Faith Without Answers?

A good friend of mine lost his six month old son last night.  A few weeks back, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  They did surgery but were unable to get the entire tumor as part of it was in the brain stem.  After a spinal tap on Friday, they determined that the cancer had spread throughout the brain and the spinal cord.  They lost him a little more than 24 hours later.

Back in July, I had the privilege to visit my friends and their newborn in the NICU up in Reston where they live.  Little Connor was struggling and I had the privilege of baptizing him while we were there in the NICU.  I won't soon forget that experience which seems that much more poignant now considering the circumstances.

When my friend called me with the news of the diagnosis on Saturday, I had just finished a morning together with the staff with whom I work.  It was an encouraging time of growth and sharing for us and I was feeling pretty good as I headed to my car.  Funny how life can change on a dime, in an instant.  I told my friend that while I might be pretty good with words in other circumstances, I couldn't find the right words nor did I feel that any would be appropriate.  I just told him that I loved him and his family and that I was here.

This friend made the trip to Williamsburg a year and a half ago when my mom died.  He is a true friend who has always been there and has such a gentle spirit.  Part of what hurts me the most about this is the fact that he and his family are hurting.

We live in a society of instant answers.  We can hop on the internet on our smartphones and have access to all kinds of information.  We are not a society that likes to wait for much of anything.  But at times like this, answers certainly don't flood in, and if they do, they feel too forced and trite, too robotic and insensitive.

When my mom died, I found great comfort in Romans 8.  Paul's words regarding the impact of sin on creation helped me to realize that all that my mom had experienced was not really part of God's original intention.  Sin and pain were not originally intended by God for His creation.  My mom was nearly 73 when she died, but theology falters when you move to the opposite side of the spectrum.

How many times I have heard someone say that a parent should never have to bury their child.  It's a phrase that rings in my head and yet all of us have seen it happen.  Just last month we saw 20 families who had to say good bye to their children.  And in the midst of it all, we ask ourselves, "Why?"  Why did it happen?  Where was God?  Couldn't He have intervened?

My struggles continue as I think back to those first few days and weeks in the NICU for Connor.  Why did the family have to go through all of that only to experience this 6 months later?

Like I said, answers escape me.  I don't have answers that seem adequate to me.  I know that Connor was loved so much by an incredible family in his 6 months on earth.  I know that his brothers adored him and that all of his aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives were enamored with him.  I know his mom and dad accepted him as an incredible gift, even if it was for 6 short months.  Tennyson's words for his friend ring in my ears when I think this through:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

It's been going on 2 years since I lost my mom, and while the situation is very different, there are days when it still feels so fresh.  But that's the impact of love, it lasts long after we think it does, if we truly give ourselves fully to another in love.  Even though it's been nearly 2 years since I lost my mom, I still put reminders of her all around.  In fact, my wife just gave me a framed collage for Christmas with pictures of her from all different moments in her life.

While some might label this prolonged grief, I call it remembering.  My mom made an incredible impact in my life and I want that to become a legacy.  Connor made an incredible impact in his life, albeit a short life, and I know that his family will want nothing more than to pass on that love and legacy to others.

Even through this, I still hold onto faith in God.  Many may criticize me for it, many may call it a crutch, but I have seen too much in my life, good and bad, to believe in coincidence.  I don't have answers, but I trust that God does and I believe that He's much bigger than me.  The words of Psalm 131 resonate:

My heart is not proud, O Lord,
    my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
    or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
    like a weaned child with its mother,
    like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, put your hope in the Lord
    both now and forevermore.

So, wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever you are experiencing, I still believe that there is hope out there.  There might not be adequate answers, but I believe in hope and I believe in a God of hope and peace. 

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Literally

I have learned a lot over the last few weeks about how literal children are in their interpretation of words.  It's something that I think we often take advantage of until we really think through the need to explain metaphors and figures of speech to children and those whose first language is not the English language.

This become readily apparent to me during my vacation while we were at Busch Gardens.  Yet another lesson learned from the amusement park.  Our family had spent the whole day at the park and we knew that the "witching hour" would be upon us soon and the children would start melting down if we tried to push our luck with them.  The weather outside was starting to become questionable and some of the rides were getting shut down.

Somehow, we were able to get on a river ride just after it had reopened and right before it closed for the second time.  My two boys and I rode and we were soaked by the time the ride was over.  So what better way to enter into a nice air-conditioned theater than soaking wet?  Right, but that's just what we did.  My wife and I really wanted to see the "Celtic Fyre" show.  The kids had responded pretty well to all of the shows that they had seen over the days that we were there, so we thought that we would give it another try.

One of the most important questions for any parent to ask prior to going into a theater or show is, "Do you have to go potty?"  I took the opportunity to ask just that and both of my boys said that they did not.  We may have already gone on the way to the theater, so I didn't think anything of it.  The show started and they seemed to be into the music and dancing.

About midway through the show, my 5 year old got up and was doing the "pee pee" dance.  I reluctantly grabbed him and we made our way to the back of the theater to find a bathroom.  As I was leaving, I asked my other son if he needed to go.  He told me that he didn't but I needed more assurance of that.  I kept pressing him, but he insisted that he didn't need to go.  There was no restroom in the theater, so we had to go outside the theater and through the park to find one.  By the time we got outside, it had started raining.  We ran to the bathroom and made our way back to the theater.

We both settled back into our seats to catch the last 10 minutes or so of the show.  Not 30 seconds later, my other son starts saying, "I have to go potty."  I am not a patient man, and this nearly sent me over the edge.  I knew that the show was almost over though, so I asked him if he could hold it.  In fact, my exact words were, "Can you hold it until this is over?"  He said that he could and crawled up on my lap to watch the rest of the show.

