A Grief Observed…Revisited
“Nothing 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.” – C.S Lewis
Lewis coined these words in his epic work, A Grief Observed. In it, Lewis wrestles openly with the grief of losing his wife to a tragic death causing him to consider the meaning of life, death and faith in the midst of loss and tragedy. It is pretty clear in our world today that we don’t know what to do with grief. We usually stuff into one of two categories. (1) We ignore the grief and shove the feeling deep down so that no one knows we are hurting therefore isolating ourselves from others and God. (2) We give ourselves to complete unrestraint in our anger and sadness only to be ruled by our feelings and hurt others in the process.
The result is the emergence of a culture that either lacks the empathy to enter into the pain and suffering of others or one that overly responnds and tries fix the problems we cannot fix with performance, power or politics. This is what I have observed in the recent national tragedies that have plagued our land. It is obvious we are not a people comfortable with grieving. Why should we be? Healthly grief emerges only from a place of truth about ourselves, God and the world.
So what is the church’s unique role or voice in a culture that doesn’t know how to deal with mass tragedy and human suffering?
WE PRAY WITH THEM
This may sound overly simplistic but it’s not. The tendency in times like these where 26 people are slain in a church in Texas is to provide answers. What if we restrained that impulse? There are no shortage of answers being thrown around. We need more armed civilians! We need stricter gun laws! In our social media happy world, we can barely get 15 minutes removed from an event before we forget about the grief and suffering of our fellow brothers and sisters and decend into politcal debauchery. This is not to say that level heads do not need to consider the issues at hand nor does it mean that we cannot hold to deeply held personal values. What it means is that our role as the church is NOT these things first or maybe even second or third. We will either model our dependance upon God through prayer or we will model our fear and faithlessness through our over dependence on governments, personal strength and autonomy.
When we pray, we pray with open hearts seeking God to give us understanding in the midst of grief. We pray with lament at the sin ravaged world we live in. We pray with repentance as people who are ALSO ravaged by sin in our own ways. Additionally, when we pray, we demonstrate that in the midst of our shaken confidence that God is the ultimate sovereign over the events that unfold. His ways are not our ways! His thoughts are not our thoughts! But he is NOT standing idoly by indifferent to our need.
WE GRIEVE WITH THEM
When we pray like this, we are enabled to enter into the grief of others and simply sit with our suffering friends without feeling awkward. We can resist the temptation to offer cheap temporary solutions that WILL NOT comfort them. We also are able to not offer up cheap theological platitudes as well. We become a griever with them, but one with confidence that God will reckon all things in his own time. The world has no capacity to grieve in such a way. They know not the one true God. But this is not limited to just extreme cases like mass shootings. It allows us to enter into grief of those who suffer from long term relational, emotional or physical pain, sin and suffering without reducing their suffering and grief or labeling them. Sadly, the church has been guilty of turning away the grieving. Whether its grief over broken relationships, grief over prolonged or even gross sin or grief over doubt and unbelief in God, people need safe spaces to deal with these matters. Is not the church a hospital for sinners? The church needs to develop an emotionally healthly and mature culture that walks with the greiving and suffering.
WE DELIGHT WITH THEM
When we pray and grieve as mature believers, we earn the right in time to turn our ‘mourning into dancing’ [Psalm 30:11]. In time, we can draw our fellow mourners to delight in an ALL GOOD GOD. When we pray and submit to a Sovereign God, we can bring real Gospel hope into the utter dispair of the sufferer. The believer can both grieve the reality and presence of sin, evil and suffering in the world YET delight and praise God that He will make all things new…in his own time. He has promised to do so. David, reflecting through Psalm 105, does just this at the end of his reign His rule was being challenged once again and his safety was compromised by the evil intentions of his son but He reflected on God’s good work for His people since Abraham. Friends, God remembers us even in the midst of our helplessness, hopelessness, famine, danger or sword. He will not abandon us to Hades. His Gospel promises began before eternity past and will be fulfilled and continue into eternity future. Jesus is the great emmancipator for the those who grieve and mourn the brokenness, darkness and evil that exist in our world. This is the only tool we have in our proverbial tool belt.
PERSONAL PERFORMANCE, POWER AND POLITICS…FAIL
The world will continue to try to address grief with utopian efforts rooted in the mistaken belief of human evolution and progress. The belief is silly and lacks soundness: “Society will overcome as we continue evolve through intellectual and materialistic enlightenment.” The church needs to guard itself from similar mistaken beliefs that pervade our fellowships. Often times, we approach suffering with a list of self improvement projects unknowingly distancing ourselves from the Gospel of grace and the fellowship of the believing in the process. “I need to work on myself for a season.” “You need to read your bible and pray more.” This may be true and even helpful but the means to Gospel wholeness is not the removing of an old behavior and replacing it with a new and improved behavior. The means of Gospel wholeness is the removing of an old affection (usually revolving around our concept and belief in ourselves) and replacing it with a true and better affection. This affection is for Jesus Christ who does not come to help us “do better, try harder” but to be our ‘yoke and burden’ [Matthew 11:30]. When we learn to be carried by Jesus and His grace alone, we will be free to obey and delight in God. How is that for progress?!
This is the church’s unique voice in a world that suffers and grieves. Let us embrace it for the glory of God and the good of all people.
