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The Problem of Pain

C.S. Lewis As a follow up to yesterday's post about Epicurean lack of passion, here is a link to an article about C.S. Lewis' great book, The Problem of Pain. A snippet:
God's idea of goodness is almost certainly unlike ours; yet, God's moral judgment must differ from ours "not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel" — or we could mean nothing by calling him good. Thus, where God means Love, we only mean Kindness, "the desire to see others than self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy". We want "not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven", a God "who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?'" (Let us note in passing how much this confusion between Love and Kindness is akin to our modern thinking: it sheds light on many present controversies, from assisted suicide to abortion to contraception.) But Love is not mere Kindness. "Kindness cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering", while Love "would rather see [the loved ones] suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes."
This subject also came up in a post last month.

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