Which 1942 C.S. Lewis book argues that pain can have a role in spiritual growth?

The Problem of Pain is C.S. Lewis’s 1942 book about suffering and spiritual growth.

Published during the Second World War, The Problem of Pain examines why suffering exists if God is good and powerful. Lewis discusses divine goodness, human freedom, punishment, animal pain, and hell while presenting a Christian philosophical response to the problem of evil.

The book argues that pain can expose human dependence and challenge self-centered desires, though Lewis does not claim that every individual instance of suffering is easy to explain or morally deserved. It is an apologetic work, meaning that it seeks to offer reasons for Christian belief rather than tell a personal story.

Readers sometimes confuse The Problem of Pain with A Grief Observed. The latter was published in 1961 under the name N.W. Clerk and records Lewis’s personal anguish after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. The two books address suffering from very different angles: one is systematic, while the other is intensely autobiographical.