[ Testimony ] Out of the Valley of Tears

[darrell]

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation" (Exodus 34: 6-7, NIV).
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The above verses seem to be a contradiction. On the one hand, they state that God is merciful and forgiving, but in the next sentence declare that He punishes children for their father’s sins! However, this only appears to be a contradiction, but in order to comprehend this, we must understand the nature of this fallen world we live in. In a sense, we are all of us being punished for the sin of our first parents. In their disobedience, Adam and Eve brought death and disorder to the world; they brought the punishment on themselves, but they also brought it on us. Do we not pray that we are “poor banished children of Eve?†Are we not living in “exile†in a “valley of tears�
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God is a God of mercy and justice. Do we not cry out for both? Do we not long for things to be made right? In our heart of hearts, do we not ache to return to the garden? In our human weakness, when we stumble, when we make a mistake and we sin, we expect to be forgiven. But when someone wrongs us, do we not desire justice, and even vengeance? If a little child is pushed, the child pushes back, just as I wanted to hurt the man who killed Johnny. I think all the anguish we feel in our hearts is really the suffering and injustice of a fallen world. We want an eye for an eye, but our ways are not God’s ways. God’s justice is forgiving; His punishment is merciful. In this suffering and disorder that Adam and Eve brought into the world, God has established a certain order: there are consequences for our actions.

 

[darrell]

I’ve been reflecting on consequences the past two weeks. Isabella and I were out for a walk the other day, and we stopped at one of the neighborhood playgrounds. I watched my little daughter climbing on the equipment and playing in the sand. Then she went over to poke at the sprinklers with a stick. After a few minutes, she came running over to me and said, “Water in my shoes!†I chuckled and told her, “If you play in the water, you get wet.â€
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Isabella learned a simple lesson of a greater truth: there are consequences for our actions. If we play in the sprinklers, we get water in our shoes! If we play with fire, we might get burned. If we study hard in school, we get good grades, but more importantly, we will learn the things important to survive and prosper in life. If we eat healthy foods and exercise, we stand a better chance of living a long life. On the other hand, if we eat a lot of fat and sugar, if we’re gluttons and don’t exercise, smoke cigarettes or abuse alcohol or drugs, there’s a greater chance we’ll have health problems, and risk a premature and ugly death. If we break the law and we’re caught, we might go to prison. We could go on and on with examples, but it’s clear that there are direct consequences for the choices we make in our lives.
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Our actions have consequences for others as well as ourselves. A few years ago, someone broke into my mother’s house and robbed her. The thief was eventually caught and went to jail – a direct consequence of his own actions, but he hurt my mother as well as himself. Now, my mother is not a wealthy woman, but far worse than the loss of her possessions, the man stole her sense of security. For months afterward, my mother lived in fear that the robber might come back.
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The way we live our lives has consequences for our children – they live in the world we create. If we love our children and spend time with them, teaching them to have good morals and by example to have faith in God, then they will grow up to have confidence and a sense of self-worth, good moral values and strong faith. (Of course, they may grow up to reject all they have been taught, as I did; but the foundation has been laid, and by the grace of God, they may one day re-embrace the truth.) On the other hand, if we neglect to spend time with our children because we are too busy chasing after our own selfish entertainments, then they will learn that family isn’t important. If we are never home because we’re working overtime to buy new cars, bigger homes or expensive wardrobes, our children will learn materialism. If we spend more time watching TV or playing sports than we do in prayer, how will our children learn to put God in the first place in their lives? If children grow up in violent, abusive, neglectful or alcoholic homes, they may grow up to be violent, abusive or alcoholic, and the cycle may perpetuate for generations…

 

[darrell]

