I am currently reading Perelandra by C. S. Lewis. The story takes place on Venus, or Perelandra. It is a beautiful, young, innocent planet. The first man and woman have been made there and, along with the gentle beasts that inhabit the planet, are untouched by evil. There is a part in the book when Dr. Elwin Ransom, who has been sent to this planet, comes across a mutilated frog. In a world where everything is joy and fulfillment and contentment, pain is unprecedented. The Lady herself (the first woman) does not understand any form of negative emotion. She does not understand suffering or death because she has never seen it. A wounded animal is completely out of place here. Allow me to share an excerpt:
"On earth it would have been merely a nasty sight, but up to this moment Ransom had as yet seen nothing dead or spoiled in Perelandra, and it was like a blow in the face. It was like the first spasm of well-remembered pain warning a man who had thought he was cured that his family have deceived him and he is dying after all. It was like the first lie from the mouth of a friend on whose truth one was willing to stake a thousand pounds. It was irrevocable. The milk-warm wind blowing over the golden sea, the blues and silvers and greens of the floating garden, the sky itself--all these had become, in one instant, merely the illuminated margin of a book whose text was the struggling little horror at his feet, and he himself, in that same instant, had passed into a state of emotion which he could neither control nor understand. He told himself that a creature of that kind probably had very little sensation. But it did not much mend matters. It was not merely pity for pain that had suddenly changed the rhythm of his heart-beats. The thing was an intolerable obscenity which afflicted him with shame. It would have been better, or so he thought at that moment, for the whole universe never to have existed than for this one thing to have happened." (pp. 93-94)
It may sound odd for me to say that it was refreshing for me to read this. I was certainly disgusted (and it only gets worse with Dr. Ransom finding twenty-one more mangled frogs), but when I say I was refreshed it is because we are so calloused to pain in this world that it was satisfying to see a character truly sickened by pain, even if that pain was found in a mere beast. It struck a chord in my heart to have the truth brought before me that there is something seriously wrong with pain. Suffering was not what we were created for. Our entire existence, from our first gasping cry to our final gasping breath, is surrounded in evil and death and suffering. Our lives are tainted. Our planet is tainted. We are so immersed in pain all of our lives that we have grown hard to it. We kill a bug without a thought. We run over a squirrel with our car. We see on the television people being shot and killed and we feel a twinge of sadness for a moment but then move on to the weather report in the next sixty seconds. We tell ourselves that there is simply too much pain in the world to really invest our hearts. We would be crushed by the weight of it. So we allow ourselves to shrug off the deaths of our brothers and sisters and the many other wonderful creatures that God has created.
This should not be. Of this I am certain: we were not made for pain and it will not be the end of us (or of anything in this world). There will come a time when these things will have passed and we won't know pain or tears. Animals will be at peace with each other and with man. Man will be at peace with himself and with other men and have true communion with his Maker. There will be Restoration.
"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
- Isaiah 11:6-9
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”"
- Revelation 21:1-4
I look forward to that day with all of my heart.
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