A story on the Internet about the failure of a church to deal with a severely mentally ill member (more of which later on) reminded me of a pastoral encounter from some twenty five years. I was away at a conference when my wife rang me to say that she had had a phone call from a mother about her 22 year son who was close to death with cancer. I returned home immediately and visited the family that evening. I felt that my visit, and the effort in making it, was more appreciated by the mother than her son. Even though he was very close to death, he was unwilling to discuss anything about death, putting things right with the world and least of all about God. In a paradoxical way there was something courageous about this defiance of death and his refusal to take on board a belief system at the last minute which might, conceivably, have eased his passing. I left the house promising to call the next morning. I returned at 9 am only to find the mother in a dreadful state because the son had, at that moment, just died. My practical help at that moment was to close his eyes and try and say something comforting to the mother. I eventually left the house, not feeling terribly effective but at least glad that I had not arrived too late for one visit to the dying man.
There was a strange follow-up to this story some weeks later. While walking around the parish, I met up with a woman, who was a member of a extreme Pentecostal group, and who knew the young man who had died and his mother. I mentioned that I had seen him within 12 hours of his death, without mentioning how ineffective I had felt. Her response was to state categorically that if there had been a death-bed conversion through the acceptance of Jesus as his personal Saviour, God would have healed the young man instantly. I did not argue with her but pondered about which planet she was living on. Did she have evidence that anyone in a terminal state, as the young man had been, had ever received such a healing? I certainly had never encountered such a claim in the books I had read. At the time, I hoped that she would not add to the pain of the young man’s family by repeating such a claim to them. As far as I know, her extraordinary understanding about what might have transpired did not get back to the boy’s family.
I tell this story as an example of the potential abuse of the very sick, by a belief system which is sincerely held by many Christians. It is abusive because it loads people, who maybe are carrying extreme illness or pain, with many extra burdens. The last thing a person who is dying needs, is a confident fanatical Christian coming and telling them that they lack the faith both to get well and to get to heaven. That encounter did not, in my story, take place, but presumably members of churches of the type this woman belonged to are saying this all the time. Pastorally and theologically it is a disaster area. I cannot here unpack all the problems in this type of attitude except to say that I am relieved that none of the chaplaincy volunteers at our local hospital think and act in this way.
The Internet story that brought back this event after so many years was a story about one Abraham. I reproduce the story straight from the net.
‘ In the 1970’s, Emmanuel Baptist Church was a large church, one of the largest churches in the United States. The church ran buses all over the Pontiac/Detroit area. During my time at Emmanuel, the church operated 80 buses.
One of the bus riders was a young man name Abraham.
Abraham was a walking contradiction. He was a brilliant, crazy, mentally ill young man.
Abraham would walk up in back of people and snip hair from their heads. A week or so later Abraham would bring the person a silk sachet filled with the hair and his finger nail clippings. Needless to say, most of us were freaked out by Abraham and kept a close eye on him.
One day there was an explosion at the church. Abraham had built a bomb and brought to church. He carried the bomb into the restroom and, whether accidentally or on purpose, the bomb detonated. It was the last strange thing Abraham ever did. The bomb blew Abraham to bits. One man who helped clean up the mess said bits and pieces of Abraham fell from the drop ceiling.
At the time, I thought all of this was quite funny. I thought “I guess Abraham won’t do that again.” Years later, my thoughts are quite different. The buses brought thousands of people to the services of the Emmanuel Baptist Church. Most of the riders came from poor and/or dysfunctional homes. Their need was great, but all we offered them was Jesus.
Jesus was the answer for everything. Except that he wasn’t. As I now know, the problems that people face are anything but simple and Jesus is not the cure for all that ails you. What Abraham really needed was residential treatment and psychiatric care. What he got was a Jesus that could not help him. In the end, his psychosis won. ‘
The questions I leave with my readers from the two stories are these. Does the promise of ‘salvation’, physical, emotional and spiritual, come as good news to people who are burdened down with poverty, sickness and other intractable issues? Whatever we understand by the offer of Jesus to meet the needs of a suffering world, should we ever be so blind to the obvious needs of individuals that we fail to help them where they actually need help? Sadly we do not live in a world where the answer to every problem is ‘Jesus’. All of us crave simplicity in the face of the complexities of our world. Some will claim that they have found simple answers, through faith, to these complexities, while the rest of us know that many such answers point to their living in a fantasy world. The struggle to find paths to walk along, both for ourselves individually and collectively, is difficult. How many of us are now struggling with the question of who to vote for in a way that does justice to our Christian faith? The best we can, perhaps, hope for is to learn to live with the questions, than declare we have found the answers.
This is a good question and I’ll think about it more. But I think you don’t have to look far to see that just offering “Jesus” and “salvation” as words to believe isn’t the point. My first response is to think of one of my favourite bible verses, from 1 John 3.17 of all places: “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” I would interpret this as a very clear statement that the true follower of Christ who is filled with God’s love tries to look clearly at the needs of others and tries to share whatever gifts they have that might be appropriate to help the other, on any level of material, financial, practical, medical, psychological, emotional, social inclusion, you name it. There is no either/or, there is no competition, it is absolutely both/and. Both help the other with any kind of need if possible, and be ready to introduce them if they want (totally without pressure!) to the possibility of the new life that Jesus brings.