There are eternal consequences as well: the way we live our lives here on Earth determines where we will spend eternity. If we lead good lives, always trying to do what is right, seeking to help others, then we have the hope of eternity in Heaven. However, if we are selfish, indifferent to the suffering of others, mean, cruel or predatory, immoral, and never seeking after what is good and true, then we risk eternal damnation.
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So there are consequences for the way we live our lives and the choices we make, not only for ourselves, but for everyone around us. Did God take Johnny because of my sins? No, I don’t think so, at least not as a punishment. However, I have wondered if the whole purpose of my son’s short life was to lead me back to the right path. I don’t know. I do know that nothing happens unless God wills it or allows it. Nothing. He is in complete control. The God who knew our names before He formed us in the womb knows us in our hearts better than we know ourselves – our deepest longings and our truest desires. He knows the choices we will make before we do, and in His grace and <ST1:p<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com

Providence</st1:City></ST1:p, He will lead us from the deepest, darkest pit to the light, if that is what we truly desire. In my waywardness, He brought me to truth. In my arrogance, He brought me to my knees.
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But I came to this understanding much later. In those weeks and months after Johnny was killed, I was in a very dark place.<O:p</O:p

 

[darrell]

Chapter 12

What is mankind that you make so much of them, that you give them so much attention, that you examine them every morning and test them every moment? (Job 7: 17-18, NIV)
I cry to you, God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me… (Job 30: 20, NIV)
Let the Almighty answer me… (Job 31: 35, NIV)
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I had a bottle of painkillers the doctor had prescribed for me. My legs had been smashed by the car door in the accident; it wasn’t a serious injury, but one day my leg was bothering me... I was very health conscious and anti-medication back in those days, and didn’t believe in taking drugs unless absolutely necessary, but for some reason, I decided to take a painkiller that day. I figured why not use them. What difference did it make? The narcotic had an unexpected effect: it took away my emotional pain, or more accurately, it made me feel like I just didn’t care. I actually thought to myself, “I can just get addicted to painkillers.” But I realized that was a stupid idea and pretty much rejected it right away.
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Then another thought popped into my head, an evil thought, an idea I never in a million years would have ever imagined I would even consider: I could kill myself. I suddenly realized that I really didn’t want to be alive any more; the thought of being dead was more appealing to me than to go on living. I did not want to go on living. I wanted to die.
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I knew that suicide was a serious thing – a permanent thing – and I was with it enough to realize not to do anything rash. So I decided to take some time to consider this idea of killing myself, and I took that bottle of pills and placed it up high on a shelf where I could see it. As I went about my business in the days that followed, I would look up from time to time and see that bottle just sitting there, waiting for me if I decided to use it.
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Then, one day, I considered what effect my committing suicide would have on Liane and Dusty: what would that do to them? I knew it wouldn’t be good. Dusty had already lost his brother, and if I killed myself, he would have to grow up without his father too (and I knew what that was like). And Liane and Dusty both would have to go on knowing that I had committed suicide. Would Dusty blame himself? Would he think I hadn’t cared enough about him to stick around? And what about Liane? She was a strong woman, but maybe that would be more than she could handle. I realized that I had a responsibility. Liane and Dusty needed me, and I knew I couldn’t do this thing. Somehow, I had to find a way to go on and be there for them. I think that decision not to kill myself may have been one of the first truly selfless acts I ever made.

 

[darrell]

