The Pain of the Problem of Pain

My Bible study group usually does "weird stuff" for the summer to mix things up a bit. Since it's a grad student Bible study, our meetings tend to be kind of like seminar classes...everybody reads the text then we chew it over. Two summers ago, we did some of the Apocrypha, and last year we did medieval Christianity. Let me tell you, Wycliffe in the original is very funny to read.

Anyway this summer we're doing CS Lewis' "The Problem of Pain" on Brian's suggestion. I've read maybe 3/4 of Lewis' books, but not this one yet.

Some people accuse Lewis of being sexist (e.g. Philip Pullman advertising his His Dark Materials trilogy as the atheist kids' alternative to the Chronicles of Narnia), but frankly they're failing to keep in mind that Lewis was writing in the '40s and '50s and is considerably less sexist than the average male from that time. I am also informed that the books that were written after he got married are better in that regard than those written when he was a crusty bachelor, like this one. Nevertheless, this is a really, REALLY bad phrasing:

...the rough, male taste of reality, not made by us, or, indeed, for us, but hitting us in the face.

I guess that, by being totally grossed out by this sentence, I'm leaving myself vulnerable to the medieval accusation that women are sinful creatures obsessed with sex. But seriously, eugh.