Suffering to Be Redeemed
Shadowlands and A Grief Observed are both mediums that quite honestly had me wiping tears, they have us look at suffering in a different way. In the film Shadowlands, we see C.S. Lewis or Jack and we follow his relationship with his friend, and eventual wife, Joy. They have a wonderful friendship that blossoms into a love like no other either of them had the felt, but like every good love story, it had to end with death. In Shadowlands, Anthony Hopkins gives us an image of a man that lives a very structured and rigid life, until he does something a little different and agrees to meet with a woman, and she consequently shakes his life up a bit. The structure we see in the film is not reflected in the book that follows after the death of Joy, in A Grief Observed. Dr. Kerlin mentioned the fact there is no real format for the book like we have with novels. The book reads like it is more of a cathartic experience like he had been holding things in and finally when pen hits paper he was able to finally release. In both, we see that C.S. Lewis loved Joy and they lead a happy existence, but still she died. Joy and C.S. Lewis went through their own suffering, let us not forget “happiness now is a part of the pain later”. Joy suffered because the
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meant. Before he says, “unearned suffering is redemptive” he talks about the trials and tribulations everyone, including himself, had to go through to get there. King said they had to have faith that those things were for something. That is the way I think God, C.S. Lewis and Joy all felt. The pain God felt was so that we could be saved, the pain C.S. Lewis felt was because he was finally able to love and loose, and Joy’s was redeemed in her infinity with Jack. Joy and C.S. Lewis suffer, but they are made better for it. On the other hand, if there was no redemption then would suffering be worth