My decision to go on living left me in torment. On the one hand, there was the grief; there really are no words to describe what a parent feels at the death of a child. I missed Johnny terribly, and I would have given anything to see him, to hear his voice and to hold him just one more time. Never again would I hear him say, “Hey Dad, watch this!†Never again would he ask me to “build something†with him. Never again would he fight with his brother. Never again would his mother hold him. Never again would I pick him up from school and see the joy on his face as he ran and jumped into my arms. Never again…
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Brokenhearted really is a fit expression. I told people that the ache literally felt as if I had a hole in my heart, and I believed some part of me died on the day Johnny was killed. Really, I never was the same man after that. I tried getting back on the bike, unsuccessfully. I just couldn’t push myself to ride hard, and after a couple of miles, I would turn around and go home. Whatever it was inside of me that had driven me all those years was just gone.
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Beyond the grief, really, my whole view on life had been shattered; everything I thought I believed about our existence here on this earth had been destroyed in one blow. One of my cycling friends, Dan Chew (who ironically happened to be an atheist), asked me one day how Johnny’s death had effected my beliefs, and that’s really what got me to thinking about it. The first thing I realized was that I wasn’t in control. Up until then, I had believed that with enough will power and hard work, I could create my own destiny. But Johnny’s death made me realize that the best laid plans in the world could be brought to nothing with a single stroke of fate.
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Some people who came to visit and pay their respects during this time wanted to pray with us. This began to make me very angry. What good will their prayers do? I thought to myself. Will they give us our son back? They didn’t protect him to begin with. I wasn’t sure if God even existed. I kept thinking of Father Jim’s words: “His potential is not lost; he’s doing God’s work now.†I wanted to believe that more than anything, because I knew that if there was no God, if the atheists were right and once we die that’s it, then that meant that everything Johnny was no longer existed. That meant my little boy was just so much organic matter rotting in the ground, and that thought was more than I could bear.
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The thought that my son no longer existed destroyed me. Finally, one day at home alone, I found myself wandering through the house, desperate, almost in a panic, as if I might find the answer I was searching for in one of the empty rooms. I fell down on my knees on a dark staircase, raised my hands to the heavens and I cried out: “Please God, if you’re there, if you are everything I’ve been taught you are, then you can change this! Take it back!†I pleaded. “Please take it back!†As ridiculous as it sounds, I was actually asking God to turn back time, and when He didn’t, I tried bargaining. “Then at least let me know that you’re there! Give me a sign. I’ll give my life to you. I will live the rest of my life for you! Please, I just want to know the truth. I just want to knw the truth!†I shook my fists and screamed, and I raged against God.

 

[darrell]

Chapter 13
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In my distress, I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry (Jonah 2: 2, NIV).
…he cried out, “Lord, save me!†Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,†he said, “why did you doubt?†(Matthew 14: 30-31).
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God answers prayers. In retrospect, it really is amazing how fast God answered my call, but at the time, it didn’t seem that way at all. Now, I understand that He had already answered mine and countless other anguished cries throughout all of human history, echoed in the words of Jesus Himself on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?†(Mark 15: 34) Of course, I still wanted Him to speak to me, to give me a sign or to make Himself known to me in some undeniable way, but that didn’t happen, at least not in that moment or in the way I wanted. God sometimes does manifest Himself to individuals in a physical way: He spoke to Moses from a burning bush, and Jesus appeared to Paul in a blinding light on the road to <ST1:p<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com

Damascus</st1:City></ST1:p. Even today, there are some who encounter God in a similar manner, in near-death and after-death experiences, and others who suddenly find themselves in God’s presence, feeling His great love. I’ve read many accounts, and I’ve actually gotten to know and become friends with a few of these individuals. Most of us, though, have to walk by faith. We cannot fully comprehend why – it is a mystery. We can understand partially in Jesus’ words to my Confirmation Saint, Thomas the Apostle:
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Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed†(John 20: 24-29, NIV).

 

[darrell]

This speaks in part to free will. God could change all of us in an instant. He could take away all our disordered appetites, our rebelliousness and our selfishness, and make us good and holy all at once. But He doesn’t. So all of this we go through in this life – the trials, obstacles and challenges, the triumphs and disappointments, the joys and the sorrows, all the choices we make, the struggle – must have great importance, or else God wouldn’t ask us to go through it. He values our freedom.
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God gives us just enough to seek Him, and never enough to fully find Him. To do more would inhibit our freedom, and our freedom is very dear to God (Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy). (1)
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From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would week him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us (Acts 17: 26-27, NIV).
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At some stage in people’s lives, Jesus comes and gently knocks at the hearts of those properly disposed. Perhaps for you, he did this through a friend or a priest, or, who knows, perhaps he arranged a series of coincidences which enabled you to realize that you are loved by God. (2)
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This understanding of this gift of free will challenges us. The skeptical reaction to this Doctrine of freedom is one of doubt: to say it’s just a rationalization invented to explain why God doesn’t manifest Himself to each individual. Free will is a gauntlet thrown down before us, for it is a challenge to reject the ways of a selfish world and to follow the road of denial of self. However, without freedom there is no responsibility, and without individual accountability there is no justice. Free will challenges us because true freedom is not following one’s own desires; real freedom is in seeking all that is good and true and just.
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Still, this understanding of the gift of freedom does not full satisfy. Why does God choose to manifest Himself to some but not to most? In all humility we must admit that God is God, and we are not. Even though our hearts cry out for understanding, in all humbleness we must accept that His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. However, we can believe Jesus when He tells us that faith is a blessing; we can trust that there is value in not having seen.
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Saint Tomas the Apostle, pray for us!

