Good Grief

Good Grief.  The famous line from Charlie Brown in the Peanuts comic was as ironic as it was iconic: Good Grief! I think of Charlie Brown lying flat on his back after his friend, Lucy, yanked the football from his kick again and again. Good Grief! I picture Charlie Brown’s head hung low as his kite was once again eaten by the tree. Good Grief! I recall many times when Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy, acted more human than canine, earning the catchphrase, Good Grief! But there never was a half-hour Special on broadcast television entitled, “How Is Grief Ever Good, Charlie Brown?” The families in northern Thailand who this week bury their children slain by a corrupt cop need to know where grief fits into goodness. The protesters in Iran who this week are disappearing for cutting their hair and removing their veils need to know where grief fits into goodness. Even those who still innocently read the Peanuts comics need to know where grief fits into goodness. We all need to understand the goodness that grief can give.

While grief is never comfortable, it is nevertheless good; or it can be good when it does its job, and when its temporary visit comes to a natural conclusion. God’s goodness is wide enough to include our grief, which is bluntly counterintuitive to the human experience. We assume that grief and mourning prove the absence of blessing in our lives. But Jesus, like he does with so many subjects, inverts our presumptions. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). Wait, what did he say? We evaluate Jesus as upside-down when it is we who are upside-down. He is the only right-side-up person who has ever lived. Because he rakes against our perceptions of normalcy and success and happiness, we interpret him as backward, awkward, and untoward. But Jesus categorically includes grief within his definition of goodness. “Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief … we esteemed him not” (Isa. 53:3). We concluded that he was nothing, a non-factor, dismissible, and forgettable.

Winners never lose and losers never win, Charlie Brown. Until we succeed in kicking that metaphorical football, we are doomed to wallow in grief with Charlie Brown. From the playground all the way up to Wall Street and the Oval Office, we find that message often repeated: blessing equals advancement. But Jesus, who knew no sin, who never failed, who lived a perfect life, died an unjust death, and rose again into victorious life, stepped into our grief, and adopted our failure as his own burden. With his step into our grief, because he is Goodness incarnate, he made our grief a space to show and therefore know God’s goodness. Consider what did not happen—our grief did not contaminate his goodness. Rather, his goodness healed our grief.