LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Three Operations of the Pain
According to C.S. Lewis, after the fall, we are not just imperfect creatures that must be improved: we are rebels that must lay down their arms. It is necessary to die daily, because, when we least expect it, we find the rebellious self more alive than ever. This process, which cannot take place without pain, is what is known as "mortification."
Now, pain shatters various illusions in our lives. The first, thinking that everything is fine with us. Unlike error or sin, pain is an unmasked, obvious evil – we all know something is wrong when something hurts. Pain is an evil that is impossible to ignore. We can continue calm and content with our sins and stupidities, but the pain insists on being attended to.
God whispers to us in our pleasures, he speaks to our conscience, but he cries out to us in pain: he is the loudspeaker he uses to wake up a deaf world. While the evil man does not discover the evil present in his existence in the form of pain, he is locked in an illusion.
Once the pain has awakened him, he knows that he is up against the real universe: either he rebels, or he tries some kind of adjustment that may lead him to faith. There is no doubt that pain, as God's speaker, is a terrible instrument: it can lead to total rebellion and without repentance; but it gives the wicked man his only chance of atonement.
A second effect of pain touches our self-sufficiency, since it breaks the illusion that what we have, whether good or bad in itself, is ours and is enough for us. Everyone has noticed how difficult it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well in our lives. "We have everything we want" is a terrible phrase when "everything" doesn't include God. We find that God is an interruption. We think of God as an aviator thinks of his parachute: he is there for emergencies, but he hopes he never has to use it.
Now, God knows what we are, and that our happiness is in him. And yet, we will not look for it in it as long as it leaves us any other resource where it is even possible to look for it. As long as what we call "our own life" remains pleasant, we will not give it over to God. What can God do, then, for our good, but make "our own life" less agreeable to us, and remove the possible source of false happiness?
A third operation of pain is to point us the way to true self-sufficiency: surrendering our will to God's, and finding our strength in him. It is in the supreme "trial" or "sacrifice" that we learn what is the true self-sufficiency that we should possess and on which we should lean: the strength that God gives us through our submitted will. The human will becomes truly creative and truly ours when it is entirely God's. The Lord Jesus gave us an example of this on Calvary. There he exemplified it for us to imitate him, without any natural support.