Post 6 "A Grief Observed" Chapters 3 & 4

Chapters three and four of “A Grief Observed” continue to account for the extreme grief felt by C.S. Lewis. Throughout all of his questions and expressions of frustration, a pattern is seen that simply leads to the conclusion that C.S. Lewis is in a battle with himself and the feelings he’s having. In chapter three he addresses the aspect of faith in the Christian walk when saying “The faith which ‘took these things into account’ was not faith but imagination.” The truth is that it takes faith to have faith. The concept that faith exists is having faith. In the Christian walk this presents the question of whether faith is real, or everything we hope in is simply a projection of our imagination. C.S. This means that our entire Christian walk (in C.S. Lewis’ case, the belief that his wife was in heaven) is teeter-tottered on the idea of faith. C.S. Lewis presents this question as a metaphor being a house of cards. A house of cards can be completely destroyed if one card at the bottom is taken our. In realizing this C.S. Lewis says that if that was his situation, it would be better to destroy everything he believed in now that later. He didn’t want a house of cards yet a truth with a firm foundation. When reading this I didn’t believe that C.S. Lewis was denying his faith yet expressing that he wanted to have a solid understand of what he was putting his faith into. Without this understanding, the idea that his wife was in heaven had no more value than a simple projection in his mind had. In the midst of mulling over this difficult question I was brought to the conclusion that our faith must be tested and we mustn’t be afraid to test it. We cannot fully understand God but must strive to solidify our faith nevertheless. Solidifying our faith does not simply mean to believe blindly but confront difficult questions which altogether should only confirm our beliefs.