Maxwell Debbas

View Original

quick thoughts on a passage

“The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed...But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't. Either way, we're for it.”
CS. Lewis
The Problem of Pain




t is so simple to fall into the state of despaired thought, to think that if things are hard, if terrible circumstances have hit you and they are not going away anytime soon, that something must be terribly wrong. 
Quite the contrary, something may be terribly right.