Day 65
Rolling
While observing Porpoise, one notices they don’t swim like most of the fish inhabiting the sea. Most fish swimming in the ocean are never actually seen by the casual observer. The distinguishing characteristic of Porpoise, dolphins and whales from other sea creatures, is that they roll across the surface of the water, allowing us to catch a glimpse of their visible existence.
My wife answered the home phone at about 3:45PM. It was Norman. He was calling from a convenience store pay phone in an adjacent city. He said he had been in a wreck driving home from community college. He didn’t want to go home and face his parents just yet. He wanted to come over and talk to us for a while and settle down first. The police had impounded his car as the accident involved another person who Norman said was seriously injured and taken away by ambulance to the nearest hospital. Norman was not injured. The Police investigating the accident told him it was unlikely he would be cited. My wife called me at work and asked me to meet her and Norman at our house. Jacki was going to pick up Norman.
I arrived home to find Norman pacing the living room, visibly shaking. This was an eighteen year-old young man who had recently obtained his driver’s license. He had completed an important exam at school that he had studied for over several days. He was feeling great because he thought he had done very well. He was driving home to share the good news with his mom. “I was on a roll man!” he exclaimed.
A middle-aged man on a bicycle darted directly in front of Norman’s vehicle. Norman’s vehicle was traveling at the speed limit, forty mph. The bicycle disintegrated on impact and the rider was partially impaled in Norman’s front windshield. (We learned later that the police officers at the incident intentionally told Norman that the man on the bicycle was alive, even though he had no vital signs when they arrived. They did this so Norman wouldn’t go into shock.).
Typically a quiet and contemplative young man, Norman was talking very rapidly, couldn’t sit down, was waving his arms in the air, eyes darting around the room, and wanted to go for a walk. Walk we did, for the next several hours. I listened to every imaginable question that pierced this young adult’s soul. “Why me? Why today? What if I had only taken another road or left a few minutes earlier or later? What are my parents going to say? Oh! That poor man and his family. Am I going to prison?”
Norman lived with his parents and three sisters in a one-bedroom apartment. Although he was proud to have obtained his driver’s license, his family couldn’t afford any insurance. His family struggled to put food on the table and pay the rent. His community college tuition and books were paid through a subsidized program for the poor. They didn’t even have the money to fix the broken windshield on the car.
During the next several months, Norman became a recluse, cloistered in the family’s apartment. He was filled with shame and grief to such a degree that we became concerned for his vulnerability to harm himself. His angst turned toward God with questions like, “Why did He allow this to happen? Is He trying to get my attention? What sort of God is this anyway? Was it because my faith was weak? That must be it!”
Have you ever been on a roll or just rolling along in life when seemingly out of nowhere catastrophe strikes? I have. I’m sure you have too. I’ve known people whose lives have been literally destroyed by a single occurrence, like the one Norman experienced. I find the casualties of these unfortunate incidents have something in common; somewhere along the line, after the incident, their angst turns toward God, just as Norman’s did. What’s peculiarly sinister about these casualties is that they take personal responsibility for something they had absolutely no control over whatsoever. Like Norman, the name of far too many of these casualties is the same, faith.
Why? Why is faith so frequently a casualty of the unpredictable, the horrific, the unanticipated and the unexpected that undeniably occur in each and every life? I think it’s because many of us buy into a bunch of hooey packaged in a God wrapper. As one author says, “We’ve learned to our sorrow that religious people lie more than most others—and lies in the name of God are the worst lies of all.” [i] You see, Norman, like far too many of us, have bought into a pack of lies that suggests, “if you believe and do this or that, you will somehow wall yourself off from disease, financial insecurity, unhappiness, the inexplicable, and anything that might make life uncomfortable.”
Based upon buying into this nonsense, when those things occur in the lives of folks like Norman, they feel abandoned by God. They wake up to the fact that the hooey God’s people have soaked their souls with, is just that, hooey.
For me, the essence of faith is that it is alive, malleable and has a composition similar to a mosaic that changes its constitution over time. One writer captures the essence I’m attempting to convey when he writes, “The central authority figures in my life told me that God was real and that Christianity was true, and I had no reason to think otherwise. When I was in my teens, faith meant believing claims that went beyond what we knew and — as my doubt increased—that seemed highly unlikely to be true. But, I thought that’s why we talk so much about faith; faith meant believing the improbable.” [ii]
I’m all for faith that embraces the improbable. Hooey that unequivocally promises that the inevitable in life is less likely to occur to you or yours is akin to urging unwitting folks to ride bicycles in front of SUV’s moving forty miles per hour, is not faith. Hooey that smells appetizing is still hooey. The next time you meet someone like Norman, who is struggling to stay afloat on the sea of faith, regurgitating the hooey they have been fed throughout their lifetime, remember this: “Faith is more than holding the “right” beliefs; it is holding the “right’ (that is, the “least of these”) hands.” [iii] Hold them tight. Don’t let them abandon faith. Facilitate the disposal of hooey. Roll with em.
NOTES
[i] Peterson, Eugene Eat This Book – A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, MI/ Cambridge U.K. © 2006 by Eugene H. Peterson p.68.
[ii] Borg, Marcus J. The God We Never Knew – Beyond Dogmatic Religion to A More Authentic Faith, HarperSanFrancisco-A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, Copyright © 1997 by Marcus J. Borg,p.21.
[iii] Sweet, Leonard. Out of the Question… Into the Mystery – Getting Lost in the Godlife Relationship, WaterBrook Press Colorado Springs, CO Copyright 2004 by Leonard I. Sweet, p. 21.
