Dogs, all of us are dogs

C.S. Lewis said that Pain is God’s megaphone to a deaf world.

I must be beyond deaf then. Not to say I’m in some great deal of pain right now – at least not in an atypical way. All our lives are riddled with pain throughout, but we convince ourselves of the normalcy of this. We’ve actually brought ourselves to a point where we tell ourselves that this pain is natural, that it’s a “part of life”, we even glorify those who can ignore it and mock those who are “too” aware of it. In the end, there is no denying it – not that our society does. All our stories, songs, values are related to this pain that we feel.

We sell hundreds of millions of self-help books each year, helping our modern society cope with this pain. Feeling worthless? Buy a book on how to make more money so you can have more worth. Feeling lonely? Buy a book on dating and learn to mask the longing for relationship with sexual passion. Feeling down? Buy a book on finding happiness through cooking, working, sex, etc.

But why? The pain of the human experience is as old as time; but why, oh why, hasn’t anyone figured it out?

There certainly have been some noble attempts. Nietzsche saw the pain of human existence but, after some careful thinking, wrote it off as the weakness of our lesser selves. That it is a result of our submission to chains of our creation—human ethics and values. The answer is to rise above these things, to become a being who is self defined and self reliant: the ubermenche – the overman, superman. Sartre saw all pain as a result of the subjugation of the being into object. That all human interaction is the hostile interaction of subjects who try to objectify each other. I want to make you an object in my world, rather than a person for person’s sake, and our interactions are the reasons why we have pain. Famously, Sartre for writing in his autobiography, “I'm not so sure I didn't seek out women's company in order to get rid of the burden of my ugliness” But really, what are these philosophies now?

Really, is there nothing that can save us? Solomon gave himself everything and found it all meaningless.

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my work,
and this was the reward for all my labor.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 2:10-11


Do you know what the difference between a dog and a human is? When you point to something, a dog will stare at your finger and a human will look to where the finger is pointing. We are dogs, all of us. We are so caught up in this pain of ours, we focus on it so dearly! We forget that this pain is merely a sign pointing the way! We are asked to look along our pain rather than at our pain!

People ask, if God is good why does he inflict pain on good people? The question is missing the point. If we are good people, why can’t we see God in the pain? God is calling out to us, asking for us to look at Him but everyday we focus on the finger, not seeing it for what it is. If we could only look along it, we would find that the pain is no pain at all but merely a sign to something far more substantial.