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Three Gifts for Hard Times

What I've learned as life has taken a turn for what most people think is the worst.

William J. Stuntz | posted 8/28/2009 09:36AM

Survivors of some horrible plague or battle often find themselves wracked with guilt: Why did I live while so many died? Though I had no battle scars, I used to feel a similar sense of guilt. I married the only woman I've ever loved. We have three terrific children. I have a secure job that I love and that pays well. Sometimes I would ask God: Why have you been so kind to me? Why have I gotten such an easy life?

I don't ask those questions anymore.

A little over nine years ago, while driving home from a family vacation, my car got a flat tire. When I started to change it, something nasty happened at the base of my back. Ever since, my lower back and the top half of my right leg have hurt. After two operations, dozens of injections, physical therapy, psychotherapy, and thousands of pills, my back and right leg hurt every waking moment, and most of those moments, they hurt a lot. Living with chronic pain is like having an alarm clock taped to your ear with the volume turned up—and you can't turn it down. You can't run from it; the pain goes where you go and stays where you stay. Chronic pain is the unwelcome guest who will not leave when the party is over.

A few months after my back turned south, my family and I moved when I accepted a job at Harvard Law School. Our family began to unravel. One of our children suffered a life-threatening disease, and my marriage fell apart.

Those crises faded with time but left deep scars. Early last year, in February 2008, another piece of bad news struck me: Doctors found a large tumor in my colon; a month later, films turned up tumors in both of my lungs. In the past year, I've had two cancer surgeries and six months of intensive chemotherapy. I've been off chemo for a few months, but I'm still nauseous much of the time and exhausted most of the time. Cancer kills, but cancer treatment takes a large bite out of one's pre-diseased life, as though one were dying in stages. Some of that stolen life returns when the treatment stops. But only some.

Today, my back and especially my right leg hurt as much as they ever have, and the odds are overwhelming that they will hurt for as long as this life lasts. Cancer will very probably kill me within the next two years. I'm 50 years old.

Such stories are common, yet widely misunderstood. Two misunderstandings are worth noting here. First, illness does not beget virtue. Cancer and chronic pain make me sick; they don't make me good. I am who I was, only more diseased. Second, though I deserve every bad thing that has ever happened to me, those things didn't happen because I deserve them. Life in a fallen world is more arbitrary than that. Plenty of people deserve better from life than I do, but get much worse. Some deserve worse and get much better. Something important follows: The question we are most prone to ask when hardship strikes—why me?—makes no sense. That question presupposes that pain, disease, and death are distributed according to moral merit. They aren't. We live in a world in which innocent children starve while moral monsters prosper. We may see justice in the next life, but we see little of it in this one.

Thankfully, God gives better and more surprising gifts to those living in hard times. Three gifts are especially sweet.

Redeeming Curses

First, God usually doesn't remove life's curses. Instead, he redeems them.

Joseph's story makes this point. Joseph was victimized by two horrible injustices: one at the hands of his brothers who sold him into slavery, the other thanks to Potiphar's wife, who falsely accused him of attempted rape. God did not undo these injustices; they remained real and awful. Instead, God used those wrongs to prevent a much worse one: mass starvation. When Joseph later met with his brothers, he said this about the transaction that started the train rolling: "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." That doesn't mean that slavery and unjust imprisonment are good; rather, the point is that they produced good, and the good they produced was larger than the wickedness that was visited upon Joseph. Evil was twisted back on itself, like a gun barrel turned so that it aims at the would-be murderer firing the weapon.

Joseph's story foreshadows the central story of the Gospels. The worst day in human history was the day of Christ's crucifixion, which saw the worst possible punishment inflicted on the One who, in all history, least deserved it. Two more sunrises and the Son rose: the best day in human history, the day God turned death itself against itself—and because he did so, each one of us has the opportunity to share in death's defeat.

That is our God's trademark. Down to go up, life from death, beauty from ugliness: the pattern is everywhere.

That familiar pattern is also a great gift to those who suffer disease and loss—the loss may remain, but good will come from it, and the good will be larger than the suffering it redeems. Our pain is not empty; we do not suffer in vain. When life strikes hard blows, what we do has value. Our God sees it.

