We Christians, and perhaps those in the vicinity of the Judeo-Christian belief, take the idea of a benevolent, all-powerful God for granted. We’re over-familiar with it. We don’t realize how scandalous and radical it is.
Let’s step back for a moment and delve into the mind of one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century.
In the beginning of The Problem of Pain — the book by C.S. Lewis that tackles the theological dilemma of suffering — Lewis summarizes his view of the universe when he was an atheist.
Here is his Pre-Christian, razor-edged, Atheist Manifesto:
Not many years ago when I was an atheist, if anyone had asked me, ‘Why do you not believe in God?’ my reply would have run something like this: ‘Look at the universe we live in. By far the greatest part of it consists of empty space, completely dark and unimaginably cold. The bodies which move in this space are so few and so small in comparison with the space itself that even if every one of them were known to be crowded as full as it could hold with perfectly happy creatures, it would still be difficult to believe that life and happiness were more than a by-product to the power that made the universe. As it is, however, the scientists think it likely that very few of the suns of space— perhaps none of them except our own— have any planets; and in our own system it is improbable that any planet except the Earth sustains life. And Earth herself existed without life for millions of years and may exist for millions more when life has left her. And what is it like while it lasts? It is so arranged that all the forms of it can live only by preying upon one another. In the lower forms this process entails only death, but in the higher there appears a new quality called consciousness which enables it to be attended with pain. The creatures cause pain by being born, and live by inflicting pain, and in pain they mostly die. In the most complex of all the creatures, Man, yet another quality appears, which we call reason, whereby he is enabled to foresee his own pain which henceforth is preceded with acute mental suffering, and to foresee his own death while keenly desiring permanence. It also enables men by a hundred ingenious contrivances to inflict a great deal more pain than they otherwise could have done on one another and on the irrational creatures. This power they have exploited to the full. Their history is largely a record of crime, war, disease, and terror, with just sufficient happiness interposed to give them, while it lasts, an agonised apprehension of losing it, and, when it is lost, the poignant misery of remembering. Every now and then they improve their condition a little and what we call a civilisation appears. But all civilisations pass away and, even while they remain, inflict peculiar sufferings of their own probably sufficient to outweigh what alleviations they may have brought to the normal pains of man. That our own civilisation has done so, no one will dispute; that it will pass away like all its predecessors is surely probable. Even if it should not, what then? The race is doomed. Every race that comes into being in any part of the universe is doomed; for the universe, they tell us, is running down, and will sometime be a uniform infinity of homogeneous matter at a low temperature. All stories will come to nothing: all life will turn out in the end to have been a transitory and senseless contortion upon the idiotic face of infinite matter. If you ask me to believe that this is the work of a benevolent and omnipotent spirit, I reply that all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Either there is no spirit behind the universe, or else a spirit indifferent to good and evil, or else an evil spirit.’
Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). The Problem of Pain (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (p. 1-3). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Take a look at where C.S. Lewis goes next with this. Remember, that little “manifesto” above was merely his introduction to a book that defends the idea of a benevolent, all-powerful God. In the book, the following paragraph is what follows immediately after the manifesto above:
There was one question which I never dreamed of raising. I never noticed that the very strength and facility of the pessimists’ case at once poses us a problem. If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?…The direct inference from black to white, from evil flower to virtuous root, from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise, staggers belief. The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been the ground of religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held.
Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). The Problem of Pain (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (pp. 3-4). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
He anticipates the objection of the cynic — especially the apologist for modern science — in his next sentences:
It would be an error to reply that our ancestors were ignorant and therefore entertained pleasing illusions about nature which the progress of science has since dispelled. For centuries, during which all men believed, the nightmare size and emptiness of the universe was already known.
Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). The Problem of Pain (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (p. 4). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
He then goes into some detail about Ptolemy and other ancient thinkers who knew about the vastness of the space beyond our world, and he reminds us of the horrid conditions that surrounded the Jews when they made the claim — in the midst of all that tribulation of their infant nation — a Being exists beyond all of it: a perfectly benevolent, all-powerful being who told them his name was I Am.
Lewis then concludes:
It is mere nonsense to put pain among the discoveries of science. Lay down this book and reflect for five minutes on the fact that all the great religions were first preached, and long practised, in a world without [anasthesia]…Religion has a different origin. In what follows [in the beginning chapters of the book] it must be understood that I am not primarily arguing the truth of Christianity [yet] but describing its origin— a task, in my view, necessary if we are to put the problem of pain in its right setting.
Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). The Problem of Pain (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (p. 4-5). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
C.S. Lewis makes a stunning observation: there wouldn’t even be the “problem of pain” without this radical idea of a benevolent, all-powerful God. It is such an incredible thing that humanity, in the midst of the universe that Lewis described, even dared to believe and declare such an assertion.
And the rest of Lewis’s masterpiece The Problem of Pain explains why he believes that declaration and says, in short, “Yes, there is an all-powerful, perfectly benevolent God, and despite the seeming madness of such a statement in the midst of this universe, there are compelling, logical reasons to believe it wholeheartedly.”
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