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When I was first asked, ladies and gentlemen, to address you on the topic of the problem of pain, I first inquired whether my, uh, sponsors wished me to talk on pain, strictly so called, or whether they wished me to talk upon that somewhat larger problem, the problem of evil. I gathered that they wished me to restrict my remarks to the problem of pain, strictly so called, though everyone realized that it could not possibly be confined altogether to pain without considering also in some part the problem of evil, seeing that moral evil perpetrated by some inflicts pain on others.
The scope of the paper that they requested having been ascertained, I brought my wisdom to bear upon the matter itself. And I suggested that with a subject that has been written about and talked about so very much, if they would seriously wish to say something new, and how could they possibly invite an audience to come and listen unless they were prepared to say something new? Then they should, in the first place, be at pains to invite not me, but someone else. A physiologist, perhaps, or a psychologist, or both, who might have talked to you tonight interestingly on all those advances that have been made in the understanding of the mechanisms of physical pain, and therefore in those attempts to define what pain is.
Whether it is a breakdown of a certain mechanism and its frustration, or whatever. For how shall anybody talk about pain, uh, properly and seriously, unless he really understands what it is and what causes it? And then the question of physical pain, to what extent is it a good thing? To what extent is it indeed a necessary thing? That is still thinking within terms of the human body and its total mechanisms.
And at what point does pain become at last a destructive and therefore an evil thing? And therefore, how should pain be treated? And particularly the pain of the terminally sick. How much should their medicals attempt to suppress pain? And how much should they allow the patient to suffer as being a proper part of human experience. All these questions, it seemed to me, are important, and there has been and is still a great deal of work being done on them, so that I advised those who invited me to ask some such physician, physiologist, or other qualified person to address you, a Sisley Saunders or somebody else.
They told me that there were many people around and available to do such talks. None of them could have come here on Thursday the twelfth of May, being Ascension Day. So then I suggested that if they couldn't get a physiologist, they should at least get a philosopher. Or, to start with, at any rate, a psychologist. For the psychologist, we might hope, would tell us something how physical pain is perceived differently by different people, and what it does to the personality as a whole, and how far pain can serve a useful purpose of integrating the personality and developing all sorts of potentials within that personality that perhaps could not be developed by pain.
And at what point does pain become a disorganizing thing in the personality? So that we might, if not, uh, a physiological approach, at least a psychological approach. They admitted the wisdom of my suggestion and said, likewise, there were multitudes of psychologists prepared to talk upon the subject, but none of them could be present on May the twelfth. I said, therefore, at least get a philosopher, and he might deal in his exact way with all those logical problems, the abstract problems, and the concrete problems to do with pain, and whether or not it is a belief in the existence of, uh, a creator being all powerful and all loving is logically compatible with the existence of evil, any evil of any kind, or with particular and concrete examples of evil.
In other words, I was exhorting them to summon here tonight a John Hick, or an Ahern, or to raise from the dead perhaps C. S. Lewis. They said that too was beyond their powers. Well, then, in all honesty, I pointed out to them that I am none of all these things that would seem to be so necessary. I am, in this context, simply a layman, moderately intelligent, I hope, but not excessively so. That in addition, I am a theist, in fact, a Christian, though in that particular simply a common or garden variety of Christian.
That I have, I suppose, some qualification in talking in some sense about this thing, in that I have encountered pain, more than some people have, but obviously much less than others. So that I am personally aware of the problem of pain, interpreted as a problem in this sense that a great deal of pain eventually begins to niggle away at my faith in God and my faith as a Christian. And that in thinking about the problem of pain in relation to Christian faith, soon makes one aware that there are those who are not believers in God in any sense, or in particular Christians, who would tell me that my pain is evidence, that my faith in God is a deception, an illusion, and ill-founded, and that if I would have be man enough or intelligent enough, I should perceive it so, and that I should throw away my
crutch of faith in God and brace myself to face reality. That, uh, one, I am in pain, and two, there is no comfort to be had in faith in God, for he doesn't exist. Well, all this I honestly confess to those who invited me here this evening. And they replied that since they couldn't get anybody else to come and address you, I should have to do it. Which I took to be what one more example, clear example of the existence of pain and the willingness of some to inflict it upon others.
