Grief as Temptation: When Bad Theology Speaks to Pain

"Death has been swallowed up in victory."  Isaiah 25:8 

"Where, O death, is your victory?Where, O death, is your sting?"  Hosea 13:14 

"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God!  He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."  1 Cor. 15:56-57

Our culture and our churches handle grief in some strange ways.

Culturally, we expect people to basically become Stoics in their time of loss.  Be strong, buck up, and press on.  You can do it!  We use words like "meltdown" and phrases like "He's really not handling it well" when people we know continue to cry after several days, refuse to get back into their routine, and seem "stuck" in their grief.  In other words, if your grief is radically altering your life and making you a different person, something must be wrong.  You are not grieving properly.

What about churches?  Church can be a whole different experience in grief, because in church we have regular people shaped extensively by their culture trying to view things through a lens of faith, and many times the words and actions that come out of this collision of culture and faith are messy, strange, and unhelpful.  "God just wanted her to come home."  "This was His will."  And what's interesting is that what's behind those well-meaning but horribly-worded platitudes is, many times, the same message behind what culture says:  "You need to move on."  "Come on, be strong, you'll get through it."  It's a cultural message covered with, frankly, a cheap Christian veneer.

Suddenly everyone at church becomes a trained theologian, each with a word of wisdom to answer the questions you're not really asking and to help you move quickly through the feelings that you're not supposed to dwell on.

Many of us as Christians seem to equate a strong faith with the ability to be Stoic in times of grief and loss.  The less crying and more "inner strength" someone has, the stronger their faith must be.  And I think that comes from the subconscious view of "loss" as a kind of "test"- like a kind of temptation.  God has either given us or allowed us (it doesn't really matter) to go through this time of "testing" in the loss of someone we love, and He is waiting to see how we handle it.  Does our faith bring us to simply trust, smile, read our Bibles, and wait to see that person in Heaven?  Or does it bring us to our knees as a sobbing, uncontrollable mess, where we go for weeks in moods of depression and fear and sadness?

Surely the former is the result of a strong faith, and the latter is what comes from a weak faith.

Right?

I wonder why we feel this need to view death and loss as a kind of "test", automatically ascribing it to God.  And when death is merely a test and grief is the "temptation" we are to avoid, then our response to this test determines our level of faith.

 Perhaps what is really going on is that we are afraid to be real about death.  We are afraid to ascribe death to its true master- Satan.  Perhaps we are afraid to talk frankly about death, to be real about the immense pain it causes and the hurt that it brings.  Maybe we are afraid to call death what it really is- the great enemy and destroyer!  Death is destructive!  Death is a terrible, awful, life-changing experience!  Are we afraid to describe death like this?  Do we think that perhaps to describe death in this way is somehow to give it too much power?  Is this why try so hard to dance around it and try to give God the "credit" by making death a test that He sends us instead of the enemy that Christ came to defeat?

Downplaying that which Christ came to defeat, Death, isn't just bad counseling- it's bad theology.

Being real about Death means we can be real about the Victory that defeats it!

It means we can rejoice in the knowledge that Christ has redeemed us from spiritual death that separated us from God.  It means we can know with confidence that this loss is not permanent.  And it means we can look forward to a day when death will be no more!

But being real about death is a double-sided coin.  Being real about death also means we don't downplay the heartache or the grief that accompanies it- because grief and heartache are not signs of a weak faith, they are signs that someone we love has died!  Being real about death means that we don't seek to "fix" mourners, we seek to accompany them.

And being real about death means that we can talk openly about death as it really is- a *defeated but still hanging around for now* enemy.

"We'll Grieve Later"

"Grief is not an enemy to be avoided, it is a healing path to be walked." 

There are lots of things in life that simply won't settle with being put on hold.

The other day I was already on my phone in the church office when another call came in for me.  Our secretary paged me and I told her I was already on the line.  Her response was, "This can't wait."  I excused myself from the conversation I was currently in and switched over to the new call.  After just a few seconds of listening I realized our secretary (as always!) was right- this was a call I needed to take, right then!

Grief and mourning are just like that second phone call- they cannot wait or be put on hold.  They are emotions that call for validation, affirmation, and attention in the present.    We can try to push them away and ignore them (what we call repression), but eventually they will be addressed!  We can either address them now when they are fresh with some level of control and understanding, or we can be at their mercy later when they well-up from deep inside of us, demanding to be noticed.

Grief can also be like that kid in the mall who stands next to his mother, pulling on her pant leg, shouting "Mommy mommy mommy mommy" incessantly.  The customers who walk by point and shake their heads; the mother is the only one unaware of the begging child.  Everyone else can see it but her!  "Can't she see he needs something?  Doesn't she hear him?"  In the same way, sometimes everyone around us can see our grief pulling at our pant leg but us.  "Doesn't she know how different she looks?  Is she aware of how she's coming across to others?  Has she really given herself permission to grieve?"

I remember watching a news report not long after the tragic explosion in the town of West, TX.  The schools were getting ready to re-open and the Mayor of West was telling reporters (my paraphrase),

"We need to get our kids back to some sense of normalcy.  We'll grieve later.  Today we need to get back to school."

 Clearly all of us know what the Mayor was trying to say, because it's probably what all of us would say, too, and have done in the past in our own families.  We need to get the kids to focus on something else besides all of this death and destruction and sadness, so let's help them feel normal again.  Let's get them back into a familiar rhythm.  The need for routine and normalcy is common and, in many ways, a very necessary and healthy part of the grieving process.  A child's first reaction to the sudden death of a parent might be, to our surprise, asking the surviving parent "Who is going to take me to school tomorrow?"  Clearly children are seeking normalcy and familiarity as they struggle to put the pieces together- a return to routine is part of that journey for them.

But this desire for normalcy, for a feeling of something solid, and this incessant need that many adults have to "shield" their kids from the painful process of grief can cause more bad than good, when it tries to circumvent the grief journey altogether.  As adults we probably feel better when it appears our kids gone back to their "old schedule", but in reality grief tugs at our children's pant legs just as it does our own as parents.  A future post will focus on the importance of children, when possible, attending the funeral of the loved one they have lost.  Ritual and symbolism are extremely important to all of us, whether children or adults, in helping us move through grief.

For children and adults alike:

Grief needs to be addressed, not ignored. 

Grief needs to be gone through, not skirted around. 

And grief needs to be validated, not condemned.

Sure, we can say "I'll grieve later" especially when we feel like we are doing it for the "sake of the kids."  But grief will not be put on hold forever.  It will tug at us until we pay attention.  We will slowly return to a "new normal" in time- for now, it is good and proper for us to go "to a house of mourning" (Ecc. 7:2)

"We are doing well with our grief when we are grieving.  Somehow we have it backwards.  We think people are doing well when they aren't crying.  Grief is a process of walking through some painful periods toward learning to cope again.  We do not walk this path without pain and tears.  When we are in the most pain, we are making the most progress.  When the pain is less, we are coasting and resting up for the next steps.  People need to grieve.  Grief is not an enemy to be avoided, it is a healing path to be walked."   -Doug Manning, The Gift of Significance