Damaging the Gospel: Transcendence of Suffering in Screwtape Letter V

If pain is divorced from joy, the gospel is damaged. God allows certain (cursed) environments to which the natural response is sadness, and not joy. Otherwise, there would be no joy, because there would be no trough of sadness before it. There is no redemption without the fall. Joy and sadness are as linked to each other as a traveler’s joy of being refreshed by water is after walking through a barren desert. If this is the best of all possible worlds, there is no joy without sadness. There is no justification without pain.

There is no redemption without Christ the God-man feeling abandoned by God the Father. This point is pounded by Lewis:

“Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

This is a clear reference to Christ the God-man enduring the feeling of abandonment, not merely being thirsty, but having his bodily fluids dripping from his wrenched body while hanging from a Roman torture device. To deny the link between joy and sadness is to devalue Christ’s work of redemption. Joy follows sadness as peaks follow troughs or hope follows despair. Or perhaps it would have been a natural response for Christ’s mother to be happy seeing her son tortured and executed in front of her eyes. That would be unnatural. There is no sanctification without pain. If pain is divorced from joy, the gospel is damaged.

Even in Heaven there will be a memory of pain, otherwise “Amazing Grace” and “Tell me the old, old story” would be lies. There can be no accurate retelling of God’s redemption in this world if in the next world if there is no mention of pain as if it never happened. The cross cannot be sanitized into a mere symbol of redemption without purging the infinite cost of God becoming man and feeling pain and death. Heaven cannot be viewed accurately if neo-orthodox postmodernism is allowed to redefine spiritual words and divorce them from any rational meanings. And this is exactly how the secular world views “Amazing Grace.” The meanings of the words in those hymns have been so divorced from justification, adoption, and sanctification that the mention of the word “grace” is often sung without reference to Christ the God-man’s penal substitutionary atonement. Christ’s work as mentioned included extreme humility and endurance of extreme pain and death, as well as the guilt of Hellfire of those given to Him by the Father. If there were no memory of pain in Heaven, then these hymns would not be sung there.

Singing “God’s praise” as mentioned in Amazing Grace requires a knowledge of the pain that Christ suffered, because it is a part of the story of God’s redemption of His people. If there were no memory of pain in Heaven, then the word “wretch” would be purged, as well as any references to blindness, fear, and tears, because those would be memories of pain. Telling “the old, old story” as mentioned in the other hymn requires a knowledge of the pain that Christ suffered, because it is a part of the story of God’s redemption of His people. If there were no memory of pain in Heaven, then being
“weak and weary, And helpless and defiled” as well as any reference to “sin” and “trouble” would need to be purged from the record. If pain is divorced from joy, the gospel is damaged.

It is not as if the existence of those burning in Hell is forgotten by God, because it is a part of God’s plan. Or perhaps Christ was speaking loosely when he mentioned Dives seeing Lazarus in Hell. I doubt it. Or is Judas’ name going to be purged from the record for all eternity? If so, how will the record show God’s glory to the fullest, if a detail is purged? Will there still be holes in Christ the God-man’s hands?

If pain is divorced from joy the gospel is damaged. Even in Heaven there will be a memory of pain, otherwise “Amazing Grace” and “Tell me the old, old story” would be lies. If these songs would not be sung in Heaven, a reevaluation of these hymns would be in order. There is no joy without sadness. There is no sadness without pain. There is no justification without pain. There is no adoption without pain. There is no sanctification without pain. There is no gospel without pain.

Work Cited

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. 1942. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001), 38.