"A Good Time Was Had By All"

"By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right.  And by

LOVE,

in this context, most of us mean kindness -- the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy.  What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?'  We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven -- a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves', and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all'.  Not many people, I admit, would formulate a theology in precisely those terms: but a conception not very different lurks at the back of many minds.  I do not claim to be an exception: I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed on such lines.  But since it is abundantly clear that I don't, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of

LOVE

needs correction."

~C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)