{"product":{"product_id":"0060652969","title":"The Problem of Pain","price":"10.19","image_url":"https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51gJd11gfOL._SL500_.jpg","url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060652969"},"comments":[{"body":"I'm sorry you're hurting. I know how much it can feel like the entire world isn't working right when we're heartbroken, and I pray that God will comfort you in this difficulty. Here are a few things to consider as well.\r\n\r\nFirst, I would encourage you to read a book by C.S. Lewis called \"[The Problem of Pain](https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969)\". I read this after my dad passed away, and while it didn't make the pain go away, it did help to give me a different perspective on pain. It was really helpful, and I think it could be for you too. To (very briefly) sum it up, pain is a guardrail, it tells us where the boundaries in life are, and while it's unpleasant, it's often a sign that God is trying to keep us from the really bad things. You can learn from pain, if you can wrap your mind around a different perspective.\r\n\r\nSecond, if God didn't allow pain, then we would have no free will. Pain is the result of choices - ours or those made by others - that diverge from His will. But if He only ever allowed us to choose things that were in His will - and as a result, avoid pain - then we wouldn't really be free, would we?\r\n\r\nThird, Scripture *does not* say that God will not give us more than we can handle. 1 Corinthians 10:13 is the often-cited justification for this belief, but it's also misquoted. It says that God will not allow us to be *tempted* beyond our ability, but also that He will give us a way of escape. This doesn't mean we'll never get more than we can handle, it means that when we're overwhelmed God will provide a way out. And the usual way? Relying on Him.\r\n\r\nAgain, I hope that God will help to mend your wounded heart and help you to rely on Him through this time.","subreddit_name":"ChristianDating","author":"Starbuck_83"},{"body":"Bro be coming into r/ChristianMemes calling us cultists for acknowledging the attributes of God; cool story. Fodder for philosophy/religion class, I’d wager.\r\n\r\nAlso, I never said God was omnibenevolent; by virtue of the fact that some people were created for the ultimate purpose of spending an eternity in hell, that attribute is irreconcilable with the character of God as we know Him.\r\n\r\nC.S. Lewis has a decent book [addressing the problem of evil](The Problem of Pain https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060652969/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_K2R33GF1ASY9EWW8XVET), if you’re so inclined.","subreddit_name":"christianmemes","author":"Alces7734"},{"body":"At least CS Lewis wrestled with the concept and wrote a [whole book](https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969) about it. The fact that these people don't seem to learn anything from it and just wave it away as \"God's Plan\" is very telling of their faith.","subreddit_name":"HermanCainAward","author":"ooru"},{"body":"I'm sorry to hear that you are having such trouble, I presume, through health problems.  C.S. Lewis deals with this issue in his book \"The Problem of Pain.\"  We can learn from it about what to avoid, for example.  It's not an end in itself, but a means to another end. https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969","subreddit_name":"Christianity","author":"snoweric"},{"body":"\u0026gt;When adam and eve had kids and all, they are the only humans in existence, incest must have happened\r\n\r\nI don't think they  \r\n\r\n\u0026gt;After god drowned the earth and Noah survived, they are the only humans, incest must have happenedwere the only humans.\r\n\r\nI don't think the flood was global. But that being said, I do think incest happened here (Ham and his mother / Noah's wife).\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;Why aren't we all born with birth defects, and why does incest cause birth defects then?\r\n\r\nI'm not a biologist so I won't even attempt this answer. I don't know the exact mechanism that causes birth defects. \r\n\r\n\u0026gt;Why does he need to test us? He already knows the outcome\r\n\r\nThe wisest words I've ever read on this come from CS Lewis. He uses the example of God testing Abraham to sacrifice Isaac before stopping him.