A change in suffering's character

The second gift is often missed, because it lives in salvation's shadow. Amazing as the greatest of all gifts is, God the Son does more than save sinners. Jesus' life and death also change the character of suffering, give it dignity and weight and even, sometimes, a measure of beauty. Cancer and chronic pain remain ugly things, but the enterprise of living with them is not an ugly thing. God's Son so decreed it when he gave himself up to torture and death.

Two facts give rise to that conclusion. First, Jesus is beautiful as well as good. Second, suffering is ugly as well as painful. Talk to those who suffer medical conditions like mine and you'll hear this refrain: Even the best-hidden forms of pain and disease have a reality that is almost tactile, as though one could touch or taste them. And those conditions are foul, like the sound of fingernails on a blackboard or the smell of a cornered skunk. Some days, I feel as if I were wearing clothes soaked in sewage.

Some days—but not most days, thanks to the manner of Jesus' life and death. Imagine Barack Obama putting on a bad suit or Angelina Jolie wearing an ugly dress. The suit wouldn't look bad, and that dress wouldn't be ugly. These are incredibly attractive people whose attractiveness spills over onto their clothing, changing its meaning and the way other people respond to it. If Obama or Jolie wear it, it's a good-looking outfit. If they wear it often enough, it becomes a good-looking outfit even when you or I wear it. God's Son did something similar by taking physical pain on his divine yet still-human person. He did not render pain itself beautiful. But his suffering made the enterprise of living with pain and illness larger and better than it had been before. He elevates all he touches. Just as his years of carpentry in Joseph's shop lend dignity and value to all honest work, so too the pain he bore lends dignity and value to every pain-filled day human beings live.

The Shawshank Redemption is about a prisoner convicted of a murder he didn't commit. That prisoner escapes by crawling through a sewer line until he's outside the prison's walls. The narrator describes the transaction this way: "He crawled through a river of [dung] and came out clean on the other side." God the Son did that, and he did it for the likes of me—so that I, too, and many more like me, might come out clean on the other side. That truth doesn't just change my life after I die. It changes my life here, now.

The God Who Remembers

The third gift is the most remarkable. Our God remembers even his most forgettable children. But that memory is not the dry, lifeless thing we feel when one or another old friend comes to mind. More like the passion one feels at the sight of a lover. When Jesus was dying, one of the two convicts crucified with him said this: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Luke 23:42). Jesus responded by telling him that he would be in paradise that very day. As we use the word remember, that story sounds off, as though the thief on the cross and the Son of God were talking past each other.

The story sounds off because to us, remembrance merely means "recall"—I remember when I connect a student's name to her face, or when I can summon up some fact or the image of some past event. That kind of remembrance is a sterile enterprise, lacking both action and commitment.

In the Bible, remembrance usually combines two meanings: first, holding the one who is remembered close in the heart, and second, acting on the memory. When God repeatedly tells the people of Israel to remember that he brought them out of Egypt, he is saying much more than "get your history right." A better paraphrase would go like this: "Remember that I have loved you passionately. Remember that I have acted on that love. Hold tight to that memory, and act on it too."

Job understood the concept. Speaking with God about what would follow his own death, Job utters these words: "You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made. Surely then you will count my steps but not keep track of my sin" (14:15-16). Notice how memory and longing are fused. Job longs to be free of his many pains, which occupy his mind like a sea of unwanted memories. God longs for relationship with Job, and Job knows it: hence, his belief that the Lord of the universe remembers each of his steps. He is the Lover who will not rest until his arms enfold the beloved. To Job, the curses Satan has sent his way are a mighty mountain that cannot be climbed, an enemy army that cannot be beaten. In the shadow of God's love, those curses are at once puny and powerless.

Philosophers and scientists and law professors (my line of work) are not in the best position to understand the Christian story. Musicians and painters and writers of fiction are much better situated—because the Christian story is a story, not a theory or an argument, and definitely not a moral or legal code. Our faith is, to use C. S. Lewis's apt words, the myth that became fact. Our faith is a painting so captivating that you cannot take your eyes off it. Our faith is a love song so achingly beautiful that you weep each time you hear it. At the center of that true myth, that painting, that song stands a God who does vastly more than remember his image in us. He pursues us as lovers pursue one another. It sounds too good to be true, and yet it is true. So I have found, in the midst of pain and heartache and cancer.

William J. Stuntz is the Henry J. Friendly Professor at Harvard Law School.

