A Grief Observed

It is raining here - an incredible storm. And the power just went out. :-) A good time to reflect, read, and write...

A couple years ago, I picked up A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. As an author that I thoroughly enjoyed, and easily (or maybe not, since there are rivals) my favorite, I was excited to get into it. I found myself a little surprised…I was not able to identify with his struggle over the death of his wife at all. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised – but it seemed like he was talking about an aspect of God that I hadn’t met. There were some good conclusions at the end, but I still felt like I wouldn’t be able to understand for a very long time what this man was dealing with.

Then I opened the pages of it again this week. It was like a balm on my aching heart! This time I felt like there was someone who understood what I’m going through. I know having someone you love die must be different than this, but an aspect of it is just so similar…especially dealing with grief at such a deep level. It brings us all to the same place in wrestling with Who our God is. Here is some of what he wrote that was significant to me. First, the cruelty we sense in what is really God's mercy:

“The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed – might grow tired of his vile sport -- might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't.
“What do people mean when they say ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never been to a dentist?”

And this part is so comforting to me. On how God teaches us to want HIM…not just the things He takes from us (in Lewis’ case, his wife “H”). And thoughts on how He sees and loves, even when we can’t understand His silence.

“Am I, for instance, just sidling back to God because I know that if there's any road to H. it runs through Him? But then of course I know perfectly well that He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all. That's what was really wrong with all those popular pictures of happy reunions ‘on the further shore’; not the simple-minded and very earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by-product of the true End.

“Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet H. again only if I learned to love You so much that I don't care whether I meet her or not? Consider, Lord, how it looks to us. What would anyone think of me if I said to the boys, ‘no toffee now. But when you've grown up and don't really want toffee you shall have as much of it as you choose’?
If I knew that being eternally divided from H. and eternally forgotten by her would add greater joy and splendor to her being, of course I'd say, ‘Fire ahead.’ Just as if, on earth, I could have cured her cancer by never seeing her again, I'd have arranged never to see her again. I'd have had to. Any decent person would. But that's quite different. That's not a situation I'm in.

“When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘no answer’. It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘peace, child; you don't understand.’

“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask -- half our great theological and metaphysical problems -- are like that.
(…)
“His love and His knowledge are not distinct from one another, nor from Him. We could almost say He sees because He loves, and therefore loves although He sees.”

I am so thankful for Lewis' grieving, and for his transparency and giftedness in expressing it. Truly our God does "[comfort] us in our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." I praise Him for that.