February 13th fell on a Tuesday that year, but it seemed like my unlucky day.

My wife of twenty years was divorcing me; it would be final in two days. February 1, my employer had shown me the door—on the twenty-fifth anniversary of my employment. Now, on February 13, I was in my physician’s office getting test results. Unaware of my difficulties, he asked, “Have you been under stress recently?” Perhaps he was assessing my emotional state to help him gently ease into the difficult subject he was about to address.

He said I might have cancer.

That evening, a longtime friend called to encourage me. As we spoke, I felt the weight of my world crashing in. Would the haunting pain of spousal rejection ever end? Where would I work? What of my life’s mission? Would life itself last much longer? I wept into the phone as I struggled to make sense of the swirling vortex of uncertainty.

Relationships, work and health absorb our time, energy, memories and hopes. Ever had a fulfilling relationship turn to ashes? Maybe you’ve excelled at work; then a new or insensitive boss decides your services are no longer wanted or affordable. Or perhaps your health falters. Your parent or best friend dies suddenly of a heart attack or perishes in an auto wreck.

What do you feel? Shock? Grief? Anger? Desires for revenge or justice? Discouragement and depression? How do you cope with the loss, and how can you start over again?

Over dinner, a new friend told me he had lost both his parents in recent years. “How did you cope?” I inquired. He related painful details of their alcohol-related deaths. I listened intently and tried to express sympathy. “But how did you deal with their deaths?” I asked, curious to know how he had handled his feelings. “I guess I haven’t,” he replied. Painful emotions from deep loss can be difficult to process. Some seek solace by suppressing them.

My wife lost her father, then her mother, during a five-year span in her late twenties and early thirties. Focusing on her mother’s needs after her father’s passing occupied much of her thought. After her mother’s death, she felt quite somber. “People who always were there, whom you could always call on for advice, were no longer around,” she recalls. “That was very sobering.” Over time, the pain of grief diminished.

How can you adjust to significant loss and start over again? I certainly don’t have all the answers. But may I suggest ideas that have worked for me and for others along life’s sometimes challenging journey?

Grieve the loss. Don’t ignore your pain. Take time to reflect on your loss, to cry, to ask questions of yourself, others or God. I remember deep, heaving sobs after my wife left me. I would not wish that pain on anyone, but I recommend experiencing grief rather than ignoring and stuffing it. This tends to diminish ulcers and delayed rage.

A little help from your friends. During divorce proceedings and my rocky employment ending, good friends hung close. We ate meals together, watched football games, attended a concert and more. A trusted counselor helped me cope. A divorce recovery group at a nearby church showed me I was not the only one experiencing weird feelings. Don’t try to handle enormous loss alone.

Watch your vulnerabilities. In our coed divorce recovery group, I appreciated learning how women as well as men processed their pain. It also was tempting to enter new relationships at a very risky time. Some members, not yet divorced, were dating. Some dated each other. Attractive, needy divorcés/divorcées can appear inviting. After each group session, I made a beeline to my car. “Guard your heart,” advises an ancient proverb, “for it affects everything you do.”{1}

Look for a bright spot. Not every cloud has a silver lining, but maybe yours does. After my divorce and termination, I returned to graduate school and saw my career enhanced. My cancer scare turned out to be kidney stones, no fun but not as serious. I met and—four years after the divorce—married a wonderful woman, Meg Korpi. We are very happy.

CNN star Larry King once was fired from the Miami Herald. “It was very difficult for me when they dropped me,” he recalls. King says one can view firing as “a terrible tragedy” or a chance to seek new opportunities.{2}

Cherish your memories. Displaying treasured photos of a deceased loved one can help you adjust gradually to their loss. Recall fun times you had together, fulfilling experiences with coworkers or noteworthy projects accomplished. Be grateful. But don’t become enmeshed in past memories, because the time will come to. . .

Turn the page. After appropriate grieving, there comes a time to move on. One widow lived alone for years in their large, empty house with the curtains drawn. Her children finally convinced her to move but in many ways she seemed emotionally stuck for the next three decades until her death.

Significant steps for me were taking down and storing photos of my ex-wife. Embracing my subsequent job with enthusiasm made it fulfilling and productive. Consider how you’ll emotionally process and respond to the common question, “Where do you work?” Perhaps you’ll want to take a course, exercise and diet for health, or develop a hobby. Meet new people at volunteer projects, civic clubs, church, or vacations. Consider what you can learn from your loss. Often, suffering develops character, patience, confidence and opportunities to help others.

Sink your spiritual roots deep. I’m glad my coping resources included personal faith. Once quite skeptical, I discovered spiritual life during college. Students whose love and joy I admired explained that God loved me enough to send His Son, Jesus, to die to pay the penalty due for all my wrongdoing. Then He rose from the dead to give new life. I invited Him to enter my life, forgive me, and become my friend. I found inner peace, assurance of forgiveness, and strength to adapt to difficulties. Amidst life’s curve balls, I’ve had a close Friend who promised never to leave.

One early believer said those who place their faith in Christ “become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!”{3} Jesus can help you start all over with life itself. He can help you forgive those who have wronged you.

As you grieve your loss, seek support in good friends, watch your vulnerabilities, and seek to turn the page. . . may I encourage you to meet the One who can help you make all things new? He’ll never let you down.

This article first appeared in Answer magazine 14:1 January/February 2007. Copyright © 2007 by Rusty Wright. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Notes

1. Proverbs 4:23 NLT.
2. Harvey Mackay, We Got Fired!…And It’s the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), pp. 150-153 ff.
3. 2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT.

Copyright © 2007 Rusty Wright

We are confronted with ethical choices and moral complexity. We must apply biblical principles to these social and political issues. And we must avoid the pitfalls and logical fallacies that so often accompany these issues.

 This article is also available in Spanish.

Turn on a television or open a newspaper. You are immediately presented with a myriad of ethical issues. Daily we are confronted with ethical choices and moral complexity. Society is awash in controversial issues: abortion, euthanasia, cloning, race, drug abuse, homosexuality, gambling, pornography, and capital punishment. Life may have been simpler in a previous age, but now the rise of technology and the fall of ethical consensus have brought us to a society full of moral dilemmas.

Never has society needed biblical perspectives more to evaluate contemporary moral issues. And yet Christians seem less equipped to address these topics from a biblical perspective. The Barna Research Group conducted a national survey of adults and concluded that only four percent of adults have a biblical worldview as the basis of their decision-making. The survey also discovered that nine percent of born again Christians have such a perspective on life.{1}

It is worth noting that what George Barna defines as a biblical worldview would be considered by most people to be basic Christian doctrine. It doesn’t even include aspects of a biblical perspective on social and political issues.

Of even greater concern is the fact that most Christians do not base their beliefs on an absolute moral foundation. Biblical ethics rests on the belief in absolute truth. Yet surveys show that a minority of born again adults (forty-four percent) and an even smaller proportion of born again teenagers (nine percent) are certain of the existence of absolute moral truth.{2} By a three-to-one margin adults say truth is always relative to the person and their situation. This perspective is even more lopsided among teenagers who overwhelmingly believe moral truth depends on the circumstances.{3}

Social scientists as well as pollsters have been warning that American society is becoming more and more dominated by moral anarchy. Writing in the early 1990s, James Patterson and Peter Kim said in The Day America Told the Truth that there was no moral authority in America. “We choose which laws of God we believe in. There is absolutely no moral consensus in this country as there was in the 1950s, when all our institutions commanded more respect.”{4} Essentially we live in a world of moral anarchy.