Really, the bible is full of answers to this. We just have to understand that when it comes to responding to others, the fundamental principle of not ignoring any kind of need but trying to give appropriately is the same whether we are talking about the basics of food for the starving, or any need on any level, including psychiatric care for a disturbed person. (This is setting aside the more refined point that psychiatric care, like any kind of medical care, isn’t always good or helpful.) In the end the biggest need is for the relationship with God, and we offer the story of Jesus so that people may find the way to God. But the principle of Listen with Mother applies. “Are you sitting comfortably?” We may need to do all sorts of things first before we can say “Then I’ll begin”. We may indeed never get as far as “Then I’ll begin”. It may only be occasionally that the right response to a person is to start with the story of Jesus immediately. But if we have done anything to make the person comfortable, then we have shared God’s love. And that in itself is bringing them into a relationship with God.
I remembered that Christians are people of the Way. This gives us another model for sharing God’s love and the knowledge of Jesus that may be better at times. Like Phillip with the Ethiopian treasurer in today’s reading. We are all on the way together. We may need to help each other along at times when the journey is difficult. And while we are on the way together we can share our stories and understandings…. like good Canterbury pilgrims.
Yes to showing and sharing God’s love. Jesus himself offered practical help where it was needed. He offered healing, he fed the 5,000, he raised people from the dead. He made the blind see, and the lame walk. They were able to rejoin, or perhaps for the first time, join, normal life. He doesn’t seem to have battered them over the head with the point that he is showing God’s love! They got the message! St. Francis. “Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary, use words”.
I am not sure if I made myself clear enoiugh that I feel that the ‘Jesus’ presented by many Christian groups is not the answer. The Jesus that they read from the bible is a reflection of the harsh judgemental God that they extract from the OT. They will zoom in on passages that seem to stress judgement and punishment. Many of the theories about why Christ died are variations on the terror theme. Of course Jesus is the answer if you take a nuanced balanced approach to what he was about but not if you read the more damning perspective that you can find in Paul’s writings. Paul himself swings between the lyrical and the legalistic but it suits some Christians to read and preach on the bits that prop up a view that Christianity can only be proclaimed in an atmosphere of terror and condemnation. In summary my piece is not suggesting that Jesus is not the answer, only that some presentations of him are far from the answer and indeed abusive.
hi Stephen, yes I think that did come across to me, I’m sorry if my responses seemed to suggest otherwise.
Yes, I wasn’t saying you were wrong. But we have to say Jesus’ message was right! It’s some of his interpreters who have got it wrong.
Another good article Stephen. Thanks.
The people who present this type of Jesus usually belong to the ‘Turn or burn’ school and have one easily identifiable feature, and that is they need safety in numbers.
It has been referred to as the ‘Herding instinct’.
I once worked under a professing ‘Born again Christian’ that believed she could tyrannize even people with learning difficulties for what she perceived as their greater good!
This took the form of taking them out of their residential nursing home and the local Church of England and transporting them six miles to her Evangelical church.
She clearly believed that “Jesus was the answer” to their great difficulties? (See my book “The Caring Game”).
I could give numerous examples of this; my life has been full of such people.
The life death and passion of Christ gives us the beginnings of an answer, all else is mystery.
Chris
thanks Chris, you have such a sharp way of summing things up sometimes. “Turn or burn” indeed!
Thanks haikusinenomine,
I feel a great burden for those schooled in this way. I know the straightjacket they live in intimately.
Peace Chris
Stephen,
It’s National Nurses Week here in the US, and a friend sent me this blog post: http://www.nurseeyeroll.com/2015/05/11/ill-never-forget-your-room-number-or-your-pain/
What you’ve written here echoed for me the same kind of melancholy and loving care, and I see this post about nursing applying to you today as much as it does to me. We offer to God what we can by caring for others, and we have to leave the outcome with Him in His sovereign wisdom. It’s almost like original sin all over again when we reduce things down to a formula which will make us sovereign, giving us the illusion that we are not as fragile as we really are and are dependent on God’s grace. I know that most who embrace the belief that a nebulous or simplified understanding “Jesus” is a panacea, but I think many people use it like a bandage to comfort themselves from the reality of who we are. Like Isaiah before God’s throne, we realize how limited we really are and are undone. Magical thinking that makes Jesus a magical word seems to me to lessen that realization that we would like to be more than we are.
I cannot help but think that our shift into a predominantly postmodern age gives language even more emptiness. Talk is cheap, and we like cheap in the short term. We like to placate ourselves with words, and only our belief in the concept gives them currency — regardless of the evidence that proves a belief to be true. I could not help but think of the Book of James which talks about being a doer of the Word and not a hearer only. We look into the mirror and see who we are, and we turn around and forget our faults. We pat people on the head and say, “Be ye warmed and filled.” But as both English Athena and haikusinenomine note well, love makes us willing to be honest, die to self, and then share the love we have received with others. Love is not just an empty sounding bell or a tinkling cymbal but has hands and feet. Love feeds the poor, clothes the naked, brings the poor into their home, and doesn’t hide from its own flesh. But that takes effort, risk, and involves pain. And we don’t like to be reminded that we have so much in common with those who are suffering, forgetting that the blessings that come with love make life that much sweeter in contrast.
May our words be salty and our actions even more so. The truth sets us free, and sometimes that truth is esteeming things as they are, not as we would have them.
Thank you Cindy. I like your idea about ‘magic thinking’. I too have been doing a bit of sitting with the dying recently, trying to communicate something of the stillness which I understand God to be. Magic words are not the answer but stillness, peace and love can be shared by just being there. What we actually have to offer the both the sick and the poor that Chris is especially concerned about is a big question. I suspect that much of the time we don’t reach them because we find it difficult to be really alongside them. That is something to be pondered.