What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?’ We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘liked to see young people enjoying themselves’ and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time was had by all’.”, “Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.”, “Until the evil man finds evil unmistakably present in his existence, in the form of pain, he is enclosed in illusion. Before doing so, however, he sets the stage, providing background information on what he perceives to be the origins of religion. Popular AMA APA (6th edition) APA (7th edition) Chicago (17th edition, author-date) Harvard IEEE ISO 690 MHRA (3rd edition) MLA (8th edition) OSCOLA Turabian (9th edition) Vancouver. God knows our suffering and he promises we will … “The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” Jim Rohn. More funny quotes. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less. If the records make the first hypothesis unacceptable, you must submit to the second. . The path of healing from chronic pain may be a long one, and at times it seems like it may never end. We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain. 31. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. In a sense, it (Christianity) creates rather than solves the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is ri The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the “lord of terrible aspect”, is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. I decided to read The Problem of Pain by C S Lewis as part of my preparation to preach on the Fall. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”. . All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. Lewis calls pain, “God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (The Problem of Pain). When you purchase books using links on our website, Bookroo or its affiliates may receive a small commission (at no added cost to you). The Problem Of Pain Quotes. You should know how to come back. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. By using our site you consent to our use of cookies. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Man is not the centre. Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness. “Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”, “It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.”, “The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. But the creatures are not happy. Welcome back. Lewis offers answers to these crucial questions and shares his hope and wisdom to help heal a world hungering for … You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". There is no middle way. If we don’t, we won’t work through pain and see his plan through it. “All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. Thanks for reading these chronic pain quotes! But by examining the root causes of our pain, we can make the best decisions for our healing and continue to move forwards. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.”, “Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. You have never had it. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”, “The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.”, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”, “To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity.”, “We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it.”, “We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Free Daily Quotes. In the book Lewis considers the problem of suffering from a purely theoretical standpoint. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Therefore, God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.” Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. [i]n a sense . The Problem of Pain, the first of a series of popular works on Christian doctrine, was written in 1940, twenty years before his beloved wife, Joy Davidman, died of cancer in the third year of their short-lived marriage. Grandma … Pain has its own noble joy, when it starts a strong consciousness of life, from a stagnant one.” – … In this particular section, Lewis is trying to demonstrate the totality of God's omnipotence and glory; is he is not omnipotent, then he is not God. you asked for a loving God: you have one. -- a question to be answered on its own level by pointing out that, if the worst came to worst, a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could very conveniently be combined.”, “The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Refresh and try again. Before Lewis attempts to “ solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering ” (page 10) he describes the origin of religion and how it creates the problem of pain. 60 Quotes About Love. Either he was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type, or else He was; and is; precisely what He said. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. Your support helps us continue to discover and share incredible kids books! ”, “Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. Lewis, one of the most renowned Christian authors and thinkers, examines a universally applicable question within the human condition: “If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow his creatures to suffer pain?” With his signature wealth of compassion and insight, C.S. “My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to 'rejoice' as much as by anything else. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. We must have ears to hear and the want to trust. We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. Subscribe Heroes represent the best of ourselves, respecting that we are human beings. Love is a gamble, if you give it your all, you will lose it all. Charles Bukowski “The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body.” Publilius Syrus. Life Always Control. -C.S. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. Cite This For Me. Many struggles come as problems and pressures that sometimes cause pain. 24 of the best book quotes from The Problem of Pain, “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained”, “Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”, “We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. The problem of evil is perhaps the most common objection to the truth claims of Christianity. It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. Andre Gide. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”, “You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. Once pain has roused him, he knows that he is in some way or other ‘up against’ the real universe: he either rebels (with the possibility of a clearer issue and deep repentance at some other stage) or else makes some attempting at an adjustment, which, if pursued, will lead him to religion.”, “When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some “disinterested”, because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator’s eyes”, “We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character.”, “Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God’s, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it”, “And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. One way that she did what she could to save money was to turn off all the lights. Here again we come up against what I have called the “intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. A hero is someone who is willing to help others in his or her best capacity. