God Shouts in Our Pains

QL's dad's wake is the fourth wake that I have attended this year. If anything it reminded me of the frailty and vulnerability of human life.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. - C.S. Lewis

How does one explain the apparent senselessness of pain and suffering? Some portray it as the absolute reality which all men must confront, and when one has conquered it by sheer Will he must be a stronger Man, more complete, more rational, unwavering in his opposing convictions to superstition or blind religious faith. Stare death right in the eye, and bat not an eyelid.

Others try to show that there is hardly any contradiction at all to a Pain-Inflicting and Benevolent God, but I guess I have simply given up explaining. To me, perhaps the Problem of Pain is unresolvable by mere reasoning. It is a problem, and I want to face it as it is. It is a problem that requires faith, but part of the tragedy lies in the fact that not even a relatively strong faith, no matter how true, might be able to comprehend the vastness of the Problem.

Therefore tremendous faith is necessary to believe that God can inflict such hurt on us beyond our deepest imagination and yet at the same time still not cease to be the Perfect Essence, Being and Source of Love. Can a faith the size of a mustard seed grasp this absurdity? The Problem grabs you by the neck and screams, "Insanity!"

The Fool wishes to master Death but instead was mastered by it. He wishes to embrace a brave new reality but retreats in his venture into a fatalistic existence. And he realizes that he was none the wiser than when he had first started out, and thus a Fool he remains. The Problem is too big for him to handle. The second Fool tries to explain, but finds himself gradually explaining away. As he prolongs his speech, rationality slowly drains away from his words, and no sooner had he started had he found himself engaging in gibberish nonsense. The Problem is too big from him to handle.

Why is the Problem so difficult to resolve? I guess it is a concept too deep for a Fallen Mind to grasp. The Fall involves an inability to comprehend the things of God. The Fall prevents Man, even one who is redeemed unto spiritual life, from truly and completely recovering the Goodness of God in all its glory and perfection. Man's heart is prone to wander, easily assaulted by darts of doubts, and these doubts consumes him and his weak faith. A man of giant faith might, for a brief moment, understand to the slightest degree how the Problem might be resolved, yet for most of his life, God has meant that he, fallen and sinful, will struggle with It.

That an omnibenevolent God with all the strength of His mighty power, should allow His creatures, and even His most beloved children, to suffer temporally and go through much senseless pain is unthinkable. And over and above that, to a more immeasurably hideous degree, to banish even those His children love to eternal separation, while His poor children weep and mourn in utter desperation, is repulsive to the Fallen Mind.

And to this Problem Fools have come to simplistic solutions. To no longer believe in an omnibenevolent God, or to believe that the Problem is really no Problem at all. Yet the most logical answer to the Problem, is that one must have tremendous faith in His character, and trust in the infinite wisdom of God through all these senseless pain.

Can I have the tremendous faith that I need, the Solution that the Problem demands, the faith of Abraham that says, "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?"