The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis

"Men are fools, perhaps; but hardly so foolish as that. The direct inference from black to white, from evil flower to virtuous root, from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise, staggers belief. The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been the ground of religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source."
-- pg. 3-4 --

"The fourth strand or element is a historical event. There was a man born among these Jews who claimed to be, or to be the son of, or to be 'one with', the Something which is at once the awful haunter of nature and the giver of the moral law. The claim is so shocking -- a paradox, and even a horror, which we may easily be lulled into taking too lightly -- that only two views of this man are possible. Either he was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type, or else He was, and is, precisely what He said. There is no middle way."
-- pg. 13 --

"'If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.' This is the problem of pain, in it's simplest form."
-- pg. 16--

Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. Harper Collins: New York. 1940, renewed 1996
ISBN 0-06-065296-9 (paperback)