So how do we begin to apply a Christian worldview to the complex social and political issues of the day? And how do we avoid falling for the latest fad or cultural trend that blows in the wind? The following are some key principles to apply and some dangerous pitfalls to avoid.

Biblical Principles

A key biblical principle that applies to the area of bioethics is the sanctity of human life. Such verses as Psalm 139:13-16 show that God’s care and concern extend to the womb. Other verses such as Jeremiah 1:5, Judges 13:7-8, Psalm 51:5 and Exodus 21:22–25 give additional perspective and framework to this principle. These principles can be applied to issues ranging from abortion to stem cell research to infanticide.

A related biblical principle involves the equality of human beings. The Bible teaches that God has made “of one blood all nations of men” (Acts 17:26). The Bible also teaches that it is wrong for a Christian to have feelings of superiority (Philippians 2). Believers are told not to make class distinctions between various people (James 2). Paul teaches the spiritual equality of all people in Christ (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11). These principles apply to racial relations and our view of government.

A third principle is a biblical perspective on marriage. Marriage is God’s plan and provides intimate companionship for life (Genesis 2:18). Marriage provides a context for the procreation and nurture of children (Ephesians 6:1-2). And finally, marriage provides a godly outlet for sexual desire (1 Corinthians 7:2). These principles can be applied to such diverse issues as artificial reproduction (which often introduces a third party into the pregnancy) and cohabitation (living together).

Another biblical principle involves sexual ethics. The Bible teaches that sex is to be within the bounds of marriage, as a man and the woman become one flesh (Ephesians 5:31). Paul teaches that we should “avoid sexual immorality” and learn to control our own body in a way that is “holy and honorable” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5). He admonishes us to flee sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 6:18). These principles apply to such issues as premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality.

A final principle concerns government and our obedience to civil authority. Government is ordained by God (Rom.13:1-7). We are to render service and obedience to the government (Matt. 22:21) and submit to civil authority (1 Pet. 2:13-17). Even though we are to obey government, there may be certain times when we might be forced to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). These principles apply to issues such as war, civil disobedience, politics, and government.

Biblical Discernment

So how do we sort out what is true and what is false? This is a difficult proposition in a world awash in data. It underscores the need for Christians to develop discernment. This is a word that appears fairly often in the Bible (1 Samuel 25:32-33; 1 Kings 3:10-11; 4:29; Psalm 119:66; Proverbs 2:3; Daniel 2:14; Philippians 1:9 [NASB]). And with so many facts, claims, and opinions being tossed about, we all need to be able to sort through what is true and what is false.

Colossians 2:8 says, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.” We need to develop discernment so that we are not taken captive by false ideas. Here are some things to watch for:

1. Equivocation — the use of vague terms. Someone can start off using language we think we understand and then veer off into a new meaning. Most of us are well aware of the fact that religious cults are often guilty of this. A cult member might say that he believes in salvation by grace. But what he really means is that you have to join his cult and work your way toward salvation. Make people define the vague terms they use.

This tactic is used frequently in bioethics. Proponents of embryonic stem cell research often will not acknowledge the distinction between adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Those trying to legalize cloning will refer to it as “somatic cell nuclear transfer.” Unless you have a scientific background, you will not know that it is essentially the same thing.

2. Card stacking — the selective use of evidence. Don’t jump on the latest bandwagon and intellectual fad without checking the evidence. Many advocates are guilty of listing all the points in their favor while ignoring the serious points against it.

The major biology textbooks used in high school and college never provide students with evidence against evolution. Jonathan Wells, in his book Icons of Evolution, shows that the examples that are used in most textbooks are either wrong or misleading.{5} Some of the examples are known frauds (such as the Haeckel embryos) and continue to show up in textbooks decades after they were shown to be fraudulent.

Another example would be the Y2K fears. Anyone who was concerned about the potential catastrophe in 2000 need only read any of the technical computer journals in the 1990s to see that no computer expert was predicting what the Y2K fear mongers were predicting at the time.

3. Appeal to authority — relying on authority to the exclusion of logic and evidence. Just because an expert says it, that doesn’t necessarily make it true. We live in a culture that worships experts, but not all experts are right. Hiram’s Law says: “If you consult enough experts, you can confirm any opinion.”

Those who argue that global warming is caused by human activity often say that “the debate in the scientific community is over.” But an Internet search of critics of the theories behind global warming will show that there are many scientists with credentials in climatology or meteorology who have questions about the theory. It is not accurate to say that the debate is over when the debate still seems to be taking place.

4. Ad hominem — Latin for “against the man.” People using this tactic attack the person instead of dealing with the validity of their argument. Often the soundness of an argument is inversely proportional to the amount of ad hominem rhetoric. If there is evidence for the position, proponents usually argue the merits of the position. When evidence is lacking, they attack the critics.

Christians who want public libraries to filter pornography from minors are accused of censorship. Citizens who want to define marriage as between one man and one woman are called bigots. Scientists who criticize evolution are subjected to withering attacks on their character and scientific credentials. Scientists who question global warming are compared to holocaust deniers.

5. Straw man argument — making your opponent’s argument seem so ridiculous that it is easy to attack and knock down. Liberal commentators say that evangelical Christians want to implement a religious theocracy in America. That’s not true. But the hyperbole works to marginalize Christian activists who believe they have a responsibility to speak to social and political issues within society.

Those who stand for moral principles in the area of bioethics often see this tactic used against them. They hear from proponents of physician assisted suicide that pro-life advocates don’t care about the suffering of the terminally ill. Proponents of embryonic stem cell research level the same charge by saying that pro-life people don’t care that these new medical technologies could alleviate the suffering of many with intractable diseases. Nothing could be further from the truth.

6. Sidestepping — dodging the issue by changing the subject. Politicians do this in press conferences by not answering the question asked by the reporter, but instead answering a question they wish someone had asked. Professors sometimes do that when a student points out an inconsistency or a leap in logic.

Ask a proponent of abortion whether the fetus is human and you are likely to see this tactic in action. He or she might start talking about a woman’s right to choose or the right of women to control their own bodies. Perhaps you will hear a discourse on the need to tolerate various viewpoints in a pluralistic society. But you probably won’t get a straight answer to an important question.

7. Red herring — going off on a tangent (from the practice of luring hunting dogs off the trail with the scent of a herring fish). Proponents of embryonic stem cell research rarely will talk about the morality of destroying human embryos. Instead they will go off on a tangent and talk about the various diseases that could be treated and the thousands of people who could be helped with the research.

Be on the alert when someone in a debate changes the subject. They may want to argue their points on more familiar ground, or they may know they cannot win their argument on the relevant issue at hand.

In conclusion, we have discussed some of the key biblical principles we should apply to our consideration and debate about social and political issues. We have talked about the sanctity of human life and the equality of human beings. We have discussed a biblical perspective on marriage and on sexual ethics. And we have also talked about a biblical perspective on government and civil authority.

We have also spent some time talking about the importance of developing biblical discernment and looked at many of the logical fallacies that are frequently used in arguing against a biblical perspective on many of the social and political issues of our day.

Every day, it seems, we are confronted with ethical choices and moral complexity. As Christians it is important to consider these biblical principles and consistently apply them to these issues. It is also important that we develop discernment and learn to recognize these tactics. We are called to develop discernment as we tear down false arguments raised up against the knowledge of God. By doing this we will learn to take every thought captive to the obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

Notes

1. “A Biblical Worldview Has a Radical Effect on a Person’s Life,” The Barna Update (Ventura, CA), 1 Dec. 2003.
2. “The Year’s Most Intriguing Findings, From Barna Research Studies,” The Barna Update (Ventura, CA), 12 Dec. 2000.
3. “Americans Are Most Likely to Base Truth on Feelings,” The Barna Update (Ventura, CA), 12 Feb. 2002.
4. James Patterson and Peter Kim, The Day America Told the Truth (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1991).
5. Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2000).

