Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Visiting with a Shadow

Ethan’s Dad: I still visit regularly, usually three days a week. For the first full year, I visited nearly every single day. I know some people think it is strange that I would go to Ethan’s grave so often. I suppose in their minds it seems like it would be too painful to visit such a place over and over again. But it is extremely important to remember, when supporting friends, neighbors, or loved ones who have sustained losses, that people grieve in different ways and they need to be given the space to do so. What I do is no better or worse, no more normal or weirder than how my wife seeks to survive in the midst of her grief. She visits his grave as well, though not as often, but she journals, for instance, much more frequently than I have. We are each dealing with an unexpected absence, a weight that may tug on our hearts more heavily at some times than others, but that always remains with us wherever we go. Yet we are different people and so our methods of carrying the weight correspond with our own personalities. And so it is with all who carry burdens of loss.

At first when I visited, I mostly talked to Ethan. I should clarify in mentioning this that it isn’t that I believe Ethan is there — at least not the part of him that matters most. My wife recently wrote a post about some of the awful day that was Ethan’s funeral. And while there was much that was unspeakably difficult about that particular day, one revelation for me occurred when we saw his little body in the tiny casket. We cried rivers of tears. We read letters to him that we placed in the casket. We hugged a lot. But one thing that was very apparent to me was that Ethan was not really there. His precious, frail body was there . . . but it was cold and impassive. . . the light of life was gone from it.

This is a difficult idea to put into words because it honestly can only be experienced, not exactly described, and yet it is not an experience I would wish for anyone. But in that tragic moment when you see your still baby who was so vibrant only a few days before, there comes this clear sense that something is truly amiss: You come face to face with the truth that a person is much more than just flesh and blood. People have spirits which make them who they truly are. The contrast between our real Ethan and what was left of him in that casket was so stark that this spiritual reality was undeniable. Our Ethan — the curious, quiet, lovable, strong, immaculately precious boy — is with the Lord. He is laughing now, rather than hurting, and waiting for us (though the wait will seem like nothing to him because time is nonexistent in heaven).

Alas, time is all too real to us, and to me it seems to go by much more slowly now than before Ethan’s passing. And so I choose to pass some of that time by sitting next to his grave. It is not the most vital part of him, but it is all we have left here in this in-between place we call the Shadowlands. It is my tangible connection to him. It is a place-holder until the joyous reunion.

Over time, my conversations with Ethan morphed into talking to God more often than talking to Ethan because He is my spiritual connection to Ethan. God is the reason a reunion will happen, made possible by Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. Jesus said He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” — of all things. (Revelation 22:13). This means He is also the God of this off-kilter in-between time in which we find ourselves.

At times, walking in these shadows, it can seem as if He has abandoned us, left us to our own devices.

“I cried out to God for help;
I cried out to God to hear me.

“When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands,
and I would not be comforted.

“I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.”

(Psalm 77:1-3). In fact, that is one reason that at first I only talked to Ethan: Because I did not feel God there, all I felt was a black hole, a yawning abyss from which no light could emanate or escape.

But in the end, faith is not about feelings, it is about will, submission of the will really, but will nonetheless. And when you press on through the shadows you discover that there is light there after all.  (And how could it be otherwise?  For shadows are only seen because of the light that illuminates reality). The light is not a bolt that thunders, at least not for me, but a flicker that whispers your name and tells you to keep listening. And so the conversations become less and less audible and more and more reflections pouring over the Bible, His words that come alive because of His Spirit communing with our own when we seek Him.

I don’t mean for it to sound like magic. It is not. There is no trick and this is not fantasy land. I do not live in a state of Zen or blessedness or higher consciousness or whatever else some beliefs choose to call their willful blindness toward the tragedies of life. Nor do I mean to sound super-spiritual, for the contemplation is born from desperation, not holiness. I am weak. I am hurt. I still feel out of sorts. I still cry because of this inexplicable loss that neither Ethan nor we deserved to experience.

And so I sit next to the place where Ethan’s little body resides. I sit still in the quiet (there are few places quieter than a large cemetery).  And in that stillness I know that God is there (Psalm 46:10), and I dare to trust that Ethan is with Him, waiting. My heart yearns: Come quickly, Lord Jesus, Come. (Revelation 22:20).