But on this understanding, I consented to their invitation that I would come tonight before you and offer you myself as some kind of specimen, that you may examine how at least one common or garden Christian comes to terms, insofar as he may, with the problem of pain, and how it relates to his faith in God and in Christ. You may well con- perce- uh, uh, consider that my faith is misplaced, but my pain has been real enough.
If, therefore, when I am done, you find the way that I have coped with pain and answered the problems that it poses to my faith, if when I'm done you find these things inadequate, I do not say that you should not express yourself very clearly and emphatically. Please do. On the other hand, if your answer is that my reasons have been inadequate and my faith invalid, and that I must throw my crutch away, see to it, if you can, that you provide me with some stronger support.
If you can't, I shall try mentally to face it. If you decide that my faith is invalid, but it acts with me as a kind of a placebo, helping me, in the times when I suffer pain, to overcome it, even though in the manner of a placebo there's nothing in it. Pray do not be too hard upon placebos, for if they work to ameliorate pain or help people to endure them, endure it.
Surely they are something to be held on to until something more potent is available. So let me come to say to you honestly what my problem is and what it isn't. I am not a philosopher. I come to this from the practical angle. I have a problem with pain only because I first believe in God. And I was a believer in God, and indeed in Christ, before I met pain as a practical problem and realized it posed a problem for my faith.
I did not come to faith in God the other way round, by first perceiving that the existence of pain could, uh, lay a question mark against the existence of a good and all powerful God. And then, by dint of labored argument, coming to perceive that the existence of pain is not an insuperable logical difficulty against belief in God, and therefore at last feeling free to come and, uh, be convinced that there is a God, and finally believing in him. I didn't come that way round. I repeat, I was a believer in God long before I came across the problem of pain in any personal seriousness.
In that, perhaps I was fortunate. A sheep that needs to be cured of some disease by some inevitably painful operation administered by the shepherd is a fortunate sheep indeed if before the need for the operation arrives, it has learned to trust the shepherd. Thus, in that sense, I count myself to have been fortunate. In believing and therefore knowing, as I understand it, a divine shepherd whom I had reason to trust before I encountered the problem of pain.
Let me therefore say that if I were not a believer, then again I fancy I should have no problem with pain either. Except the practical one, how to get rid of it. For if I believed there was no God, I would conclude that the existence of pain is a thing that you might expect. For now, the explanation to which I would be attracted for the origin of this universe, and hence my own existence, would be that this universe and I in it are the product of mindless, blind forces acting by accident, and therefore that they should produce an imperfect system in which pain is prevalent is no more than to be expected.
The existence of pain in that case would not itself be a problem. I say in a parenthesis that it would for me create another problem. I find it difficult to see how, if all the universe around us is indeed the result of mindless forces acting accidentally, such an enormous part of this universe manages to turn out to be so good, indeed so beautiful. I had a good friend in this university at one stage, now retired, and he and I used to walk together to Queens very early in the morning on occasion, and he was a biochemist and an atheist, and he used to take delight in pulling my Christian leg.
How an otherwise intelligent man could believe in God, he found it difficult to understand. But in one of his franker moments, walking down at this time of year amid the beauty of the trees and the shrubs, he confessed to me a similar notion. How is it, he said, if it's all by accident, nature manages so regularly to produce so much beauty? I left the problem to him. But I proceed to observe that I could get rid of my problem of pain that I have because I first believe in God.
If I completely abandoned my faith in God, I should no longer have any problem. But of course, I observe myself from a practical point of view that getting rid of the problem wouldn't get rid of the pain. And as I understand it, it would be fair to make that pain much more intolerable. For now it would tell me that my pain is just an accident, and therefore largely insignificant. That my pain might serve a short-term purpose of allowing scientists to experiment upon me, find out its cause, and prevent so much pain in other people, but that in the end the whole show is but accidental, and one day some other accident will end it, so that ultimately there is no significance in my pain, no meaning.
