A Cosmic Sadist: Why C.S. Lewis' Quip is Comforting

words for when being human hurts

Last December, I read A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis and Good Grief by Granger E. Westburg within a week. (Mercifully they’re both under 80 pages in length.)

They were opposite in nearly every way, and exactly what I needed.

Have you ever expected a person to be the way they were for your whole life and suddenly, they aren’t? The mask slips, the true colors show, and no matter the cliché you choose, it happens.

I had an idyllic childhood. Our family life was oh-so-typical, or as typical as a homeschooling family with seven whole children could be. I had a laidback father who taught us how to play Uno, crawled around on all fours with us after work, and took us on long bike rides around our neighborhood. We loved the weekends when he’d open the windows in his workshop, crank up the 90s country station, and build us treehouses.

But as I write today, none of those core memories reconcile with the present day.

When my world first turned upside down, we had a one-year-old and I was expecting my second baby. The world was careening toward a pandemic and a lockdown that would traumatize me more than I cared to admit. I was reeling from my family’s trauma, late-onset postpartum depression, the lockdown’s effects, and surfacing spiritual abuse everywhere I turned. The pain of being helpless to take away others’ pain seemed like almost too much to carry.

I questioned everything and everyone, and I tried my darndest to distance myself from anyone else who might let me down — mainly God and my husband. I thought that if they were going to betray me too, then I’d rather know now. The question I wrestled with was, “What if God has already betrayed me?” I didn’t question God’s existence. Instead, I cried, “If God exists and he does things like this, is he good? Oh God, what if you’re not good?”

The only coping mechanism I knew for the depression that engulfed me was to run as fast as I could and then sink into deep apathy until I shamed myself enough to start running again. I lost my appetite and lived on caffeine and cortisol and latent fury at the injustice of the world.

My go-to catchphrase became, “Well, it is what it is.” And while that is true, I usually said it to keep myself from bursting into tears on the phone. I said it to stuff everything down while tumbling on my not-so-merry way from depression to stony cynicism. Like the owl in Song of the Sea, I was so terrified of the depression under the floorboards that I canned up my negative feelings in metaphorical mason jars and slowly turned to stone.

The only experience I had with letting myself feel negative emotions was the depression so dark it almost killed me. In the back of my mind, I knew if I opened my emotional jars and stopped saying “It is what it is,” I might fall into a black hole and never get out.

I was Christmas shopping at Barnes and Noble when I noticed a slim, cream-colored copy of A Grief Observed. My reasons for buying it? Fifty percent because I knew I needed it, and fifty percent because it was a lovely book cover.

It’s not a book I’d recommend to everyone. In fact, I think I’d only recommend it to someone dealing with loss that is causing them to question the moorings of their reality. Lewis published this raw journal after the death of his wife, under a pen name, and refers to his deceased by a pseudonym. He wryly calls himself out for the way he writes (noting that he’s writing “yells rather than thoughts”) and I’ve never read anything quite like it.

At one point Lewis asks himself if God is really a Cosmic Sadist. What if we are putting our trust in an Eternal Vivisector, and this life is a joke on a horrible almighty level?

Why on earth was that thought so deeply comforting to me?

Because one of the greatest apologists for the faith went there.

He said that.

And God can take it.

We’re His children, and as Lewis muses later in the book, perhaps our questions are like those a small child asks. “Is yellow square or round?” There is no answer to that because it’s not a question that can be answered. Colors and shapes aren’t the same things. Maybe we’re asking the same questions of God.

Maybe our idea of what is right and just and kind is based on our keyhole-sized perspective. Regardless, we’re His children, and like Job or the psalmists or C.S. Lewis, we can beat our weak sinful fists on His chest and He won’t go anywhere. He can take it. And He loves us anyway.

We’re not alone in our questions. The giants of the faith asked the same ones.

God answers us like He answered Job in the whirlwind. “Were you here when I formed the stars?”

We can relate to Job’s response: “I lay my hand over my mouth.”

As someone wise told me, the only way we can see that things are horribly out of tune, misshapen, and fractured in our world is because we know that Goodness exists. Otherwise, we would see no contrast between the pain we experience and our soul’s deep knowledge that this isn’t our home.

I don’t believe that God is a Cosmic Sadist. But I needed to ask the question. And I think maybe that was faith of the “I believe, help my unbelief” variety.

I have a five-year-old son who asks about nine hundred questions a day. I would never dream of turning him out of our home because he asked an audacious question. I think God loves us better than I can love my precious tiny questioner.

I read Good Grief on the heels of A Grief Observed, a loan from a friend. The little book stolidly reassured me that I wasn’t alone or crazy and that there was a name for what I was experiencing. It gently beckoned with the hope that I wasn’t going to drown. While messy, grief was still more linear than swirling down the whirlpool of depression. Depression feels like being sucked into the darkest of ocean depths, while being buffeted by waves, with absolutely no way out and no glimmer of light. It feels like you’re walking dead, numb to bodily urges, and suffocating. It makes you wonder if breathing is even worth it.

Grief, though, good grief, is a brutal tidal wave that tells the truth. It might also make you wonder if breathing is worth it, but for me, there was a new note in the pain.

Grief tells a story of goodness and eternity.

Grief shouts the pricelessness of the things we mourn.

Today I have faith that my God (who is not a Cosmic Sadist) is both good and sovereign. I don’t fully understand His ways but that’s a leap of faith I’m willing to take. I have Christ and He will never leave or forsake me. And I believe the same grace that holds me has the power to work in the lives of those I love.

In a world wrecked by sin, our pain is the crucible in which we will work out our faith. No human story is exempt from grief. There is no faith without the wild ache of impossible questions. To wrestle with God—to grip him like Jacob with hungering, angry hands—is the work of every person born into a fallen world. This is what it means to be human and follow God in a world at war, wrenched away from the Beautiful One who crafted its being. But the way we wrestle will shape the whole of our story, and Beauty tells us what we are wrestling for.”

-Sarah Clarkson, “This Beautiful Truth”

Why do I tell you this long, imperfect story?

Because it’s the story I wish someone had told me.

If you have ever felt scared or sad or lonely, whether your world has turned upside down or your world is exhausting and your brain feels like an enemy…you are not alone. You’re not the only one to ask questions and you are not faulty or crazy. You matter so much, and God can take your laments. We can ask questions about His goodness without fear because He is good. Let’s bring our questions and pain to Him in faith. There is still light and life and beauty to be found here. Let’s tell that Imperfectly Perfect story together until the day we die.