C.S. Lewis

20 Quotes on Grief from A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

Kirk E. Miller

What type of book is A Grief Observed?

“A Grief Observed is not an ordinary book. In a sense it is not a book at all; it is, rather, the passionate result of a brave man turning to face his agony and examine it in order that he might further understand what is required of us in living this life.. … In its stark honesty and unadorned simplicity the book has a power which is rare: it is the power of unabashed truth. … What many of us discover in this outpouring of anguish is that we know exactly what he is talking about. Those of us who have walked this same path, or are walking it as we read this book, find that we are not, after all, as alone as we thought. … If we find no comfort in the world around us, and no solace when we cry to God, if it does nothing else for us, at least this book will help us to face our grief, and ‘misunderstand a little less.’”
—Douglas H. Gresham, “Introduction”

“I am grateful to Lewis for the honesty of his journal of grief, because it makes quite clear that the human being is allowed to grieve, that it is normal, it is right to grieve, and the Christian is not denied this natural response to loss.”
—Madeleine L’Engle, “Foreword”

20 quotes from A Grief Observed

The nature and effects of grief—what it’s like

“No one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job—where the machine seems to run on much as usual—I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth?”

“An odd byproduct of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. … Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers.”

“But I know this [restoring things] is impossible. I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. … It is a part of the past. And the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death.”

“It [grief] gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything.”

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When Grief Meets a House of Cards Called “Faith” (C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed)

Kirk E. Miller

I had been warned—I had warned myself—not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for.1

C.S. Lewis is saying, he knew Christianity didn’t promise a pain-free life. Quite the opposite—it promises suffering. He knew it was part of the deal.

So when he faced his own personal experience with grief, there should have been no surprises, no feelings of a bait and switch. He had counted the cost… or so he thought. He goes on,

Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination.2

It’s easy to accept the reality of suffering when it’s hypothetical or happening to someone else. But when it hits you personally, things suddenly get real. As the well-regarded theologian Mike Tyson is known to have said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

But if we are so flimsy in the face of grief, what does this say of the actual strength of our faith?

Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No. And it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which ‘took these things into account’ was not faith but imagination. … I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find I didn’t.3

It’s easy to deceive ourselves. But the true character of our faith can only be known when it’s actually tested, as 1 Peter 1:6–7 demonstrates. Lewis illustrates it this way:

Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game ‘or else people won’t take it seriously.’ Apparently it’s like that. … And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. … Nothing less will shake a man—or at any rate a man like me—out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.4

Later he says,

They say these things are sent to try us. … But of course one must take ‘sent to try us’ the right way. God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.5

This sort of disillusionment is good, albeit painful. It forces us to be honest with ourselves, although we may not like what we find when we get there.

If my house was a house of cards, the sooner it was knocked down the better. And only suffering could do it.6

So now the question is, if we rebuild after the rubble, is what we rebuild any better or just another illusion, a self-deceived notion of faith? Do we truly believe what we say we do, or is it mere play?

Is this last note a sign that I’m incurable, that when reality smashes my dream to bits, I mope and snarl while the first shock lasts, and then patiently, idiotically, start putting it together again? And so always? However often the house of cards falls, shall I set about rebuilding it? Is that what I’m doing now? Indeed it’s likely enough that what I shall call, if it happens, a ‘restoration of faith’ will turn out to be only one more house of cards. And I shan’t know whether it is or not until the next blow comes.7

Notes

  1. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (HarperOne, 1996), 36. ↩︎
  2. Ibid., 36–37. ↩︎
  3. Ibid., 36–37. ↩︎
  4. Ibid., 37–38. ↩︎
  5. Ibid., 51–52. ↩︎
  6. Ibid., 38. ↩︎
  7. Ibid., 38–39. ↩︎

A Grief Ignored | Madeleine L’Engle on A Grief Observed

Kirk E. Miller

Madeleine L’Engle writes this in the foreword to A Grief Observed, reflecting on Lewis’s raw honesty in grief—particularly his frustration with overly tidy religious responses to suffering and death:

“Perhaps all believing people feel, like Lewis, a horror of those who say of any tragedy, ‘Thy will be done,’ as though a God of love never wills anything but good for us creatures.”1

L’Engle states that many people of faith (“perhaps all believing people”)—including C.S. Lewis—might feel revulsion (“horror”) or discomfort when they hear someone respond to deep suffering or tragedy with a pious phrase like “Thy will be done.” Why? Because it can sound like they’re glossing over the tragedy and pain of the event, assuming that God only ever wills things that are obviously good and easy for us. Lewis is wrestling with a God whose will might include real pain—things which certain don’t feel “good,” and at many times are not at all good in and other themselves. Lewis bristles at those who piously smooth over such realities with their theological cliches and simplicities.