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

A Whole New Life

As I've struggled over the last eight years with diagnosis after diagnosis, and one pill after another, I realized today that what the Destroyer wanted to use for ill in my life, God has turned around and has used for His glory and His good in my life.

For years now I've been walking around in what I like to jokingly refer to as an "opiated haze" - numb to feelings and emotions, deadened to smells, sounds, tastes and sights. I was putting too many spices on my food to give it taste - ANY taste; I was burying my nose in things to detect the subtlety in aromas; I was turning my head left and right trying to detect sounds that others had no problem hearing; and I was blinded to the simple things that make life worthwhile.

As I've come off Morphine and Oxycodone, these senses have awakened with a vengeance! Suddenly coffee smelled so potent that I was unable to drink it, and my food began taking on tastes so foreign to me as to be virtually unpalatable. The phone and the alarm clock were painfully loud, and any light at all was too much light for my eyes. Soaps I'd used for years were suddenly overwhelming to my sense of smell. Music I'd loved became clamorous and jangling to my nerves. All in all, it was like living inside a odoriferous, sour, loud, light-filled Rubik's Cube - where every change and combination only served to heighten my discomfort.

Chris explained this all to me from a physiological point of view, telling me that my cells had built up an exceptional amount of ectoplasmic reticuli - or some damn thing - in an attempt to filter out the poisons I was ingesting each time I faithfully took my daily meds, and that this additional "ER" - as she called it - suddenly found itself without a job, and was making ALL of my cells crave toxins so the stalwart ER would have something to do - hence my heightened and jangled senses.

Needless to say, it's been less than fun, and more than challenging.

But here's some amazing things: I've found out that I have been DRAMATICALLY over-medicated all these years. (And here you thought I was just slow on the up-take!). I've discovered that one-quarter of an oxycodone - a lowly 7.5mg - works as well as 200mg of Morphine PLUS TWO (2) 30mg Oxycodones on top of it! I've discovered that a small handful of Ibuprofen (affectionately called "Vitamin I") and a hot shower do more to relieve stiffness than popping a Zanaflex, or a Flexeril. I've discovered that being exhausted from a long day of helping others is a much better sleeping pill than Tamazapam or Lunesta. And - forgive me in advance - I've found that using the bathroom doesn't require Senecot, Docalax, or Milk of Magnesia - and that going every single day is a NORMAL thing. (I asked you to forgive me already!)

On a different tack, I've also discovered that I REALLY can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Not that I recognized His strengthening hand in the midst of it all, but looking back on things, it's patently obvious. According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), an office within the US Department of Health and Human Services, and specifically, their Office of Applied Studies, opiate narcotics are the number ONE substance in drug related deaths in the United States. In 2007 alone, Salt Lake County - in our humble little white-bread Mormon outpost of a city - 19.3 deaths in every 100,000 people were directly attributed to opiate narcotics - be they accidental overdoses, suicides, or intentional poisonings! 1,067,722 people lived in Salt Lake County during 2007 - that means that 206 people died that year with opiates being the primary contributing cause. Statistics are sketchy on the number of them who died while in withdrawal, but a local center told me that the chances of experiencing a "life threatening emergency situation" during opiate narcotic withdrawal was "... more likely than not..." and that unattended withdrawal (meaning going cold turkey on your own), results in death "... more often than we'd like to admit."

Can I call my survival a miracle? Well, based on this information, I'd say that I was certainly strengthened throughout by Jesus Christ, and that His divine intervention may well be the only reason I'm here today. I'm reminded of Romans 8:28 which says, "And we know that all things work together for GOOD to those who love God and are called according to His purpose..." and I can certainly apply Jeremiah 29:11 which tells me that God's thoughts toward me are NOT for evil, but for a future and a hope. I think it may be overly dramatic to say that, "I'm lucky to be alive..." but when you speak those words in the face of reality, and of statistics, and of those 206 people who are NOT here to share - maybe it isn't so far fetched after all?

Life is certainly getting better. Coffee doesn't stink any more - Thank God! My hearing is pretty much back to normal, my eyes are as blind as they were before, and food has begun to taste - well, like food again. I have a beautiful wife, three amazing kids, a few pets, and air in my lungs. To quote Anthony Bordain - "life is clearly not sucking."

And the best part of it all? It's not sucking - without opiate narcotics.

It truly has been a journey.

Surely there must be a reason for it all?

