“I’ve been given two choices: As a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety. The man chooses suffering.”

C.S.Lewis【shadowlands】

Suffering stands out as one of the most prominent subjects addressed by Christian works, even when the cross itself embodies suffering.

The movie Shadowlands illustrates the life of The Chronicles of Narnia’s author C.S. Lewis (hereafter Lewis), focusing on how the sufferings experienced in life heightens his intellectual comprehension of God’s love. In the film, we see how the pains of living challenge and test our own understanding of His love, inviting us to reevaluate our beliefs.

At the beginning of the film, we see Lewis, a renowned professor at Cambridge, poses these powerful questions to a packed and hushed audience: “Does God want us to suffer? Isn’t He supposed to love us?” I’m sure no one is unfamiliar with his memorable answer: “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” However, when Joy entered into his life, he would never have thought that the many encouragements that he left his listeners, such as “Suffering is God’s blessing in disguise, given to help us mature,” would prove his harshest challenges later in life!

Joy, a Jewish American, abandoned and divorced by an unfaithful husband, now bankrupted, brought her young child to London to begin a new chapter, and eventually falling ill to cancer. Her life followed a string of brokenness, and she even self-mockingly said, “Do you think I get a discount?” A certain scene has her and Lewis debate the extent of influence personal experience has on a person versus learned knowledge. Lewis staunchly holds that “something that hurts doesn’t make it more true or significant.” Joy, on the other hand, strongly believes that personal experience is critical for one’s understanding of life. She even mocks Lewis, “Reading is safe, isn’t it? Books aren’t about to hurt you.” Despite their strongly differing opinions, this straight-shooting and unabashed American poet still manages to leave the well-read and well-spoken British orator speechless. As is the case of their worldviews, the turbulent life led by Joy sharply contrasts from Lewis’s calm and peaceful one. Lewis has spent the better part of his life living in the same quiet Cambridge neighborhood with his brother Warnie, teaching, giving speeches, writing books, as well as engaging in spirited debates with his long-time colleagues.

“Have you been really hurt?” Joy penetratingly asks. For many, the best persuasion comes from those who have gone through the same suffering; for those who haven’t, their comfort and advice are nothing more than empty discourses, barely scratching at the surface of the problem.

Lewis has however, experienced pain at the age of nine when he lost his mother. He shared with Joy this heartbreaking memory: “I remember I had toothache, and I wanted my mother to come to me. I cried for her to come, but she…” The comforting footsteps never came for the boy. The author of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a story about children who must forcefully and purposely push through the suffocating and heavy coats to reach a miraculous world, has felt the pang of feeling like the roughness of the back of the wardrobe. Has he, while expecting miracles, cautiously barricaded himself as a child fearful of hurt? To him, miracles are as a painting hung in his study titled “Golden Valley”; the valley bathed in the sun’s golden beam is said to exist, but remains merely a paradise of his childhood fantasies. However, when Joy appeared in his life, he found the courage and the reason to break down his protective walls.

Lewis’s decision to marry cancer-stricken Joy under the witness of God is due to his realization that he could no longer hide in his safe and pain free world. To love, he must endure a baptism of spiritual pain. He must watch his precious wife be tormented by a crippling illness, both physically and mentally. At such excruciating pain, the professor of theology releases his pent-up frustration in his sermon: “See, if you love someone, you don’t want them to suffer. You can’t bear it. You want to take their suffering onto yourself.” The knowledge of the intellect collapses in the face of the cruelty of reality. Is it because we underestimated suffering? Or is the challenge too great?

In essence, after Joy critiqued his inability to open up, Lewis was forced to begin thinking about the fears and suspicions he had hidden away throughout his life. He said to a dear student, Whistler, “We live in the Shadowlands. Sun is always shining somewhere else… around a bend in the road… over the brow of a hill.” However, Lewis still lacked the courage to completely abandon the shadows of his life in search of a brighter place. He created a barrier with his book knowledge, keeping himself in and barricading others out of his heart.

For their honeymoon, a barely recovering Joy encouraged Lewis to find the heaven of his childhood. After asking around, they finally arrived at the Golden Valley, only to find that it was in fact merely a small marsh. Lewis went to comfort Joy, thinking that they need only treasure and enjoy their present and temporary happiness. The main reason is that he didn’t want to walk out of the comfort zone. But Joy saw through his weakness, and was determined to lead him out of his stagnation in a boy’s worldview, and learn to accept and embrace the pain of impending death and separation. She said to him, “The pain then is part of the happiness now. That’s the deal!” Yes, happiness and pain are as closely related as conjoined twins, constantly reminding each other of their own presence. Just before passing on, Joy watched the helplessly sobbing Lewis, and reminded him, “no more pretending, not anymore.”

Losing a loved one is one of life’s greatest tragedies, and even Lewis is hopeless in the face of his blessing in disguise. As Joy was accepting treatment in the hospital, Lewis’s colleagues comforted him by saying, “God will listen to your prayers!” He answered, “That’s not why I pray. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.” Suffering allows us to cry out in pain. We rage, and bargain, and at last, we accept reality*. It doesn’t matter if we are the average man or an accomplished scholar; when confronted with suffering we react with the same child-like fear and shock, finding ourselves at a loss. “Why love? When losing is such a pain!” Lewis cries out in pain.

Lewis uses his wails of rage to deal with his sorrow, but Joy’s nine-year-old son Douglas relies on “I don’t care!” to combat the unbearable pain of his mother’s death. Sitting in Lewis’s attic and staring helplessly at the gigantic wardrobe, he wonders if, through the heavy coats, there really is magic on the other side. Like Lewis, he is a small child hoping for a miracle, yet ever fearful of overextending himself and becoming hurt again. The two helpless boys, identical in their desperation of wanting Joy back in their lives, fall sobbing into each other’s shoulders, and at that moment, matured.

In the closing scene, we see the two walk down a sunny hill, as life calmly moved on, around a bend in the road, over the brow of a hill. Maybe we still cry out to God; is he the same loving God as the one who watches us suffer? But, as Christians, we already have the answer. The mystery of suffering is hidden in the love of the Lord, and He has answered our cries through the suffering on the cross. Love can be found, experienced, felt, and understood in ordinary and unordinary lives. No matter through what means, and no matter if we wish to or not, we must leave the safety of the nursery, and enter the adult world, filled with misery and suffering to fully understand and experience the Lord’s love!

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

C.S.Lewis

*See Joyce Lim’s “Facing Suffering.”