More than Merely Happy

The thing that irks me most about philosophically arguing, (in an intellectual and non-violent manner), is that as soon as I have my position figured out and am ready to defend my opinion, I am made aware of a significant flaw in my reasoning. Often it is just moments after the light turns on and the "ah-hah" escapes my mouth that someone asks, "But how do you explain...?" and I must reluctantly go back to the drawing board. Such has been my experience time and again as I've grappled with the Problem of Pain. There are times I want to "throw in the towel," accept that there is pain in the world and give up looking for reasons and explanations as to why. For some reason, though, this is not acceptable. Why not? I don't know.
Why do we need to make sense of pain? Arguably because it doesn't jive with the world as we think the world ought to be - good. But we when say "good" isn't what we really mean self-serving and comfortable? In Hume's Dialogues the character Philo explains "...neither man nor any other animal is happy; therefore, he [God] does not will their happiness." He uses this as a part of his argument that says (in an oversimplified manner) that an omnipotent and omniscient God would be capable of making a world in which the creatures are happy, but the creatures are not happy, thus such a God must not exist.
I don't think this is necessarily true. It isn't that God can not make a world in which we are always happy, but that he does not. If the world was supposed to exist for the sole purpose of making man happy don't you think it would? You can argue that it did initially, that a world in which man is unhappy is merely a result of sin, but even that argument fails if we are to maintain that at Creation the omniscient God knew of the pain that was to come (which is another argument in itself). What I'm trying to get at isn't that God intended pain, but rather that God may not have created the world, even in its original state, for man's happiness (as we currently understand happiness that is).
The Westminster Catechism suggests that man's chief end is to "glorify God and enjoy him forever," not "to be happy on earth and without any pain." If this is true, than wouldn't God create a world in which such a purpose could be lived out? Didn't he? Lewis suggests that one of the reasons we have a problem with pain is that we have a false understanding of what God's goodness and human happiness really are. Divine goodness is not kindness. To say God is good is to say he loves us, but not that his goal for us is to live pleasurable comfortable earthly lives "God wills our good, and our good is to love Him." Nowhere in that statement does it say that either our good or loving God come without pain.
As Lewis explains God's goodness he employs four analogies of love. Consider an artist with a work in progress: The beloved object may fail to understand the transformation in progress, a transformation which may require pain, the use of which the beloved also may not understand. The transformation is necessary if the object is to be perfected. We argue if such perfection is necessary, but only because we misunderstand the purpose of the beloved. "After all, a great painting primarily benefits its artist." Wielenberg says this in objection to the painter analogy, pointing out that the beloved itself gets little happiness out of the deal, but I would posit that this is the point entirely. Man does not exist for his own happiness, but for God's glory.
This is not to say that glorifying God is a miserable existence. Quite the opposite, to glorify God is the greatest joy we can experience, but it is happiness as we fail to understand it, happiness as we do not seek it. And so God must, if he desires for us to both be happy and fulfill our intended purpose of loving him freely, use pain to draw us to himself. "God, who has made us, knows that our happiness lies in Him," says Lewis. "Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him."
We have sealed our own fate by maintaining the idea that a self-centered life leads to true happiness. What other option does God have but to use pain to open our eyes to our false happiness?
I cannot (and would not attempt to) explain away all the existence or reason for all pain. I am, however, suggesting that there are things more important than living in a pain-free world - the great good of genuine human happiness that comes when one's chief purpose is glorifying God for example. I think Lewis would agree - in fact it was from him that I learned it - that the self-surrender of the will and transformation of the person is of a value and significance that far outweighs the pain that enables it.