(1) Hansen, R., (1991). Mariette in Ecstasy <ST1:p<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com

</st1:State>New York</ST1:p: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
(2)Pope Benedict XVI, May 12, 2007, <ST1:p<st1:City w:st="on">Fazenda da Esperança</st1:City>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Brazil</st1:country-region></ST1:p. Vatican.va

 

[darrell]

Chapter 14
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Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened (Matthew 7: 7-8, NIV).
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God answers prayers. Back on that dark staircase almost six years ago, as I cried out to God with all my heart, and as I listened for Him to answer me, the silence seemed to echo the message of an unbelieving world: there is no God…there is no God…there is no God… Not knowing was more than I could bear. I had reached the point where nothing was more important to me than knowing the truth about our existence in this life. I became a seeker, and Jesus promised, “Seek and you will find.â€<O:p</O:p
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That night, after Liane and Dusty had gone to bed, I sat in front of my computer feeling totally dejected and miserable. I was lost, and I didn’t know what to do or where to turn. What I did next was crazy, but I was desperate, and desperate men take desperate actions: I tried sending God an email! I actually typed “God†into the address box, and of course, in return I got an “error: invalid email address†message in return. I tried searching the internet and found a bunch of atheist web sites; reading them just plunged me deeper into despair.
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In my anguish, I reached out to others. At that time, I belonged to an ultramarathon cycling internet forum, and word of Johnny’s death had reached all my riding friends across the country. It was in this forum that my atheist friend Dan Chew had asked me how Johnny’s death had effected my beliefs, and so I began sharing what I was going through, my doubts and questions, pouring my heart out to my friends and I-don’t-know-how-many strangers across the country.
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I exchanged several emails with another former RAAM rider, Michael Shermer, now a famous atheist and founder of The Skeptics Society, and editor of its magazine Skeptic. He told me he didn’t believe in God or an afterlife. I always found Michael to be a friendly, moral and ethical person, but his words to me at that time only added to my despair. [Recently, as I was reflecting on this, I looked up some of Shermer’s writings on the net. I didn’t read a lot, but of what I did read, I found his argument to be lacking.]<O:p</O:p
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I had cried out to God with all my being, and in those first minutes and hours, my answer had been empty silence. I’d begun to look, and initially what I found was skepticism and unbelief. It seemed my worst fear was true: there was no God. Or if there was, He wasn’t answering me. Why would He not answer me?I was lost – a man without hope.<O:p</O:p

 

[darrell]

The very next day, a friend from work, Joann Cilbrith, sent me an email. Joann wrote that she’d been having a reoccurring dream that troubled her. In her dream, she saw Jesus, and Johnny was sitting on His knee looking up at Him. She saw me at Jesus’ feet, weeping, and He had His hand on my shoulder. The one other thing I remember from Joann’s email was she told me that although I didn’t know it, there was a great spiritual battle going on around me.
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Some people on the ultracycling forum were upset and felt it wasn’t the proper place to be discussing these things, but others came to my defense and said I was their friend and I should keep on for as long as I needed. I began to get quite a few responses from different people telling me about their faith experiences, some even sharing mystical experiences. At first, for the most part it all sounded like platitudes and without substance to me, but gradually I began to have a little hope.
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Looking back, I’m amazed at what a “Doubting Thomas†I really was, because now I recognize that God was pouring out all this grace, in little signs and the people he brought into my life, and yet it wasn’t enough for me; I wanted to know. Still, I didn’t give up seeking. As long as I continued to hope that it was possible to find the truth, I was going to keep on searching for it, because I knew one thing for sure: if there was no God, there was no hope.

