The Problem of Pain

Lewis argues that humans need improvement and provides several reasons why that is the case. The first reason, he says, is our incomplete understanding of what it means to be good, which we equate with being kind: “The real trouble is that ‘kindness’ is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment” (32). Being good, Lewis argues, is not as easy as being kind when there is no reason not to be kind.

The second reason humans need God’s help to improve ourselves is because contemporary psychoanalysis (that is, in the 1920s and 1930s) has led people to believe that shame, rather than being a necessary corrective to our behavior, is a bad thing. Lewis disagrees with this notion, writing that shame is the only true and right feeling of humanity. We are so in need of correction, he argues, that we should feel shame, as it helps alert us to our flaws and misdeeds. Lewis backs up his point by saying that Jesus, who died for the sins of man, didn’t question that men were inherently bad. Understanding that “old sense of sin” as inevitable and in need of cleansing is the only way to be a true Christian: “Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.