Lewis tells us that "Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt." Pain was brought into our world when man fell from grace. Pain was not something God intended for us to experience. When people go through pain, they often blame God for their misfortunes. We regard God as a parachute. We only refer to him when we need him. God uses misfortune to get our attention. Like the quote I used earlier he uses pain to communicate with us. He uses it as an opportunity, but does not cause it.
The purpose of pain is only understood by those who have experienced it. If you have not experienced it, it is hard to be able to relate to something you haven't ever experienced. Lewis describes this experience when he tells the story of how his wife Joy died. He finally experiences that great pain of losing someone. He then realizes that God may have been trying to get his attention all along. He realized that he was never really living for God. God used this experience to make him realize this. In the end Lewis was thankful, but at first he was very bitter.
Lewis explains that our way of thinking can lead us to be selfish. God uses pain to take us off of our selfish paths and set us back on an honest path towards him. Some people have a higher pain tolerance than others and that is when this can become a big problem. When people learn to ignore the pain, they ignore the lessons from God. God uses pain to show us and when we don't use this as a gentle nudge, he uses more painful ways until we finally recognize that he is trying to say something.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I like how you mentioned it takes experience to relate to it. It would be impossible to describe what pain is to someone who had never felt pain. Sometimes the best way to comfort someone who is in pain isn't to say, "I feel your pain" but rather to simply be with them, let them tell you about it. I thought you last paragraph was really good too, pain is a way of guiding us, letting us know when something has to change, that something is wrong, and it can be very usefull.
ReplyDeleteI like your point that when we ignore pain, we ignore a lesson from God. Just like you said, God doesn't necessarily always cause the pain, but he does allow it and he uses it for his purposes. Ultimately, his purpose is to draw us closer to him. If we're too distracted by the pleasures of this life, we become far from him. Pain is a way of bringing us back.
ReplyDelete