Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil

[soso]

The human spirit will not even begin [to try and surrender self-will] /as long as all seem to be well with it.

Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence;

they are masked evil.

Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil;

every man knows that something is wrong /when he is being hurt…

And pain is not only immediately recognizable evil, but evil impossible to ignore.

We can rest /contentedly /in our sins and in our stupidities;

and [anyone //who has watched gluttons /shoveling down the most exquisite foods /as if they did not know [what they were eating], will admit that we can ignore even pleasure.

But pain insists upon being attended to.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains:

it is His megaphone /to rouse a deaf world.

From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in The Business of Heaven