Divine Plagiarism

In ‘The Problem of Pain,’ C.S. Lewis wrestles with the intellectual and philosophical complications of an all-holy, all-powerful, all-loving God creating a world of suffering and death. He brings all of his big guns to bear, his intellect, his research, even his experience of losing his mother. By the time the ink is dry, he has formulated a very effective and very clear framework for understanding God’s goodness in the midst of suffering. I am sure that book has helped many a Christian hold onto God in the midst of a great loss.

Several years later, Lewis authors another book on pain. In today’s publishing market, nothing would be less surprising than a sequel. Yet, this book is hardly a sequel. In the intervening time, Lewis falls in love with a woman dying of cancer. When she passes away, he is left alone with only God and his grief. In that place, he finds himself learning every lesson he once taught others. Ironically, the lessons are as foreign as they are familiar.

Imagine a professor of Aeronautical Engineering. He would be well placed and well equipped to derive design limitations and operating procedures for the aircraft. In fact, he writes the seminal textbook on aircraft design. Yet for all his expertise, a very junior pilot may understand flight better than he does. The young pilot may not know how or why, but she’ll have a sense of what feels right. She may not be able to describe the intricacies of airflow departing a surface, but she will know what an imminent stall feels like. Now imagine our professor wants to write a companion volume to his famously successful textbook. But instead of ’Introductory Aerodynamics, Volume II,‘ he elects to write about the experiences of flight. In order to do so, he will actually have to learn to fly. He will have to let go of his podium to take hold of the controls.

In all likelihood, the professor’s experience will involve great deal of frustration. It’s bad enough to apply incorrect crosswind controls. It’s far worse to know why they’re incorrect, and mess them up anyways. The inexperienced pilot has at least a fool’s comfort in ignorance: he can always decide that a maneuver he can’t master is ‘stupid.’ The professor does not have that option: he knows why it’s not stupid, and he still does it wrong. Ultimately, though, after the professor endures a good deal of frustration and learns a great deal of humility, he will be far richer for it. At the end of it all, he will be in a rare position: knowing enough to grasp the significance of his experiences, experiencing enough to understand the value of his knowledge.

And this is how ‘A Grief Observed’ reads. Lewis raises an objection, yet he knows the answer as soon as he says it. For the great professor, there is no comfort in ignorance: he has already explored every counter-argument. None of them hold weight. He has no choice but to face the thick reality before him. Yet, in doing so, that reality becomes a part of him. He ceases to be a complex of well-formed arguments, and instead becomes a man. He puts away the textbook and learns to fly.

I once told a friend that I cared about deeply that ‘you are stronger than you know, but you’ll never realize how strong you are until you turn to face your fears.’ In retrospect, perhaps the message was just as true for the sender as it was for the recipient. That friend was quite gifted and quite deeply wounded. As was I. We both built our walls high. Jesus says that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. It is so easy for rich man to find his security in all of the things he can control. But there are many kinds of riches. Some more dangerous than others.

Most of us are comfortable with the parable of the rich man. This is likely because few of us are rich by monetary terms. But I wonder, are we really so different from the rich man? My friend and I were not. Weakness’ best disguise is strength. So the rich man hides his poverty of spirit in an ocean of wealth. And the intelligent man hides his poverty in a sea of deep thoughts. The ambitious man hides his in a river of accomplishments. In this is the trap of the highly gifted: we all run from our fears, but the very gifted are able to run so fast that nobody else can keep up. A man who can run faster from his fears is not a stronger man. He is just more effective at being a coward. The highly gifted simply have deeper caves to hide in, caves so deep that no one can find their way in to pull them out. Where we are perfectly safe, untouchable and unsaveable.

It all comes back to pride. Self-sufficiency. We look to what we already have to tell us who we are. We create new household idols of intelligence, physical fitness, or any of a hundred things to give us identity. Even identity itself can be a damning richness. ‘I am rich in respect amongst my people, and I will place my trust in that respect and ask it for identity.’ It is a subtle trap, for there is a holy richness in relationships. It becomes a poverty when we use others as human shields against our deep fears.So the captain of the high school football team asks his letter jacket to tell him who he is, the son of the prominent political family hides behind his last name, and the occasionally faithful Mrs. Kahlo actually starts believing in the icon she becomes amongst her people. One watches all the films, reads all the books, and gets all the degrees that assure them a place of honor within their group. Another assures his respect and security within his group with silver wings, a combat tail on his cover and a coveted Weapons Instructor patch. Are the currencies of cultures any less treasures on earth? Are we any different from the rich man? Accumulated wealth or inherited wealth, both make equally good idols.

Richness is an equal opportunity trap. Even if we’re not better than everyone else at anything, we’re still relatively good at something. Economics calls this ‘comparative advantage.’ We are all rich in something. Even if we have nothing at all, we can be rich in nothing. We can have more nothing than anybody else, and we can remind everyone else of it at every opportunity. These ‘opposition richnesses’ ensure that richness is not confined to the successful. If you’ve got friends in low places, as the song goes, then you are rich in derision. If you are forever the outcast, then you are rich in persecution. If you are the hated group, then you are rich in discrimination. Ice castles or gilded palaces, we always use the materials at hand to build our walls. If others hurt us, we places their offenses as mines around our hearts, so that neither they nor anyone else like them ever dare approach. Is this really different from arguing circles around our enemies, or scheming ways to buy them out, or simply outright bullying them? Gold, success, failure, wealth, pain, all of these make equally good idols. Our household identity gods keep us from recognizing the Image of the one True God that burns inside of us.

