It's November 22nd, and each year on this day many Americans will remember the death of John F. Kennedy. But another person died on this day, Clive Staples Lewis, (also known as C. S. Lewis) and his impact on the world is arguably greater than even J.F.K. Since his death in 1963, sales of his books have risen to 2 million a year. His most famous book is probably Mere Christianity, which has been suggested by me and a zillion other pastors to those exploring faith in Christ. I want to suggest to you another book he wrote. It might be entitled Real Christianity. It was actually entitled A Grief Observed. I'm thinking it would be more appealing to those exploring faith because far from the clouds of intellectual arguments, it deals with the visceral pain of loss, and the massive challenge this brings about how you think about God.
Some considered it scandalous. Why? Because it argues with God out loud. Like the Psalmists did. That would be the prayer book of the Bible, where people cry out to God to "wake up" and are actually pretty angry with God. Because when you allow real life to actually intersect with your spiritual life you will want to say "wake up" to God quite a bit. Somehow along the way Christians lost that raw visceral approach to interacting with God. Even Lewis was hesitant to own up to this book, originally writing it under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk (the N. W. is Anglo-Saxon shorthand for nat whilk, "I know not whom"). Maybe Lewis was saying "I don't know who wrote this" as he journaled his anger, his pain, and let us watch his own grieving of the loss of his wife, Joy.
That's how grief feels sometimes. You think thoughts, you pray prayers to yourself, and you sometimes say "I know not whom". You feel as if you "know not whom" about yourself, God, the world in which you live, everything. But God can handle our anger, He can handle our pain, and He can handle our questions. So ask him. The answers won't come quickly, and they won't always be satisfying. At least not in the short term. We live in a world of immediate answers and God doesn't seem to be into immediate answers. But He does promise to never leave nor forsake us. He does promise that He sympathizes with our weakness, and that in that moment of need, we find grace and mercy. Jesus promises that mourning will bring comfort, ultimately.
Maybe Lewis points the way for us. He brought together both an intellectual tenacity and an emotional honesty in his faith journey. And I think both are needed. It helps us to gaze firmly on the cross and the great story of God taking on the loss of the world to redeem it, and to see that story as intellectually credible. But I think we lead with our hearts and not our heads. And in a fallen world, our emotional landscape may resemble a minefield where all the mines have exploded. With Lewis, we should also gaze firmly on our grief, and feel more free to do it than Lewis apparently did, to process how we are experiencing life with a God who understands loss, and in relationship with us, expects us to vent. Forget one or the other, and we find ourselves less real, and we find Christianity less plausible.
I have a friend who wrestles with loss in her life. She said she has chosen to "grieve it". I think the Psalter would agree with her. I'm pretty sure Jesus would too.
For more on A Grief Observed, here's a brief review >
