LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Goodness and Benevolence
"If God were good, he would wish to make his creatures perfectly happy, and if God were all-powerful, he would be able to do what he wishes. But creatures are not happy. Therefore, God lacks goodness, or power, or both". This is how the English author C.S. Lewis states the problem of pain in his book The Problem of Pain. He then clarifies that the possibility of solving this problem depends on demonstrating that the terms "good" and "almighty" admit more than one definition, and that the best definitions are not necessarily the most common ones.
If our concept of goodness excludes suffering, it certainly includes suffering for God. This makes an important difference that merits clarification. This does not mean that goodness according to God is antagonistic to ours. It is different, as Lewis says, but "not as white is from black, but as a perfect circle is from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, he will know that the circle he now makes is what he was trying to make from the beginning".
Today, when we speak of God's goodness, we are thinking almost exclusively of his way of loving us; and in this we may well be right. And by love, in this context, most of us understand benevolence: the desire to see others happy; not happy in this or that way, but simply happy. But a God who wanted only to see us happy would not be a heavenly Father, but a grandfather. His benevolence would be the benevolence of the old man who only wants to see the young people having fun, as if at the end of the day the only thing that matters is that everyone has had a good time.
Every human being, in the depths of his heart, would like things to be that way. But since this is not the case, and since we understand that God is love, we must change our concept of love. In fact, God's love is not the kind of benignity thus described.
There is benevolence in love, but love and benevolence are not synonymous. In benevolence there is a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and inconclusively something akin to contempt. Benevolence may even go so far as to want the elimination of the object it loves, provided it does not suffer. As Lewis says: "It is only for people we care nothing for that we demand happiness on any terms; (but) with our friends, our loved ones, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in despicable or alienating ways".
God's love is much more than benevolence; his love has never treated us with indifference or disdain, but in a profound and tragic way. Here begins the way to understand the problem of pain as being permitted by a good God.