The following is not a theological argument for God or His existence. It is a recounting of my conversations with a dear friend who fought a noble fight with his personal physical challenges and somehow saw the beauty of God in the midst of that suffering.
The prospects of life are generally thought to be hopeful. Part of that is our penchant for looking forward with rose color glasses and sunshiny days. A new child is born into the world and we cannot help to look at their soft, fresh, clean, tender and tiny bodies and see anything but sweetness, love and hope. It will never rain in the future for them…and if you live in Utah, like I do right now, it seems that is very true. We don’t usually look to that which is on the horizon with anything but fullness, grace, hope and blessing.
But, like the Smashing Pumpkins’ song says, “The world is a vampire.” It confronts us with pain, disappointment, constant change and hopelessness. The world sucks our blood. The harmony of that reality and the former hope is a challenge we all experience.
How can we brave the world looking forward without becoming totally discouraged and feeling like we are drowning, raging, just like a “rat in a cage”? And, at the same time, how can we look at life so unrealistically; as if, by being Christian, no wrong can ever happen to us or our loved ones?
My friend, Jonathan Creed, confronted me with these types of questions. Why would a good God allow not only evil on the earth, but why would God allow Jonathan’s personal physical trauma and all its ramifications.
Jonathan, my friend, son of a friend, historically “raised” in the church by faithful member parents; Jonathan, a unique individual, like all of us, but in recent days, carrying the weight of his body gone bad. Diabetes was wrecking his body. His kidneys were basically shut down, demanding that he experience dialysis three times a week. He found himself, most recently, in and out of hospitals from the most critical wards to more benign observations. He died, if you will, right at the moment that a physician and a nurse were at his bedside, allowing the heroism of timely medical intervention to “save” his life. Then, as he recovered from this series of personal challenges, he laid his head down one night on the floor of his family home and died quietly while his family slept in other rooms. Twenty five years old…twenty five years young…a tragedy.
It is a tragedy because much of Jonathan’s experience was self-inflicted. He did it to himself. In conversations with me, Jonathan did not deny this immutable truth. He had arrived at youth and, as many youth will admit if they were honest, he ceased to do what his parents encouraged him to do. “Take care of your body, son. Take your medications. Watch your blood sugar levels.” My friends cared for their son and they wanted the best for him. They never ceased in desiring this. They tried to encourage, but you know, sometimes we children don’t care to follow our parents. We just don’t. And Jonathan made his choice.
At the same time, Jonathan was full of life and life’s expectations. He wanted to live. He wanted to have a future. He wanted to experience good things looking forward, even with all his challenges. He was, like many of us, full of hope on the horizon while battling all the giants before us.
He was mindful of his precarious state. He and I had quite a few discussions on the subject of the frailty of life, even when things were going well. He got that clearly. He also was consistent in his questioning the general things of life, one of which was the existence of God and harmonizing that with the reality of this malevolent world. He asked me that question some months before he passed away. He said, “I don’t get how a supposedly good God could allow me to suffer so much. How can he be good or does that mean he doesn’t even exist?” I understood that question coming from him as we sat in a hospital room on the 8th, 9th, 10thor 11th floor (I don’t remember which one; he had been on all of them). I tried the best I could to answer his real desire to figure out that great truth. Does God exist or not? And what about that and the evil we see all around?
He fessed up to me then that he knew he had put himself in that precarious physical condition. But that didn’t diminish his nagging doubt relative to the existence of God. Even having grown up in the church, he asked me, “Why would God cause all that evil on the earth?”
I told him the earth was the way it was, not because of God, rather, because of mankind. We just love to shoot ourselves in the foot and we are real good at it. Yet we still try to do good, but we are woefully bad at it. In fact, we made this mess and we are afforded the privilege to live in our own poo. And, I said, “Just like you, Jonathan, you are afforded the right to live your own choices.”
I told Jonathan that the difference is that while we are unable to get ourselves out of this mess, God, in His great love, reached down to us through the sending of His Son Jesus to deal with our inability. Where we could not, God can. So instead of seeing a god who plays with us as pawns, or one who doesn’t care or doesn’t even exist, we need to see His great love as endeavoring to reach out to us and pull us from this pile of pain, suffering and disappointment.
I was taken back when Jonathan began to cry uncontrollably. His eyes welled up and he tried to speak to me, but he couldn’t. When he finally got some semblance of control, he said to me, “I get it. I understand. I see how God is. I see His demand on me.”
I don’t know what I said to cause that response, but where Jonathan was doubtful before, he sat in front of me resolute. He had a new knowledge of who he was and how he fit in the grand scheme of things. He said to me as honestly and sweetly as one could imagine, “Thank you, Prim.”
My friend had got it. Whatever you want to call it, he had grabbed a hold of God. I don’t know what that meant for Jonathan in the days that passed between that moment and his death, but one thing is sure…that thank you was as much of a sign of transforming as any words that could ever have been spoken.
Jonathan got God to the chagrin of the world’s efforts to steal the last bit of joy that he might have had on this earth. And I will see him again, for the hope that we rely on is found in the God that Jonathan finally apprehended. Despite the pain, the suffering the disappointment in this tragedy of life, I am so ever thankful to God for having known Jonathan Creed, who suffered bravely with his eyes at last on the only hope we have in this challenge laden world.
Leave a Reply