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Taking the Path of Paradox

Ethan’s Dad: Karl Marx famously said: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” This remark says more about Marx than it does about religion. That is, it shows that Marx knew very little about true religion and only focused on what he wanted to believe about religion.  Marx told himself that people believed in religion because it provided them with a delusion that masked the truth of their sterile lives. In other words, religion supposedly made the lives of ordinary people easier for them at the expense of facing reality.

Any true practitioner of the major religions can tell you that Marx’s framework is nonsense.  It is anything but easy to take religion seriously.  Most religions, to one degree or other, require a person to do at least one thing that is directly contrary to our basic nature: pay homage to something higher than ourselves.  In this sense, religion is not natural at all.  It is not an easy way to escape reality; it requires a certain transcendence of it.  The easier path does not acknowledge demands outside of ourselves.  The easier path treats survival as its own reward and lives accordingly, sacrificing anyone and anything that gets in the way of the self.

In a sense, Christianity raises the level of natural difficulty to a whole different level than other major religions.  How so?  A pivotal difference between Christianity and other religions is that Christianity says that we cannot save ourselves, only Jesus can do that. Thus, Christianity removes the control over our lives that other religions seek to bestow by making our actions play a consequential role in our ultimate destiny.  Because of this difference, Christians are not supposed to act out of obligation or to earn a reward, but out of love: a love for God and what He has done for us in Jesus, and a love for others that grows from that love for God.

But again, this love does not come naturally or easily.  We are born loving ourselves, first, foremost, and always, and second loving those who help us most. We must be shown by God (through His Spirit) that He does the most and cares the most for us, and that even strangers deserve our love because God loves them just the way He loves us.

The militant atheist Richard Dawkins has said that it would be much better for humanity if people just acknowledged that life is “empty, pointless, futile, a desert of meaninglessness and insignificance.” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 360).  He argues that people create problems for themselves when they seek to attach meaning to a universe of “blind physical forces and genetic replication” where “some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.”  (Dawkins, A River Out of Eden, pp. 132-33).  This view is nothing more than a post-modern rendition of Marx’s riff about religion. It is this notion that “reality” — by which people like Marx and Dawkins mean their belief that there is no spiritual reality and the only real existence is matter and physical energy (what I will call materialism) — is harder for people to accept than the fantasy of another world beyond this one.

Such contrasting thoughts can provide for an interesting, if esoteric, philosophical debate, but at this point you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with Ethan.  The answer is, actually quite a bit.  This debate takes on an entirely different dimension when you face the unexpected death of your child.  If Marx and Dawkins are right, then that death is just part of life and there is no greater significance or meaning to it.  If Christianity is right, then . . . .

I want you to stop for a second and ask yourself if Christianity is really the easier choice here? If life and death are accidents of nature, then why should another person’s death affect us at all? There is a sense in which the materialist view makes things very easy because then life is what it is and there is nothing to reconcile. There is no higher obligation, let alone a rational reason to love because that implies an attachment beyond the self with accompanying burdens that last after other people are gone forever.  And since you are an accident too, whatever befalls you is not evil or cruel or unfair, but rather it is just the reality of it all and it matters not because you will end permanently as well.

Now, if Christianity is true, it means that God loves us beyond all measure of our comprehension, and yet for some reason He allowed our Ethan to die — through no fault of his or ours — before he got to do (and we were privileged to witness) a thousand things in his life.  God knew Ethan’s death would cause us unfathomable pain, and yet He allowed it to happen.  As a Christian, I cannot say this happened because it caught God by surprise or He was unable to save Ethan, because the Bible tells us that God is all-knowing and all-powerful. (And indeed, why would God, if He is real, be less than that?) As a Christian, I cannot say (the way the Marx/Dawkins adherent can) that this was simply an accident of nature.  No, instead I have to hold onto a paradox: that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever loving God, and yet somehow there also exists a pervasive natural evil in this world that at times robs us of those we love.  It says God calls us His children and still somehow He allows this evil that inflicts unspeakable harm upon us.

