Pain, God's megaphone

Pain as God's megaphone

C. S. Lewis 1898 · 1963The moral law everyone feels, and reason itself, point towards God.

What it claims

Pain can serve a good: it wakes the person who thinks everything is fine and opens the only chance of amendment. Its presence in the world is not incompatible with a good God who speaks through it.

Why

We can ignore pleasure and overlook our faults, but not pain: it forces us to see that something is wrong.

The same idea through history

C. S. Lewis1940In The Problem of Pain, Lewis answers the problem of evil by asking what suffering can do for us. The first role he gives it: to shatter the illusion that all is well.

In short

"Pain, God's megaphone" is an argument by C. S. Lewis (Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940), ch. 6, 1940) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: theism). Its claim: Pain can serve a good: it wakes the person who thinks everything is fine and opens the only chance of amendment. Its presence in the world is not incompatible with a good God who speaks through it. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940), ch. 6

Valid with an implicit premise

Lewis does not claim God wants suffering for its own sake. He observes that we live pleased with ourselves while all is well: we can rest in our faults and follies, and even fail to taste our pleasures. Pain, however, is an evil we cannot ignore. For a good God wishing to wake someone asleep in wrongdoing, it would therefore be a hard but effective means. Lewis immediately adds that it is a "terrible instrument" that can also lead to rebellion.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.

If pain forces us to notice evil (P1), if without it we notice nothing (P2) and if noticing is the condition for amending (P3), then pain opens a chance nothing else opens. P3 is added by charity.

Analogy.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

David Hume (Philo) 1779 · attacks premise 1

Even to drive creatures to act, pleasure alone seems sufficient: a diminution of pleasure could replace pain. An all-powerful God would not need pain to warn us.

Lewis replies

Lewis Lewis' reply

Lewis does not name Hume, but his text answers the idea: we can ignore even pleasure, like the glutton who shovels down the finest food without knowing what he eats; pain, however, "insists upon being attended to".

Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Hume speaks about animals and action, Lewis about the human being and moral life; they do not quite answer the same question. What they share is the debate about a God who could have done otherwise.

William Rowe 1979 · attacks the conclusion

A fawn trapped in a forest fire lies in agony for days, alone. No moral being learns anything from it, and suffering often goes far beyond what the formation of character would require. The warning role cannot explain all suffering.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1979, after the author's death (1963).

The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Rowe writes fifteen years after Lewis's death. In this chapter Lewis does not claim all pain is a warning: he treats human pain and says it can fail. Even if accepted, though, his argument does not explain cases where no one can be woken. The rest of the book treats other uses of pain and animal pain, which we have not re-read here.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Lewis' argument at best explains part of human suffering; who must prove what about the rest is the core of the debate with Rowe.

The objection Lewis anticipates 1940 · attacks premise 3

Pain does not always improve: it can harden, breed hatred, lead to rebellion with no return. A means that fails so often is not a good path to conversion.

Lewis replies

Lewis Lewis' reply

Lewis grants it: it is a terrible instrument that can lead to final rebellion. But he defends it thus: it gives the bad man the only opportunity for amendment, since without it he would remain without the least suspicion.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Lewis accepts possible failure and defends only the opportunity offered; his critics reply that the opportunity is not worth the price paid by those who do not benefit.

C. S. Lewis himself (A Grief Observed) 1961 · attacks the conclusion

After the death of his wife Joy Davidman (1960), Lewis kept a journal of grief, published under a pseudonym. He writes there that the danger is not ceasing to believe in God but coming to believe dreadful things about him; and when you need him most, you find a door slammed in your face. Pain as lived does not feel like a voice that wakes you.

no reply

We have not yet found a direct reply by Lewis in the texts.

The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: further on in the same journal, Lewis gradually regains peace without giving up his faith. The book does not refute The Problem of Pain; it shows the gap between the argument and the pain one goes through.

In the same family · The problem of evil

Evil is not a thing: privation and free willAugustine of Hippo