\r\n\r\n“If God then is omniscient, he must have known what Abraham would do, without any experiment. Why then this needless torture?” But as St. Augustine points out, whatever God knew, Abraham at any rate did not know that his obedience would endure such a command until the event taught him: and the obedience which he did not know that he would choose, he cannot be said to have chosen. The reality of Abraham’s obedience was the act itself; and what God knew in knowing that Abraham “would obey” was Abraham’s actual obedience on that mountain top a that moment. To say that God “need not have tried the experiment” is to say that because God knows, the thing known by God need not to exist. ([*The Problem of Pain*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060652969?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;linkCode=as2\u0026amp;camp=1789\u0026amp;creative=390957\u0026amp;creativeASIN=0060652969), 101)","subreddit_name":"AskAChristian","author":"BobbyBobbie"},{"body":"Look you probably won't like this answer but that's such a deep and complex question that I'm not gonna try and freehand it on Reddit. Sorry. I know your point because I've held that point before so I'm going to refer you to someone who is a much better authority on that question than myself and this is the main source that delivered me from seeing human suffering the way most people naturally do:\r\n\r\n[This is the Amazon #1 Best Seller in Religious Ethics](https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969/ref=sr_1_1?s=books\u0026amp;ie=UTF8\u0026amp;qid=1513380893\u0026amp;sr=1-1\u0026amp;keywords=The+Problem+of+Pain)\r\n\r\nI promise you if you read that book it will change your outlook on human pain and suffering. C.S. Lewis was an atheist because of the very issue you pose but he was able to sort it out in a brilliant manner. He later became a devout Christian and one of the best Christian intellectuals of that time. Please read this book man, it's cheap and a pretty quick read. \r\n\r\nIf you're here and you're debating these issues and you're thinking about these issues that means you have a thirst for more knowledge. People have dedicated their lives to this very question. Seek and you shall find brother. ","subreddit_name":"Christianity","author":"ImissLouie"},{"body":"Okay. Those points have been made time and time again throughout history. It's difficult to answer in a reddit post off the top of my head. This is a complex issue. Here's my question to you:\r\n\r\nAre you going to hold onto those offenses you hold toward God, and then confront Him after you die? Like, how will that go? Do you think if you actually were standing in front of God (that means He's real and you're staring at Him) do you think you could make the case that He was wrong in how He handled His creation? What, could you have done a better job or something?\r\n\r\nI'm not trying to be rude I'm just explaining to you how this won't work out for you. You will lose if you stand against God. God could easily ask you if you tried to learn His ways, if you sought after the bible and books and Youtube videos and asked questions (which you are doing now) to honestly try to learn. Seek and you will find, that's God's word. So try this instead. Read a few books written by Christians that explain the very offenses you have. Learn about it. Find the answer to it. I promise you people have given this a lot of thought and have compelling arguments for why evil exists in the world.\r\n\r\n[The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis](https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;qid=1512189437\u0026amp;sr=8-1\u0026amp;keywords=the+problem+of+pain) is an excellent book and a great starting point that I promise will change how you think about this issue. Or you can spend some time on Youtube listening to different pastors and different Christians explain this topic. You'll feel better after you learn more about it, just please don't stay where you are, move forward with it.","subreddit_name":"Christianity","author":"ImissLouie"},{"body":"God is there in the good times and the bad. You should thank Him for your suffering, because when you suffer, you understand His Passion better and come closer to Him. Being happy should never be the aim of faith; being the best servant you can possibly be for God should. \r\n\r\nI'm really, really sorry to hear that all of those horrible things happened to you. If it makes it any better, I stopped believing in God and thought religion was dumb for a long time. At that point, my life was a series of trauma that would take too long for me to explain, and I was considering suicide, because life was not worth living to me whether God existed or not. When I recovered, I didn't attribute my recovery to God--I attributed it to my own hard work and the help of a therapist. In retrospect, I do believe that God delivered me from the brink, but I could not see Him in the moment, and in fact, a part of me despised Him. I only renewed my faith recently. God understands our weakness as humans and forgives everyone, because He loves you a lot. Faith is not easy at all, and it never will be, not even for the most devout.