Nor is there hope in the sense of any ultimate. Now I am aware that some people facing that say, but what reason have you to think that there should be any hope? Why not be a man? Why not enjoy what good things accidentally lie before you in life? And when you've enjoyed them to the full, depart from the banqueting table of life into oblivion, and don't complain because your ice cream didn't last longer.
Be content that you did enjoy some ice cream, and when it's gone, be content to go. That is an attitude that satisfied many ancients in the Greek and Roman worlds, and still apparently satisfies many today. If it were forced upon us, we should have to accept it, I suppose. But it seems to me a terrible thing. It may sound well to somebody who has had a lot of ice cream, and even better to those that have had strawberries along with their ice cream.
But for those who from infancy have had little ice cream, have been misshapen and misformed, who have known constant pain and early death. To say to such, be content with such ice cream as you've had and depart, seems a forlorn thing indeed to say. At least, I would want to call this to the attention of those who began by having faith in God, and then were moved to abandon that faith, as once a colleague of mine was so moved, by the consideration that there is so much suffering in the world, that sheer compassion for people had led him to abandon his faith in the existence of deity.
How could you have a heart, said he, for the vast quantity of human suffering? If you felt it at all and any compassion for it, you must at length come round to the view that there could not be a God that would allow such suffering. I respected his compassion, but came myself to the conclusion that what he was offering to people was not compassion, but the very opposite. For I repeat, if there is a God, it is conceivable, even if we couldn't prove it eh eh completely.
And I am relieved to find that at least some philosophers tell us that the matter is not logically provable either way. But even if we couldn't prove it, that there will eventually be compensations that will make the sufferings of this present time seem small by comparison. Compensations that will make people feel that it would have been, it wa- has been worthwhile to go through the suffering, to gain the compensation. If there is a God, I say, it is conceivable that there is some purpose, some ultimate compensation, some good to come out of the suffering, and therefore there is hope.
If there be no God, and the suffering is to be accounted for as a mere accident, your compassion in coming to that conclusion just pushes the sufferer deeper into his suffering. And the conclusion to those who are congenitally malformed, who must bear a lifelong burden of pain, would be perhaps the best thing to do is to shoot your brains out. Now you will perceive at once that thinking as I do, I am in great danger of indulging in wishful thinking.
For the simple reason that fi- ex- faced with pain and experiencing it, I do wish and hope that it is not all wasted, that there is some eventual good and some purpose in it, and some compensation, not only in it, but beyond it. I'm in danger, therefore, of wishful thinking. Certainly, I would admit to not being neutral on the matter. I would simply like to say, in my self-defense, that maybe there are various kinds of wishful thinking.
One variety, at least, borders on hope. And when it comes to the question of enduring pain, which for most of us is a pressing practical question, then hope is not to be lightly dismissed as wishful thinking, but as a something potentially valuable. Destroy it if you must, in the name of rigorous logical thinking. Manly courage facing reality.
Destroy it if you must. But I shall remain unashamed in hoping that my hope is valid until the very last ditch of unanswerable logical demonstration has proved my hope vain. For hope, I repeat, when it comes to suffering, is of immense value in the endurance of it. Let me therefore say how this matter appeals to me.
As one who believes in God, indeed in Christ, and faces the problem of pain that some tell me ought to disestablish my faith completely. For my part, I look around, not for complete logical proofs, but for some indications that some purposes could be served by pain. Granted, I couldn't explain the purpose of all and every pain.
But if I could perceive that some purposes can be served by pain, then that will give me a basis for faith and hope. And similarly, if there are any indications at all, any grounds for believing that there may be eventually adequate compensations, then again, I shall not ask you for complete, absolute, irrefragable, logical proof. I shall grab eagerly any indications that seem worthy of my faith, that there may well be lot- there may be well compensations.
And in that larger question, whether the existence of pain is compatible with a belief in an almighty and a good creator. Then I myself shall not ask for ultimate logical demonstration. I shall ask rather, are there any good reasons for trusting a creator who might, for reasons beyond me, have allowed pain, at least temporarily. And with that I come to a number of what I have called common delimitations of my problem, common because many people have observed them, and delimitations of the problem, uh, that may be useful later to us in thinking about the affairs of creation and redemption.
