One of my best friends has been batteling cancer, lymphoma to be exact, since June. He had actually been cleared about two weeks ago. The doctors said he was clean, no cancer and he had even been working for about two weeks prior to that report from the doctors. All of that came after several complications, so to seem him doing so well was so great. I don't think I'd ever seen him so happy. I guess one looks particularly lively after being close to the other end of the spectrum.
Well recently he started feeling bad and come to find out the doctors say that the lymphoma has moved into his bone marrow. This means more chemo, and a bone marrow transplant. This is more serious than last time and has come to everyone, it seems, as quite a shock. Im not sure how anyone is handeling it. Ive kind of been reeling since I heard and still can't quite wrap my hands around it.
I emailed a good friend of ours in Brasil to tell him about it, at my friends request. Emerson in turn emailed several of his friends there in Belo Horizonte to begin to pray for his friend. One of Emerson's friend's sent him an article from John Piper (big shot pastor, thinker, theologian, and recently diagnosed cancer patient) called, "Don't Waste Your Cancer." Emerson forwared it to me and asked me to read it and think if it would be appropriate to send to our friend. Apparently he had some issues with it and wanted a second opinion. (He didn't choose me because Im particularly smart, but I speak english better than he does)
The article consisted of these points:
1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.
2. You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift
3. You will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God.
4. You will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death.
5. You will waste your cancer if you think that “beating” cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.
6. You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God.
7. You will waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepen your relationships with manifest affection.
8. You will waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope.
9. You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before.
10. You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ.
I read them and was beside myself with anger. I couldn't believe that he would be so harsh as to say all of that. To think of cancer as a gift?? He can't be serious. I actually take offense to that, and I feel like I can take theological issue with it also. I think that cancer, as well as all disease is due to sin. By that I don't mean that my friend has sinned and therefore has cancer. I think that because people have sinned, humanity has sinned, then humanity deals with the consequences of sin, and one of those consequences is disease. To say that God gifts some people with cancer doensn't sound right to me. Why in the world did Jesus go around healing people if God desires for some people to have the gift of disease? Does God give millions of Africans the gift of AIDS and death? Jesus demonstrated what kind of a kingdom the kingdom of God would be by doing miracles, and most often those were healings. Maybe a better word than healing would be restoring, restoring people to a condition of wellness that they were created to exist in, pre sin, pre disease. God is in process of bringing His kingdom to reign throughout His creation. "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, ON EARTH, as it is in Heaven." Heaven is the example, the ideal, and the earth is the place that the ideal will be fleshed out. Thats the picture that Jesus' life was painting. My gosh, to say that people are gifted with disease is to say that sin itself is a gift from God, and that God's kingdom would still include disease, and thus sin. Disease comes from the root of sin, not the goodness of God. Yes He is soverign, yes He is just, and I think this is were Piper says that its a gift. If God is soverign and all how can people have cancer and it not be from Gods hand? Well, I think that God, just like a person, (not to humanize God) is not merely defined by His attributes, but also by what He is doing. I am not only defined by my attributes, blonde, male, out of shape, looser...but also by what I am doing...blogger, video editor, nerd. The same is true with God...soverign, all knowing...but also....working toward the total and complete healing of His creation. You don't see the entire picture of what someone is purely by a list of their attributes, you must take into account thier activity.
Maybe none of this makes sense to anyone, but I just cant believe that God gifts people with the results of universal sin. That whole list is devoid of love toward someone fighting cancer. I told my Brasilian friend that I wasn't going to send that article to our friend. I also told him that I do think that our friend can use the situation that he is in to bring glory to God by the way he handles it, but also that if he doesn't handle it particularly well, if he doesn't share his faith with every one of his nurses, if he doesn't pray, if he is so angry with God that he doesn't even want to think about it, and if he doubts that God is there at all, that I think God still loves him very much and desires for him to be made well. That's the kind of God that He is, and I know that not simply because of a list of attributes but because of what He has been in the process of doing all throughout history.
