Life in Enemy Occupied Territory

Life in Enemy Occupied Territory

"Life in Enemy Occupied Territory

By: Chuck Colson|Published: October 22, 2002 9:42 AM

Why We Suffer

In suburban Washington, D.C., a sniper strikes at random, killing one stranger after another, throwing their families into the grip of sudden, agonizing grief.

Pain -- human suffering -- is a part of every life. When it strikes close to home, it often causes people to question the reality of God -- His nature, His power, His very existence. Why does a good God allow this?

The problem of human suffering fascinated two of the last century's most influential thinkers: Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. But as Harvard psychiatrist Armand Nicholi notes in his book The Question of God, these two men drew very different conclusions about God from their own encounters with pain.

Both Lewis and Freud experienced profound suffering. Lewis lost his mother when he was a child, endured the horrors of World War I, and watched his beloved wife, Joy, suffer an excruciating death from cancer.

Freud also lost precious family members: a daughter and a grandson. He experienced vicious anti-Semitism, endured ridicule from other scientists, and suffered physically from a painful cancer.

Human suffering led Freud to conclude that God does not exist -- that no loving God would permit people to endure such pain if He had the power to prevent it. He believed that men's fates were determined, not by a supernatural Father, but by "obscure, unfeeling, and unloving powers."

Lewis concluded otherwise -- but not without a struggle. After his wife's death, Lewis wrote...."    Read the whole article in the link above...  

http://www.amazon.com/The-Question-God-Sigmund-Meaning/dp/074324785X

The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life

"Throughout the ages, many of the world's greatest thinkers have wrestled with the concept of -- and belief in -- God. It may seem unlikely that any new arguments or insights could be raised, but the twentieth century managed to produce two brilliant men with two diametrically opposed views about the question of God: Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. They never had an actual meeting, but in The Question of God, their arguments are placed side by side for the very first time. 
For more than twenty-five years, Armand Nicholi has taught a course at Harvard that compares the philosophical arguments of both men. In The Question of God, Dr. Nicholi presents the writings and letters of Lewis and Freud, allowing them to "speak" for themselves on the subject of belief and disbelief. Both men considered the problem of pain and suffering, the nature of love and sex, and the ultimate meaning of life and death -- and each of them thought carefully about the alternatives to their positions. "....    read the rest in the link to Amazon...