Grief Reharmonized

One of the hardest things about grief can be navigating other people, including other Christians. In the four years since our baby son Jed died, some believers have implied that we should be grieving less if we trust in Jesus. Others have implied that Jesus makes no difference whatsoever to real-world tragedy. We’ve wrestled through many tensions—many half-truths and insufficient condolences—trying to understand grief in light of the gospel.

Gospel Counterfeits

There’s a place in the Bible where we’re told that Christians don’t grieve “as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Both parts of this statement are crucial: firstly, that Christians really do grieve, but secondly, that this way of grieving is inescapably altered by “hope.” If we miss either, we end up with a cruel counterfeit.

The first gospel counterfeit is to believe we shouldn’t really feel sadness and grief—not if we’re really yielded to Jesus. Not if we’re really filled with the Spirit. Not if we have enough faith. Yet this type of thinking is out of tune with Scripture. We do grieve, and sometimes very bitterly indeed. After all, Jesus himself wept and suffered, and he calls us to follow him. He even wept when he was about to raise his friend Lazarus to life![1] God the Father is called the “God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3), thus assuring his people of the depths of his comfort for our fears, losses, and afflictions. Paul himself, a hero of the faith, writes of being so burdened that he despaired of life itself.[2] Christians grieve because we still encounter grievous things in this broken and yet-to-be-made-new world.

But there is another way of distorting the gospel in grief, and it’s to miss the second half of 1 Thessalonians 4:13—to assume (or even insist) that grief for a Christian is like grief for anyone. This counterfeit downplays the reality of Christian hope. If Jesus did indeed die and rise again, then it’s impossible for our grief to remain the same. 

Different Grief

So, what’s different for us as believers? It’s not that our grief disappears. Not long after the resurrection of Jesus, we’re told that “devout men buried Stephen [the first martyr] and made great lamentation over him” (Acts 8:2, emphasis ours). Grief doesn’t disappear, nor is it lessened. A Christian wife who loses her husband after fifty years of marriage will not miss him less than her non-Christian neighbor would. A Christian mom who loses a baby does not weep less than her unbelieving friends would.

Instead, grief—for the believer in Jesus—sits alongside hope. More accurately, grief is fully experienced while sitting on top of hope. We might say that grief has been “reharmonized.” That’s what’s different about Christian grief.

A New Harmony

When you play a minor chord on an instrument, it sounds sad. Musicians might add extra notes to the chord to make it sound calm and sad (minor 7th), longingly sad (minor 9th), or tragically sad (minor 6th). But a minor chord is essentially sad. The only way to make it not sad would be to change the chord to a major chord, which sounds essentially happy. The first counterfeit of the gospel says that everything essentially minor should now be essentially major. The second counterfeit says that there’s no possibility for a minor chord to be anything but sad.

But what if someone comes and plays a different bass note, underneath the minor chord? If you are a musician, imagine playing a C minor chord but adding a new, lower bass note—an A flat or an F. Suddenly that very same chord sounds surprisingly hopeful. It has been reharmonized. In fact, this new bass note has a way of drawing out the full richness of the minor chord whilst not letting “sad” be the defining feeling. It reframes and expands the musical vista of a minor chord.

In the same way, grief—for followers of the risen Lord Jesus—has been irreversibly reharmonized. We grieve, but not as others do who have no hope. The very fact of the resurrection sits underneath the whole of our current experience. Because Jesus lives, we know that this present evil age will soon give way to the fullness of the age to come. The vista of our present suffering has been reframed and expanded. Because Jesus lives, we know that “those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy” (Psalm 126:5).

But God

One little word that has helped us hear more clearly—in real-time—the reharmonized sound of our grief is the word “but.” It acts like a tiny (yet mighty) lever, changing the whole direction and feel of our bleak thoughts. We can’t take away our thoughts of pain and sorrow, but we can introduce new thoughts. By using the word “but,” we can keep remembering that we grieve with hope. Here’s what I might be thinking right now:

Jed would be four years old now. What I wouldn’t give just to cuddle him right now. I miss him so much.

But.

(And now, I remember something true about the Lord Jesus.)

But Jesus will wipe every tear from my eyes.[3] Or, but his mercies are new every morning, and his comfort will be enough to carry me through today.[4] Or, but Jesus said he’ll make all things new.[5] 

I can’t face getting out of bed today. 

But “they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31).

What comes after the “but” is the greater truth—the truth that sits “underneath” my present experience.

What are you going through right now? Will you experience it in the light of Jesus’s resurrection?

In this broken age, we really do grieve. But this age of loss has been reharmonized by the hope of a coming age of joy, laughter, life, and wholeness. Jesus says to his people, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19). And so we don’t grieve as others do, since we grieve with an inextinguishable hope.

[1] John 11:35

[2] 2 Corinthians 1:8

[3] Revelation 21:4

[4] Lamentations 3:22-23

[5] Isaiah 43:19