Where is God in Grief?

Introduction

When someone dies, people often try to comfort the mourner in ways that aren’t exactly helpful. They may say to the mourner, “Heaven gained another angel.” A somewhat less saying patronizing is, “He or she is with the Lord now”—that very well may be true. Additionally, people will often share Bible verses with the bereaved. All of this seems so good on the surface, but the problem is rarely does it ever help. When we come to some who is grieving, who has just lost a loved one, and we say to them, “Jesus wanted them in heaven,” instead of comforting them, we may actually make them feel worse. I suspect we have all been on the giving and receiving end of comments like these. So, don’t feel bad if you’ve said these things to someone who is mourning. The intention is good. We want the griever to feel better. That is also precisely the problem. “Feeling better,” is not necessarily the answer (or even possible) at the time. We want them to recover—to feel better in the long term. When someone we loved has died, there is nothing that can make us feel better. Because even if they are with God, then they are not here with me.

CS Lewis writes in the second chapter of his book A Grief Observed, “Kind people have said to me 'She is with God.' In one sense that is most certain. She is, like God, incomprehensible and unimaginable.” When our loved ones pass away, we lose that concrete connection with them. Lewis writes about his fear of confusing who his late wife really was with a creation of his own mind. In that sense, she is very much like God. He is connected to her, but he cannot touch, taste, smell, or hear her any longer. Lewis asks. “'Where is she now?' That is, in what place is she at the present time. But if H. is not a body--and the body I loved is certainly no longer she--she is in no place at all.” When we tell someone that their loved one is with God, that very well may be true. At a later time, that truth may bring comfort to them. The problem is in the midst of grief, the person I loved—not only their mind/consciousness is gone, but as Lewis says, the body I loved is gone. Lewis says, “You tell me 'she goes on'. But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back.”

Like Lewis, when someone we love dies we ask that question, “Where is my is my loved one?” We often ask another question, “Where is God?” This is the question raised to the Psalmist this morning, “Where is your God?” This is the question Lewis asks in the second chapter of his book. The question I want to address this morning is “Where is God in grief?” Last week, if you’ll recall, we looked two different definitions of grief. To summarize those definitions: Grief is the normal and natural reaction to loss, and grief is also the conflicting feelings we experience as a result of loss. Today we’re going to dive into these conflicting feelings—especially how we may feel about God when we lose someone we love—while remembering it is normal and natural to have these feelings.

In moments of loss, it is common to feel as if God is absent. It is common to feel is as if God’s presence is far away. It is common to feel as if we have even been abandoned by God. This is the experience of the Psalmist. This Psalm was likely written in the aftermath of the destruction of Temple by the Babylonians in 587 BC. The Psalm is described as a Maskil of the Korahites. Korah was Levite. So, this Psalm was likely written by a priest who was taken into exile. The Psalmist has lost his home, his vocation and status as a priest, he likely lost many friends and family members who were killed by the Babylonians, and most significantly he has lost access to the presence of God. Psalm 42 is a well beloved Psalm. But we’ve romanticized it. We sing the song, “As the Deer,” which has this very sweet soothing melody. This is a Psalm of desperation. The Psalmist writes, “As the deer longs for the running stream, so my soul longs for you, O God.” That word “longs,” is an okay translation, but it’s a little too romantic. The old King James actually does better in this instance, “As the deer pants for the running streams, so my soul pants for you.” The Psalmist paints an image of a deer on the run—a deer being chased by a predator or hunter—panting from exhaustion, needing to quench it’s thirst. Just like that deer, the Psalmist says, “I am panting for you God!” In Hebrew, when an author says “my soul” does something, they’re not referring to some immaterial part of themselves. It is a way of referring to the self. “I pant for you, O God.” The Psalmist says, “I thirst for God, the living God!” The Psalmist is parched. He has been ripped away for God’s presence. He cannot find the stream of living water. He is dying of thirst and there is no relief. His thirst is his grief.

The Psalmist wants to know, “When shall I come and behold the face of God?” This is a reference to returning to the Temple and beholding God’s presence within the holy of holies. Until the Psalmist can return to Jerusalem, he cannot behold God’s face in Babylon. Until he can return to Jerusalem he cannot drink from the stream of God’s presence. The Psalmist says he cannot physically eat or drink because his grief is so severe, all he can do is cry. Meanwhile, his captors taunt him saying, “Where is your God?” This is the question that torments the Psalmist, and not only because his enemies use it to mock him. This is the question that the Jews were forced to answer after the Babylonian exile. Where is God now that there is no temple? Out of the deep grief of losing everything (home, family and friends, and the temple) the Jews of this period collectively ask: Where was God when his enemies destroyed Jerusalem? Why did God allow this to happen us? Is God still with us now that we’ve been carried away to territory of our enemies and their gods?

CS Lewis wrestled with a similar set of questions in the wake of his wife’s death and her struggles with cancer. Lewis says, “They tell me H. is happy now, they tell me she is at peace. What makes them so sure of this? [...] 'Because she is in God's hands.' But if so, she was in God's hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God's goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death as unendurably as before it.”

