From A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis



And all this time I may, once more, be building with cards. And if I am He will once more knock the building flat. He will knock it down as often as proves necessary. Unless I have to be finally given up as hopeless, and left building pasteboard palaces in Hell forever; "free among the dead."

Am I, for instance, just sidling back to God because I know that if there's any road to Joy, it runs through Him? But then of course, I know perfectly well that He cant be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all. That's what was really wrong with all those popular pictures of happy reunions "on the further shore;" not the simple-minded and very earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by-product if the true End.

Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet Joy again only if I learned to love you so much that I don't care whether I meet here or not? Consider, Lord, how it looks to us. What would anyone think of me if I said to the boys, "No toffee no. But when you've grown up and don't really want toffee you shall have as much of it as you choose."

If I knew that to be eternally divided from Joy and eternally forgotten by here would add a greater joy and splendor to her being, of course I'd say, "Fire ahead." Just as if, on earth, I could have cured her cancer by never seeing her again, I'd have arranged never to see her again. I'd have had to. Any decent person would. But that's not the situation I'm in.

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 Hos head not is refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand."

Can a mortal ask question which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half out great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.