C.S. Lewis\' a Grief Observed

¶ … C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed

Lewis was one of the most famous theologians and authors of children's books of his day. Yet even he had to confront the demands of ordinary, human grief like the death of a loved one, demands that made him question not the existence of God, which he felt deeply and profoundly on an elemental level, but the goodness of God and God's creation. Even this devout Christian believer admitted that, much like health or home or other forms of security, when "when you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be -- or so it feels -- welcomed with open arms," with very little effort. (Lewis, p.5)

This sensation of unforced love for God and God's creation mirrors what it is like, perhaps around the holiday season, where going to observances seem like a chore, an annoying but not unpleasant "interruption" to daily life. But daily life is more full of the types of visceral joys, like laughing with friends, or in Lewis' case, spending time with his beloved wife, than apprehending the full nature of the divine.

In other words, because of the earthly, individualistic human nature, the happy and personal pleasures of the world will often seem greater than the pleasures provided by the indefinite idea of God, even in the heart of someone who appreciates God's love on a daily basis. A believer may give thanks to God, but often as an afterthought, rather than with the same kind of unforced, truth faith that one gives love to another human being.

But unlike the life of the spirit, a human life is finite. Although love of God may not bring the same kinds of immediate pleasures of human intimacy or love, when one experiences death, or another kind of profound loss, then there is a need for God once again -- and a need to question God as well. "But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside." (Lewis, p.5) Over the course of Lewis' meditation, of course, Lewis does find the goodness God again, but he admits that knowing that a truly good God exists can prove difficult, when he wants to find proof of God's existence in what is good and joyous in the world, rather than the difficulties that accompany human life. Belief comes easily for Lewis: "Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not: 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'...Of course it's easy enough to say that God seems absent at our greatest need because He is absent -- non-existent. But then why does He seem so present when, to put it frankly, we don't ask for Him?" (Lewis, p. 5) In short, Lewis is tormented by the question of how can one believe in a good God, a God worthy of belief, in a world of suffering, where loss is part of human existence?

Chapter 3

Ultimately, even in a world riddled with loss, Lewis insists on affirming the goodness of the world, and the goodness of the God that created that world. He uses metaphors not simply of heaven, but of the common, human daily activities of eating, drinking, and the memories he spent with his wife. "Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead?"(Lewis, p.45) The need for justification is too great at first, the believer must eventually take stock of the entirety of his or her life, the good as well as the bad, and appreciate the goodness of the drink of life, not with the intensity of the moment, but with what God has given as well as taken away.