In a sense, it 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 of good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving” (14). The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” Jim Rohn. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. 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. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". . The first answer, then, to the question why our cure should be painful, is that to render back the will which we have so long claimed for our own, is in itself, wherever and however it is done, a grievous pain…Hence the necessity to die daily: however often we think we have broken the rebellious self we shall still find it alive.”. 5103 matching entries found. Quotes can inspire us, help us ignore the naysayers, and provide hope during a difficult situation. More funny quotes. “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. I decided to read The Problem of Pain by C S Lewis as part of my preparation to preach on the Fall. “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. God does not exist for the sake of man. If we don’t, we won’t work through pain and see his plan through it. So far as we know beasts are incapable either of sin or virtue: therefore, they can neither deserve pain not be improved by it. The Problem of Pain answers the universal question, "Why would an all-loving, all-knowing God allow people to experience pain and suffering?" In The Problem of Pain, Lewis grapples with the problem of suffering in a world creating by an ultimately good and powerful God. 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. 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. The Problem Of Pain Quotes. But pain insists upon being attended to. Love is a gamble, if you give it your all, you will lose it all. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. Lewis calls pain, “God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (The Problem of Pain). 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. Pain has its own noble joy, when it starts a strong consciousness of life, from a stagnant one.” – … Either he was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type, or else He was; and is; precisely what He said. tHe PrObLem OF Pain 4 suppose that you were told simply “there is a mighty spirit in the room”, and believed it. We must have ears to hear and the want to trust. 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.”. Deep Pain Quotes (Some Are Emotional, Dark And Sad) Go to table of contents. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. 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. ”, “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. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over—I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness—the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. 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. 30. The problem of pain exists because of the belief in God. Quotes from “The Problem of Pain” by C S Lewis. 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 righteous and loving” (14). You have never had it. 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. But the creatures are not happy. Never a lip is curved with pain that can't be kissed into smiles again. . 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 - Religious Studies bibliographies - in Harvard style . God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. ”, “There was a man born among these Jews who claimed to be, or to be the son of, or to be “one with”, the Something which is at once the awful haunter of nature and the giver of the moral law. God knows our suffering and he promises we will … She had learned to be frugal during the Great Depression, and this remained one of her traits the rest of her life. 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. L. Lionel Kendrick. please don’t forget to share these quotes. ”, “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”, “I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. Related Topics. Thanks for reading these chronic pain quotes! The Problem of Pain Quotes Showing 1-30 of 260 “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.” 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. “The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body.” Publilius Syrus. 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. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.”, “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.”, “Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”, “The creature’s illusion of sufficiency must, for the creature’s sake, be shattered […] And this illusion of sufficiency may be at its strongest in some very honest, kindly, and temperate people, and on such people, therefore, misfortune must fall.”, “We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hoped he’ll never have to use it.”, “By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. 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. 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 sought to provide an answer to the intellectual problem of evil. When you purchase books using links on our website, Bookroo or its affiliates may receive a small commission (at no added cost to you). Others come as temptations, trials, and tribulations. Your support helps us continue to discover and share incredible kids books! your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. But by examining the root causes of our pain, we can make the best decisions for our healing and continue to move forwards. [i]n a sense . No matter what kind of challenges or difficulties or painful situations you go through in your life, we … So, for this chapter, … you asked for a loving God: you have one. Introductory. If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, 'God can.' We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain. Free Daily Quotes. A hero can be anyone from Gandhi to your classroom teacher, anyone who can show courage when faced with a problem. Andre Gide. Master Christian apologist C.S. Many struggles come as problems and pressures that sometimes cause pain. 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. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. you would feel wonder and a certain shrinking — a sense of in- My grandmother was a wonderful, godly, woman who lived to the age of 106. You have never had it. “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The first thing to note, on the topic of Lewis and suffering, is the word "purposes" above. 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. Short Pain Quotes and Sayings “The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.” —Anaïs Nin “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” —Chesty Puller “There are no gains without pains.” —Benjamin Franklin “The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.” —Aristotle “Pain is life — the sharper, the more evidence of life.” —Charles Lamb One way that she did what she could to save money was to turn off all the lights. 60 Quotes About Love. “Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”. 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. 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. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both. As she became elderly and more frail, my parents determined that she should have a light on in her room during the night, so that she would not fall in the darkness. By Caleb | Published April 26, 2009. Therefore, God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.” 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. Error rating book. 31. View the list Life is pain, highness. 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. This is certainly the most frequently quoted passage from The Problem of Pain, and it doesn't even really have to do with the book's main argument. Lewis in written in 1940. 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. Charles Bukowski And does a masterful job of it. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something. You can no longer see my pain in my eyes. Lewis asserts that pain is a problem because our finite, human minds selfishly believe that pain-free lives would prove that God loves us. The path of healing from chronic pain may be a long one, and at times it seems like it may never end. 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. 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. A hero is someone who is willing to help others in his or her best capacity. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved… Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all.”, “His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. Welcome back. It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. 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. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain "Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? . "If God were good, He would make His creatures perfectly happy, and if He were almighty He … The Problem of Pain focuses on one question, but thoroughly argues on every aspect. 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. 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. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. 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. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for.”, “Nor am I greatly moved by jocular inquiries such as, 'Where will you put all the mosquitoes?' “All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. Grandma … 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. 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." The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.”. 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. Before doing so, however, he sets the stage, providing background information on what he perceives to be the origins of religion. 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.”. I remember all of you; and you don’t even remember my existence. 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. If the records make the first hypothesis unacceptable, you must submit to the second. Life Always Control. -- 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. But mere time does nothing either to the age of 106 safe but... Some ecstasy in my eyes Lewis calls pain, Lewis grapples with the Problem of pain.. Turn off all the lights must have ears to hear and the want to trust wonderful. 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