“It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Except when it’s not. … Like a magnifying glass, Christmas time not only spotlights what’s already present but enlarges our perception of it. This includes life’s joys—but also life’s sorrows.
Though Ambrose wrote these words over 1,600 years ago, I could be mistaken for thinking they were written directly to me today. They still ring true: (1) true friendship is both an immeasurably valuable thing to experience if one can manage to possess it, and (2) its genuineness is revealed only through perseverance in adversity. All else melts away like dross, exposing its true character.
Do not desert a friend in time of need, nor forsake him nor fail him, for friendship is the support of life. Let us then bear our burdens as the Apostle has taught: for he spoke to those whom the charity of the same one body had embraced together. If friends in prosperity help friends, why do they not also in times of adversity offer their support? Let us aid by giving counsel, let us offer our best endeavours, let us sympathize with them with all our heart.
If necessary, let us endure for a friend even hardship. Often enmity has to be borne for the sake of a friend’s innocence; oftentimes revilings, if one defends and answers for a friend who is found fault with and accused. Do not be afraid of such displeasure, for the voice of the just says: “Though evil come upon me, I will endure it for a friend’s sake.” In adversity, too, a friend is proved, for in prosperity all seem to be friends. But as in adversity patience and endurance are needed, so in prosperity strong influence is wanted to check and confute the arrogance of a friend who becomes overbearing.
How nobly Job when he was in adversity said: “Pity me, my friends, pity me.” That is not a cry as it were of misery, but rather one of blame. For when he was unjustly reproached by his friends, he answered: “Pity me, my friends,” that is, ye ought to show pity, but instead ye assail and overwhelm a man with whose sufferings ye ought to show sympathy for friendship’s sake.
Preserve, then, my sons, that friendship ye have begun with your brethren, for nothing in the world is more beautiful than that. It is indeed a comfort in this life to have one to whom thou canst open thy heart, with whom thou canst share confidences, and to whom thou canst entrust the secrets of thy heart. It is a comfort to have a trusty man by thy side, who will rejoice with thee in prosperity, sympathize in troubles, encourage in persecution.1
“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”
“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.”
Continue readingI 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
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.
Kirk E. Miller 