 

[darrell]

I received another email from a woman I didn’t know. [I don’t remember her name, and the records of all these correspondence were lost when my hard drive crashed a few years ago.] This woman shared with me that she was a psychologist, university professor and a Christian. She had read about what I was going through and recommended three books she thought would help me: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, (1) When God Doesn’t Make Sense by Dr. James Dobson, (2) and The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. (3) I went straight to the bookstore and bought all three books.
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The thing that struck me in Mere Christianity was the argument that we find the best evidence for God in ourselves – we have a conscience. Lewis put it this way: “…human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it.” Also, “The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts; it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.” In my own life this has been inescapable. For example, I was taught that sex outside of marriage is wrong. However, I grew up during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. All those years as an unbeliever, I rationalized that if I didn’t believe in God, there was no reason to hold myself to the traditional Christian values, and as long as I was honest and responsible about it, I should be able to do whatever I wanted. I told myself that any guilt I might feel was simply the result of my upbringing, nothing more than parents trying to control their children by making them feel guilty. Yet I was never able to get rid of that “tune” inside of me.
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The other night, as I was reflecting on these things, I pulled Mere Christianity off the shelf and found the following words highlighted: “Christians, then, believe that an evil power has made himself for the present the prince of this world. One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe – a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin. The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees…that this universe is at war.” And I remembered my friend Joann telling me about the spiritual battle going on around me. Lewis’s writings gave me a lot to think about; but it still wasn’t enough for me, and I moved on to the next book.

(1) Lewis, C.S. (1952). Mere Christianity <ST1:pSan Francisco</ST1:p: Harper Collins.
(2)Dobson, J. (1993). When God doesn’t make sense <ST1:p<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com

Wheaton</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">IL</st1:State></ST1:p: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
(3) Strobel, L. (1998). The case for Christ <ST1:place <st1:City w:st="on">Grand Rapids</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">MI</st1:State></ST1:p: Zondervan.

 

[darrell]

In When God Doesn’t Make Sense, James Dobson shares about a great tragedy in his own life, of when four friends were killed in a plane crash and how he came to make sense of it. He concludes by putting it all into the proper Christian perspective: if one has faith, death is not the “ultimate tragedyâ€; if one believes in God and the promise of eternity with Him, death takes on an entirely new dimension; “the righteous are far better off in the next world than in this one.â€
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Of course, this would have given me great comfort and hope, if only I could believe it; but I couldn’t just accept it because it would give me peace of mind. If I was going to believe, I wanted it to be because it was the truth. This brought me to the third book.
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Lee Strobel presented his own personal search for truth in TheCase for Christ. Strobel was an investigative reporter working for the Chicago Tribune who uncovered the Ford Pinto exploding gas tank scandal back in 1980. An atheist, Strobel was at first annoyed, then intrigued by the changes he observed in his wife after she became a Christian. He decided to investigate Christianity with the same techniques he used as a professional journalist. He interviewed university professors, biblical scholars, historians, archaeologists, psychologists, theologians, medical doctors, philosophers and scientists in his examination of the facts about Jesus of Nazareth. Strobel himself experienced a conversion in the process. After finishing this book, I remember very clearly thinking that either Jesus of Nazareth was and is everything He claimed to be, or He had perpetrated the greatest and cruelest fraud in history.