© 2006 Probe Ministries

What makes you feel anxious? Being late or unprepared for work or appointments? Maybe unresolved interpersonal conflict. Airline travel? Public speaking? Fears of losing love? Serious illness or a friend’s death?

 This article is also available in Spanish.

What makes you feel anxious? Being late or unprepared for work or appointments? Maybe unresolved interpersonal conflict. Airline travel? Public speaking? Fears of losing love? Serious illness or a friend’s death?

Pressures from the trivial to the traumatic can prompt feelings of fearfulness or apprehension.

Once at a booksellers convention my wife and I spent an exhausting day on our feet promoting a new book. Late that night, after a reception crowd had thinned down to mostly authors and our publisher, we stood in a circle engaged in conversation. I had to leave her side momentarily to attend to a matter.

Upon returning to the circle, I walked up behind my wife and began gently to massage her shoulders. She seemed to enjoy this, so I started to put my arms around her waist to give her a little hug. Just then, I looked up at the opposite side of the circle and saw … my wife.

I had my hands on the wrong woman!

In that instant, I knew the true meaning of fear. Fear of circumstances. Even fear of death! Confusion clouded my mind. Heat enveloped my back, shoulders, neck and head. My face reddened; my stomach knotted.

You’ve probably had embarrassing moments that generate anxiety. What about more serious causes?

Your Greatest Fear?

Fear of death is perhaps humans’ greatest fear. In college, the student living next door to me was struck and killed instantly by lightening on a golf course one springtime afternoon. Shock gripped our fraternity house. “What does it mean if life can be snuffed out in an instant?” my friends asked. “Is there a life after death and, if so, how can we experience it?”  Confusion and anxiety reigned.

If you can’t answer the question “What will happen when you die?” you may become anxious.

How can you find real peace in a chaotic world? Consider a possible solution. It involves the spiritual realm.

As a university student, I wrote a paper for an abnormal psychology class investigating a biblical therapy for anxiety. I had come to faith as a freshman and found it brought me peace of mind. Complex psychological disorders often stem from more basic problems like anxiety, problems for which faith offers practical solutions.

I sent a copy of my paper to the author of our textbook, a prominent UCLA psychologist. A month later, he replied that he liked the paper and asked permission to quote from it in his revised textbook.

Somewhat amazed, I readily agreed. I also sent a copy of his letter to my parents in Miami, who were beginning to wonder about their son’s campus spiritual involvement.

This professor felt that the principles in the paper—which certainly were not original with me—had both academic and personal relevance. Several months later, we met at his lovely home in Malibu overlooking the Pacific Ocean. As we sat in his back yard, this professor told me he lacked personal peace and wanted to know God personally. I showed him a simple four-point outline based on one of Jesus’ statements: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”{1}

We discussed God’s unconditional love for us, our dilemma of being unplugged from Him and the flaws (selfishness and “sins”) that result. I noted that Jesus, through His death in our place and return to life, came to plug us back into God by paying the penalty we owed for our sins.

Finding Real Peace

This professor decided to place his faith in God and asked Jesus to forgive him and enter his life. We kept in touch. Later, over the phone, he told me that as he looked out over the ocean and saw the setting sun, “I really believe I’m a part of all this. Before I didn’t, but now I do.”  He was seeing how he fit into God’s universe. An internationally acclaimed scholar linked up with, if you will, the greatest Psychologist.

One of Jesus’ earlier followers wrote to some friends about a divine aid for anxiety: “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”{2}

Faith in God does not make life perfect and is no automatic solution to anxiety. Illness, chemical imbalance, emotional wounds and more can hamper coping. But a good starting place is to become linked with the One who loves us and knows best what makes us fulfilled.

Might it be time for you to consider Him?

Notes

1. John 3:16 NLT (New Living Translation).
2. Philippians 4:6-7 (NLT).

This article first appeared in Answer magazine 4:3 May/June 2006. Copyright © 2006 by Rusty Wright. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Quiz: What do you get when you take one leftist Jewish journalist, assign him to the evangelical Christian beat for major newspapers on both US coasts, sprinkle in some fiery sermons and politically conservative speeches, mix thoroughly, and bake with the heat of fiercely contested national elections?

Note: This is not a joke.

Sound like a recipe for nitroglycerin shortcake? Maybe you’d expect mutual animosity: “Those wacko God-squaders are at it again, imposing their beliefs and politics on the rest of us sane people.” “He’s just another example of the biased secular humanist liberal media that’s ruining America.”

Yet this cake hides no explosives. The leftist Jewish journalist made a significant discovery on the road to meeting deadlines, one he feels can instruct his colleagues and us all.

He says to effectively cover the strange tribe to which he was assigned, it helps to know its members as neighbors and friends. His lesson has affected his writing in ways that have conservative evangelicals commending him for fairness and that provide useful illustrations for managing today’s turbulent culture wars.

A Jew Among the Evangelicals

Mark Pinsky’s new book, A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed (Westminster John Knox), tells how this “nice Jewish boy from Jersey” ended up attending church “more often than many Christians” and sometimes more often than he attends his own synagogue. During his ten years covering religion for the Los Angeles Times, he focused on leaders of major evangelical ministries and had little connection with local grassroots evangelicals.

When he moved to Florida in 1995 to write for the Orlando Sentinel, they were everywhere: In the neighborhood, at kids sporting events, birthday parties, PTA meetings, Scouts, “I encountered evangelicals simply as people, rather than as subjects or sources of quotes for my stories.”

Still a committed Jew, Pinsky found they were neither monolithic nor, as The Washington Post once claimed, “”poor, uneducated and easy to command.”  They displayed surprising diversity on a range of issues including the Iraq war, environmentalism, tax policy, women in leadership, and immigration.

The Readable Radical

Disclaimer: Pinsky, whom I’ve known since our university days, is a personal friend, so I’m biased. But I’ve also observed a curious development here that merits wider consideration. His Duke Chronicle column was entitled “The Readable Radical” and he was at the vanguard of late-1960s campus leftist causes. I didn’t always agree with his politics, but I admired his concerns about justice, hypocrisy and the disenfranchised.

He still votes with the Democratic left, but he also understands the Christian subculture he covers better than many of its members. Mutual respect characterizes his relations with its leaders.

Pinsky is not without good natured humor as he highlights evangelical quirks. Example: the Orlando golf club that hyped its Easter sunrise service and “Easter Egg Scramble” golf tournament. And, perhaps-not-so-tongue-in-cheek, he admits he especially likes about evangelical Christians that “if you are sorry, they have to forgive you.”  He knows their boss said, “When you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against{1}.

Lessons for Life in the Larger World

His book draws lessons from his peculiar and unlikely journey for life in the larger world. His stories of “how people just like you wrestle with feelings, values, and beliefs that touch the core of their beings” provide “a glimpse of someone learning to understand and get along with folks whose convictions differ from his own.”

Get to know your intellectual and philosophical adversaries, he recommends. Take them to lunch. Ratchet down the rhetoric. Maybe connection can produce understanding and civility can grow into bridgebuilding.

Not bad advice in a world too-often filled with brickbats and name calling.

Note

1. Mark 11:25 New Living Translation.

© 2006 Rusty Wright

Former Probe staff member Rick Rood lovingly cared for his wife Polly through their twenty-year battle with the degenerative ravages of Huntington’s Disease. He wrote this intensely personal and insightful essay a couple of months after Polly’s death in the fall of 2003. We gratefully provide his reflections on that journey.