\r\n\r\nIt might be worthwhile to read the book [*The Problem of Pain* by C. S. Lewis](https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969). The epigraph of the book is a quote by George MacDonald:\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;The Son of God suffered unto death,  \r\n\u0026gt;not that men might not suffer, but that their  \r\n\u0026gt;sufferings might be like his.\r\n\r\nHang in there. I'll pray for you.","subreddit_name":"Christianity","author":"LGBTCatholic"},{"body":"Have you read *The* *Problem* *of* *Pain* by [C.S.Lewis](http://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969)? He tackles that issue pretty well regarding evil in the world. Not trying to push anything on you, I'm just saying - he's a smart guy and it's a good read. As for how could God reach out to you if you don't worship Him: haven't you ever loved someone who didn't love you back? I have; Megan Fox still won't return any of my phone calls or emails. And yes, there are some really oblivious Christians out there. Sorry about them; there's not much I can do. However, there are some others out there that understand the evil in the world far better that you and me. Did you know there are more Christian martyrs in the world now then there were when the Romans were feeding them to the lions? ","subreddit_name":"Christianity","author":"fessus_intellectiva"},{"body":"\u0026gt;so much injustice and misery\r\n\r\nthe price of original sin \r\n\r\n\r\n\u0026gt;why does God allows such things to continue\r\n\r\n\r\nC.S. Lewis literally wrote a book on this: *The Problem of Pain*\r\nhttp://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-Pain-C-Lewis/dp/0060652969\r\n\r\n","subreddit_name":"Christianity","author":"Hessmix"},{"body":"http://smile.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;qid=1427661998\u0026amp;sr=8-1\u0026amp;keywords=the+problem+of+pain\r\n\r\n“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself” \r\n― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain","subreddit_name":"Christianity","author":"theluppijackal"},{"body":"I strongly recommend The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis: http://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969/\r\n\r\nI just finished it recently and it helped my understanding of these questions immensely. I'm not a theologian, but as far as I could tell it was pretty much in line with the teachings of the Church. I would be interested in hearing if I am wrong about that.\r\n\r\n","subreddit_name":"Catholicism","author":"pottsnpans"},{"body":"While not an easy question to respond in a good way to a child, the answer is very well explained in important Christian books such as:\r\nhttp://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-Pain-C-Lewis/dp/0060652969\r\n\r\n“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself” \r\n― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain\r\n\r\n“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.\r\n\r\nIf you choose to say, 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, 'God can.'\r\n\r\nIt remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.” \r\n― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain\r\n\r\n\r\n","subreddit_name":"worldnews","author":"abeachsomewhere1"},{"body":"I hear you. People suck.\r\n\r\nFor me, getting past the \"blame God for evil and suffering\" mindset came by better understanding free will and God's role in the world. Three sort of classic books on this include: [the problem of pain](https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1\u0026amp;keywords=the+problem+of+pain+c.s.+lewis\u0026amp;qid=1621431098\u0026amp;sprefix=the+probl\u0026amp;sr=8-1) by C.S. Lewis, [Evil and the justice of God](https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Justice-God-Rev-Wright/dp/083083415X/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1\u0026amp;keywords=evil+and+the+justice+of+god+n.t.+wright\u0026amp;qid=1621431137\u0026amp;sprefix=evil+and+the+justi\u0026amp;sr=8-3) by N.T. Wright, and [God, Freedom, and Evil](https://www.amazon.com/God-Freedom-Evil-Alvin-Plantinga/dp/0802817319/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1\u0026amp;keywords=god%2C+freedom%2C+and+evil+by+alvin+plantinga\u0026amp;qid=1621431011\u0026amp;sprefix=god%2C+freedom\u0026amp;sr=8-3) by Alvin Plantinga.