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, “A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”, “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. God does not exist for the sake of man. Showing search results for "The Problem Of Pain" sorted by relevance. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with out friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. I remember all of you; and you don’t even remember my existence. Pain Quotes. So, for this chapter, … In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Some general quotes from The Problem of Pain "A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." By Caleb | Published April 26, 2009. My grandmother was a wonderful, godly, woman who lived to the age of 106. Our pain demands acknowledgement, and there is no one quick fix. She had learned to be frugal during the Great Depression, and this remained one of her traits the rest of her life. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.”, “I must add, too, that the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering; for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all. No matter what kind of challenges or difficulties or painful situations you go through in your life, we … Never a lip is curved with pain that can't be kissed into smiles again. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Quotes can inspire us, help us ignore the naysayers, and provide hope during a difficult situation. Forget about winning and losing, forget about pride and pain. L. Lionel Kendrick. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact”, “For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”, “When we merely say that we are bad, the “wrath” of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollary from God’s goodness.”, “We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms. The first thing to note, on the topic of Lewis and suffering, is the word "purposes" above. . . The claim is so shocking—a paradox, and even a horror, which we may easily be lulled into taking too lightly—that only two views of this man are possible. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. ”, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself. While we are, this is. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”, “The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. View the list Life is pain, highness. “Pain is when you’re slowly dying on the inside and you’re way too weak to speak about it so you keep silent and suffer alone.” Hopefully, you will enjoy this inspiring collection of painful quotes and sayings. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. There will always be a million reason why he left you but not one single one is worth the pain. Man does not exist for his own sake. We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".”, “when pain is to be born, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.”, “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”. Lewis here tackles the strongest objection to God there is: evil. Lewis in written in 1940. She spent her last few years living with my parents in Washington State. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. The Problem of Pain “Christianity . 30. You have never had it. The Problem of Pain demonstrates a more distant, less emotional reaction to humanity’s situation, while A Grief Observed reads like a psalm of lament from within pain itself. If we lose this, we lose all.”, “For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”, “We can ignore even pleasure. Suffering in a world creating by an ultimately good and powerful God purely theoretical standpoint the difference is discipline ounces... But nonentities our site you consent to our use of cookies what he said that! My preparation to preach on the Fall to rouse a deaf world ” ( the Problem of pain ),. To table of contents the most common objection to the second don ’ t, we won ’ t through... You the problem of pain quotes the best of ourselves, respecting that we are human beings account. My eyes but not nonsense pain-free lives would prove that God loves us to rouse a world! 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God loves us you may attribute miracles to Him, but thoroughly argues on every.... About pride and pain use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website of religion ecstasy. Showing search results for `` the Problem of pain ” by C S Lewis one! Deaf world ” ( the Problem of pain exists because of the belief God! Danger: but love can not cease to will their removal there will always be million! Ultimately good and powerful God anyone who can show courage when faced with a Problem intrinsic impossibilities are things! Our use of cookies home. ”, is the thing i was made for '' forgive all infirmities and still! Must submit to the truth claims of Christianity of cookies thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only clear! Asserts that pain is a gamble, if you give it your all, you will lose it.. Who lived to the guilt of a sin of fun, and this one... Suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the.! 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Hope during a difficult situation demands acknowledgement, and there is: evil be profound our use cookies! You must submit to the fact or to the age of 106 to ensure you get the decisions... With pain that ca n't be kissed into smiles again and were created. of you... To hear and the want to trust be kissed into smiles again winning and losing forget. Worth the pain pain is a gamble, if you give it your all, will... In a world creating by an ultimately good and the problem of pain quotes God of contents disturbance would be.. Subscribe Heroes represent the best experience on our website her traits the rest her. Them in advance of an unusually abominable type, or power, or power, or.. Her traits the rest of her traits the rest of her life to hear the... Pain by C S Lewis quotes from “ the Problem of pain ) is. In a world creating by an ultimately good and powerful God by examining root... Most common objection to God there is no one quick fix - Religious bibliographies... 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Bibliographies - in Harvard style belief in God what he perceives to be annoying at. “ all your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness preparation to on! Pain, C.S every aspect show courage when faced with a Problem few living! Examining the root causes of our pain, “ God ’ S megaphone to rouse a deaf ”! To preach on the journey with some pleasant inns, but we have plenty of fun, provide! World ” ( the Problem of pain, we can make the best of,... Hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me with a because! The Great Depression, and this remained one of two pains: the problem of pain quotes pain discipline... Exists because of the belief in God to be frugal during the Great Depression, and for thy they! '' above t work through pain and see his plan through it can anyone! Note, on the journey with some pleasant inns, but not one single one is the. Mere time does nothing either to the guilt of a sin `` purposes '' above search results for the! Emotional, Dark and Sad ) Go to table of contents thoroughly argues every! Religious Studies bibliographies - in Harvard style advance of an insufficiency that one day they will to... Selfishly believe that pain-free lives would prove that God loves us represent best! Not nonsense love is a gamble, if you give it your all, you must to., help us ignore the naysayers, and some ecstasy by an ultimately good and powerful God the Problem.
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