 This article is also available in Spanish.

During these first few months of adjusting to being alone without my dear wife Polly, I’ve had occasion to reflect quite a bit not only on our nearly 32 years of marriage, but particularly on these past twenty years of walking with her through her journey with Huntington’s Disease (HD). And particularly how they impacted me personally. I admit that this is going to be a very personal essay. And parts of it may be tedious at best. But I feel that at the end of this twenty year journey, this is an appropriate time for me to share some of my thoughts, and to fill in some of the gaps in Polly’s story. My purpose is not only to share some of my heart, but also to provide a glimpse at some of the ways in which the Lord was at work through this experience, at least to my perception.

Polly and I met during our college years at Seattle Pacific University, and got to know each other well during the year that we both served in student government. I remember to this day being “captured” by Polly’s disarming warmth and cheerfulness, as well as by her servant heart. Polly used to spend her summers working at Christian camps. And the summer before we served in student government together, she served as a summer missionary among the Indians of British Columbia. Polly was an elementary education major, and also was a very good pianist. When she was younger she had also been a cheerleader, and was a member of her school’s swim team.

When we married on Sept. 11, 1971, we had no idea that thirteen years later, almost to the day, our lives would be impacted in the way they were when she was diagnosed with HD. There was no clinical test for HD back then. No way to know that you carried this illness, until the symptoms began to reveal themselves. But over the course of a year, and two visits to the University of Texas Health Science Center in Dallas, Polly’s doctor concluded that he was “99% certain” that she had this illness. From that moment on, no aspect of our life would be untouched by this reality—physical, emotional, relational, social, vocational, and spiritual. We also knew that her health would gradually decline over the course of the next fifteen years or so, and that only a very small percentage of HD patients survive more than twenty years after onset.

I could detail every step of Polly’s journey with HD (and later also with cancer), and fill several pages. But that’s not my purpose in this essay. I will only say that her limitations affected every aspect of her person, and that they proceeded slowly and gradually over the course of the next nineteen years, until she was taken home to heaven on August 6 of this year. There were, however, certain “milestones” along the way which I will share with you. The most notable of these was when it became obvious to us that it was time for her to take up residence in a nursing home in August of 1992. Polly never held back from the challenges she was confronted with by this illness. She continued to do all she possibly could. But she gradually had to give up one activity after another: driving, cooking, dressing and feeding herself, etc., etc.

The year prior to her entering the nursing home, I was able to work almost entirely at home for the ministry I served with at the time (International Students). It was unsafe to leave Polly alone, since she easily lost her balance. And she needed someone to feed her at mealtimes, and help her with the other aspects of her life. We had discussed nursing home residency in the past, though it was not something either of us was entirely comfortable with. But I well remember the day when she sat in our living room and said to me, “Rick, I think it’s time for me to move to a nursing home.” I think we both knew it was time. Polly needed someone with her at all hours of the day and night. Yet we also had two children to continue raising (Jeff and Jill were 12 and 15 at the time), and a full-time ministry to pursue.

The day I helped Polly move into her room at the nursing home, I stayed with her over the lunch hour. I had never spent much time in nursing homes before. And looking around the room, I realized that we were entering a very different world. Most of the people in this nursing home were quite disabled. It was a culture shock! But with my nightly visits, and development of relationships with the staff and the other residents, Polly’s nursing home soon became my home as well. Her world became my world. The highlight of my day for the next eleven years was to drive to her nursing home to be with her in the evening, and when I could to go at lunchtime to feed her her meal! At first, Polly used a walker, and we would walk down to the dining room to sit alone at a table, and talk about our day. She always wanted me to get a Dr Pepper or iced tea, and lift it to her mouth so she could drink it by straw. She loved for me to read to her from various books, and especially from the Bible. I think we read through most of the Bible together—some books several times. She loved Genesis, Isaiah, the Psalms, and the Gospels. Soon Polly was in a wheelchair, and I used to wheel her outside to a bench that was shaded by trees. We would sit and watch the birds, and pray together.

A statement Polly made to me a few days after she entered the nursing home reveals something of what kind of person Polly was. She said to me, “Rick, do you think I should start witnessing to the people here?” I’ve encountered people through the years whose zeal for witnessing probably had the opposite effect they desired. But Polly was not one of them. Just her quiet perseverance and cheerful manner spoke volumes to me, as I believe it did to many others around her. The social worker at the nursing home where she spent her first four years made these comments about her: “Polly was a very cheerful person. Whenever you would see her she had a smile on her face that could cheer up the world. She was always complimenting others for things they do. She loved a challenge. She played a major part on our balloon volleyball team. Although her health condition limited her in doing some things by herself, she did as much as she could by herself, trying so hard to be independent as much as she could. I remember her face when she used to tell me that she was going out on pass to go to a ballgame, she was so excited. Polly was a very kind and sweet individual who loved her family and she will be missed.”

Many fun activities were provided by the nursing home staff, including “balloon volleyball” (which Polly seemed to enjoy a lot), special holiday dinners (she would dress up in her finest dress, and accompany me down the hall to the dining room), outings to various events in the city (e.g. to concerts, the state fair). Actually, Polly’s move to the nursing home enhanced our life in many ways. For the year prior to her taking up residence, almost all our time was devoted to “keeping our head above water” (which we didn’t always manage to do). We were beginning to sink under the load of all the activities necessary just to maintain our life. But with all the assistance of the nursing home staff to cover many of these things, the time we spent together could now be devoted to other things that added to Polly’s quality of life.

For several years I always brought Polly home on the weekends, and always scheduled a special outing or two—to a ballgame, a concert, a movie, a drive to a lake, etc., etc. I found that the anticipation of these events brought an element of hope and joy to Polly during the long weeks at the nursing home. We all need hope—the little hopes of a change of pace each weekend. I well remember one day probably 8 or 9 years ago now when Polly looked at me and said in her then slurred speech, “Rick, you help make my life worthwhile.” My reporting that to you sounds self-serving, and maybe it is. But I will tell you that that one statement stayed in my heart for many years! On another occasion I recall asking Polly how she kept going in spite of the at times overwhelming difficulties. She simply said to me, “I have the Lord. And I have my family.”

About six years ago it became very difficult for Polly to continue eating, and she decided to permit her physician to insert a feeding tube in her stomach. For a while I continued bringing Polly home on the weekends. But with the tube feedings every four hours, neither of us got much sleep, and by Sunday night we were both exhausted. But even after we discontinued her coming home for these extended stays, we still went out Friday evenings (mostly to high school ballgames) and Saturday afternoons, and even to church Sunday mornings (where we sat at the back of the sanctuary). These outings brought me great joy. And it was so satisfying to see Polly smiling, even though she could barely speak anymore.

Polly’s physical condition was declining pretty rapidly now. And it was getting much more difficult to transport her places. I well remember one day I think nearly four years ago, when I realized that this particular Saturday was the last time I would likely ever by able to take her out. It was. From that day on, Polly rarely was removed from her bed, except when we transported her to the shower room. Henceforth, it became a matter no longer of bringing Polly to places she could enjoy, but of bringing joy to Polly in her room. While we continued many of our daily routines, it seemed to me that worship became more and more our most meaningful activity. Polly couldn’t speak at all anymore, and I am not much of a musician. But I could tell that the worship music that we frequently listened to brought a great deal of comfort to her . . . and to me too. In fact, the past few years it was worship that brought most comfort and joy to my own heart as Polly’s caregiver and husband . . . to the very last day of her life. Just before she left us, I was preparing to play some music. We never got to it. But I’m convinced that she was welcomed into heaven by far more beautiful music and meaningful worship than anything I could provide for her!

