Posted on FACeTS of Madeira blog (http://madeirabaptist.blogspot.com) on March 17, 2007.
Musings #1 - However We Assume the World Is, It Actually Is the Way It Is
The first time I remember realizing the world is fundamentally not the way I assumed it to be, was in my late teens (1967). I was still living with my parents in Asuncion, Paraguay. I had gone by bus with my friend and fellow church member, Laureano Arriola, some 90 miles out into the country to a town, Primero de Marzo, where Dad was starting a new church. My family was supposed to come on Sunday to hold services and take us back to Asuncion with them. But all that day they didn’t show up.
Laureano and I were stranded without money to buy food or lodging, if we saved what funds we had for a return bus fare. Laureano scrounged a sooty cooking pot, we picked some kind of peas or beans (maybe from his grandmother’s property?), put them on to boil over a stick fire. He found an egg which he broke into the boiling pot. After a while we ate the concoction - strings of egg white around very, very al dente (as in raw) peas. Then we waited and dozed somewhere without going to bed. The bus for Asuncion left at some unearthly hour, like 2 or 3 in the morning.
When we arrived home, we found out the family had indeed set out for Primero de Marzo the day before, but some 20 - 30 kilometers down the highway, a small boy ran out in front of them. Unavoidably, Dad hit the boy nearly killing him. They put him and his parents into the damaged car and returned to the Hospital Bautista in Asuncion.
That was the news that greeted Laureano and I when we arrived back at our house. The whole family - mostly Mom and my siblings - was telling us the news loudly and excitedly. I could scarcely make heads or tails of the story with everyone talking at once, and I saw a look in my Dad’s eye I had never seen before; a look of sheer, cobalt-blue dread. Dread that he might have been instrumental in killing a child (after being in a coma for 3 weeks, the boy survived but was never normal). To this instant I can still see that indescribable look in my Dad’s eyes. In a few seconds, with that look and those facts, I felt the underpinnings of my belief system begin to shift – forever.
I was immediately angry and started shouting at my siblings to shut up. I was angry, ostensibly because of the confusion caused by everyone talking, but mostly because I had a jumble of thoughts that went something like this: this is not fair. Something is wrong. Who of us is to blame? God didn’t do His job, etc.
I had had some vague notion – we often build entire life-philosophies on unexamined, vague notions – that God’s people who were trying to obey Him (doing foreign mission work, for crying out loud) would be protected from such things, would be blessed, would be rewarded – not punished, not given over to tragedy and heartache and humiliation and loss and crisis.
Similar emotions and reactions may occur for every kind of catastrophe and tragedy, I’m sure. I would say that for a family witnessing the crisis of a loved one, the pain is even more acute. Debbie has a much more difficult and emotionally draining role than I do. I would much rather have lymphoma than witness a loved one having it.
Still, perhaps we should not forget how ordinary, how "common to man", these happenings are. The fact is, most people live and work in some sort of pain and sickness and depression. Somewhere years ago I came across the statement that most of the productive work in the world is done by people in pain. My surgeon told me recently that one third of all people have tumors of some kind. All people are touched by a family member or friend having cancer, not to mention a thousand other illnesses. All people are touched by death near at hand or nearer at hand. Billions experience famine, war, terrorism, crime, accidents, major material loss, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, blizzards, pestilence, physical handicaps, disappointment.
When life and circumstances “are going OK” for us, we tend to live on mental and spiritual cruise control. We assume the universe is a certain way, and that life is a certain way. We may have any number of “ideas”, brain washings, clichés, “personal philosophies”, “doctrines that we live by” while getting on with our lives and “reality”. We “believe” a whole variety of popular, cultural and personal conditionings that we may never have actually thought seriously about, much less sought the will of God for. Being brought up short by some undesirable event may provide us a golden opportunity to think long and hard and honestly and seriously about what we really do believe in and rely on as the guiding information and credo of our existence.
As with almost all important issues, the project outlined above is extremely complex and baffling. There may be many good, valid, true, bedrock answers that don’t seem to agree or even make sense. Furthermore, it is normal, it is acceptable to have all kinds of emotions, including doubt, anger at God, ambivalence about the will of God. We should not try to tell ourselves lies at a time like this, simply because we have been told, or we think, this is what we have to do. We should not profess to believe what we don’t believe. But we should make thoughtful choices and decisions.
So, when my doctor called and said the lab analysis indicated I have lymphoma, I was not really surprised. I have come to realize that this is the way things are. This is the way the world is. To a great extent, it doesn’t matter what one does. The world is fallen. The universe is broken. And God does not stay in the boxes we put Him in. Very often He does not share our natural or conditioned goals and purposes - because He has higher ones, better ones. He is not limited by good health, accomplishments, having enough money, exceptional piety or even physical life, in fulfilling His purposes.
When our dreams and plans are shattered (if they are; some of them may still be realized in modified or less than preferred circumstances), that is a good time to really try to think objectively, to understand our theology, to know our expectations, to find out what principles we have built, or now will build our lives on. If we have been mistaken in what we believed, God does us a favor to bring about circumstances that disabuse us of our faulty belief system. However hard it is to give up beliefs that we are often sentimental about, it can be very liberating in the long run. Christ said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