And this is far from the only paradox Christianity asks a believer to accept.  We must believe that God transcends time and yet that He stepped into time.  That He is infinite and yet He became finite. That He is Spirit and yet He became flesh.  That He is eternal and yet that He died. That by His death and resurrection He gave us life everlasting. That we are here, and yet this is not our home.  A real belief in Jesus means all of these things. And yet the likes of Marx and Dawkins want to say this is the easier path in life?

I will grant that there is a segment of Christianity for which it could be said that it is easier than the materialism of Marx and Dawkins. It is the segment that ignores the paradoxes — particularly the first one regarding the existence of evil — by claiming that absolutely everything happens for a particular reason, that God wills everything for His purposes, and so there is no room for questioning or wondering.  Instead, all is as it should be, you just have to have the faith to accept it.  This is not the post for me to explain all the ways I think such a brand of Christianity misunderstands Biblical truth.  It will have to suffice here to observe that such a Christianity leaves no room for actual evil or for authentic faith.  So I leave it aside and ask again: is Christianity the easier path in life?

The answer is “No,” but at bottom that isn’t even really the right question. We should not be surprised that Marx and Dawkins assume that people select religion over materialism because it is easier. They hold this view precisely because they are materialists: to them the material is all that motivates people, and so most people inevitably will select the easier road in life.  Of course, this view is self-contradictory because it fails to explain why there are people like Marx and Dawkins who do not select such a path.  When you drill down, the answer comes down to the fact that they believe that they are just smarter than the rest of us.  In the end, that is their real motivation for such a view: a demonstration of superiority.  And you do not have to read much of Marx or Dawkins for proof of this smugness (a natural trait that, at time, we all display).  I would also argue that a lack of belief in God fits nicely with this claim of superiority because it means that there is no being superior to them.

If you put aside the lens of materialism for a moment, however, and imagine that people sometimes make choices based on something other than comfort, then you might see the real reason why people would select Christianity over materialism. When you watch your baby dying before your eyes, you scream and shout in bitter anguish, and then you collapse in a pool of silent despondency, wondering where God is; you do not have the luxury of a comfortable Christianity.  You feel numb; cold; hopeless; alone.

You are left with this: Is it true? Is there a love that surrounds this? Is there a hope that transcends it? Is there ultimately a triumph of the good despite the harsh reality of such abject evil?

This place of haunting loss is where faith is not a a tingly feeling or a rote creed.  It is a conscious decision to persevere in spite of the deep wound in your heart. It is where, as Andrew Peterson says in one of his many honest songs,

“faith is a burden, it’s a weight to bear
It’s brave and bittersweet
And hope is hard to hold to
Lord I believe, only help my unbelief
Till there’s no more faith and no more hope
I’ll see your face and Lord I’ll know
That only love remains.”

My wife and I (and a host of other Christians that have experienced abominations of evil even worse than our own) do not believe in Christianity because it is easy.  We believe because, while you are drowning in the abyss of evil, you realize there is something else there, something beyond you, something above you — Someone who knows all about this because He suffered the loss of a child, experienced a separation unlike any we could comprehend, endured torture, embraced an ignominious death, and bore the sins of the world — all at the same time.  Does He understand what we endure?  How can He not?

Christianity does not deny the existence — and even the pervasiveness — of darkness in this world.  It simply insists that God ultimately has overcome the darkness.  The materialist views Christianity as delusional because of its insistence on a spiritual reality, but there is a a raw concreteness to Christianity that materialism cannot match because true Christianity not only recognizes suffering for what it is, it endures it, and it promises that God will ultimately overwhelm it because of what Jesus has done.

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

“If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,’
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.” (Psalm 139:7-12)

“[B]ecause of the tender mercy of our God, the Sunrise from on high came from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide their feet into the path of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79)

Jesus said: “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” (John 12:46)

Thus, by holding onto the paradoxes inherent in the Christian faith we are planted in a reality far more profound than the shallow materialist vision that seeks (and spectacularly fails) to maximize pleasure and avoid pain at all costs because it insists that the here-and-now is all that matters.  Instead, we are renewed by a Spirit that only a lasting hope could bring. “Therefore, though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” (2 Corinthians 4:16).  Another paradox — and thank God for that.