As I have reflected more and more on these past twenty years, I’ve asked many questions. It was only natural, especially at first, to ask “Why?” But we knew that we live in a fallen world, and none of us can claim immunity from life’s struggles and even tragedies. It never really entered my mind to ask “What?” That is, “What shall I do as Polly’s husband?” I knew that I was with her for the “long haul.” No matter what. But I did at times ask “How?” “How are we going to do this?” How am I going to care for her, raise our two children, continue in full-time ministry, and for a few years during this journey also help care for my mother with Alzheimer’s, and my dad when he was so seriously ill as a result of working so hard at caring for her. It didn’t take me long to realize that apart from the Lord there was no way to do this. It was an impossible task. But I also knew that we weren’t “apart from the Lord.” He had shown himself faithful to us in so many ways through the years. He couldn’t stop now.

Shortly after Polly was diagnosed with HD in 1984, I was reading through the Psalms, and I came to this statement: “Cast your burden upon the Lord and he will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken (literally “totter”)” (Psalm 55:22). In the margin I read that the word “burden” could be rendered “what He has given you.” At that moment, the Lord impressed on me that the burden we had been handed was also in some mysterious way I could not yet understand, a “gift” from the Lord. Not something He had caused. But something that He could touch and transform. It would be many years before I would even begin to see how this could possibly by true. As I progressed through my reading of the Psalms, I also came to this statement: “Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden” (Ps. 68:19). I knew that if we were going to finish this race, it would be by doing what these two verses urged us to do . . . and to do it one day at a time. I had for some time kept a journal in which I recorded evidences of God’s hand on our life. And over the next twenty years I returned to this discipline many times. Today, this journal is one of my most precious possessions, because it is full of the record of God’s faithfulness to us, even though at times my own personal faith was very much of the “mustard seed” variety, if even that! I was also very aware that we needed the prayer support of many other people. And I cannot tell you the encouragement it was for both of us to hear from so many friends across the country that they were praying for us even daily. When I encounter people in the hospital who are under a burden too heavy for them to bear, I always encourage them to enlist the daily prayer support of as many friends as possible. And to ask them to keep praying until they go to heaven!

As I read through this journal, I find evidence of the Lord’s activity in our lives in two primary ways. First, in the many things that He did for us. I’m sure that there were innumerable ways in which He was working in our behalf, of which we were totally unaware. But I will mention a few of the ways of which I was aware. For one, it became evident to me as the years went by that God had been preparing us for this long chapter of our lives—primarily by providing models for us. I think for instance of my own paternal grandparents. Among my earliest memories in life are those of watching my grandmother care for my grandfather during the years following his major stroke, in the early 1950s. Then there was the model He provided for us of Bill and Dorothea Hart, who were members of our church in the Seattle area in the late 1970s. Bill suffered from Parkinson’s for many years. And he and his dear, caring wife were regular attendees at the church I pastored for five years. What a sterling example they were to us. There was the model of Polly’s mother Elsie, who tirelessly cared for Polly’s brother Chris for so many years. There was my own father who was so dedicated in caring for my mom during all her years with Alzheimer’s. There was the couple we met in Hayward, CA in 1987, Sherwood and Harvette Peters. Harvette had M.S., and relied on Sherwood’s loving care for many years before her homegoing. There were our neighbors, Al and Jeane Olson, who lived directly across the street from us. (Little did we know what a blessing they would be to us when we bought our home, not even knowing they lived there!) Al suffered from a neurological disorder for many years, and his wife Jeane provided such a wonderful model by patiently caring for him. I could mention others, such as Greg and Lisa Hatteberg at Dallas Seminary, who are still contending with Lisa’s M.S. And so many others whom God brought across our path to serve as models and examples, particularly for me.

In addition to preparing us, it was also evident that the Lord was guiding us and providing for us. God’s guidance and provision was evident first of all in his enabling me to remain in full-time ministry through these past twenty years, but in ways that allowed me the flexibility to provide the increasing level of care that Polly needed. I frankly did not know how this could be. But how grateful I am for the years I was allowed to serve at Dallas Seminary, International Students, Probe Ministries, and since 1996 in hospital chaplaincy. And for the many, many faithful friends who have supported us in these efforts!

I think of the special families who lived near us, and who helped us shepherd our dear children during the years they were growing up, and we were being stretched beyond our capacities.

The Lord’s guidance and provision was also evident at points along the way when we had to make important decisions. I think for instance of when it came time for Polly to enter the nursing home. It was our neighbor Melanie Miller, a nurse, who informed us of Brentwood Place—the one facility in Dallas County that had a preponderance of younger residents (Polly was only 41); and then four years later when Polly’s needs were increasing, she informed us of the opening of a new nursing home on the shores of Lake Ray Hubbard (Sr. Care) where Polly resided for over seven years. I remember also when Polly and I were discussing this decision, being captivated by a story on the evening news that very week about a couple’s going through the process of making the same decision we were.

When she first entered the nursing home, we had to jump through a number of legal and financial hoops, including applying for Medicaid assistance for Polly. This was the only way we could afford this level of care. Only those whose total assets fall under a certain limit are able to qualify for this assistance, which ours did at that time. We later learned, however, that if we had waited one more month to apply, we would have been disqualified, and Polly would not have been able to enter the home for perhaps two more years. This was the Lord’s doing, and his timing for her.

At other times of decision it seemed that God brought people across our path who had just the insight or encouragement we needed at that particular time. When Polly had to make a decision about a feeding tube for example (which really is a huge decision), the very day that we were contemplating it I entered a room at the hospital where I serve as chaplain, only to find a HD patient and her husband. She had made the same decision Polly was contemplating. I only encounter HD patients in the hospital about once a year! But I encountered her on the very day I needed some encouragement with regard to Polly’s decision.

One of our most constant companions these past twenty years was the temptation to discouragement. I’m convinced that there is a spiritual battle that surrounds issues such as these in our lives. There is an enemy who wants to defeat and destroy us. And I found that one of the ways that the Lord encouraged us (I’m speaking for myself here), was through the many small evidences of his presence in our lives. If you were to read several pages of my journal, you would conclude that I had recorded a number of interesting “coincidences” in our life. But when you string together so many events like these over the course of not only years but decades, it becomes not “coincidence” but “providence.”

For example, I remember a day in the early 90s when a package containing a book came to my desk at Probe Ministries, where I was serving as Director of Publications. Accompanying this package was a letter from the authors of the book. They were asking if we would consider marketing and distributing this book. This was the only request like this that I remember receiving during the years I worked there. I noticed from the cover that the book was a biography or story. How they happened to send this book to us at Probe (an academic/educational ministry), I still do not know. The authors had no way of knowing me, or anything about our life. But what surprised me when I opened the book was that it was the life story of a couple, the husband being affected by HD! Polly’s illness. What are the odds? We eventually met the sweet surviving wife of this man about whom the book was written!

I remember another time not long after Polly entered the nursing home that I brought her one evening to a concert at a large church in Dallas. About 4,000 were in attendance. We were a few minutes later than planned, and the lights were already dimmed. It was packed. But there was one seat at the end of one pew on the ground floor, where Polly could sit next to me in her wheelchair. We took our place. I turned to my right, and found that the person right next to me was the director of nursing from her nursing home! I didn’t even know she was a believer, or that she would be there that night. What are the odds? There was also the time when I had just finished reading a portion of a book to Polly at the nursing home, then left to attend a service at a nearby church. The pastor’s message was on exactly what I had just read to Polly. What are the odds?

