IS ALL PAIN EVIL?

Nature is constant. A neutral something to give us context, to differentiate ourselves from one another and everything else. It has its own identity of sorts and rules and laws that we can't manipulate. We follow Nature's laws so we can keep our freedom of choice and sense and awareness of self, which God gave us and wants for us. But this is also why Nature can cause us pain, because it isn't doing everything each one of us wants it to, like fire, tornados, storms, hurricanes, etc. But that's the only way we could keep freedom of choice, which is necessary for love to really be love. We need the choice to choose God over everything else, no matter what pain the constant context, Nature, can cause us.

 

"Hence, even in a perfect world, the necessity for those danger signals which pain-fibres in our nerves are are apparently designed to transmit. Does this mean an inevitable element of evil (in the form of pain) in any possible world? I think not: for while it may be true that the least sin is an incalculable evil, the evil of pain depends on degree, and pains below a certain intensity are not feared or resented at all."

 

Besides, how can Nature please 7 billion people all at once? And think what awful spoiled children God would've raised if He'd allowed that to be.

 

So if I want one thing and you want the exact opposite does that create evil? No.

 

"...this is very far from being an evil: on the contrary, it furnishes occasion for all those acts of courtesy, respect, and unselfishness by which love and good humor and modesty express themselves.

 

"But it certainly leaves the way to a great evil, that of competition and hostility."

 

So, we have a choice: to let NOT GETTING OUR WAY ALL THE TIME lead to acts of courtesy, respect, unselfishness and love and modesty, or to competition, hostility, and evil.

 

Not all pain is evil. It's hard to wrap our minds around, but it's true. Pain, ultimately, leads us to opportunity, the opportunity of the freedom to choose how we will respond to it.

 

And we have the constant of Nature and God to thank for that opportunity, to thank for our freedom of choice. To thank for not letting us be spoiled children, but children hopefully rooted to grow into courteous, respectful, unselfish, and loving human beings. And without that freedom we would be robots, not people, not His children. And I am unbelievably grateful I am a child of God and not a robot.

 

So which would you choose, a world where you couldn't get hurt and nature and God bent to your every whim, but you were a robot who couldn't love or feel or be in awe of God's glory, or be His child, with the freedom to choose Him and be loved by Him, even if that meant being able to feel pain?

 

- C. S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

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