Picture a scene between a married couple. In their bathroom, the wife brushes her hair before heading off to bed. She looks in the mirror and makes some disparaging comment about herself. The husband looks at her with a curiously stern expression, and he asks her, ‘why do you believe your eyes when they lie to you?’ His face softens, and he whispers to her, ‘Why don’t you see yourself through my eyes instead, beloved?’ There is a difficult choice for her in that moment. Believing her own eyes is safe, in a way. She knows what she is going to see, and she is more or less in control of it. But she will always see first the things that she hates about herself. Seeing herself through her husband’s eyes is scary. In order to do so, she must give up the safety and control of her self-defined identity. Yet only by looking through his eyes will she realize that she is more beautiful than she could had ever imagined. When he looks at her, he sees first the things that are delightful and lovely, and they blind him to all the things that she hates so much about herself. A woman failing according to her own impossible standards becomes a goddess by her husband‘s kinder standards, perfect from the moment of her creation. And she would see it herself, if she would allow him to give her his eyes.

I don’t imagine we are so different from the middle-aged housewife. God is trying to tell us how amazing we are in His eyes, but we continue to believe our own dimmed eyes. This is the great paradox: man is forever trying to be his own god, yet man is made in the image of the True God. If we would learn to trust Him with our identity, He will paint us with all the colors of His Divinity.

We talk so much about image. All of the shopping malls of our culture offer us images, each as well coordinated an Ikea bedroom set. Songs and shoes; studded belts, surfer shirts or semi-formal slacks, all of which almost equally expensive. But it is not just about consumerism. Our universities are shopping malls, as well. The engineering departments market an image to attract young students, along with the athletic programs, along with the rest of the various campus interest groups. But once you buy one piece, they’ll try to sell you the rest of the set. ‘You like studying cultures? Good, we’ve got some classes for you. And I’d like to invite you to the upcoming conference we are hosting. And while you’re at it, you should check out these films, these songs and these books. I’m sure you’ll like the atmosphere of open-mindedness we foster here, unlike some of the more reactionary types on campus. You‘re not friends with any of them, are you?’ And so on, inviting the acolyte to invest in an image. Everything around us invokes the power of image, be it organic foods in the supermarket, all the myriad flavors of bumper sticker, or our choices in real estate. It is hardly an exclusively American problem. Consider the posturing of tribal chieftains, or the almost universal idea of saving face. We weave and wear images, hiding our nakedness just as we have done since the exile from Eden. In doing so, we forget our first Image. We forget in Whose image we were created.

The man who has not filled his hands with rubbish has room in them to receive treasures. Those who are poor in all things save Him alone become truly rich. So it is the humble that He makes great. They do not try to remake themselves in the image of money, nor of smarts, nor of any other image, but that of God alone. But I am not humble. Nor are most of us. And until all of our other images are exhausted, we won’t seek Him. So I had to be made poor.

I was good at running. And I could run fast. I could quote chapter and verse, and if I didn’t know it, give me a week and I would learn it. I was image of intelligence, fused with the image of success. I am sure I was not the first to make that idol. But I made it well. And like a good idol, it would spit out answers and theories, never needing anything in return. I gave the world an image that they couldn’t see through. That they couldn’t hurt me through. I was safe. I was needless. I was unsaveable.

Until it all came crashing down. I ran into the one thing that I really wanted. My wish was Adam‘s wish. Someone like me. Someone in my image. I got exactly that. My image was a mix of the idols of intelligence and success. Hers was intelligence and identity. I set my image to work. I tried to find the perfect words. They failed. So I tried to read the right books. And that failed. I tried to figure her out. And failed. Every time I would try to logic the whole thing out, the whole thing would shift. We always ended up at each others’ throats. I had come across a problem I couldn’t solve for the life of me. At long last, a fight that my brain couldn’t win. How ironic that it was the fight I wanted to win most of all.

Grief. I wonder if there was another path. Looking back on my pride, I think probably not. How fitting that I met someone else just as prideful, wounded and fearful as me. I refused to face myself, so God found another way for me to do so. I would finally understand the magnitude my own brokenness only by seeing it in someone else. In my pride, my foolish choices ensured that I felt the full measure of that brokenness. Yet, in that moment of absolute defeat and absolute failure, my path home finally started.

If you had asked me a few years back what it meant to love someone who hated you, I could probably have quoted the Sermon on the Mount. Probably some Lewis, some Bonhoeffer, maybe a bit of Schaeffer. I knew the book answer. I just had no idea it would be so hard. If you asked me the same question today, I would respond only with her name. So the aeronautical engineer learns to fly. And becomes very frustrated in the process. But he learns nonetheless.

Lewis once wrote an essay called ‘Is Theology Poetry?’ He talks about how prophecy must humble itself before it is manifested. For all the lofty words of Isaiah, their fulfillment arrives in a smelly, stinky mass of baby in a manger. Perhaps this is the difference between knowing all the answers and actually living. Lewis’ books on Love were simple, universal, and perfect. The woman Joy Gresham was a messy, complex divorcee. Yet Lewis would have traded that book a million times over for one more week with her. The prophecies of Isaiah are thunderingly beautiful poetry, words as deep as the universe. Simeon holds the tiny Christ-child, an infant that looks little different from any other, for only a few moments. Yet the humbled fulfillment of the prophecy causes him to rejoice in a way the words never could. There is real life out there. The book version may prepare you, but you have to put the book down at some point and go outside.

It is not about a specific path. That’s the hard part of closing the book. Every time you read a Tolstoy novel, the characters all do the same things as they did last time. If you just learn how the story goes, you can anticipate it and prepare for it. But this is your story, and the Author writes original masterpieces each time. Yours’ is completely different than anyone else’s. I can’t tell you what to do or where to go. But go nonetheless. This is real life. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.