Problem of Pain

Creation’s Weak Point

  • Sep 29, 2019
  • Zach Kincaid
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What’s your story? Does it begin in a garden, move to desolation, find itself in redemption, and get caught in the great hope of Heaven? That’s the Christian story.

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Advent Reflections on Love

  • Dec 16, 2018
  • Zach Kincaid
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Lewis has a lot to say about love. As you know, The Four Loves threads through the love of a mother, of a lover, of a friend, and of God himself. Each love exhibits different qualities, with agape love as the definition and conclusion of all love. As John reminds us in I …

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Point of View for Lent

  • Feb 19, 2018
  • Zach Kincaid
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As many of you certainly know, Lent is the 40-day pilgrimage that Christians take every year as they look to Easter. Last week it was introduced by the solemn reminder that we are dust (and to dust we will return) on Ash Wednesday. Our breath and being are animated by …

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Divine Refining

  • Jul 30, 2016
  • Zach Kincaid
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In The Problem of Pain, Lewis writes “Christianity is not the conclusion of a philosophical debate on the origins of the universe… It is not a system into which we have to fit the awkward fact of pain: it is itself one of the awkward facts which have to be fitted into …

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Grace Outlasts Pain

  • May 17, 2016
  • Zach Kincaid
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The eternal cause of pain is not clear; it wears a mask. But because God is good, we have hope of a ‘good’ eternal cause to our temporal conflicts. The Apostle Paul writes that we should not mourn like those that have no hope. Lewis says that this command must …

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Hell

  • Oct 21, 2014
  • Zach Kincaid
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Lewis is not shy about the afterlife and the intertwining of the spiritual with the material. Counter to the cyclical trend of finding ways for hell to either not exist or at least not be used for eternal damnation of humans, Lewis says something different: “I believe that if million chances were …

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You Will Be Missed

  • Aug 01, 2014
  • Zach Kincaid
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Lewis talks quite a bit about suffering and loss. His earlier, more theologically driven The Problem of Pain and the wanderings of A Grief Observed, as he wrestles with the loss of his wife, each explore the gut of the faithful follower of Jesus, as do other works. Everyone suffers, but …

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Heaven and Hell as Idea and Image in C. S. Lewis

  • May 07, 2010
  • Peter J. Schakel
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C. S. Lewis was deeply interested in heaven. In his nonfiction prose he frequently discussed the nature of heaven (and, less frequently, the nature of hell) and explained how to take part in it. In his works of fiction he created several striking descriptions of what heaven (and, in less …

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The Problem of Pain

  • Feb 26, 2010
  • Zach Kincaid
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C.S. Lewis puts his wages on a God who holds goodness and pain in a paradox. The Problem of Pain demonstrates a more distant, less emotional reaction to humanity’s situation, while A Grief Observed reads like a psalm of lament from within pain itself. The two texts compliment one another …

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The Reality of Pain

  • Feb 18, 2010
  • Zach Kincaid
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Lent opens this week and it’s a reminder of suffering and pilgrimage. C. S. Lewis wrote two books on pain, The Problem of Pain in 1940 and A Grief Observed in 1961. In The Problem of Pain Lewis says, like Chekhov, there is “so much mercy, yet still there is …

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