Love and Happiness

When I read the works of C.S. Lewis, I am always blessed and encouraged by his God-honouring intelligence which far exceeds my own.  His literary skill and creative approach to answering meaningful questions puts me in the place of a little child having to run to keep up with his father's long stride and still lagging behind.  I recently started re-reading The Problem of Pain, a book Lewis wrote in 1940.  It is the sort of book which strikes the reader differently in each reading because of the depth of content and how much the reader or his circumstances have changed.  Instead of following a familiar pattern of discussion, C.S. Lewis blazed a trail academics, theologians, and us ordinary folk do well to follow.

Having laid the foundation for the existence of God, C.S. Lewis began to explore how people have a belief that if God is all powerful and loving, He should ensure our constant happiness.  A false contradiction and even the denial of God's existence can follow because of the pain a supposed loving God allows.  Consider this remarkable paragraph on page 36:

"The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them.  Man is not the centre.  God does not exist for the sake of man.  Man does not exist for his own sake.  "Thou has created all things, and for they pleasure they are and were created."  We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest "well pleased".  To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God:  because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled, by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us loveable.  We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities--no more that the beggar maid could with that King Copherua should be content with her rags and dirt, or a dog, once having learned to love man, could with that man were such as to tolerate in his house the snapping, verminous, polluting creature of the wild pack.  What we would here and now call our "happiness" is not the end God chiefly has in view:  but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy." (Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. Whitefriars Press Ltd., London and Tonbridge, 1942.)

Every love we experience on earth:  the love of people for pets, the love of family, and love between a married couple are only shadows of the love God has for every person.  In our natural state we are cut off from the love of God by our sin, but having provided atonement through the Gospel we are restored to a relationship with God He has designed and desires.  Love is never content with distance, and God delights for us to invite Him in.  Jesus stands at the door and knocks, calling out for people who have grown comfortable without Him like the Shulamite in Solomon's Song.  Fullness of joy is promised those who open the door of their hearts to Him.  What could make a man happier than to love the God who created and loves him?