Pain, Suffering, and Death

Lewis’s affirmation of Christian theism—based on its greater explanatory power in regard to the phenomena of rational thought, morality, and the existential need for joy and meaning—faces its toughest test in the problem of evil and suffering. This chapter reviews Lewis’s general philosophical responses to the problem of pain and suffering, noting their insights and critiquing their inadequacies, and placing his work in the larger context of contemporary philosophical discussions of the problem of evil. Interestingly, when Lewis met and fell in love with Joy Gresham, he experienced personally those pangs of pain and loss that he had previously dealt with only theoretically. Joy’s suffering and death by cancer caused Lewis to question his old answers and even to question God. He journals the troubled thoughts and feelings of his grief in a frank and honest way that gives permission to all who grieve to express their feelings and not be intimidated by supposedly proper answers. His “grief observed” ultimately works through to an even stronger faith than his original faith in which joy did not encounter suffering, concluding that suffering cannot be erased but can actually be subsumed by joy. An item of particular interest is the Lewis–Van Osdall correspondence (recently discovered, never before published) in which Lewis identifies with Van Osdall’s loss of his only son in a fatal car crash.