This is why I appreciate Narrative...

Before the meat and potatoes of this post begins, I appetize with an unfortunate, hilarious story.  I have labeled all my assignments with acronyms: hence, when I have to read a chapter in "Problem of Pain," I see "POP" and when I have to read "A Grief Observed," I read "AGO."  The hilarity of this lies in my eyes reading "AGO" and my brain understanding "TGD."  And so, I have spent all week reading "The Great Divorce," and not "A Grief Observed."  

We'll get there as a group, but I wanted to say that reading Lewis's narrative on the nature of heaven and hell entirely clarified his philosophical apologetics in my mind.  Seeing Lewis wrestle with the nature of the human decision, its timing, its inevitability, its psychology, was astounding.  Having written this, I also realize that this book is not the one assigned.

After watching much of "Through the Shadowlands" and reading of Lewis's own wrestle with grief in "AGO," I truly appreciate "The Problem of Pain" so much more.  This book is no longer an impersonal intellectual's romp through the nature of suffering.  This man had to deal with suffering, too.  He was not immune.  "A Grief Observed" reads poorly, not because the author was a poor writer, but because he chose to write in the midst of chaotic agony, rather than from the collected retrospective.  This observation is present, not past.

I've complained before about my struggle with philosophy.  However, this book showed me that philosophers are still human, still spiritual, still broken.  Their thoughts are not neutral, but stem from personal experience, from narrative.  I still prefer stories, but I have a new appreciation for the mind of the philosopher.