They tell me H. is happy now, they tell me she is at peace. What makes them so sure of this? ......
'Because she is in God's hands'. But if so, she was in God's hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God's goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death as unendurably as before it.
It's taken me about three days to calm down enough to write about this passage. Having seen the terrible experiences that Jen went through in treatment, I can't accept this line of argument for a moment.
I differ from C. S. Lewis on several important points. I don't see God's agency in the world as being about a superintending of every detail down to the lowest level, and so I don't hold God responsible for giving Jen breast cancer. My understanding, based on the Bible, is that God is powerful enough to achieve his plans and fulfil his promises, no matter what we do. William James used the analogy of a playing chess against a grandmaster: he (or she) doesn't know what move you'll make, but he will still win the game in any case. I don't think God's important plans necessary involved Jen living to a ripe old age, so in that sense I don't think God has failed. Of course if God is powerful enough to achieve his purposes, couldn't he as a by-product use some of his power to change the course of Jen's illness? For some people, that could happen, but not in Jen's case. So the image of Jen having been in God's hands all along is to me misleading.
Similarly, I recoil from Lewis's ideas about purgatory. They seem to depart strongly from the little biblical evidence, purely on the basis of Lewis's own ideas about what is possible. He seems to doubt that God could bring about an instantaneous transformation, so he is drawn to the idea of a painful refining process after death. He alludes to this idea in another book as well. Tom Wright's book "Surprised by Hope" has a good section on the present state of those who have died believing in Christ. He points out that even some leading Roman Catholic theologians (such as Cardinal Ratzinger, now the Pope) have moved quite a distance from the traditional Catholic position. Wright has an illuminating comment:
The sufferings of the present time, not of some post-mortem state, are the valley through which we have to pass to reach the glorious future. I think I know why purgatory became so popular, while Dante's middle volume is the one people most easily relate to. The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection from the present onto the future. This is why purgatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story, here and now. If we are Christians, if we believe in the risen Jesus as Lord, if we are baptized members of his body, then we are passing right now through sufferings which form the gateway to life.
He goes on to argue for the current state of the dead as being at rest with God, in a "paradise", a restful happiness, before the resurrection. For example, Jesus' words to the thief on the cross - today, you will be with me in paradise. Also Wright argues on linguistic grounds that in John where Jesus says "Where I am going, I will prepare a place for you", he is not talking of a final rest but an intermediate one.
I'm not utterly convinced on the detail of that argument - it seems equally possible that we are unaware of what has happened until the resurrection occurs. However I am reassured that God is his goodness is not hurting Jen now, but looking after her. I felt enormously honoured to see Jen struggle through the horrors of treatment, and not be angry with God, or abandon her faith in Him. So she ran the race to the end. She has seen the face of her saviour. She has received her crown of righteousness.
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