Pain Blog #5

"Problem of Pain" We're still in chapter 4.

"When we merely say that we are bad, the "wrath" of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollary from God's goodness"

Then Lewis goes into some supporting issues, or why God's wrath works this way against mankind. Well, ultimately, how we delude ourselves.

1. We are deceived by looking on the outside of things. (Comparing ourselves to others.)

2. The "social conscience". Feeling our guilt corporately instead of individually.
Kind of confusing, but it hits home. "An excuse for evading the real issue"

3. "Illusion that time cancels sin"
And here's one that I'm on. And there was a remark that he made that sets my mind working. This is where I'll end the blog.

"We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.

As for the fact of a sin, is it probable that anything cancels it? All times are eternally present to God. Is it not at least possible that along some one line of His multi-dimensional eternity He sees you forever in the nursery pulling the wings off a fly, forever toadying, lying, and lusting as a schoolboy, or forever in that moment of cowardice or insolence as a subaltern?

It may be that salvation consisits not in the cancelling of these eternal moments but in the perfected humanity that bears the shame forever, rejoicing in the occasion which it furnished to God's compassion and glad that it shuold be common knowledge to the universe. Perhaps in that eternal moment St. Peter--he will forgive me if I am wrong-- forever denies his Master. If so, it would indeed be true that the joys of Heaven are for most of us, in our present condition, 'an acquired taste'--and a certain way of life may render the taste impossible of acquisition. Perhaps the lost are those who dare not go to such a public place. Of course I do not know that this is true; but I think the possibility is worth keeping in mind.