Philip Yancey, Where is God When it Hurts?
“The messy problem of pain and suffering keeps popping up despite erudite attempts to explain it away. The great British writer C.S. Lewis offered perhaps the most articulate treatment of the subject in this century with The Problem of Pain, written at the height of his intellectual powers. But years later, after his own wife died of bone cancer, Lewis wrote another book, A Grief Observed, which he published under a pseudonym. It covers the same topic, but in a very different way. As the quote at the beginning of this chapter reveals, Lewis’s confidence had been shattered, his emotions stretched beyond the breaking point. “you never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a mater of life and death to you,” he said.”
The quote Yancey referenced:
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, if you turn to Him then with praise, you will be welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desparate, when all other help is vain and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away.”
What Yancey calls “erudite attempts” to explain away suffering speaks to the cold, disconnected impact apologetics can have when shared with someone who is processing through intense pain. To be sure, suffering needs to be a part of both our theology and our apologetic…but logic, reason and theological treatise often mean little to a person who is hurting. A consideration of suffering in the “abstract” is much different than one done in the aftermath of the storm.
Stories and Illustrations for Ministry 