Learning to be Thankful for Suffering

Our natural inclination is one of self-preservation. We don’t want to suffer and will, at almost all costs, fight to keep ourselves from having to experience trials and tragedy. In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis writes, “The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.”