A World Without Pain

“I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made 'perfect through suffering'" is not incredible.”- The Problem Of Pain: C.S. Lewis

The old saying goes “ What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” I think that that is true. Pain is something that shows our mortality. Though annoying sometimes, it reminds us of our frailty. Pain is what keeps us in check. No one can escape it.

In the Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis tries to make the concept of pain compatible with God’s character. I don’t think that pain is a problem. Saying that it is a “problem” implies that it can be solved. But as mortal humans, and pain being a natural reminder of that mortality, it would be impossible to “solve” the pain of losing a loved one, or of being burned by a hot pan, or of a paper cut, on our own. We need an outside force, be it aloe or God, to come in and heal the pain.

It really isn’t that large of a mystery “why” our lives are filled with pain. It is part of the natural order of this world, a fallen world, in which the rule of opposites applies. In order for us to know pleasure, we must first know pain. But more than that, I think that without living in pain, we could never know the gift God has given us in redemption. In order to understand, perhaps not comprehend, the glory of heaven, we must first know what hell is like, or at least sample it through our mortality. How could we possibly understand “grace” if we have not known the difference in “suffering”?

What we all would like to believe is that there can be heaven on this Earth. But I think the truth is that that heaven sailed away long ago. God does not call us to make this fallen world into our own version of paradise, and we should not try to. Accepting “pain”, as strange as it sounds, is ultimately accepting God’s grace (for a Christian). I means that we understand not only our mortality, and the mortality of the things around us, but that He is the one who offers us a world truly free of that pain.