Given any one of these instances, I would not think a great deal about it. But these kinds of events formed a pattern over the course of many years to the very last day of Polly’s life! I recounted in my memorial letter about Polly some of the evidences of God’s fingerprints on our life during her final weeks and days. But for those who have not read that account, I repeat some of it here. The morning before Polly entered the hospital for the last time, I was preparing for my day and listening to a Christian radio station in the background. As is my custom, before leaving my room I walked over to my bed to sit down and read the day’s selection from the devotional “Daily Bread.” As I sat down, I reached over to turn off the radio. But before I did, the last words uttered by the spokesperson on the radio caught my attention. He said, “If you knew that today would be your loved one’s last day, what would you say to them?” An interesting thought. Then I opened my devotional, and the reading for the day was entitled “Say It Now!” These words appeared in the article: “Recalling the good qualities of deceased friends or relatives at their funeral is appropriate, but how much better to give sincere praise to them while they are still living. It may be the encouragement they desperately need . . . . Don’t put it off. Say it today. Tomorrow may be too late!”

That night when I went to see Polly, I made a special point to be alone with her and to tell her how much I loved her and thanked God for her, and to thank her for all she had done for us as a family through the years. Polly had been unable to speak at all the past few years. But the look in her sweet brown eyes spoke more than words could tell. Little did I know that this indeed would be her last full day in the nursing home. The next night I would be sitting with her in the emergency room as she entered the hospital for the last time. Two weeks later I was up early on the morning of August 6, preparing my breakfast before returning to the hospital. The same radio station was playing in the background as two weeks before. This time a commentator came on the air and said, “You know, when it comes time to die, the relationships that will support us during our time of need, are the ones we have cultivated and nurtured all our life. We die the way we lived.” Less than two hours later I was standing at Polly’s bed as she left this world for heaven.

I share these events with you to simply illustrate how over time I learned to take them as reminders, or “markers” along the way, of God’s presence and shepherding care over our life. Even in our most difficult hours. One of the many things that the Lord did for us during Polly’s long illness.

But just as important as what the Lord was doing for us, if not more so, was what I eventually saw as his work in us. At least I knew He was seeking to do this in me. Shortly after Polly died, our daughter Jill said to me (and I quickly corrected her), “Dad, I think the reason God put you with Mom was because He knew you had the qualities that would be needed to care for her.” I know my heart better than she does, and I said, “Jill, I think one reason the Lord put us together was because He knew I needed to acquire the qualities needed to care for Mom.” And it’s true. I well remember a day (a moment, really), probably five years after Polly was diagnosed, that it dawned on me what God was doing in my life in this regard. And how much growing I needed to do. I can only speak for myself, but I know that when Polly became ill, God enlisted me in a life shaping process. Part of this process involved his gently and patiently chipping away at qualities that He knew needed to diminish in my life. The other part was gradually instilling in my heart the qualities He wanted me to acquire. And I saw primarily three.

The first of these was a sounder faith in the Lord. Not that there wasn’t faith in our hearts before. But this assignment required faith at a different level than I know I personally had. I’m not necessarily speaking of faith in God’s healing power (though I know it’s real). Candidly, there were occasions over the years when well-meaning individuals urged us to have faith that God would heal Polly miraculously. One fellow once told me that if we had real faith we would discontinue all of Polly’s medications. I don’t need to tell you that I didn’t think about this suggestion very long. The kind of faith I sensed God was aiming at growing in us was a trust in His goodness, and the goodness of His purposes, even when it was unknown to us what they really were. Even though life was getting harder every year. This kind of faith comes only from God.

Over the years the Lord used such things as the reading of scripture, times of prayer, the prayers of others, and the recording of instances like those mentioned above, to nourish our faith in Him. Not that we didn’t experience times of doubt or discouragement. We did. One thing I did learn, however, was that the experience of pain and sorrow is not inconsistent with faith in the Lord. Paul’s letter to the Philippians is full of exhortations to joy and peace, and contains a wonderful affirmation of our hope that to be with Christ is “better by far.” But in the middle of this letter Paul makes the honest confession that if his friend Epaphroditus were to die as a result of his recent illness, he would have experienced “sorrow upon sorrow” (2:27). God’s word is so realistic and balanced. That fact helped me endure the stormier seasons (as it does now).

The second quality I sensed God working on, and this is really an outgrowth of the first, was hope. I am not by nature a very hopeful person. But I learned to grow in this area. I see hope as simply “faith oriented to the future.” (I read this somewhere.) An expectation not just of “good times to come,” but that as God’s goodness has been revealed in the past, so it will be unveiled in the future—even if it comes through encounter with illness and pain. That what the enemy may intend for evil (and which is evil), God can and ultimately will use for good. Even in the face of death (that alien invader into God’s created order), there is the wonderful hope of eternal life in heaven, and the resurrection to come!

The third quality God was working on is the most important. That was love. I say “most important” because the New Testament tells us that if faith doesn’t produce love, we are “nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2). It is useless and dead. I loved Polly before. But this illness tested our love, and took aim at it. Speaking for myself, God used this illness to transform my love for Polly. I learned just how much I needed to grow in genuine self-giving and self-sacrificing love. Not that I didn’t need to take time to care for myself. It is possible to neglect your own legitimate needs as a caregiver. And I see some caregivers in the hospital who do this. I remembered that even the “Good Samaritan” delegated some of his caregiving to others so that he could tend to his other obligations (Luke 10:35). But there is a difference between taking care of our needs, and catering only to our own desires. And this is what the Lord was showing to me.

He was showing me just how many ways there are to spell “love.” Dressing, bathing, feeding, carrying, smiling, laughing, crying, reading, singing, just sitting quietly . . . . I learned that in a society that places its highest premium on appearance and ability, it is very easy for people whose illness robs them of these very things to feel not only diminished, but also devalued. At times the words and actions of others can reinforce this false belief. I learned that the most significant gift I could give to Polly was to communicate to her by my own words and by my actions that she was the most valuable human being in my life. And she was.

I must not fail to mention at this point that not only did I sense the Lord transforming my love for Polly, but also deepening my love for Him. There were times when I felt confused and upset about what the Lord was allowing to happen in our life. I still feel the pain of some of these memories. But as the years went by, and we experienced more and more of God’s shepherding care over our lives (even during the very trying times), my love for Him and sense of indebtedness to Him grew and grew. As a result, I sensed a growing passion in my heart to simply worship Him. Both private and corporate worship became the focus and highlight of my week. I remember reading as a young boy the verse that says, “We love (Him) because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). It’s true. The love I feel for Him and the worship I find flowing from my heart, is simply the natural response to His great love, expressed to us in so many ways. When my heart grows cold, and at times it does, one of the things I’ve learned to do is to bring to mind the many ways in which God has so graciously loved us these past twenty years. “Faith, hope and love; these three remain. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

I will tell you honestly that the greatest blessing of my life was caring for Polly. I miss it deeply. And though I would never want her to go through again what she did these twenty years, . . . if she had to, I would be first in line to go through it with her again.

Several years ago, I was reading through the Gospel of John. When I reached the end of the book my attention was drawn to a statement Jesus made to Peter in which he signified to him “by what kind of death he would glorify God” (21:19). I had always thought about “living to the glory of God.” But I had never thought about our “dying to the glory of God.” I knew at that point that Polly’s remaining years were likely few. And I began praying almost daily that whenever it came time for her to leave us, that her departure would bring glory to Him in some way. That was a hard prayer for me to offer. And I don’t feel like I was ready for it to be answered until her very last hospital stay. But now that that day has come and gone, I believe God has answered that prayer. In my mind, He has answered it in part by magnifying through Polly all that He has done for us, and all He’s doing in us. And will continue to do until we see Him in glory. Soli Deo Gloria.