As the song played on and the performers danced, I thought that I was in the clear.  We could enjoy the last part of the show and then hit the bathroom prior to leaving the park.  Well, the music stopped and while the note was still hanging in the air and the audience was still applauding, I felt a sudden warmth on my lap.  I looked at my 3 year old and said, "I thought you were going to hold it."  He looked back at me and said, "It was over."  He had a point, I had never specifically told him to wait until the whole show was over, so to him, the ending of the song was reason enough to assume finality and unleash the fury that his bladder had been holding.

I teetered between frustration and amusement.  I told my wife what had happened as she was trying to figure it out as she looked at the constant banter between my son and I.  We laughed.  The show ended and I imagined myself walking around with a distinct smell of urine on me.  Thankfully, I had already been soaked from the ride that we had been on, otherwise, it may have been a "Billy Madison" moment when I tried to convince people that I had peed my pants to make my son feel better.

I will be very careful about my words with my children in the future.  Not that I already hadn't been, but my sensitivity has been heightened.  But it's not just with children, it's with everyone.  Our tendency in this digital age is to allow our communications to be abbreviated.  Abbreviated communications can easily lead to misunderstanding.  I don't know about you, but I hate to be misunderstood.

In this political season in which we find ourselves, it's hard to find people who say what they mean.  My intention with my son was to clearly communicate so that I could be understood, it seems that there are many out there who are trying to communicate in such a vague way that they can be easily misunderstood.  I wish that people would say what they mean and mean what they say.  It would make things much simpler in the understanding arena, trying to decipher the message would be a lot easier, not so much a detective game, but just a listening game.

As I sat and thought about this, I was reminded of James' words in James 5:12, "Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned."  Regardless of what others do, I have a responsibility to communicate as clearly as possible, to allow people to interpret my words as close to "face value" as possible.  I need to do all that is within my ability to eliminate the potential for miscommunication and misunderstanding, which means that I need to think through what I say before I say it.

Everyone hears things different, children aren't the only ones, we need to communicate with that in mind.  People will take us literally, they will take us figuratively, they will misunderstand, they will misinterpret.  All that we can do is be aware of the possibility and do our best to communicate as explicitly as possible.

(By the way, if you don't understand the picture, there was a scene in the movie "Spaceballs" where the soldiers were told to comb the desert.  They took the command very literally.)

Blink

I just finished a book called “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. It was the second book that I have read by Gladwell in the past few months. The main gist of this book was about the process of decision making and whether it is better to make snap decisions or processed and well thought out decisions. Gladwell brings in real life case studies to prove the points that he is making. The book is a few years old, so there were a number of cases that were somewhat dated such as the O.J. Simpson trial and the Amadou Diallo shooting, but they still made sense for anyone who recalls those stories hitting the press when they were current.

There have been many times that I have faced a decision in my life when I researched a lot in an attempt to gain as much information as was available, making sure that I had done my homework before making a decision. Gladwell opines that having too much information can actually be harmful in the decision-making process. Sometimes, snap decisions are the best, especially in staying power for the long term with little regrets felt later.

Towards the end of the book, Gladwell writes, “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” It really made me stop and think. We have so much information at our fingertips, information that we generally assume to be true and reliable. With a few clicks of a button, we can compare and contrast the prices of cars in different states, find the best price on electronics, file our taxes, pay our bills, and do countless other things that used to take much longer. In some ways, the simplification of these tasks has made us lazy. We don’t check things that we should and we end up taking things for granted.

In regards to Gladwell’s quote regarding knowledge and understanding, I have seen this all too often. I have seen it in the business world. I have seen it in the academic world. I have seen it in the church world. Culture has constantly informed us that “knowledge is power” and yet knowledge without understanding can be somewhat useless. We may have tons of knowledge and yet we lack the wherewithal to apply that knowledge. Applied knowledge is understanding. If we fail to apply the knowledge that we have gained, we simply act as living and breathing encyclopedias, dispensing information as if we were experts.

In many ways, these are the remnants of modernist thinking on our culture and society. The modernist looks for initials after names and degrees hanging on walls, while the post-modernist looks for scars and battle marks to prove that there has been some experience behind the knowledge that one has gained.

Within the church, I have seen this all too often as well. If you jump through the right hoops and spout a lot of information or knowledge, you may be respected. Some pastors will even take advantage of the knowledge that they have gained. While I don’t want to overgeneralize the situation, there has been a tendency with some pastors to go right from Christian school to Christian/Bible college to seminary to a church. The exposure to our culture and the world in which they will need to minister is minimal and they are thrust into a situation where they are called to shepherd or lead those who are living in that culture every day. Can that really be effective? Sometimes it can. Oftentimes I think that it can be destructive.

The best example I can think of for the vast difference between knowledge and understanding is in relationships, particularly the marriage relationship. I can know an awful lot about my wife but that does not mean that I understand her. Gaining knowledge causes people to be seen as problems to be solved rather than relationships to be entered into. Gaining understanding of a person generally leads to a relational connection that is far more organic than simple knowledge.

We are creatures created to be in community. We are fallen and broken because of the original sin of pursuing a knowledge that would seemingly elevate us to the same level as God. We have not strayed very far from that sin and our pursuit of knowledge. Our pursuit of understanding should far exceed our pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge will simply puff us up while understanding will connect us with others. I would much rather be known for my understanding than for my knowledge. Knowledge is impersonal while understanding can be more personal.

Where do you stand in your pursuit of knowledge and understanding? Are you impressed with people who know a lot and do a little? Are you a person who knows a lot and does a little? In our pursuit of understanding, we will most likely gain knowledge but I don’t think that the opposite is true. You tell me.