I always enjoy reading CS Lewis, even if I'm not exactly the intended audience anymore. This is again, another good thesis/essay by Clive, but for some reason, this seems far more jargon-y and not really getting down to the "brass tax" of what its supposed to be about. Seems like he doesn't truly tackle and go on about the true "problem of pain" and its more or less a work-around to discuss what he wants to talk about with regards to Christianity and man's view and take on it.

The chapters are also broken down into weird ways and the long (3 page paragraphs!) paragraphs and writing style compared to some of his other essays makes this wordier and with much more filler than need be and previously done.

I have to say I wish there was a fair bit more 'meat' on it, and would also wish there was tackling of this from an atheistic perspective (obviously I know going in, I wouldn't be getting that perspective from Lewis). ( )

A neatly composed argument for the placement of pain within God's overall plan. To get to the argument, though, Lewis has to take us through his personal theology at the base of it. Although one might not agree with everything - and some might be turned off by the vocab/writing style - his overall points seem sound and worthy of discussion. ( )

I cannot help but enjoy Lewis, even when he says things that annoy me. I think it is because I read a lot of him when I was younger, both fiction and non-fiction. This book has had one big annoyance and one minor one. The minor one was a slight misunderstanding of some Pauline stuff. Nothing big, so I am willing to move on (after having looked at the book funny of course). The other one was a discussion of the relationship of humans to God and saying it was like "patient to agent, woman to man, echo to voice, mirror to light". I don't think I need to go too far into why that bugged me. I just need to remember that this book was written in 1940, so I should not get too annoyed at it's view of gender.

Intellectual. Not good if you are looking for help through some current pain or suffering. He asks some weird questions a couple times, otherwise, solid. ( )

ESP-118