© 2006 Rick Rood

What Makes You Feel Guilty?

What makes you feel guilty?

Has a relationship gone sour and you find yourself agonizing about what might have been if you’d acted or spoken differently? Maybe your slave-driver boss hassles you for being behind. Are your kids wondering why they ended up with you as a parent?

These days, food guilt is common. With super-slim models gracing supermarket tabloids and magazine covers (admit it, now; you’ve peeked), even a fit, petite-sized former cheerleader can get depressed standing in the checkout line. “No-Guilt Nachos,” offers a Ladies’ Home Journal recipe.

America Online has a special guilt section dealing with “Relationship Guilt,” “Parental Guilt,” “Food Guilt,” “Workforce Guilt,” “Pricey Guilt,” “I’m-a-Rotten-Person Guilt,” “Stay-in-Touch Guilt,” and “Trying-to-Please-Everyone Guilt.” Whew!

Ever been late paying a family bill due to negligence or overspending? Been unfaithful to your spouse? Lied to the IRS or a friend? Been angry without reason?

When we fall short of our own – or others’ – standards, guilt feelings can result. Unresolved guilt can bring anxiety, depression, ulcers, low self-esteem and more.

I am a recovering perfectionist. As a teenager, I could be pretty hard on myself. I once fouled out of a high school basketball game in the final seconds with our team ahead. The opposing player made his free throws, putting his team ahead. I felt bleak. Our team’s desperation inbounds pass went to midcourt, where a teammate caught the ball and threw up a prayer. The ball swished through the net as time expired. We had won. I was the second happiest player there. I probably would have excoriated myself had he missed.

A single man I know became involved with another man’s wife. Her rocky marriage had sent her lonely heart wandering and his youthful enthusiasm and libido met many of her wants. They dreamed, schemed, sneaked, and rendezvoused. When discovered, he lied and sought to perpetuate the affair. Eventually, friends convinced him to break things off. He felt guilty for having the fling, guilty for lying about it, and guilty for dumping her.

Feeling guilty can cripple you emotionally. Serious ethical or moral lapses can bring blame and shame. A seemingly minor flaw can sometimes bug the daylights out of you. This article looks at healthy, biblical ways to deal with guilt, and how to know that you are really forgiven.

Some Causes of Guilt Feelings

Why does guilt affect us so, and how can we alleviate it? Some psychologists emphasize that problems in our past can plague us in the present. Inability to reconcile or move past unhealthy relationships with parents, siblings, teachers or classmates may color our emotions. Other authorities feel that people may be following overly rigid standards.

Suggested solutions have included discovering and resolving past hang-ups, relaxing moral codes or easing personal expectations. Certainly many people still suffer from past problems or set unrealistic standards. Forty-eight hours of tasks won’t fit into one day, so don’t necessarily castigate yourself when only half your ambitious to-do list gets accomplished. If you find yourself sneaking a diet-busting snack, maybe rewarding yourself occasionally is better than whipping yourself. But it seems wise to also consider that, at least in some instances, we may feel guilty because we are guilty.

If this is true, then therapy for a guilty person could begin with getting them to admit their shortcoming. That’s not always easy.

Admitting you’re wrong can be hard. Perhaps you’ve heard of the writer who asked his domineering editor if he’d ever been wrong. “Yes,” replied the editor. “I was wrong once. It was when I thought I was wrong but I wasn’t.”

University of Illinois psychologist O. H. Mowrer pointed out a common dilemma in trying to face your own shortcomings:

Here, too, we encounter difficulty, because human beings do not change radically until first they acknowledge their sins, but it is hard for one to make such an acknowledgement unless he has “already changed.” In other words, the full realization of deep worthlessness is a severe ego “insult,” and one must have a new source of strength to endure it.{1}

I understand this inner weakness problem. As a teenager, I found success through athletics, academics, and student government. I was attending one of my nation’s leading secondary schools. President John F. Kennedy and actor Michael Douglas were alumni. But my achievements didn’t bring the personal satisfaction I wanted. Guilt, anxiety, and a poor self-image often plagued me on the inside.

My first year in university, I met some students who said that the spiritual side of life offered a solution to the guilt problem. A relationship with God, they said, could give me the “new source of strength” necessary to face my own flaws and seek help. Because of them, I discovered practical reasons why faith could help me overcome my guilt.

A Solution to Guilt

The hit movie Bruce Almighty depicts God’s attempts to contact the main character (played by Jim Carrey) by leaving a number on his pager. Turns out the phone number is valid in many area codes. After the film’s release, people and businesses began getting calls from folks asking for God.

A Florida woman threatened to sue the film studio after twenty calls per hour clogged her cell phone. A Denver radio station built a contest around the fluke. Some callers to the station seemed to think they’d really discovered a direct line to God. One even left a message confessing her adultery.{2}

Owning up to guilt can help clear your conscience.

Those college students I mentioned earlier had a joy and enthusiasm that attracted me. They claimed to have a personal relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. I couldn’t believe it all. I kept returning to their meetings because I was curious and because it was a good place to get a date. Especially because it was a good place to get a date!

They explained that God loved me, but that my own self-centeredness or sin had separated me from Him. They said His Son, Jesus, died to pay the penalty for my sins, and rose from the dead so I could receive forgiveness as a free gift. Eventually, it made sense.{3} Through a simple heart attitude, I invited Jesus to enter my life, forgive me, and become my friend. There was no thunder and lightning, no angels appeared, and I did not become perfect overnight. But I found a new inner peace, freedom from guilt, assurance that I would be with God forever, and the best friend I could ever have.

Of course, my experience is not unique. Harvard psychologist William James, in his classic book The Varieties of Religious Experience cites Henry Alline who placed his faith in Christ: “the burden of guilt and condemnation was gone . . . my whole soul, that was a few minutes ago groaning under mountains of death . . . was now filled with immortal love . . . freed from the chains of death and darkness….”{4}

One early believer wrote: “God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross.”{5} I found that my own guilt was gone, but I also had to draw on His power daily.

A friend of Jesus wrote, “If we confess our sins to him, he [God] is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.”{6} Some call this statement the believer’s “bar of soap.” We confess, being honest with God. He forgives and cleanses us.

But what if you don’t feel forgiven? Is there such a thing as false guilt?

True or False?

A reader who signed his e-mail “Guilt plagued” told me of his struggles:

A few years ago, out of desperation, I made a series of terrible mistakes. I am committed to the Lord and confessed my sins. I’m terribly ashamed and embarrassed about what I have done, and I feel ten times worse because I can’t make restitution. . . . I’m having a difficult time processing the idea that He has forgiven me. . . . Please help me . . . what should I do? The guilt is eating me alive.

Sometimes we feel guilty because we are guilty. Other times we feel guilty without cause. Is your guilt true or false, and what can you do about the feelings?{7}

When my wife, Meg, was in graduate school at Stanford, she regularly parked on the street near her campus office. One afternoon she discovered a parking ticket on her windshield. During that day – while she was parked there – campus management had painted the curb red, signifying “No Parking.” (The curb had never had paint during her tenure.) Was she guilty?

Her dilemma was both laughable and burdensome. Meg would have to either pay a fine or go to court. She appeared in court and told the judge what had happened. He dropped the charges. (I should hope he would!)