First of all, it is surely a common observation that not all pain is bad, judged by our own standards. Pain, we perceive, and the medicals tell us, acts as a very healthy warning system. If my finger accidentally gets in the way of a knife, pain warns me to withdraw it before the thing is chopped off altogether. And incidentally, that mechanism that I find in my finger only after I cut the thing seems to me to be a very interesting because it seems to suggest that the process is there by foresight.
And that had I never cut the finger, the mechanism would have been there, but not necessary. There it seems to be against eventuality by foresight. But into the possible implications of that, I do not proceed. Here, therefore, our concern would be when, therefore, does pain cease to serve a positive, healthy purpose and become destructive of the very mechanism that you might have thought its purpose was to preserve. And here you will perceive what grievous deprivation we have suffered in having me talking to you tonight and not a medic.
Would that medic say, I wonder, that the pain, when it becomes destructive, is evidence of bad engineering on the part of whoever engineered the human body? Would that medic say that, uh, pain becoming destructive is merely one further result of what the Bible would call the results of the fall of man, the subjection of nature to eventual frustration and corruption. And then it seems to me that generally pain is quite commonly accepted if it, uh, achieves and is necessary for higher enjoyment.
The rugby fifteen, all sweating and steaming, and knocked about the face and knees and elsewhere, seem, if appearances can be trusted, and their persistence in their curious habit explained, seemed on the whole to have enjoyed themselves, and would not thank you to commiserate with them in the pains that they have suffered. Indeed, further, the mountaineer who scales Everett- Everest, hanging on to tiny ledges of rock by his fingernails, seems, if I understand him, to enjoy it precisely because it is dangerous.
And were it merely a matter of, uh, climbing into bed without any danger, wouldn't give himself to the occupation so readily. He finds a stimulation in the fact that it is dangerous and could lead to death. Though, of course, he has no intention of dying and will use his utmost powers to stop fatal accident. But therein, and the pitting of his skill against such possibility for him is a great deal of the exhilaration and the pleasure. And many similarly seem to regard the acceptance and the endurance of a certain amount of pain as an indication of their manliness.
And eagerly take the opportunity to demonstrate their courage. Only when the pain becomes excessively large, and the battle seems to be a battle against overwhelming odds, do such people begin to complain of pain as an evil. And if there are schemes I shall presently argue that the deity has afoot, that involved in themselves risk, or involved indeed pain for some adequate higher good.
We have no reason to complain, at least on the basis of our own common standards of judgment. I notice too, as many notice, that pain is not the same for everybody. The person training for an Olympic gold medal is prepared to endure quantities of pain that I certainly am not, which explains in part why I don't have an Olympic gold medal. An adult woman dismisses as a nothing the pains that would be insufferable for her six-year-old infant.
But I noticed too that pain affects us differently according to our different states. When we are healthy and occupied and doing something confidently that we value, pain seems to be forgotten or excluded for the moment from our consciousness. But let us be in a situation where we are cold or feeble or perhaps guilty and uncertain. Then pain can loom large. Which will make me wonder eventually, whether even before the fall that the Bible preaches to us, there could have been pains that would have been taken by the unfallen in their stride, but which became for guilty men a very different thing.
And then, of course, it is evident that pain is accepted generally in our world. If it is the only way possible for improvement and healing. We do not blame the surgeon for inflicting pain, if the infliction of pain is the only way that the patient can be eventually cured. A wise doctor faced with a drug addict may well tell him, may well try to persuade him, might in some circumstances compel him to go without his drug and face the terrors of his withdrawal symptoms as the only way that he will eventually emerge on the other side of those withdrawal systems, a man free from fear.
We accept pain, therefore, and accept the idea that in our world, pain can be the inevitable and necessary way through to redemption and recovery. From those general considerations, therefore, I come now to some elements in what I conceive to be God's purpose for us that I'm called upon to believe in as a Christian. And if I shall not get time to apply some of those general observations that I have just made to this particular case of the purpose and method in creation and redemption, I fancy I shall be able to leave it to you to see how I would have applied them if the time had permitted.