\r\n\r\nMany, many people go through similar doubts and struggle with this. I certainly have. So your thoughts and concerns are perfectly normal - it's okay to question this stuff. For me, my way past was to work on understanding the boundaries between people and God in this world, and understanding what God is doing here. Attributing complete agency to God ignores the (very good / important) agency that people have to take their own actions. And people can suck. Hope this is helpful.","subreddit_name":"OpenChristian","author":"schrodinger26"},{"body":"Let’s give a general Christian explanation for why God allows evil into His creation, based on a basic Biblical worldview:  God is now in the process of making beings like Himself (Matt. 5:48; John 17:20-24; John 10:30-34) who would have 100% free will but would choose to be 100% righteous.  Consider in this context what could be called the \"thesis statement\" of Scripture in Genesis 1:26:  \"Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.\"  Why did God make us look like Him and think like him?  This is further confirmed by the statement concerning the purposes for the ministry's service to fellow Christians includes this statement:  \"for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ . . .\" (Ephesians 4:12-13).  God wants us to become just like Jesus is, who is God and has perfect character (i.e., the habits of obedience to God's law (Hebrews 5:8-9), not just imputed righteousness), yet was tempted to sin and didn’t (Hebrews 4:15).\r  \r\n \r  \r\nNow the habits of obedience and righteousness can't be created by fiat or instantaneous order.  Rather, the person who is separate from God has to choose to obey what is right and reject what is wrong on his or her own.  But every time a person does what is wrong, that will hurt him, others, and/or God.  Yet God has to allow us to have free will, because He wants His created beings to have free will like He does, otherwise they wouldn’t be becoming like Him (cf. Hebrews 2:5-13).  God didn't want to create a set of robots that automatically obey His law, which declares His will for how humanity and the angels should behave.  Robots wouldn’t be like Him, for they wouldn't have free will nor the ability to make fully conscious choices.  So then God needs to test us, to see how loyal we'll be in advance of granting us eternal life, such as He did concerning Abraham’s desire for a son by Sarah by asking him to sacrifice him (Genesis 22).  Furthermore, the greatness of the prize, being in God's Family and living forever happily in union with God, ultimately makes up for all the suffering in this life.  For what's (say) 70 years of pain relative to trillions of years of happiness in God's kingdom?  Unfortunately, our emotions, which normally focus on what's right before us physically, rebel against this insight, but it's true nevertheless.  Furthermore, as part of the process of impressing how seriously he takes violations of His law, He sent His Son to die in terrible pain on the cross for the sins of others.  God here rather mysterious decided to become just like His creatures who do suffer, and chose to suffer along with them (John 1:1-4, 14; Hebrews 2:14-18).  For if his forgiveness was easily granted and given without this terrible cost paid for it, then people might not take violations of His law seriously as a result.  So then, we have the great mystery of God dying for the sins of His creatures despite they were in the wrong, not Him.  God allows suffering in His creation, and then chooses voluntarily to suffer greatly Himself as a result of His allowing it into His creation, as a cost of His making creatures with free will.  Therefore, since we know that God understands suffering (cf. Hebrews 4:14-15), we should never think emotionally, “God can’t understand my painful life!”   \r  \r\n \r  \r\nSo although we may not know fully why God allows suffering and pain in His creation, or emotionally and psychologically be convinced that He has a good reason for doing so, we should trust Him and wait in faith on the matter.  In this context, consider God's basic answer to Job:  “You don’t know enough to judge Me!”  Furthermore, many people without suffering pain wouldn't trust God to have our interests at heart when telling us to not do X, just like they didn't trust their parents when they told them (say) doing drugs or getting drunk was bad for them.  Therefore, God chooses to prove it to humanity and the angels by hard, practical experience (i.e., empirically) on this earth in order to show that His way is best, not Satan's.  After all, when the evil angels revolted against God, they never had experienced any pain or death, but they still mistrusted God for some reason, that He didn't love them fully.  (Perhaps the Quran’s explanation, although it must be deemed to be uninspired, Christians could still ponder usefully as a speculation with something to it.  According to sura 7:10-17, Satan refused to bow down to Adam despite Allah’s order to do so based on this defiant reasoning, “Nobler am I than he:  me hast Thou created of fire; of clay hast Thou created him.”  