"The Grey" and C.S. Lewis' Book "The Problem of Pain"

A couple of nights ago I watched a movie called "The Grey."  It is about a hunter who is employed by an oil company in Alaska to protect its workers from wildlife.  While on a plane ride to a remote area, the aircraft experiences catastrophic failure and crashes into the middle of nowhere.  There are only seven survivors, one of whom is this hunter.  As they struggle to get back to civilization they are constantly pursued and hunted by wolves.  Many of the original seven fall behind and die horrible and excruciatingly painful deaths at the jaws of the wolves.

A major theme of the movie is a question of faith.  How can a just or loving God exist if all we see around us in nature is raw and terrifying evil?

Near the end there are just the hunter and one other fellow left alive.  The other fellow falls into a stream and gets his foot caught so that his head is just below the surface of the water.  As the hunter is trying to pull his friend out he cries "God!  Please don't do this!"  In his eyes, God is fully capable of helping him, but does nothing for reasons unknown.  That essentially is crux of his argument.  God does exist, is capable of doing good (saving his friend's life), but does not.  Therefore, God is neither good nor just.

I would not recommend this movie to anyone, as it was full of foul language and was also quite graphic.  However, I did enjoy it because it engaged me and challenged me to answer this intellectual problem that modern society has with the problem of pain.

C.S. Lewis begins his book "The Problem of Pain" with an introduction that I find interesting.  He states that the very strength of this intellectual question about the existence of a good God poses a problem.  If the universe is really as bad as it seems, then how could humans have ever possibly thought that it was attributable to a wise and good Creator.  It is not possible for human beings to have deduced a good and loving Creator from the chaos of the world.  The idea had to come from somewhere else.

C.S. Lewis then goes on to describe the origin of Christianity as it is in the origin that we may be able to find the answer to this intellectual problem.

That is as far as I have got, and I will update in the near future as I read more.

In Christ,

Reader Nicholas