Problem of Pain

In chapter 6, Lewis talks about human pain. In this he notes that there are two types of pain, that of cognizant Pain and that can be either physical or mental and biological pain that is the result of synapses of special nerve fibers. The first type of pain is called the B sense in Chapter 6 and Lewis comments that this type of pain is mostly caused by one person on another and at the same time this pain is also felt by people when they surrender their lives to God which is a kind of death for the self-will, the desire of a person to control his own life and not surrender it to its true owner, God.

Lewis goes on to say that Pain is an evil, but not the subtle and smooth evils that lurk in our hearts, but an evil that is "unmasked and unmistakable". Thus the idea of punishment for the good of the perpetrator so that he will recognize that he is committing evil and thus shattering his illusion of being good or ok is a useful thing, but it can be warped into vengefulness which is to punish for the sake of punishing not for the improvement of the person. Lewis then shows how this type of correction is what God uses on us daily lest we fall into deluding ourselves that we are Good and have no need of him because our lives are going so well, which is especially common amongst the "good" people of this world. However this is not to say that all following of God's will is painful, but rather that a good portion of it becomes less and less painful the close to God that we get unless you are referring to the pain of self-surrender which will always be an unpleasant experience, but ever more beneficial to the one who under goes it.

I think that we can find examples of this in all things. For instance, how does a dog learn to sit or to not go into the house? by kind words of the master or by the master kicking the dog out of the house or forcing the dog to sit down despite its will to resist, but if no action is taken then the dog will never sit and will freely roam the house despite the master's thundering thoughts that he should not that are never vocalized. Much the same, God wishes to train us and teach us to conform to the innate rightness of his will. We can choose either to resist and keep going where we should not or we can listen and move closer to being right.