The Great Philosopher 'C. S. Lewis Suffering'
The great philosopher C. S. Lewis once wrote: “They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into glory” (Keller 34). How can agony and suffering be turned into glory? Suffering is a term that is closely related to the concepts of evil and pain. The verb, suffer, means to undergo or endure. Suffering is linked with the experience of anguish or misery in which humans are aware of the hardships of their intent or function. Suffering, with its biological and psychological matters, may be the result of moral evil where human sin leads to affliction (injustice, greed, war, rape, exploitation) or of natural evil (droughts, floods, earthquakes, accident, illness). Suffering, as a state of mind, may also relate to circumstances of places, possessions and people rather than evil (Atkinson
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This term determines God hidden in suffering and humiliation of the cross of Christ. Luther used the phrase Deus crucifixus, which means “a crucified God,” as he speaks of the manner in which God shares in the sufferings of Christ. It was the late twentieth century that it was the “new orthodoxy” to speak of a suffering God. Traditional theology declared that Jesus Christ was indeed God incarnate. Therefore it seems to follow that God suffered in Christ. Christ suffered in his human nature, not divine. Thus God did not experience human suffering and remained unaffected by the aspect of the world (McGrath 221). God came to earth to put himself on the hook of human suffering. God experienced the greatest depths of pain. On the cross he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours (Keller 30). The Bible says that Jesus had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without having to end
This term determines God hidden in suffering and humiliation of the cross of Christ. Luther used the phrase Deus crucifixus, which means “a crucified God,” as he speaks of the manner in which God shares in the sufferings of Christ. It was the late twentieth century that it was the “new orthodoxy” to speak of a suffering God. Traditional theology declared that Jesus Christ was indeed God incarnate. Therefore it seems to follow that God suffered in Christ. Christ suffered in his human nature, not divine. Thus God did not experience human suffering and remained unaffected by the aspect of the world (McGrath 221). God came to earth to put himself on the hook of human suffering. God experienced the greatest depths of pain. On the cross he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours (Keller 30). The Bible says that Jesus had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without having to end