Week 4: Section Three — "Something quite unexpected has happened"

1.Section Three opens with Lewis noting that something unexpected has happened — a sudden lightening, a moment of release. He is careful not to over-interpret it, but it marks a real change in the book's atmosphere. Have you ever experienced an unexpected moment of lightness or peace in the middle of ongoing suffering? How did you account for it?

2.Lewis makes a crucial distinction in this section: the "door slammed shut" image from Section One, he now suspects, was not a description of God's behavior but of his own inner state. He was not locked out — he was locked in his own frantic grief. How does grief distort our perception, including our perception of God? What does this teach us about the reliability of our feelings as theological data?

3.Lewis asks himself whether his image of H. was really H. at all, or a mental image he had constructed. He then applies the same question to God: "My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time." This is both frightening and freeing. What idols of God — tame, manageable, or predictable versions of him — have you carried into suffering? What has life (or this book) shattered?