Introduction
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” This emotion that is described so perfectly in the opening line of Clive Staples Lewis’s book A Grief Observed is an overwhelming feeling that everybody must deal with at some point in their lifetime. However, most people do not know how to handle the thoughts and emotions that swirl in their head when fighting with these feelings of pain and suffering. C.S. Lewis has put into words his own personal fights with grief, pain, and suffering. Throughout these works of his, we see a man dealing with real issues that force him to ask real questions which demand real answers. These views have influenced many modern day thinkers today who have continued to make an impact in the world we live in. It is amazing how one man’s theological conclusions can affect Christianity more than 50 years after his death. As one observes this man of such influence, his life must first be seen in the early stages.…show more content… Lewis’s most honest reflection. He works through the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. In the beginning, his writing is, as one would expect, raw, vulnerable, and at times startlingly angry. Lewis questions the benevolence, even the attentiveness of God, and expresses a distaste for all of the business of life. In wondering at his struggling to understand God, Lewis confesses a fear not of losing his faith in God, but of coming to believe awful untruths about him. Lewis struggles with the fear that God is willing to hurt us arbitrarily, without cause or compassion. In the third chapter, Lewis begins to “recall” God’s promised suffering, mourning, and even pain that is inevitable, not to mention necessary, for the Christian faith. Lewis concludes that God does in fact use the necessary pain in our lives to teach us to know and trust Him as He is, and that for God to give us comfort we have to be through the consuming grief enough to be able to receive