 

[darrell]

Chapter 15
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The atheists would have us believe that the Christian religion is based on a fairy tale or a fraud. There are those who suggest that Jesus never even existed – He’s just a myth. That’s a bit hard to swallow considering our calendar is based on Him: this is the year 2007 AD -- anno Domini – the year of the Lord. Clearly, something very significant happened 2007 years ago, something that changed the way we keep track of time, and that something was a poor carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth. Without a doubt, He existed, which leaves us with the question: who was this Jesus?
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Some try to say that he was simply a wise teacher or a prophet, and I suppose if all He had left behind were His profound words, that might be possible. But He left behind much more than words. He left behind an empty tomb… He also left behind His Apostles and Disciples who were witnesses to the empty tomb and to His many miracles; they were witnesses to the Resurrected Christ, and these followers of Jesus were persecuted and killed for their testimony. Would they have chosen a road of self-denial and persecution for a myth? Would they have gone to their deaths for a lie or a fraud? Here we have the witnesses – the early Christian martyrs who willingly went to their deaths rather than deny the Truth.
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When I closed Lee Strobel’s book, I knew that this Jesus was either a fraud, or He was and is the Son of God. And I didn’t believe He was a fraud – the evidence didn’t support that. At that point, I would have said I found the Christian faith to be reasonable, but I didn’t want reasonable. I wanted more; I wanted something solid and with substance, something real to grab a hold of, something immovable to stand on. I wanted the fullness of truth. I wanted a rock. I still didn’t know if it was possible to knowthe truth, but for the first time since Johnny’s death, I began to feel excitement and the stirrings of hope.

 

[darrell]

Christians themselves can be the cause of unbelief. However, they are also the cause for belief; for it is when we see people’s lives changed that we can believe in Jesus. Many are the accounts of those who have encountered the Lord, in near death experiences, in illuminating moments where individuals experience His great love, experiences where God speaks in an audible voice or an interior voice, and these experiences change the individual forever. For the rest of us, and I think this is the majority, we are asked to walk by faith. This is a mystery we cannot fully comprehend because God is God, and we are His creations. Does a sculpture understand the hands that molded it? Is an idea aware of the mind that conceived it? No, but we are more than created things; we are human beings, made in the image of our God, and He loves us. A child in the womb is warm and safe; baby is aware of mother, but this is the limit of its knowing. When baby is born into the world, it comes to know mother in a new way. As the child journeys through life, it grows in knowledge and understanding. So too, just as I respond to each of my children individually, our Father in Heaven gives generously to all who listen for His voice, each according to his or her need. Just as Jesus promised <ST1:p<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com

St. Paul</st1:City></ST1:p: "My grace is sufficient for you†(2 Corinthians 12: 9, NIV), so too, in our lack of understanding we can trust in the higher purpose of our Father in Heaven.
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In those weeks and months after Johnny was killed, as my heart ached, as my very being cried out in anguish for things to be made right, even as all seemed hopeless to me, God’s grace flowed abundantly. As I read books in search of the truth, as I talked and cried with friends, and with strangers, God lit my path in still other ways.
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I made an appointment to meet with Father Jim, and I shared with him everything I had been going through, including my feelings of guilt. I asked for the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and I made a good and sincere confession – it had been a while. When Father Jim said the words of absolution, I knew in my heart that if there was a God, He had already forgiven me. Looking back, I recognize the grace. It’s like climbing a mountain: as you’re walking, you focus on the path in front of you; but when you stop and turn around, you realize how far you’ve come, and you see things you didn’t see before. Father Jim loaned me a couple of books: Heaven, the Heart’s Deepest Longing by Peter Kreeft, (1) and St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.(2)
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The sheer size of the Summa Theologicaoverwhelmed me; I wasn’t ready for it. I came close to setting Kreeft’s book aside as well, because I wasn’t looking for philosophy; I needed something more concrete (as if ideas and reason weren’t real). Except everything Kreeft said made perfect sense. He has a way of stating things in a very down-to-earth way, and at the same time, his writing is deep and rich. Kreeft became one of my favorite authors. This passage in Heaven, the Heart’s Deepest Longing was an epiphany for me:
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There is a very old wisdom, quite out of fashion today, that says we are not supposed to be happy here. In fact no one is really happy here, and the “pursuit of happinessâ€, which the American Declaration of Independence declares one of our “inalienable rightsâ€, is in fact the surest and silliest way to unhappiness. This is not a wisdom we like to hear, and for that reason we had better give it extra hearing. It is a wisdom not just from the past, but also from within, from the soft spot in us that we cover up with our hard surface, from the vulnerable little child in us that we mask with our invulnerable adult. Our adult pretends to want pleasure, power, wealth, health or success, then gets it, then pretends to be happy. But our child knows what we want – and, as children, we know we don’t have it. Romanticists are wrong: children are not happy. They are too honest with themselves for that illusion…(3)
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Kreeft argues that none of us are really happy: “…it is precisely when life treats us best that the deepest dissatisfaction arises…That’s why rich and powerful modernity is not happier than previous cultures... Our greatest bitterness comes not only in the sham sweetness of riches and power but also in the middle of our truest earthly sweetness: hearing a symphony, seeing a sunset, complete sexual love. It is highest life that sets us longing for something more than this life.â€(4)
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(1) Kreeft, K. (1989). Heaven: The heart’s deepest longing <ST1:p<st1:City w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:City></ST1:p: Ignatius Press.
(2) Aquinas, T. (1948). Summa theologica <ST1:p<st1:State w:st="on">New York</st1:State></ST1:p: Benziger Bros.
(3) Kreeft, K. (1989). Heaven: The heart’s deepest longing <ST1:p<st1:City w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:City></ST1:p: Ignatius Press, 56-57.
(4) Kreeft, K. (1989). Heaven: The heart’s deepest longing <ST1:p<st1:City w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:City></ST1:p: Ignatius Press, 57-58.