We are told then, and notably in Paul's letter to his Ephesian fellow Christians, that the purpose that God has for us humans was purposed before the foundation of the world, which is there not to tell us that it was purposed simply a long time ago, but that the purpose God had was logically prior to the creation of this world. It was that purpose that eventually led to the creation of this world as the necessary means to the goal that that purpose had set before it.
We are next told that that purpose that God had, which eventually occasioned the creation of our world, was, to use the technical language, the adoption of us as sons to himself through Jesus Christ. Allow me for a moment to step aside and explain what I understand that term son to mean. It doesn't mean that we are to be creatures of God, all our creatures. The Bible is insistent that if you would be a son of God, you have to be a creature first, and then as a second stage to become a son of God.
And that therefore I am given to understand that the reason why this world is here at all is the prior reason that God decided that he wished to have sons, that the only way of getting sons was first of all to create a world and then to put on it creatures, so that those creatures should in turn have the opportunity eventually of becoming sons. Secondly, I understand it that this Son of God in these terms is such that it can only be produced by the consent freely given of the creature that is in being invited to become a son.
It is one of those things. Pray let me, uh, point out that I'm not now talking, as many have talked and rightly talked, that if you wish to have a moral creature, as distinct from a robot, you must give that creature free will. They have drawn the implication from that, that if you give creatures genuine free will, you must be prepared for those creatures to misuse that free will, not only to disobey God, but to inflict pain and suffering on their fellow creatures, and that this accounts for a great deal of the suffering in the world today.
And so the argument runs that you cannot blame God for that. The possession of free will, the possibility of being a moral creature is such a good in itself that even if you had to run the risk that some would misuse that free will, that was a risk worth taking. I admit all that. The point I am making is a further, I should want to say, uh, a more advanced point. For that, as I understand God's purpose, it was not simply that he should make moral creatures with moral judgment, but that he should have sons of God.
Creatures who, being born as simple creatures with a moral conscience and a moral will, might be invited to respond to God's invitation, and now of their free will, to proceed a further step and enter into a relationship with God that could only be entered into and become such a relationship if it is the response of a free decision taken. And the difference, to my mind, is important. All of us were born into this world with a power of choice, but you will observe that we were born without our permission, being either sought or granted.
You have a free will, you have a choice, but the fact you have it is not by your choice. Because evidently you can be made into a moral creature with a free will and therefore a f- a a a a a choice and therefore a possibility of morality. You can be given all that without your permission being sought. As I understand it, you cannot become a son of God without your permission. Being so. And that therefore this goal upon which the Almighty set his heart, that he should have sons, did open the possibility by the very nature of the relationship, that the creatures given this offer should be able to say no.
Not merely to do wrong, but to say no to the Creator and his offer of this higher relationship. But then, I shall want to say, who are we? To say the the Almighty mustn't take risks. When we frequently are happy, even in our pleasures, to take them. And secondly, if you say about the fearful disaster that would happen if people took here the wrong decision is so great that the Almighty surely was wrong in, in proceeding with such a purpose and taking such a risk.
Then it seems to me the Bible will answer by saying that the Almighty provided a safety net. That if this thing went wrong, there should be a redemption. So that the going wrong should not necessarily lead to ultimate disaster. And in this connection, I want to mention a third point, and that is the insistence of the New Testament everywhere on the way this safety net arrangement works.
There is a popular notion abroad, is there not, that our redemption, now that we are sinners, depends upon our effort, our moral striving, depends upon our ultimate attaining to moral perfection. If that were so, I should find it a grievous charge against God, that having launched us without our permission, on a scheme that involves such risk. He then made our recovery, when we went astray, depend upon our effort.
Of course, that is not so. And the New Testament is everywhere insistent that things having gone wrong, the safety net works this way, that there is redemption solely by faith in the operation of God. And that upon simple repentance and faith, God is prepared to receive and accept his creature, sins and all, imperfect and horrible. And accept him in such sort now, as will give him good ground for being certain that he will eventually attain the glory of God.
