Love and the Machine: The Problem of Love Part 5
In reflecting on John 3:19 in which humans are inclined to love darkness rather than light, Professor Ronnie Campbell of Liberty University points us back to Lewis’ work in The Great Divorce. In that work, Lewis shows so adeptly that “People are ensnared by their sins and refuse to embrace God’s way for them. They would rather be ruled by their vices than to repent and surrender them over to God.”[6] And by this, Campbell shows that hell is necessary when a people absolutely reject Him and do not want to be with Him—it is their choice that brings them to eternal separation from God. And that is what hell is, to be entirely apart from the One who has created us, in His image, for His glory. No part of our existence can be self-focused if we are to fully embrace the happy holiness for which we are meant, “choosing to go their own way, straying from God’s original intention for them.”[7] This is the point Campbell makes, this problem of choice, that of free will. Men condemn themselves to that eternal darkness, with no Son to shine upon them, no Father to comfort them, no Spirit to fill them with joy—for there is no real joy to be found within themselves apart from the source of “abundant life,” what Campbell describes as “ultimately found in conforming to God’s ways.[8] Lewis says, “The characteristic of lost souls is ‘their rejection of everything that is not simply themselves’. . . He has his wish—to lie wholly in the self and to make the best of what he finds there. And what he finds there is Hell.”[9] Hell is necessary, the quarantine away from God’s elect if justice is to prevail. God’s love would not have it any other way because God cannot go against His own nature. It is in the nature of love to welcome choice, even if it means that not all would choose Him. There are no machines in heaven.
Love Welcomes Choice
It is in the nature of love to welcome choice, even if it means that not all would choose Him. There are no machines in heaven.
And here is where we come to our conclusion, that glorious end writ in Scripture. The end of this existence into the next, be it in forever darkness or eternal Light. By His nature, God is love and He is just and cannot let a transgression go unpunished. Rather, He chose to take the punishment on Himself. But this is a gift that must be accepted, not rejected, to feel the fortunes of forgiveness. Lewis makes a distinction between condoning and forgiving: “To condone an evil is simply to ignore it, to treat it as if it were good. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness.”[10] And God cannot ignore injustice against Himself, the evil evinced by man’s pride to know as God knows. Evil is a symptom of the Fall, the break between man and God, and justly God had turned Adam and Even from that garden, and we have since tried to find our way back.
George Harold Trudeau expounds on Peter Kreeft’s notion that “Joy is never fulfilled by anything in this world because Joy’s corresponding object is God,”[11] and in pursuing joy and happiness, humans are ultimately finding their way back to God, back to the garden. In referencing The Problem of Pain, Trudeau says, “Lewis locates longing as a deficiency in the human soul that still acts as general revelation. But how does a soul which never had satisfaction know how it is to long?”[12] God tells us in His word that He has made us in His image and has written His law in our hearts. There is a compass within us that tells us how far we have strayed whenever we feel that sense of pain, suffering, and sorrow in this world. Perhaps the non-believer could not articulate it, but throughout history in the arts, sciences, and philosophy has mankind tried to again find his North Star, that absolute truth the believer calls God.
Art and God
Perhaps the non-believer could not articulate it, but throughout history in the arts, sciences, and philosophy has mankind tried to again find his North Star, that absolute truth the believer calls God.
We can be grateful for the possibility of evil as much as we are grateful for the possibility of the cross, for the former is necessary to the latter. Were it not for our pain would we take for granted our Savior. Were it not for our fallenness could we not appreciate our being raised again as was the Christ. By His act of redemption, humans know the love of God in a way that other created beings, even angels, do not have the privilege to experience. It is in this reality that believers can respond, to the constancy of Christ in a world where the present problem of pain persists, looking to the hope of salvation in the sea of suffering. It is in the “not yet” of evil’s final defeat do we hope in the coming Kingdom of Christ. The problem of God’s love is the answer to the problem of evil, in the choice He gives us. Without this freedom, we could never know the love of God truly, intimately. The great separation of the fall and the evil that ensued will be repaired on the day of Christ’s coming, completely defeating evil in confirming those who chose God over self. Lewis has said, “Of course, God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk.”[13] And we all know love is always a risk.
[6] Ronnie P. Campbell, Jr., Worldviews and the Problem of Evil: A Comparative Approach, (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019), 257.
[7] Ibid. 258.
[8] Ibid., 257.
[9] C.S Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001), 125.
[10] Ibid., 124.
[11] George Harold Trudeau, “C.S. Lewis’s Post-Edenic Wanderings: Uncovering the Object of Longing,” The Heythrop Journal, Vol. 61, Issue 4 (July 2020): 642.
[12] Ibid.,
[13] C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001), 48.