Much like Psalmist, who witnessed untold suffering when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, CS Lewis witnessed the agony and suffering of his wife Joy as cancer ravished her body and claimed her life. Witnessing Joy’s suffering raised some serious questions about who God is for Lewis. Is God really good, if he can allows this kind of suffering? How do we know he won’t inflict this kind of suffering on us after we die? Our Catholic friends say, yes. You may have to suffering in Purgatory before going heaven. How do we know heaven is place of peace, joy, and happiness? Lewis says he is not afraid that the atheists may be right and this material world is all there is. Rather he is afraid that we are all rats in a trap. God pretends to be good, but then drops the hammer on us. This is a heavy quote, and I apologize, it’s very visceral, but it’s one I know many of you with loved ones with chronic illness can likely relate to. Lewis says, “What chokes every prayer and every hope is the memory of all the prayers H. and I offered and all the false hopes we had. Not hopes raised merely by our own wishful thinking; hopes encouraged, even forced upon us, by false diagnoses, by X-ray photographs, by strange remissions, by one temporary recovery that might have ranked as a miracle. Step by step we were 'led up the garden path'. Time after time, when He seemed most gracious He was really preparing the next torture.” In the wake of loss and grief, we often not only wonder “Where is God?” but we also wonder “Is God good?”

Because we’re all good Christians here, none of us have had such thoughts (wink wink). When we are grieving, and we are raw, we often have similar thoughts to those Lewis expressed. “We prayed, and we prayed, and believed, and we prayed some more. God still took the person I loved. What kind of God allows that to happen?” Then we feel guilty, because after all, we’re not supposed to have thoughts like that about God. If that is you, and you are struggling with these deep questions and deep feelings after a loss, I want you to know that God has big shoulders. He can handle your questions. He can handle your anger. He can handle your confusion and doubts. Even Jesus, in his moment of greatest loss—forsaken by his friends, family, betrayed by the people he came to save—cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” If Jesus was able to give expression to his grief and feelings of godforsakeness, you can too.

What do we do about these questions? Honestly, they’re really good questions that Lewis raises. When we are grieving is not the best time to try to answer these questions. Lewis brings up a really point. Trying to intellectualize our suffering (wanting to know, why?) is sometimes just a form of escape from our feelings. Lewis says, “Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense? Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less? Aren't all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device (if only he could find it) which will make pain not to be pain. It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.”

When the conflicting feelings about God and the loss come, and all the questions come, I want you to remember grief is a normal and natural part of life. The Psalmist asks God, “ I say to God, my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?’” CS Lewis asked questions of God in his grief. You’re not a bad Christian because you have conflicting feelings towards God and are pondering all the questions that arise as a result. It’s normal and it’s natural. However, there is a danger at this point. Dwelling on these questions can distract you from your feelings. The questions aren’t bad in and of themselves, they are part of the normal and natural response to grief. However, if we try to retreat into our heads, then we’re not in our hearts. That won’t help us recover from grief. This is the hardest truth about loss and grief, as Lewis said: There is nothing we can do with suffering, except to suffer. Lewis says there’s no way to make pain not pain. After a loss people try. People turn to alcohol, drugs, food, sex, compulsive exercise, but at the end of the day the pain is still there. This is why saying, “Well, heaven gained another angel,” doesn’t help someone who has lost a loved one. There’s no way to make pain not pain.

What do we do then? We must allow ourselves to feel the grief. If we don’t, if we try to ignore it, if we try to suppress it, if we try to minimize it by focusing on all the questions, it will not go away. You have to give yourself the grace to cry. You have to give yourself the grace to feel what you feel. You have to give yourself the grace to ask the questions. (Pop can analogy - make sure to bring a can of Liquid Death). If you don’t allow yourself to grieve, here’s what could happen. You just lost a dear family member, but you try to not cry around anyone. (You have to be strong). So, you don’t cry when you feel like you need to. Not only are you sad, but you’re angry. You’re angry at the person for leaving and you’re angry at God for taking them. Every time you have those thoughts, you say to yourself, “Stop it! Don’t think like that! I can’t think that about God.” Then someone comes up to you and says, “Heaven gained another angel” (Can you tell I really don’t like that one?) and you explode! Your friend unwittingly opened the shaken can of soda. You raise your voice to your friend and say, “God is really selfish then! As if he needed another angel! He doesn’t need them! I do!” That’s what you’ve really been thinking and feeling, but because you wouldn’t allow yourself to process those thoughts and feelings, you explode.

CONCLUSION

In the midst of loss, Like the deer in the Psalm, we are parched. Our mouths are dry. We feel weak. We are running with no relief. We want to find the cooling and quenching spring of God’s presence, but we cannot find him anywhere. We want to know “Where is God?” We want to know, “Why did God allow this to happen?” We want to know, “Is God still a good God?” The answers to those questions do not always appear when we are in the middle of grieving. We discover the answers to those questions, as we go through the grieving process. Your answers to the questions that arise, will likely change throughout your journey towards recovery. Once you have gone through the process of grief and you’re on the other side, then you can see where God’s presence was with you in your loss. Then, you can begin to understand how the loss may fit within God’s plan for your life. Then you can begin to understand the character of God in new ways. It takes going through the process.

But what if you’re in the middle of grief. What can you do then? You have to grieve. As Lewis said there is nothing to do in suffering but to suffer, but know this, the grieving and suffering is temporary. It is not permanent. This is how the Psalmist concludes his Psalm, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” The Psalmist asks why he is downcast? He has lost everything, and his ability to worship God in Jerusalem. The Psalmist has this hope, “for I shall again praise him.” The exile isn’t permanent. The grief isn’t permanent. So, maybe you’re like the Psalmist, and you’re grieving and you just can’t find it within yourself to worship. That’s okay. Let the feelings come. Let the questions come. Let the tears come. Here is what I believe: If you don’t shake the can—if you open it before the pressure builds—and you allow yourself to drink, while the water may be bitter, you will find the satisfaction the Psalmist longs for. As you allow yourself to grieve, God will be with you in your grief, and will satisfy your thirst. Amen.