By: Tom Knoff | April 2, 2023
The Desperate Search for Truth that Developed C. S. Lewis’s Perspective on Suffering
While Lewis’s heightened awareness of suffering was awakened early in life as a result of his painful experiences, it was his ensuing quest for the meaning of life which would develop his perspective. The intense journey which he embarked upon served to shape what would become a remarkable theoretical comprehension of pain and the purposes it serves in life. There were two aspects about pain he discovered on his search that had a significant influence on his perspective, one being that the painful sense of emptiness he experienced while exploring various worldviews ultimately led him to the truth about God, and the other was that pain serves a key role in God’s plan for life.
Lewis’s Discovery that a Painful Sense of Emptiness Can Lead a Person to the Truth about God
After relinquishing the nominal Christian faith of his childhood, Lewis set out on a quest for meaning and truth. Because the legs of his intellect possessed such extraordinary strength, he was capable of scaling philosophical mountains that few others could, and thus he was able to explore their respective peaks for treasure. However, after having surveyed atheism, Freudian psychology, pantheistic religion, and even the occult, Lewis returned from his search with nothing of lasting value. What he did bring back from his arduous expedition was a deep emptiness in his soul. Ironically, it was that very emptiness which turned out to be the surprising bounty of his quest, for it would serve as an important reminder that he still hadn’t found what he was looking for. He would always remember that nothing of perpetual worth could be found at the apex of human philosophy other than barren trees, devoid of any fruit that can truly satisfy the mind or any beauty that can eternally nourish the human soul.
The vexing discomfort of a sense of meaningless became an important catalyst for his spiritual awakening, and a return to the Christian faith. This, combined with other factors, led to Lewis’s conversion to Christ in 1929. Within a few years after his conversion, he would pen a book which recounted his spiritual journey. In it he would write how his intellectual search led to a sense of emptiness and how God can use such dissatisfaction to get a wanderer’s attention,
If a man diligently followed this desire, pursuing the false objects until their falsity appeared and then resolutely abandoning them, he must come out at last into the clear knowledge that human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given… The only fatal error was to pretend that you had passed from desire to fruition, when in reality, you had found either nothing, or desire itself, or the satisfaction of some different desire.[1]
This concept would continue to develop in Lewis’s thinking, and by 1940, he would be arguing that pain and dissatisfaction are a primary way in which God works to get the attention of all rebellious hearts. He wrote of how God uses pain as “His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”[2] While it may have seemed counter-intuitive to some, he contended that adversity was actually a divine good because it granted an opportunity for a lethargic soul to wake up and see the need to make a change in life. Lewis noted, “But it (pain) gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.”[3]
For Lewis, his desperate search for truth shaped his perspective on suffering. Initially seeing how God used it in his own life, his view expanded to include the claim that God also uses it to get the attention of unbelievers, as well as to keep believer’s hearts longing for heaven.
Lewis’s Discovery that Pain Serves a Key Role in God’s Plan for Life
Though Lewis had finally found peace with God through Jesus Christ, he persisted in his search to understand life more fully. As he continued to grapple with the problem of pain, he discovered that pain is a key instrument in God’s plan for life. It was such an important theme to him, that it pervaded much of his life’s work.
For Lewis, God uses the pain and longings of the heart to turn the attention of both unbelievers and believers toward the divine. He wrote, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”[4]
Pain is also one of the tools God uses to overcome the subtle tactics of Satan who attempts to lead people to Hell, as he notes in his famous allegory, The Screwtape Letters, “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”[5]
Additionally, he asserted that the prospect of eternal suffering is something God uses which can, but does not necessarily, turn a rebellious heart away from damnation. In The Great Divorce, Lewis recounts how God’s offer of salvation from everlasting sorrow is often tragically rejected, “I wish I had never been born, she said. What are we born for? For infinite happiness, said the Spirit. You can step out into it at any moment…”[6]
Lewis would also claim that God uses the pain of a life without beauty to keep one’s heart longing for Him. In Surprised by Joy, he speaks of how God uses intuition and beauty to connect with the human soul. He writes, “Moreover, by God’s providence human intuition and imagination is so made and tuned as to discern spiritual meaning behind symbols and metaphors taken from visible nature.”[7]
Lewis also contended that discomfort serves an important role in preserving the emotional component of humanity. In an attempt to combat a growing aversion in rationalistic education to the denial of true feelings (and thus true pain), Lewis exposed it as something that was destroying in young people an awareness of healthy passion and a sense of the supernatural. In The Abolition of Man, he writes, “They conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion…”[8]
For Lewis, his desperate search for truth led to the discovery that pain serves important purposes in God’s plan for humanity. As he grappled with trying to understand suffering, he concluded that God uses it to get the attention of a lethargic soul, to overcome the tactics of Satan, to turn people away from eternal damnation, to maintain awareness of beauty (and thus the divine), and to guard against allowing rationalistic stoicism to cause one to deny the reality of feelings and pain, and thus not learning to appropriately handle life’s adversity as God intended.
About the Author
Tom Knoff is a Senior Class Teacher of Worldview Philosophy at Grapevine Faith Christian School in Grapevine, Texas. He is in the PhD in Theology and Apologetics program at Liberty University. Tom, his wife, Kim, and family are originally from Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Copyright 2023. Bellator Christi.
Notes
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 204-205.
[2] Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 604.
[3] Lewsis, The Problem of Pain, 605.
[4] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007), 114.
5] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942), in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (San
Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007), 220.
[6] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (1946), in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (San
Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007), 499
[7] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955), 176-177.
[8] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1944), in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2007), 699.