 

[darrell]

Lee Strobel’s book, The Case for Christ,had such an impact on me that I bought the sequel. In The Case for Faith,Strobel used the same format of interviewing various experts to address some of the biggest and most common objections to Christianity: suffering, evil, evolution, etc.(5) Interestingly, the first person interviewed in this book was Peter Kreeft! All my doubts and questions disappeared as I read, and by the end, I was left with only one major hurdle to belief – the seeming hiddeness of God.
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Why would our Father remain out of sight of His children? Why would our Creator remain hidden from His Creation? The Christian answer seemed almost cryptic, a clever invention: while it makes sense (because it’s true), “free will†didn’t fully satisfy. After all, an all-knowing God knows that in my heart I will follow Him if only I can knowthat He is real. And yet He asks us to believe and to follow Him.
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One day in the middle of all this turmoil, my friend Laura Kinney called me on the phone. I thought back to the day of Johnny’s funeral: after the Mass, there came a moment to myself; I looked around the church and spotted Laura sitting alone by the baptismal font. Our eyes met, and she smiled and walked over to me. She told me that a day would come when everyone else had gone and I would be all alone and would need a friend, and she told me to call her when that day came. I hadn’t remembered to call Laura, but she remembered to call me. I don’t recall much of our conversation that day, but what really struck me was the timing of her call: it came just as all seemed hopeless to me. Laura also spoke of the hand of God and the face of God, but her words didn’t make sense to me at the time.
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As I’ve been reflecting on all this and trying to put it together in a coherent way, I recently pulled another book by Peter Kreeft off the shelf, Three Philosophies of Life.(6) I began reading his commentary on the book of Job, and only now made sense of Laura’s words about the face of God. Kreeft explains that the thing Job longed for most, the thing we all long for most, even if it means death, is to see God’s face:
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Saint Augustine</st1:City>, in his sermon “On the Pure Love of Godâ€, imagines God coming to you with a question similar to the one he asked <ST1:p<st1:City w:st="on">Saint Thomas</st1:City></ST1:p. The point is a kind of self-test to find out whether you have “the pure love of Godâ€, that is, whether you are obeying the first and greatest commandment, to love God with your whole heart and soul, in that deep, obscure center of your being where your “fundamental option†decides your eternal destiny. Augustine supposes that God proposed to you a deal and said, “I will give you anything you want. You can possess the whole world. Nothing will be impossible for you. You will have infinite power. Nothing will be a sin, nothing forbidden. You will never die, never have pain, never have anything you do not want and always have anything you do want except – for just one thing: you will never see my face.†Would you take that deal? If not, you have the pure love of God. For look what you just did: you gave up the world, and more – all possible worlds, all imagined worlds, all desired worlds – just for God. Augustine asks, “Did a chill arise in your heart when you heard the words ‘you will never see my face’?†That chill is the most precious thing in you; that is the pure love of God.(7)
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(5) Strobel, L. (2000). The case for faith <ST1:place <st1:City w:st="on">Grand Rapids</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">MI</st1:State></ST1:p: Zondervan.
(6) Kreeft, K. (1989). Three philosophies of life <ST1:p<st1:City w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:City></ST1:p: Ignatius Press.
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(7) Kreeft, K. (1989). Heaven: The heart’s deepest longing <ST1:p<st1:City w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:City></ST1:p: Ignatius Press, 49.

