pain

I’m going to take a quick break from the book to give you some personal thoughts.

I have been thinking a lot about pain recently. I am not contemplating that, I stubbed my toe pain, or even, my girlfriend broke up with me, pain, but real pain. The type of that rips at your soul and makes you question things, that is the type of pain I have been mulling over. You see the problem is that I don’t understand it. Now don’t get me wrong, there are many things I don’t understand. I don’t understand how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. I don’t understand why we pay athletes tons of money to put a ball into a hoop. However, I can live with those things and say, “it’s a mystery.” Yet, this concept of pain gnaws at me. It bothers me. It makes me question things.

Sometimes I think we do one of two things with pain: either we treat it too simplistically, or we tread around it too carefully. I’m going to be honest, it always bothers me when someone is hurting and another well-meaning person says “God has a plan for this you just can’t see it yet.” While that may be true to some extent, I really don’t think it helps anyone in the situation. Nor do I think it is good to totally ignore that someone is in pain and just move on.

C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors. I love the Chronicles of Narnia; I thought that The Screwtape Letters was an excellent book; anything he has written I have enjoyed. I thought The Problem with Pain was a masterpiece; a great intellectual discourse on why there was pain in the world, and why it had to be there. And then came A Grief Observed. A brilliant and transparent book that Lewis wrote after his wife died. He starts to understand pain and grief better.

A friend tells him that “… the same thing seems to have happened to Christ: ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’” Lewis’ response? “I know. Does that make it any easier to understand?” You can almost hear his heart being wrenched from his chest as his mind tries to play catch up and reconcile his faith with his feelings

“Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

I recall thinking the same things throughout my High School and college years. God was so real to me that I couldn’t get rid of him altogether, however there were moments where I wondered what kind of God was I serving.

I remember a time when I had been healed as a freshman in high school. I suppose I should have been joyous. I expect that I should have had better thoughts, and better words. Nevertheless, all that I could really think was “Why was I, one with so little faith, healed, and my sister, one who thirsts for God daily, not?” (Before we go on, I do not want any particular responses to that question. I have come to the realization that it will never be answered, and I’m ok with that, smarter people than you have tried and failed. Thank you for your thoughts, but move on to the next section please.)

As I got older, I saw more pain, and these were the worse types. They were not caused by any act of free will, or any particular choice; NO, freaks of nature, tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes caused them. My “freewill” defense went out the window on those situations. And my intellect mocked me. “Come and answer Aaron, come and fix this problem of pain.”

So what is my answer? What is my grand scheme to help all in pain or who are watching someone they love experience it?


I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. I have no intellectual reason for all of the pain in the world. I don’t know why an all-loving, all-powerful God allows for this kind of suffering either. I suppose many of you will read this and come up with something. And that’s ok. If you want to share it that is ok as well. I’m always impressed with those that can rationalize better than I. Those whose minds work in overtime, and overdrive. As for me, I’ll end with this. It is from Lewis in his last chapter.

“I thought I could describe a state (of grief); make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history …”

Until we experience real pain, we don’t understand it, and even then we are so blinded we can’t comprehend it, and once we are over that, the scars won’t let us totally recall it. Perhaps I will try to grasp it after death … and maybe not even then.