L’Engle continues:

“He [Lewis] shows impatience with those who try to pretend that death is unimportant for the believer, an impatience which most of us feel, no matter how strong our faith.”

Lewis rejects the idea that believers shouldn’t grieve deeply, as if death were no big deal because of our hope in resurrection. He finds it dishonest or unhuman when Christians act like faith removes the sting of death.

Lewis speaks specifically of death, since he is reflecting here on the death of his wife. But the same can be true of other griefs and forms of suffering.

L’Engle agrees: most of us, even strong believers, share this impatience. When we ourselves our faced with person grief or pain, don’t want to skip over it with clichés. We want to face sorrow honestly, stare it directly in the eyes, and acknowledge it for what it actually is. That’s precisely what Lewis does in A Grief Observed.

“I am grateful to Lewis for the honesty of his journal of grief, because it makes quite clear that the human being is allowed to grieve, that it is normal, it is right to grieve, and the Christian is not denied this natural response to loss.”2

“Don’t talk to me about the consolations of religion,” Lewis writes, “or I shall suspect that you do not understand.”3

Lewis is saying: if you come to me in my grief with nice-sounding religious comfort, like “she’s in a better place” or “everything happens for a reason,” I will assume you haven’t truly felt this kind of loss. Why? Because in his raw sorrow, those phrases feel hollow—even offensive. They can come across as shallow attempts to move past the pain rather than sit in it with someone.

As L’Engle’s reflects, “For the true consolations of religion are not rosy and cozy, but comforting in the true meaning of that word: com-fort: with strength. Strength to go on living.”4 Real religious comfort isn’t about being told things that make us feel instantly better. It’s not about sentimental peace or cheerful optimism. Instead, it’s about being given strength to endure.

The word comfort comes from Latin roots meaning “with strength” (com- = with, fortis = strong). So real comfort from God doesn’t erase grief, but it helps you stand under its weight and keep going. It doesn’t erase grief; it endures it.

It doesn’t ignore grief; it observes it.

Notes

  1. Madeleine L’Engle, “Foreword,” in A Grief Observed (HarperOne, 1996), xiii ↩︎
  2. Ibid., xiv. ↩︎
  3. Ibid., xv ↩︎
  4. Ibid., xv–xvi ↩︎

Is It Wrong to Want Vengeance (Romans 12:14–21)? | Exegetical, Theological, & Practical Reflections

Kirk E. Miller

In Romans 12:19, Paul says we are not to avenge (enact punitive justice) ourselves. However, the reason we do this is not because as Christians we think vengeance itself is wrong. To the contrary! Again, justice, by definition, is just (good). (In fact, used with the a- prefix, this root is used to form the word “unrighteousness” in Roman 1:18 and elsewhere.) Rather, the reason we ought not enact vengeance for ourselves is that it doesn’t belong to us. God alone is judge, not us (Rom 12:19, citing Deut 32:35; see also Rom 14 where Paul, under different circumstances but in proximate context, emphasizes that God alone is judge).

In fact, the logic of Paul’s instruction here seems to be, you don’t need to enact vengeance, not because vengeance itself is bad and you are wrong to want it to happen, but precisely because you know it will happen. You don’t need to do it, because God will (Rom 12:19). In other words, the foundation for Paul’s commands throughout Romans 12:14-21—to bless in response to curse, not to repay evil with evil, to overcome evil with good, etc.—is this fact that we can trust that God will punish evil, so we don’t have to (in fact, we shouldn’t, since it’s not our prerogative). So likewise, Peter says that Jesus didn’t return reviling or threats (1 Peter 1:21-23), but “continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (v.23). Again, it’s not the absence of vengeance, but believing in its guarantee—God will “judge justly”—that enables his people to leave vengeance to God.

Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean we are indifferent to vengeance in this life or that it should never happen. To the contrary! As Paul continues in Rom 13:1-7, he describes the state as a “deacon” (often translated “servant” or “minister”) of God. In what sense? It is “an avenger [same root as “avenge” and “vengeance” in 12:19] who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:4, ESV emphasis added). In other words, vengeance is God’s (12:19). But God also authorizes human means, like certain institutions in this life, to deliver that justice and protect victims—even here and now, at least to some degree (I like the word “provisional” here: provisional justice, as opposed to eschatological and ultimate justice).

An image of Logos Bible Software highlighting ever occurrence of each word in Romans 12–13 that shares the common route for vengeance.

I think the proximity in Paul’s use of ἐκδίκησις and ἐκδικέω (in Rom 12:19 and Rom 13:4) then is intentional. Remember, chapter divisions aren’t original, and unfortunately here that big “13” can make us feel a stronger shift in topic than is likely the case.

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Haunted by What Should Be: Christianity’s Resonance with Our Cursed World

Kirk E. Miller

I attended a “celebration of life” (read: post-funeral party) this afternoon with my wife. It was for my wife’s friend. She was only 36 and had a 3-year-old son. Absolutely tragic.

It was a bit of a weird scene. They had a DJ who was playing dance music and dancing in the corner. Lot’s of drinks, food, and chatter. They were going for good vibes as a way of honoring this woman who lived life full of energy. But it was a jarring juxtaposition given the reason that brought us together.

Have you ever noticed that some don’t call them funerals anymore, “but celebration of life” services? Our culture doesn’t like to deal with death. We like to keep it out of sight and out of mind. We find it unsettling. We probably don’t know what to do with it existentially. So even when we do have to deal with it, like at a funeral, we like to recast it as life, “a celebration of life.”

But the juxtaposition made me think: Gosh, this is all so tragic, this woman dying at the mere age of 36, leaving her son behind who will likely barely even remember her. It’s heart-breaking.

But the reason it’s so heart-breaking isn’t because we’re the natural result of some mere evolutionary process that causes us to develop attachments to others due to its evolutionary advantage, with the byproduct that we grieve their loss. No, the reason we experience such deep tragedy in this world is because it’s haunted by what it should be. And the more beautiful and good something is meant to be, the more tragic and distressing its loss and destruction is.

We don’t just live in a world where unfortunate things happen—and that’s just the way it is. No, I think we sense something more sinister at play. Thus, we’re instinctually unwilling to accept this world as is. We internally want to resist it. We internally protest. We feel it as evil. We deeply sense something has gone wrong, that things are not the way they are suppose to be. And not just that, but that something good and beautiful has been disrupted—making it all the severer.

Think about those movies where a curse is invoked. The curse becomes an active force wreaking havoc, ruining the good, a force of harm. Tragic events aren’t just happenstance, the way things are. They are the torturous workings of the curse. The characters are constantly haunted by its reality. It chases them down. It won’t leave them alone. They struggle to escape it’s presence.

C.S. Lewis speaks of Christianity as the “true myth.” By this, he wasn’t saying that Christianity is unhistorical or untrue. No, he was saying, Christianity makes sense of our myth making. Myths provide meaning. And Christianity is that meaning-making story that explains all of our other attempts to make meaning.

So too Lewis said he believes in Christianity like he believes in the sun, because it illuminates and makes sense of everything else. It resonates with reality, our existential longing, our deep desires and sense of this world. Christianity “resonates” with the way things actually are.

One of the ways I think Christianity resonates with reality is this idea of the curse. When Adam and Eve sin, creation came under God’s curse (Gen 3).

The older I get, the more and more messed up I feel this world and this life are. It’s not just happenstance unfortunate events. It’s like a curse from a movie, an active presence wreaking havoc. We feel the tragedy not merely of unfortunate things we wish weren’t the case but of things we know ought to be beautiful and good, like the life of a young 36-year-old woman and her three-year-old boy.