He will attain the original purpose. So that we need not live our lives, even as sinners, in fear of the ultimate disaster, because our puny efforts have not been able to save us and salvage us from the ruin into which sin has brought us. That we can live our lives in the security and the joy of knowing that we are already accepted and shall yet be perfected. That leads me then to think on the next thing, and that is the Christian doctrine, the the biblical doctrine of the fall.
I mention it here because there are many Christians who feels disposed not to believe the doctrine of the fall and its account of the origin of many of our pains. And they prefer to think that our pains come about because God has used in his wisdom a evolutionary system of some kind, and that this evolutionary system, working in part as God ordained it to work by chance permutations, necessarily comes up with imperfect stages on the way forward, and that the pains that accompany those imperfect stages are inevitable, but only temporary, and will one day give way when the final glorious stage has been arrived at.
The pains are, so to speak, growing pains. And some have said, more recently, that according to the anthropic principle upon which this universe appears to have been constructed, that this universe as it is, with all its pains and difficulties, is perhaps the only kind of universe that God could have created. And they back home their argument by learned mathematical observations and calculations, with which I shall not weary you now. Uh, uh, their argument simply, I repeat, is that mathematical calculations as to what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang that occasioned our universe.
Mathematical calculations tend to suggest that the universe that we have is the only universe that could possibly have been made. These things I do not discuss now because, as I warned you at the start, I am a b- a Christian, not only a theist, and therefore it seems to me I am committed to believing the doctrine of the fall. And to me it seems not only a satisfying doctrine, but one that helps me to cope with the problem of pain from a practical point of view.
The doctrine of the fall, as we find it in the New Testament, says that creation was subjected to vanity, to frustration, to a bondage, to corruption, not willingly, not as though this were a necessary part of creation's process, into which n- nature might have, uh, been represented as willingly to have entered. But creation was subjected to this frustration in hope that one day she shall be delivered from it. And the Old Testament seems to give us the background circumstances in which that subjection was put into operation.
That man, original man, being put in charge of creation to develop it as God's viceroy, eventually chose to disobey one of God's directions, chose the creation rather than the creator, and that therefore God put his curse upon creation. Now, I for one find it fairly easy to think of a possible reason why the Almighty should have done it. For if it is true that man is made for God, and that to enjoy fellowship together, there must be something over which they enjoy fellowship.
You can't have a lot of fellowship over nothing. If two are to have fellowship, they must have some subject over which they might commonly have fellowship. If creation, therefore, was to be at first a basis and a something, uh, the material of fellowship, and man then then departed and chose the creation rather than the creator, it seems not only a disastrous thing to do in itself, it seems to me quite reasonable that the creator then might say, very good. Well, then you must be taught in advance what eventually such an attitude would lead to of itself.
The ultimate kind of death that must descend upon a creature who chooses creation rather than the creator must be warned of in advance, that therefore the creator in his wisdom, it seems to me, might well take creation and subject her to vanity, not spoiling her altogether, leaving enough of her glory and beauty to indicate what things might have been, but in building a frustration that would warn man that man without God has gone astray, is in a potentially disastrous situation.
And to that dislocation of nature that's subjecting her to corruption and its bondage, it seems to me the Bible would attribute many of the evils that we suffer. And in that connection, therefore, I observe what seems to me to be an important thing in the direction of our comfort and making the endurance of pain more tolerable. For it has been a common thing, and the Bible is witness that in certain times even the godly have fallen into the mistake of thinking that the pains we suffer must somehow all spring from our own personal sins, and that therefore, if somebody suffers a toothache or a cancer, it is somehow to be understood that that person is personally guilty of some enormity before God, and therefore is suffering according to desert.
Now, it is possible that sufferings come upon us through our personal sins, but certainly not all of them. Some of them, according to the Bible as I read it, are there because of that general fall of mankind. And if that be true, a great deal of sense of guilt is removed from those who suffer. And with one stroke of the pen, so to speak, are removed a great many superstitions. They would imagine that all suffering must be the result of personal sin.
