Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Problem of Pain

Top positive review

Chapter on animal pain was astonishing

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2016

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book. The problem of pain is of course the subject of focus, but the book is nearly comprehensive as an explanation of the Christian worldview. Lewis is a clear thinker and writer. The last chapter on animal pain was astonishing and presents theories I'd never before considered. I've given this book as a gift twice since reading it in 2014.

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DJ Fairlie

Choose a Different Format

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2020

Don’t purchase the Kindle edition. The fonts (many different types and sizes) are a mess. Virtually impossible to read. I have never left a negative comment on Amazon but felt the need to advise future purchasers to choose another format.

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DJ Fairlie

Choose a Different Format

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2020

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119 people found this helpful

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Adam Briggs

whY IS iT formaTTED so TerriBly??$?

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2020

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My one star isn’t a criticism of the book itself. It’s a criticism of the format of this version. The word “I” and the first word of every sentence are almost always lower case, the sentences are broken up in the middle of a line, and it’s missing lots of punctuation.
I’m no dummy but this book is not necessarily the easiest read, so the lack of proper formatting makes it much harder.

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Lady Soar

I remember liking C.S. Lewis in my younger years…

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2022

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THE PROBLEM OF PAIN: Too much abstruse theologizing, and the author repeatedly admits that he does not have the wherewithal to write on the subject, which becomes abundantly clear with each chapter. He spends a lot of time on the sinfulness of man and that suffering is a result of this, which does nothing to comfort the millions of small children in pain, who have never sinned, nor the very good people who eventually find that the ravages of time spare no body. The chapter on animal pain, with the author’s assertion that animals are under the dominion of Man, is completely out of touch (this chapter is frankly an embarrassment.) The frothy final chapter on Heaven, affirming that this, my suffering friends, is the ultimate goal anyway, is superficial.

In my humble opinion, the problem of pain is fairly straightforward:
1. Humans do not have perfect intelligence but can indeed act freely, and too often they decide to be selfish instead of wise with self and generous with others, all of which results in greed, self-indulgence, and lustful power urges and therefore pain for others and for themselves. Lewis does point this out clearly.
2. The human body, even when well cared for, naturally gets old and the parts strain and break, resulting in pain. Lewis strangely does not raise this subject: no doubt writing when he was in younger years!
3. Sometimes, Bad Things Just Happen, resulting in pain. Lewis never considers this random element of life on Earth.
3. God is the one who always and ever wants and urges the Good, and always sympathizes with your suffering because He loves you. Lewis does mention all this but without, in my view, adequately stressing how we should imitate God in our lives with others, striving to be compassionate and, even in tough situations, intent on the good of our fellow creatures.

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Brad

Greek.

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2022

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After reading several other C.S. Lewis works which I very much enjoyed, I found this one full of self-serving circular reasoning and hard to understand in most places. Maybe it’s the time period and location from which he writes.

I’m sure that there’s an audience who would get something out of this book, but I just found it to be 160 pages of long-winded explanation that the human mind doesn’t have the capacity to understand God’s use of pain and suffering in the world. It’s like using string theory to explain the overarching laws of the universe. You can make numbers and words do anything if you arrange them in a way such that the average reader doesn’t understand; but in the end, it’s just a long explanation of something that God never intended for us to explain.

Lewis could’ve spent 320 pages explaining further, but the reader still arrives at a single irrefutable truth: There are things within the realm of human comprehension that aren’t meant to be understood, and the presence of pain in our world may be one of them.

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Seven Stars

The editor of the Kindle version needs a lesson on proper writing

Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2020

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The 1 star review is for the extremely poor presentation of this book. Never before have I seen such a literary disaster from whoever edited this book into the Kindle format. Apparently the editor has no idea that it's standard practice to capitalize the first word in every sentence since this is the case throughout the entire book. I very much wanted to read this book but could not stand the shockingly improper writing and typos. C.S. Lewis would roll over in his grave if he saw this complete debacle of his work.

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Don Awalt

Kindle format is a mess - don't buy

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2020

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CS Lewis is awesome - I have read many of his books. BUT - don't buy this one in Kindle format - the book that came down had text missing, was completely impossible to read. It was like random text pieced together, I have never seen anything like it. I deleted and tried downloading again, same thing. I just noticed other reviews note this issue. Beware.

5 people found this helpful

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MrDarkness

C.S. Lewis? Yes. Kindle? No.

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2020

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Don't allow my single star to dissuade you from reading C.S. Lewis; then as now, there's no finer mind, no greater prose stylist in Christian apolegetics than Clive Staples Lewis--but as a reader, you must bring your 'A' game, with a commitment to unrelenting concentration.

Unfortunately, the Kindle edition of this book makes that very difficult, if not impossible. I've encountered flawed Kindle printings before, but nothing like this; it's an unreadable riot of dissimilar fonts, character heights and general mayhem tossed randomly across the page as if butchery of Lewis's work was the object.

2 people found this helpful

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Mark H.

(Review for Kindle only) The Kindle edition is absolutely horrible!

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2020

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This is an excellent book, but the Kindle edition is terrible. It looks like the pages were read through an OCR and then NO editing was done afterwards. Paragraphs split up by footnotes, no headers or chapter divisions, sentences beginning with small letters. Well, just look at the "Look Inside" to see what I mean.

3 people found this helpful

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pm new mex

Extraordinary writing, inferior binding

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2021

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CS Lewis’s writing is beautiful, insightful, and relatable. The copy of the book that I received was absolutely crappy workmanship, with uneven, cheap pages glued into the cover crookedly. I once bound my own book as a fifth grade art project and the quality was superior to this. By all means read Lewis’s The Problem of Pain, but pay more for a better bound copy.

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Steve Gardner

Great book ruInEd bY uN beLIeVabLY bAd cOnvErZhun

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2020

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Somebody was asleep at the switch. It's not that hard to fix this. Come on, Samizdat or van Wingerden or Pogo -- whoever is responsible. Save the trashy conversions for trashy books. PLEASE FIX THIS!

Samizdat univerSity PreSS Q uébe C
based on the public domain etext:
The Problem of Pain, by C. S. Lewis (originally published in 1940). OCr by van Wingerden. Footnotes and punctuation restaured by Pogo.

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