I am posting part of my final for my Literature of CS Lewis class because I felt like sharing. This part tasked us with contrasting the way Lewis views evil in The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, and The Great Divorce. I'm not sure why I am sharing, but maybe somebody will get something out of it.
Here it is….
In C.S. Lewis’ works, he approaches evil in differing ways based on the story. In The Screwtape Letters, evil is the product of demons tempting us away from the call of God to pervert natural inclinations into desires that distract us from God. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis sets out to show how evil and the resulting pain it causes is the result of our free will clashing with God’s sovereignty and essence. Lewis’ view of evil in The Great Divorce is that evil is the result of our inability to love others without the love of God being present within us. Despite the three differing views on the origin of evil that Lewis offers, he always portrays evil as a force that separates us from God.
In The Screwtape Letters, Wormwood the tempter corresponds with his uncle Screwtape on how to corrupt a human on earth. The only letters that we read in the novel are those from Screwtape to Wormwood, although Screwtape often refers to items Wormwood has written about. Throughout the novel, the tempters are portrayed as the chief purveyors of evil. They set about their work by appealing to human’s pleasures and corrupting them to the point wherein they are distracted from God and focused solely on their wants and desires, regardless of the needs they actually have. Screwtape advises Wormwood to use the Patient’s pleasures and to twist them into misguided notions of what God had designed them to be. Wormwood is advised to distract the Patient from the true purpose of prayer, to tempt him into superficiality, almost anything that will deaden the Patient’s mind and awareness to God. The resulting state of uncertainty that the Patient finds himself in will cause anxiety about his future with no regard or cognizance of what God’s plan may be for the Patient. Essentially, the tempters use our fallacies and misunderstandings to trick us into ignoring God and focusing on ourselves. Their evil lures us into ignoring God’s will and leads us into spite, envy, hatred, lust – everything that God is not. Thus evil is caused by the temptation of demons who lead us down a path into our sinful selves that draws us away from God and results in the evil that we do to ourselves and each other.
In The Problem of Pain, Lewis attempts to explain how pain could exist in the light of a Creator who is omnipotent and holy. The book addresses the question of how could the sinful nature of man exist when man was created by a good and holy God? While this question seems to be one that many struggle with, Lewis takes it on and says that the evil that we do is the result of our free will and our willingness to do as we wish, not as God demands. Thus, the evil that we do is the result of our free will rejection of God and His laws. In turn, that evil leads to pain because of the struggle between our evil and God’s innate goodness. Lewis goes on to explain that despite the evil and pain we cause to ourselves and to those around us, God still finds a use for them to assert His Authority and Sovereignty. Through the pain that we cause, God is able to use it to shatter our ideas of self-sufficiency and the illusion that everything is okay in our world. The way we react to this pain will drive us further away from God – or closer to him. If we stray further away, then we will simply do more evil and cause more pain. However, if we are roused by “God’s megaphone,” then we can truly know God and realize that we need to rely on Him for everything. In turn, we can become a better servant to Him and each other. As such, the origin of evil in The Problem of Pain is found in our free willed rejection of God and His laws and our continuous rebellion against Him.
The third way that Lewis approaches the issue of evil is found in The Great Divorce. In this book, Lewis uses a story of fantasy in order to show how our residence in either Heaven or Hell is determined by our ability to love in the way God intended for us to love. In this story, Lewis shows how our twisted sense of love can lead us to hurt the ones we think we love. In this book, Lewis states that we are unable to truly love until we love God and allow Him to make us whole again. Since we are unable to love truly, we do things to hurt those we think we love. The exchange that best shows this is the story of Sarah Smith and her husband. When they were alive, Sarah found her identity in loving her husband, but she did not truly love him. Instead, she needed his love to feel complete and she filled her emotional need by using him. Now that she has found out what love truly is, she tells her husband that she is now complete and apologizes for using him. In response, her husband gets angry that Sarah says she no longer needs him and demands to know why she doesn’t pity him. Her response is that she will not be blackmailed into pitying someone so that they can feel better about themselves. At this the husband vanishes and Sarah is left to deal with his mouthpiece. After a little more conversation, the dummy disappears as well and Sarah continues on her way. Each of the conversations that the narrator comes across all deal with people who are blind to the reality that surrounds them and instead focus on the way they have always been, despite the spirits’ attempts to show them the error of their ways. In this view of evil, Lewis makes the case that it originates from our own selfish desires and stems from our inability to love.
The three views that Lewis puts forth all portray different ways that evil originates, but they all have one commonality – they all lead to pain and suffering. Whether it is demons leading us astray, or our free will causing us to act out against God, or our own selfish desires disabling us from truly loving others through loving God, evil’s destructiveness knows no bounds. In the end, evil leads everyone down the same path to hurting ourselves, the ones we love, and away from God.
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