Grief hurts. And it hurts for at least two reasons. There is on one hand the active pain of a particular loss. On the other, there is the God-problem: ‘How could God let this happen?’ I think C.S. Lewis gives us a great framework in his memoir, A Grief Observed.
Three Views of God
The occasion for Lewis’ reflections in A Grief Observed is the tragic death of his wife and his consequent grief. His reflections take on a theological character so far as the death of his wife brings new data that complicate his understanding of God. In this tragedy, God, the great iconoclast, has shattered Lewis’ previously held view of God, forcing him to adopt a new one.
My friend, Nicholas, distinguishes three views of God present in A Grief Observed, which he loosely classifies as ‘past,’ ‘present,’ and ‘future,’ or ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ and ‘uncertain,’ respectively. Lewis knew God to be good; now he feels him to be bad; it is yet-to-be-determined how Lewis will see God in the future.
Of the three, one is impossible right out of the gate. God cannot be who Lewis once thought God to be. He cannot be Simply-Good. After all, he is now known to allow severe instances of pain. That view has been shattered, and God will not allow the sufferer to return to it.
Possibility of a Bad God
First, Lewis experiments with the possibility that God is Simply-Bad. That is to say, all human conception of Goodness is false; God is a Cosmic Sadist whose only determinant of Goodness is his own capricious whimsy.
Lewis decided that this view of God as Simply Bad was too anthropomorphic. It didn’t cohere with glittering sunsets and good weather. A Sadistic God, reasons Lewis, couldn’t make a universe like the one that exists now. There is no God like his acquaintance, S.C., who picks on cats.
I think that Lewis makes a tacit appeal here to Universal Beauty. The objects he lists as demonstrations against God’s potential Sadism are pathetic in the Aristotelian sense. A child might construct a complex, functional blanket fort, only to tear it down, but he would not paint it, trim it, adorn it with art, and beautify it. That the world is not only complex, but beautiful keeps Lewis from calling God Simply-Bad.
At the beginning of the next chapter, reflecting back on this thought experiment, he criticizes himself for ‘rationalizing in the dentist’s chair.’ There is no method or thought that can deter the experience of grief. One must not rationalize, but fold his hands and ‘let the drill drill on.’
Unable to return to Simply-Good, and unable to accept Simply-Bad, the only option is to move forward to a not-yet-named theology which we are tempted to prematurely call Complex-Good, which is a beyond-understandable and beyond-applicable, but true idea.
A Different Theological Method
If he had to deduce from his reason and experience what kind of god God is, Lewis was offered two options, neither of which he could accept. He maintains his belief that God is good, but cannot explain how the empirical data of his current situation justify that belief. In other words, he cannot answer the question, Why or For what purpose did God do or allow this? I think there two things that kept Lewis from calling God Simply-Bad.
The first is a different theological method. Theology in the West has been called ‘kataphatic’ or ‘positive’ theology. We can say true things about God that we call doctrine. Eastern traditions are more comfortable than we are with what has been called ‘apophatic’ or ‘negative’ theology. They can say true things about what God is not that we can call double negations. To draw an example from Lewis’ case, he is able to say ‘God is not not Good.’
While this may sound like nonsense, what it does is build on an assumption that is central to Lewis’ thought, which he states more positively: God’s Goodness is distinct from, yet continuous with, our concept of Goodness. It transcends without contradicting. Whatever we know to be ‘Good,’ we know that God is not not that. What God’s Goodness is remains to be fully understood by us, although we can be pointing in the right direction. So Lewis can hold this tension: Though God seems Bad, and I do not have enough empirical data to call what he has done or allowed to happen ‘Good,’ I have too much data to call him ‘Bad.’ Thus, he is able to say with a sense of mystery, ‘God is good.’
The second follows from the first. Because of Who he knows God must be, he can now pray. Had he thought God was Bad, there would be no point in praying. A rogue God, independent of reasonable notions of Goodness cannot be reasoned with. But because God is beyond his idea of Good, he can pray differently than he would have before: for comfort and sustenance in the pain of grief.
After all, there is a difference between the Bad God and the Dentist. Although neither will put down his drill, the Dentist has good reason to inflict pain, and He cares for the health of his patient.
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