An idea that I suspect is very common. Do we not frequently hear somebody comment upon somebody who has suffered such a terrible illness? Poor dear, what did he do to deserve that? Perhaps he didn't do anything to deserve it. Perhaps it is simply because he lives in a fallen world. With that, I must notice another thing that has interested many, and that is, of course, that granted a world of pain, pain obviously calls forth certain virtues that could not otherwise be produced.
It's difficult for me, at any rate, to envisage how the virtue of compassion could have been produced without the existence of suffering. Perhaps you will reply that if there had been no suffering, there would have been no, uh, uh, need for the compassion. Not all of us would dismiss that virtue and all the noble things it has led to. But now I come to a further thing, and I have not many more observations, uh, with which to tie you, but this is a lecture on pain.
I come to the obvious thing taught us by the New Testament, that in the process of our redemption from our fallen state, pains are useful and some of them necessary. I suppose if we had never fallen, our faith, to be genuine faith, would have had to be put through all kinds of exercises, lest in the very glories of heaven we should have been led astray to choose those glories before our creator.
But that we should have come through those tests, maybe in an unfallen state, without the pains that we now go through in coming to through, uh, uh, the tests necessary for the development of our faith. Saint Peter tells us that our faith is tried, is tested, is purified from time to time as need be. If our fall, the fall of our race, if our constant trouble is that we will prefer creaturely goods to God himself, then sooner or later we must be brought and trained to be brought and brought to the point where, given the choice, with all other things on the one side and God himself alone on the other, we shall choose God.
It would seem that our true enjoyment of all those blissful things that lie beyond depends upon our faith being thus perfected, else the very glories of heaven would remain dangerous. But for those who, because of their fallen state, find it easy to believe that they are exercising faith in God when things go well. It is often difficult to believe in God when things go painfully. And certainly, if such as we are, are brought to the test, whether faced with the choice between God and all else, we will choose God.
The giving up of all else can be and often is fraught with pain for all sorts of reasons. A little child that has run off with father's pen knife and stands in danger of doing itself a damage. And now being exhorted by father to give up the pen knife, even though father promises all sorts of other joys when the pen knife is given up, can often find it difficult to give up the pen knife, if my observations are true, because of the shame having to admit it's wrong and the pain of giving up the glittering thing.
And the bowing of its own inadequate ideas to father's greater wisdom. But the process must be gone through if the child is to be saved from doing itself damage. I find it therefore in the New Testament that for our very salvation's sake, in the sense of our perfecting, pains will be involved necessarily. Not that because they are for our perfecting, the knowledge that they are will help to make the pain the more endurable.
If an operation, long and painful upon a child's spine, is the only way to correct the curvature of that spine. And if the child is able to comprehend it, parents, if not the doctors, will be at great trouble to try and explain to the child why it is necessary and what the benefit of it eventually will be. Thus I find in the New Testament encouragements to myself to bear the pains necessary in the process of my redemption.
Having said that, I finish with observations in another direction. If I know anything, it is not pain in itself that eventually is the problem. It is with many a believer, at any rate, the proportion of it that becomes the difficulty. So much of it. And when the pain is so much that it seems out of proportion with anything it could achieve, then our spirits quail and our questions arise.
Similarly, our problem with pain is its distribution. Some people seem to have so much, and some people apparently so little. And if pain is necessary for one reason or another, even for our redemption, how comes it that some have a great deal and others have apparently so little? I make two observations there. I fear the first of them is not, uh, uh, so convincing as the second. The first one I put forward merely as a suggestion.
It arises from my consideration of the Old Testament book that deals mostly with this problem of pain, namely the book of Job. As I understand the man's problem, it was not to admit himself a sinner. It was not merely, eh, uh, certainly it was not at first a problem to admit that God, uh, gave him his goods, and therefore if God took them away, Job had no ground of complaint. It was, however, when two things happened that Job began to find grave difficulty.
One, the suggestion that his pains were the result of his personal sin. A sinner he did admit himself, but compared with other people, he was not such a sinner as all that. Therefore, the amount of suffering seemed to be excessive, and the question arises, why? And then there was the frustration. He felt if only he could get hold of God, he could have argued his case very well. That while he might have deserved some suffering, he could not possibly have deserved all this.