(just as a side note. by no means do I agree with Piper on this, and yep, Im pretty pissed about that article...but I realize also that Piper is himself dealing with this disease and is tryin very hard to come to terms with God the very same way that my freind, and all of us that surround his situation are. I think that it is easy for Piper to view God in the way described in the list and it helps him deal come to terms with his situation. I don't think that makes him right, but he needs to be shown that same grace that I was talking about even if someone were to shut God out completely. No matter what, even if Piper is dead wrong on this (and he may not be) God still loves him and wants him well. And I need to learn how to disagree and not be angry.)
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Thursday, February 23, 2006
DaRicous is smarter than me...
So Ive been going to this housing project to hang out with some younger guys for about 6 or 7 months now. I go with other folks from my church and try to learn how to love people that I normally don't spend time with (trying to change that) that are right here in my community. (The project is like three blocks from where I live)
I love my church, and Im beginning to be more tolerant of some of the people there. There are a lot of folks, including myself, at church who seem to be searching for some peace, some healing from being burnned by the church in the past. So there's a great deal of cynicism...and Im a part of that. Along with the cynicism comes a lack of sincerity, I feel. And along with that comes a relaxed attitude about sin, and really, a misunderstanding of grace. Now I know not all people at my church are in the same boat as me (a good thing). Some are serious about their sin and others are perhaps even more cynical than I am. And really the cynics of my church probably are in the minority, we're just louder...it actually seems the further one tends toward cynicism, the louder one gets.
But last night at SouthTown I saw a completely different point of view. We had a speaker talk to the kids, then we broke up into smaller groups. One guy, DaRicous, said he didn't want to be in the group with the speaker, where I thought he would be because that's where all his friends were, but wanted to talk with me instead. (Another guy that comes from the church had said that he asked DaRicous some tough questions a few weeks earlier and said that DaRisous really had been thinking about them) So I asked him, "What do you think it means to walk with God?" He said, "Believe Him. Belieive Jesus died for your sins." But then I asked if he actually knew what was taking place when Jesus died for a persons sins. He said, "Not really." So we talked about what sin deserved, death, and what Jesus did, the fulfillment of justice. Then it came..."Man, I think everybody should go to hell....I mean we all sinners it don't make sense that someone shouldn't go to hell"
And at that point I knew that DaRicous understood something that I don't. We really are an awful group of people, and don't deserve anything but hell. We got to talk a little more about justice, and then a higher concept than justice....grace. But DaRicous didn't seem to understand grace. But then again maybe he's one of the few people I know that actually does.
I love my church, and Im beginning to be more tolerant of some of the people there. There are a lot of folks, including myself, at church who seem to be searching for some peace, some healing from being burnned by the church in the past. So there's a great deal of cynicism...and Im a part of that. Along with the cynicism comes a lack of sincerity, I feel. And along with that comes a relaxed attitude about sin, and really, a misunderstanding of grace. Now I know not all people at my church are in the same boat as me (a good thing). Some are serious about their sin and others are perhaps even more cynical than I am. And really the cynics of my church probably are in the minority, we're just louder...it actually seems the further one tends toward cynicism, the louder one gets.
But last night at SouthTown I saw a completely different point of view. We had a speaker talk to the kids, then we broke up into smaller groups. One guy, DaRicous, said he didn't want to be in the group with the speaker, where I thought he would be because that's where all his friends were, but wanted to talk with me instead. (Another guy that comes from the church had said that he asked DaRicous some tough questions a few weeks earlier and said that DaRisous really had been thinking about them) So I asked him, "What do you think it means to walk with God?" He said, "Believe Him. Belieive Jesus died for your sins." But then I asked if he actually knew what was taking place when Jesus died for a persons sins. He said, "Not really." So we talked about what sin deserved, death, and what Jesus did, the fulfillment of justice. Then it came..."Man, I think everybody should go to hell....I mean we all sinners it don't make sense that someone shouldn't go to hell"
And at that point I knew that DaRicous understood something that I don't. We really are an awful group of people, and don't deserve anything but hell. We got to talk a little more about justice, and then a higher concept than justice....grace. But DaRicous didn't seem to understand grace. But then again maybe he's one of the few people I know that actually does.
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