 

[darrell]

Just this morning, as I was praying, I thought of a black hole, a star so dense that it has collapsed on itself. The gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape it, and we can’t see the collapsed star; all we can see is a void. But just because all we can see is darkness, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. On the contrary, the mass is so dense and great that nothing can escape its pull, not even light; everything is drawn to it. When we look beyond the event horizon (the boundary of the black hole – the point a distance from the center at which the force of gravity no longer overpowers light), we again see stars. The farther from the black hole, the more scattered the stars, and as we get closer to the black hole, the number and closeness of the stars becomes greater and greater. The effect is that all the heavenly bodies appear to point to a dark void.
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Spiritually speaking, this was the point I had come to: I seemed to be staring at a dark void, a God I couldn’t see. Yet everything appeared to be pointing to a God who was very real. I had done everything I could to find the truth, examined all the evidence, and the facts supported that there was a God, that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Truth. It seemed there was nothing more I could do to knowthe truth of our existence in this life; I was left with a Mystery (of course. After all, God is God, and I am just a man). And this left me with a choice. I could choose to go on not believing in anything, which would be to choose despair because I understood that if there was no God, then there were no absolute truths, no right and wrong, and no justice; it was all relative. If the atheists were right, when we died that was it, and whether or not we had a “good†life depended largely on the circumstances we’re born into – pure chance. I knew that in the Christian view, even in a life of nothing but suffering, there was hope in eternity. As Peter Kreeft said, “The point of our lives in this world isn’t comfort, but training and preparation for eternity.†I realized that to believe in anything other than the promise of Christianity meant there was no hope.
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[darrell]

God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world, and be happy with Him forever in the next.(8)<O:p</O:p
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Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do no see (Hebrews 11: 1, NIV).
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I decided that seeing wasn’t believing. I decided that faith was the only choice that made any sense. I chose God, and decided to start getting to know my Father in Heaven, and His Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Right then and there, I told Jesus that up until that point, I had lived my life for myself; now I was going to live the rest of it for Him. And I meant it. I was His. For the first time since Johnny’s death, I felt hope.
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At the time, I would have said my decision was purely rational (and Faith is rational. Nothing makes more sense). Again, looking back, I see so much grace: in the emails from strangers, in the phone call from a friend at my darkest hour, in coming across a passage just as I’m reflecting on that very topic, in a friend telling me of a dream just as I cry for help, in the people who have come into my life, and in the words of the daily scripture readings. Holy Spirit speaks! The skeptics can dismiss it all as coincidence. “For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation will suffice."(9) Just as the stars in the heavens point to the seeming void of a black hole, so too I see all these things pointing to a very real God. I see His hand everywhere.
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I met with Father Jim several times before he was reassigned to another parish. On our last visit, I said something about figuring out what God wanted me to do with my life. “What do you think God wants you to do?†he asked.
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“I don’t know… Observe the sacraments, try to live a good life and do what’s right the best I can.â€
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Father Jim smiled.
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(8) Published by the world apostolate of <ST1:pFatima</ST1:pl. (1999). Basic catechism of Christian doctrine NJ: AMI Press.<O:p</O:p
(9) Joseph Dunninger