God remained aloof. Eventually, as we know, God in the, in the story appears to Job, and Job professes to find, uh, relief, if not solution, to his problems. And many there have been that have objected to the apparent solution that is offered us in the book of Job. G. B. Shaw, for instance, dismissed it as absolute nonsense and worse. For, as GB Shaw said at the end of the book, when Job has been wrestling with the problem of pain, pain undeserved, pain all out of proportion, God comes down and brandishes the big stick of his creatorial power.
Job, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Well, I wasn't there. Well, then keep quiet. But how is that an answer? Job, could you make an ostrich? No. Well, what are you complaining about then? Job, do you know where snow comes from or the rain? No. Could you control the constellations? No. Well, what are you complaining about then? He be sure urged that such is no answer to the problem of pain. It's a sheer mockery. Everybody knew that Job couldn't do those things. The question was not, is God more powerful than humans?
Of course he is. It was a question of what was right and just and fair. And so many have felt, and others keen to see some profitable lesson in Job have come up with various suggestions as to what the answer was really meant to be. I, with some diffidence, give you mine. Yes, in the Old Testament, God did come out in answer to Job's complaint and show himself as creator and leave it there, in all his dignity, as creator.
Would you say, how is that an answer to this problem of suffering? It appeals to me, you may tell me it was wrong anyway, but it has been, curiously enough, a comfort to me. Perhaps I shouldn't have been comforted by any such thought. It has been nevertheless a comfort to me. In those moments when my pain has been such that I have felt that it is out of proportion and unfair, I have observed that I am using my moral judgment. The idea has crept into my mind that God is wrong.
My moral judgment better. Then I have had to ask myself, from where did I get my moral judgment? Of course, if there is no God, then I got my whole contraption of a moral judgment from some impersonal, accidental nature. And that is almost a guarantee that ultimately it's not reliable anyway, so I might as well ditch it. If I got my moral judgment from the Creator himself, how shall I use it to prove the moral judgment of the creator wrong, without thereby proving my own moral judgment suspect because it comes from the suspect source?
Suppose I'm flying my aeroplane by some sophisticated mechanism that will show me whether I'm upside down or downside up, whether I'm over Japan or Ballyclare. And I'm trusting to this machine to guide me. And I use the machine to tell the maker and designer of it that I'm right and he's wrong. Suppose eventually I can prove that the maker of this machine didn't know his mathematics, nor his geography, nor his physics.
Well, then have I proved that the machine itself isn't worth going by. And what use is he? How could I possibly find any directions from it? If there is a God, and my moral judgment comes from him, then if the mechanism of my moral judgment is going to be right, the source better be right. Or if the source isn't right, the mechanism of moral judgment is itself untrustworthy.
You will say, if that is comfort at all, that is very cold comfort, maybe. But we are in a world where, according to scripture, what is the ultimate test is the test of our faith. That is prepared to say to a creator, thy will, not mine, be done. In the belief that the creator's will, however inscrutable, is better than mine. But of course, the New Testament gives another reason for trusting. In a life where pain is unavoidable, the Bible offers a story not only of a glorious purpose behind creation that in and of itself would justify any risk, not only of a redemption that has provided the safety net, and offers to all, if they will have it, the guarantee that the purpose shall be attained.
It is a scheme of salvation according to the Bible, in which its author has suffered the most of the pain In involved. God. When God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. And that therefore it comes about that we have a savior and high priest who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. For he learned obedience by the things which he suffered. And ultimately for our redemption and for the accomplishment of the purpose of God, suffered that ultimate of suffering, which means that we shall forever be saved from the extreme of absolute suffering.
And now, as I say, and I warned you at the beginning, I have not put before you a philosophical address that perhaps would have been beyond my powers. I have offered you myself merely as a specimen, rather timidly, but then with all the courage I can master, I have put myself before you. Uh, and pray tell me if you feel that the things that have buttressed my faith in the face of pain are unworthy, pray tell me, and tell me where. If you can leave me with some help in the form of pain, pray do.
