Say What?: July 2007

A month or two ago, I finished C.S. Lewis' classic, The Problem of Pain. It was a fine book that looked at pain from an "objective", outsiders perspective. As usual, Lewis was thorough, logical, and compelling. If you want some good, rational discourse on how a good God can allow suffering and pain in the world, this is a book you may consider reading.

However, if you want to get a glimpse into the heart of a person who is suffering, if you want to walk along side of someone through the process of their grief, if you want to see pain from the inside, you may want to read A Grief Observed instead. In this book, which consists of excerpts from Lewis' diary, we get a raw look at Lewis' pain after the death of his wife. Although Lewis' experience is likely different than yours or mine (it's A Grief Observed, after all, not All Grief observed), we may find common ground with him as we seek to understand our own grief.

One of the things I found interesting about Lewis' little book is the progression that can be seen in the way he understands God's presence. Consider these few excerpts from the beginning, middle and end of the book:

“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?....Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him.” (6)
“I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help my be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.” (46)
“When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent , certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’” (69)

I also was intrigued by the way Lewis tried to describe what grief feels like. Here are a few examples:

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.” (3)
“I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. [his wife] for their object. Now their target is gone. I kept on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there’s an impassable frontierpost across it. So many roads once; now so many culs de sac.” (47)
“There is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss. Like in those dreams where nothing terrible occurs—nothing that would sound even remarkable if you told it at breakfast-time—but the atmosphere, the taste, of the whole thing is deadly.” (35)

And of course, Lewis being Lewis, there are also plenty of intriguing little snippets that can stand on their own. Here are few to think about:

“Bereavement is not the truncation of married love but one of its regular phases—like the honeymoon. What we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through that phase, too.” (xvii)
“It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters.” (15)
“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect you don’t understand.” (25)
“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history…there is something new to be chronicled every day. Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape…not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley isn’t a circular trench. But it isn’t. There are partial recurrences, but the sequence doesn’t repeat.” (59-60)
“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t.” (52)
“What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?” (43)

There you have it. There are, of course, other bits in this book that make it a worthwhile read. Or, if you're sure that I already took all the good parts but still want something of this sort, you may want to consider Nicholas Wolterstorffs wonderful little book (also a daily journal) Lament for a Son.

That's what I was going to call my sermon Sunday. But because of time limitations, I had to leave the Ben Franklin part out.

There were several reasons I wanted to include a bit about Ben Franklin. One is that I just finished reading his biography and have to do something with all that information. After all, over 500 pages, I learned some interesting bits about old Ben:

When he did the famous kite experiment with his son William, his son was actually 21 years old (not a small boy as legend seems to suggest). Later, the two were estranged because of their differing positions on the War for Independence.
Franklin was a fan of parlor tricks. Among his favorites was a cane he made that would dispense oil on water when he tapped the waves. Doing so would "still the waves."
Franklin briefly started his own sect. Among the rules: "all men shall have beards" and strict adherence to vegetarianism. The little experiment ended when Franklin caved in and ate a hamburger (or steak, or pork chop, I can't remember which).
Franklin started the first volunteer fire department in America.
Franklin believed that fresh air was good for one's health and took a daily "airbath" in front of his open window (some say in the nude).

There are many other interesting snippets about Franklin--but the simple intrigue of his life was not the primary reason I wanted to include him in my sermon. Rather, I wanted to include him because I see Franklin as something of a "Case in Point" for my discussion on "practical atheism." Let me explain.

One of the most famous scenes in Franklin's life (taken from his own autobiography) is his arrival in America as a "bedraggled 17-year-old runaway...straggling off the boat" with little more than a nickle to his name. Equally famous is the image of Franklin some fifty or sixty years later, simple but stately, a wealthy land owner (with three homes when he died), mover and shaker of 18th century politics etc etc. Basically, a success. According to Isaacson (Franklin's biographer), this move made Franklin "typically American" because Franklin proved that with a little hard work and ingenuity, (unlimited) upward mobility was possible. To borrow the old cliche, Franklin proved that it was possible (and indeed, expected), for Americans to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps."

So what's the relation to "practical atheism"?

Well, in Franklin's world, the goal was to live independently, not dependently. Franklin believed in some sort of benevolent, powerful being off in the sky, but when things went well in his life, Franklin was much quicker to pat himself on the back than to offer up a prayer of thanksgiving. He was much quicker to praise his own industry and frugality than to praise the Maker of Heaven and Earth. He (Franklin) deserved all the credit for his life's successes.

Perhaps this sounds "normal" to us (particularly the "bootstraps"/industry talk)--it is, I think, a very accepted idea in our culture that with a little hardwork, we can do whatever we want. But now consider Isaacson's parting comment on Franklin's life and legacy. He writes: "[Franklin] embodies one side of a national dichotomy that has existed since the days when he and Jonathan Edwards [one of our Spiritual forefathers, I would say] stood as contrasting cultural figures. // On one side were those, like Edwards...who believed in an anointed elect and in salvation through God's grace alone. They tended to have a religious fervor...and an appreciation for exalted values over earthy ones. On the other side were the Franklin's, those who believed in salvation through good works...and who were unabashedly striving and upwardly mobile." (476)

It's an interesting dichotomy, I think. And perhaps one that ought to give us pause as we think about whose footsteps we follow in. Is it Edwards, dependent on God's grace? Or Franklin, and his "self-help" upward mobility? Where does our help come from?

:There are other the obviously "religious" implications that manifest themselves when this worldview is expanded beyond economics and into one's beliefs the relation between God and his world. For example, there was Franklin's well known effort to perfect himself by following a rigorous self-improvement regimen (complete with ledger book in which he recorded his progress on 13 virtues).