The Nature of God's Goodness

The following excerpt is taken from The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis. This short book was written in 1940 and was his first in a series of superb apologetic works. In it, he takes on a recurring question in the Christian life: How can pain exist in a universe governed by a God that is both perfectly loving and limitlessly powerful? The quote below is taken from the chapter exploring the nature of God’s goodness:

“We are bidden to ‘put on Christ’, to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable complement, by to much love, not too little.

Yet perhaps even this view falls short of the truth. It is not simply that God has arbitrarily made us such that He is our only good. Rather God is the only good of all creatures: and by necessity, each must find its good in that kind and degree of the fruition of God which is proper to its nature. The kind and degree may vary with the creature’s nature: but that there ever could be any other good, is an atheistic dream. George MacDonald, in a passage I cannot now find, represents God as saying to men ‘You must be strong with my strength and blessed with my blessedness, for I have no other to give you.’ That is the conclusion of the whole matter. God gives what He has, not what He has not: He gives the happiness that there is, not the happiness that is not. To be God – to be like God and to share His goodness in creaturely response – to be miserable – these are the only three alternatives. If we will not learn to eat the only food the universe grows – the only food that any possible universe can ever grow – then we must starve eternally.”

“My way or the highway” – the power-play implicit in the phrase can make us cringe. Yet that is the reality we are confronted with in this world; God tells us to “enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.” There is not a single course other than the one “narrow way” in the whole scope of human choice that can possibly end in good. The above passage explains that God was not arbitrary in framing our world with the one right answer and the billion wrong ones: there really is, and can ever be, one truly right answer. When God (in His character, His will, His power, His goodness, etc. etc.) is PERFECT, with no possible improvement in any possible sphere, what other answer could there be? In what other direction could we grow to become fulfilled, other than to grow to be like Him?

-C. Wagner