Do you ever wonder why you are singled out for something in your life? As though someone had dipped their hand into a cosmic raffle jar and pulled out your name and suddenly your life was turned upside down, or suddenly you find out your sick with something incurable, or your job and security suddenly vanish? Do you find yourself wondering what you may have done - if this is the big ol' cosmic karma roller coaster ride, and it's your turn to find yourself bound and struggling on the tracks? Do you ever in your quiet time turn your eyes heavenly and ask the forbidden question, "why me, God?" Do you ever find yourself wishing for the end? Hoping for release?


You are not alone.

Times like this can try even the best of us. Job - a man that GOD said was without sin and perfect - found himself asking these kinds of questions. He found himself wishing he had died at birth! He found himself wishing to simply die and have done with it all. Often times we mistakenly think that if it can happen to an upright man like Job, then it's patently obvious it would happen to us. But just because it happened to Job, why would we naturally assume that we're more deserving than he was of testing? Of pain? Of hardship? Of loneliness? Of being hurt, betrayed, or slandered?

"Friends" would tell you that possibly you deserve it for some past wrong. Others may suggest it's the result of unrepentant sin in your life. Yet others may say you're only getting what you deserve. But let me ask you - does that make the enduring of such trials any easier? Not at all. Where are the friends that will simply come and sit beside you in silence and endure the long hours with you? Where is the family that's supposed to support you and not judge you? Where is God when all of this is going on? Why does it seem as though you're in it on your own?

It's because we tend to assume the worst of God, and believe the lies the Accuser whispers in your ear. "You deserve this." "What goes around comes around." "Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind." "You don't deserve better."

They really are lies, you know.

God's heart for us is tender, compassionate, and loving. Does that mean that there won't be consequences of sin in our lives? Of course not - but our consequences are not God's punishments. Like a loving father, God will drive foolishness from our hearts with the rod of correction, but he never leaves us in our sorrow or pain. Jeremiah - the "weeping prophet" understood what God's heart is for His children. The Lord revealed to him His love and compassion when He said, "For I know the plans I have for you... they are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." (Jer. 29:11)

Can God lie? No. It is impossible for Him to do so. So, can we believe Him? Certainly. He went on to share more with Jeremiah when he said, " In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you! I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes! I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and I will bring you home again to your own land." (Jer. 29:12-14) Some would say that this pertains only to Israel - and it certainly did when Jeremiah received these things, but as believers, we can claim the promises given to Israel of old, and we can trust in their fulfillment in our experiences.

Times are hard. People are out of work. There is untold suffering in this world, and yet, it is NOT God's plan for us. Does He allow things to happen in our lives to draw us to Him? To teach us? To correct and direct us? Absolutely. But His plan for us to give us a future and a hope.

A future and a hope you say? Yes - exactly that. We live in a horribly fallen world. There is a lot of pain and suffering - but our future - and that which gives us hope, is knowing our place in the Kingdom of God. As heirs with Christ, the home God spoke of - the one He will bring us home to? That's His Kingdom. It's ours through the process of adoption, and through the shed blood of Christ.


A study done by John Hopkins Medical Center recently, showed that patients who were given hope and encouragement had a more than 75% rate of successful recovery, as compared to only 17% of patients in the control group. Hope is powerful. Hope keeps people alive through difficult, life-threatening, dangerous, or even painful experiences. Study after study has shown that persons in life or death survival situations who exhibit hope, stand a greater chance of survival than those who give up this precious and powerful gift.

Life on this ball of dirt can really suck. I know from personal experience. You do too. But standing on faith and securing an unshakable hope can make all the difference in the world. After all, aren't we told that, "God makes all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose?" (Rom. 8:28) So maybe in the end, all of our pain, heartache and sorrow in this life, will be the very tools the Lord uses to work immeasurable good in our lives, the lives of those around us, and just perhaps someone who hasn't met Him yet?

There has to be a reason for it all. I choose to believe it will be that God needed to shape me more, and make me more like Him.

Just a thought.

You really must read this site...

Not to tell you how to live your life, or how to walk with God - however comma, THIS is an article that everyone who is walking with the Lord should read. I think it's time we got down to earth, and get real. This is amazing.

Go check out this article: http://freebelievers.com/blog-entry/spiritual-porn-addiction

Personally, I think it's time I dumped some of the conventions I've held. I think it's time to be more real about the Lord.

Blessings,


Mike