Indeed, an evil angel may have made sure that his reasoning against Jehovah was inserted into the Quran when “inspiring” Muhammad’s recitations.  No doubt, the evil angels aren’t looking forward to being judged by saved Christians (I Cor. 6:3) and then being thrown into the lake of fire).  So even though many awful things have happened historically in the world, we should trust God that He knows what He is doing.\r  \r\n\r  \r\nCan morally absolute ideas of evil be used to prove there’s no God?  But if evolutionists attack and eliminate God’s existence from their consideration based on His allowing evil in nature to exist, they can’t then say evil doesn’t exist.  That is, they use a system of moral absolutes to eliminate God, but then (almost always) erect a system of moral relativism for people after getting rid of Him.  But if indeed all is relative, and there are no moral absolutes, they can’t complain about parasitic wasps eating the living bodies of caterpillars or about cats playing with mice as “immoral.”  If indeed all is relative, and no evil therefore exists, they can’t condemn God for allowing evil to exist.\r  \r\n  \r  \r\nThe inescapable dilemma skeptical evolutionists face in deploying the problem of evil against the existence of God stems from where the origin of our sense of morality, of right and wrong, comes from.  As Cornelius Hunter (“Darwin’s God,” p. 18) expertly summarizes the problem (his emphasis):  “The existence of evil seems to contradict God, but the existence of our deep moral sense seems to confirm God.”  For if we believe all is relative, that there are no absolutes, in a world without God, how can we condemn God for (say) allowing the Holocaust, the Cultural Revolution, or the Ukrainian terror famine?  We can’t judge God unless we believe we can derive some kind of system of moral absolutes separately by human reason without recourse to Him or religious revelation.  Hunter (p. 154) penetratingly exposes the evolutionists’ moral conundrum, after citing Richard Dawkins’ comment about the universe having no design, purpose, good or evil, “nothing but pointless indifference” thus:  “Since there is no evil, the materialist must, ironically, not use the problem of evil to justify atheism.  The problem of evil presupposes the existence of an objective evil—the very thing the materialist seems to deny.”  If we can’t derive natural moral law separately from God by human reason, if we can’t get an “ought” from an “is” without reference to religious revelation, we can’t condemn God for allowing evil, now can we?  If indeed all is relative, and one person’s good is another’s evil, such as for (say) female genital mutilation or Chinese foot binding, which traditional societies affirm(ed) but feminists condemn, on what basis can we criticize God for being a permissive libertarian about the actions resulting from His creatures’ freely chosen moral decisions?  If indeed there are no moral absolutes, the ideologies that led to gulags and concentration camps are just as ethical as the ideologies that eliminated them.  Hence, our innate moral sense, although it may manifest itself differently from culture to culture and person to person, constitutes intrinsic evidence for something beyond the material world.  Otherwise, a fist hitting someone’s face in the street is no more or less morally significant than two rocks hitting each other in the wilderness, since all are composed of atoms in motion coming in contact with each other.  True, various philosophical attempts to derive an “ought” from an “is” exist, such as the differing arguments of James Q. Wilson (“the moral sense” that has a psychological/mental/behavior origin in our human natures), C.S. Lewis (“the Tao” or way, of cross cultural ultimate similarities show traditional morality is a kind of irreducible primary), and Ayn Rand (“living entities intrinsically need certain values to sustain life”) show.  But unless atheists and agnostics discard their moral relativism, they can’t use the existence of evil to discard God. \r  \r\n\r  \r\nThe doubtful and the skeptical should read C.S. Lewis’s classic examination of this old issue in “The Problem of Pain.”  There have been lots of answers given on this subject for centuries; there are no “gotchas!” available for atheists in this department that haven’t long ago been answered comprehensively.  https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Pain-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652969#:\\~:text=In%20The%20Problem%20of%20Pain,of%20compassion%20and%20insight%2C%20C.S.\r  \r\n\r  \r\nFor more about why a good God allows evil to exist, click here:  http://lionofjudah1.org/Apologeticshtml/Why%20Does%20God%20Allow%20Evil%200908.htm","subreddit_name":"Christianity","author":"snoweric"}]}