The law and the judge’s application of it determined guilt or innocence. Similarly, if we violate God’s proscriptions, we stand guilty. If we do not violate biblical principles, then we may or may not be guilty.

If you know your guilt is real, your solution begins with placing your trust in Christ to forgive you. Once you have, and you become aware of sins in your daily life, simply admit them to God.

Keep short accounts with God. As the proverbial country preacher said, “I ‘fesses ’em as I does ’em.” Feelings may lag behind, but if you’ve admitted your sin to God, He has forgiven you.

What if you’re unsure if your guilt is true or false, or if you confess your sins but still don’t feel forgiven?

Consider the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to guide us into truth,{8} especially concerning sin.{9} If the Bible doesn’t prohibit certain behaviors, you – if you’re a follower of Jesus – can ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom about them. Jesus’ brother James wrote, “If you need wisdom—if you want to know what God wants you to do—ask him, and he will gladly tell you.”{10} Discerning God’s guidance is not a perfect science, but His inner conviction can help you sort things out.

Making Things Right

What do you do if you’re not sure if your guilt feelings are legitimate, or if you don’t feel forgiven?

Realize that God’s promises trump your own self-criticism. Members of God’s family can trust His opinion even when they don’t feel like it’s true. We can “set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”{11} Does your heart condemn you unjustly? You can say, “Listen, heart. I’m a child of God. I’ve confessed my sin and He says I’m forgiven. I refuse to believe your condemnation.”

I recommend that you converse with yourself in private rather than in public! For a variety of psychological and spiritual reasons, your guilt feelings may not disappear immediately. Changing established emotional patterns can take time. Choosing to believe God is good starting point.

Realize also that God’s promises trump the real enemy. This may be hard to swallow, but it’s important. Jesus taught the existence of “Satan,” a “liar and the father of lies,”{12} the “accuser” of believers.{13}

I once considered myself too intellectual to believe in Satan. Our university mascot was the “Blue Devil.” To me, the devil was some guy in a blue costume with a pitchfork who ran around at basketball games. Then I heard that Satan the deceiver has some people so deceived that they don’t believe he exists. Jesus’ life and teachings eventually convinced me that Satan was real. If you experience false guilt feelings, realize that they may have a lower source. You needn’t deny the feelings, but you can deny false guilt based on Jesus’ friendship with you.{14}

You may need to make restitution. My second year in college, I swiped a plastic bucket from behind the lectern in the psychology lecture hall. It had been there every day during the semester. “No one wants it,” I convinced myself. “It deserves to be taken.” I used it to wash my car.

Two years later, I read a booklet about God’s forgiveness. That bucket kept coming to mind. I not only needed to admit my theft to God. I needed to make restitution.

My booty long since lost, I purchased a new bucket and carried it sheepishly across campus one afternoon. Finding no one in the psychology building to confess to, I left the bucket in a broom closet with a note of explanation. Maybe a janitor read it. My conscience was clear.

After hearing of this stolen bucket episode in a lecture, one friend wrote his former employer to confess all the items he had stolen and to offer restitution. “We all probably have some plastic buckets in our lives,” observed another associate.

Feeling guilty? You may just need to relax unrealistic standards in a stress-filled world. But you also may need to face genuine personal shortcomings. If you do, you can know that the complete forgiveness that Jesus offers is free and that His truth trumps all challengers.

This article is adapted with permission from Rusty Wright, “Grappling with Guilt,” In Touch, February 2005, pp. 18-20; Copyright © Rusty Wright 2005.

Notes

1. O. H. Mowrer, “Sin, the Lesser of Two Evils,” quoted in Henry R. Brandt, The Struggle for Peace (Wheaton, IL: Scripture Press Publications, 1965).
2. Mitch Stacy, “‘Bruce Almighty’ Phone Number Annoys Many,” Associated Press/AOL News, May 28, 2003.
3. For detailed information on Jesus and evidence to support His claims, see www.WhoIsJesus-Really.com.
4. The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henry Alline (Boston, 1806), 31-40; selection abridged in Henry James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: The Modern Library/Random House, 1936 [original copyright 1902]), 214-215.
5. Colossians 2:13-14 NLT.
6. 1 John 1:9 NLT.
7. For more on false guilt, see, Kerby Anderson, “False Guilt,” www.probe.org/false-guilt/and Sue Bohlin, “It’s Not Your Fault!” www.probe.org/its-not-your-fault/.
8. John 16:13.
9. John 16:8.
10. James 1:5 NLT.
11. 1 John 3:18-20 NIV.
12. John 8:44 NASB.
13. Revelation 12:9-10 NASB.
14. 1 John 4:4 NLT.

 

© 2005 Probe Ministries

Each year more than three million baby boomers turn 40. Now there is nothing magical about turning 40 per se, but turning 40 does signal the beginning of a time of introspection and re-evaluation that generally occurs during the 40-something years.

Millions of people will encounter a mid-life transition in the 1990s. Why does this occur? How does it affect people? And how can Christians marshall the emotional and spiritual resources to deal with these changes? These are just a few of the questions we will address and attempt to answer.

The leading edge of the baby boom has been the first group to hit this time of transition. Born in the late ’40s and early ’50s, they lived in new houses, built on new streets, in new neighborhoods, in the new American communities known as the suburbs.

When they headed off to school, they sat in new desks and were taught about Dick and Jane by teachers fresh out of college. They grew up with television and lived in a world brimming with promise. In the ’60s they graduated from high school and enrolled in college in record numbers. Then they landed jobs at good salaries in a still-expanding economy and bought homes before housing prices and interest rates went through the roof.

Unlike the baby boomers born after them, the leading edge achieved, in large part, the American dream. They weren’t smarter or more talented. Their success was due simply to being born earlier. But even though they have achieved a degree of financial success, many are beginning to encounter a crisis of purpose. They are like the cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker. The husband turns to his wife over the breakfast table and says, “The egg timer is pinging. The toaster is popping. The coffeepot is perking. Is this it, Alice? Is this the great American dream?”

Millions in this generation will no doubt repeat these questions in the next two decades. Is this it? Is this the great American dream? Add to these questions others like: Where is my life going? Is this all I am ever going to achieve?

In some ways, these are strange questions coming from the leading edge boomers who enjoy the fruits of the American economy. They have achieved a measure of success and yet they are asking questions that signal a coming crisis of purpose. So why a crisis of purpose? And why now?

The Age 40 Transition

As it enters mid-life, the baby boom generation remains an enigma. Its members rejected the values of their parents and changed the structure of their families in ways unimaginable to a previous generation. But they must now shoulder adult responsibilities and assume positions of leadership (if they aren’t already in them). Put another way: the baby boom stands at a point of transition. This is not the first time this generation has collectively faced a point of transition. When the leading-edge boomers began turning 30, they hit what psychologist Daniel Levinson calls the “Age 30 Transition.” The struggle of leaving childhood and entering the adult years was worked out in a period of stagnant wages and appreciating house prices. Ultimately the collective angst of the boom generation turned Gail Sheehy’s book Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life into a runaway bestseller. Among other things, the book assured the baby boomers that they were not alone in their confrontation with a major lifestage.

The leading edge of this generation is now in the midst of a more significant transition: the mid-life transition. Turning 40 is no more a predictor of change than turning 30 was. But somewhere in that time period, mid-life re-evaluation begins. It is a stage in which men and women begin to evaluate and question their priorities and deal with their dreams and aspirations.

While this transition is both somber and serious, some have attempted to inject some levity into the discussion. Lawyer Ron Katz found the YUPPIE designation an inaccurate description of his friends’ lifestyle. So he coined, somewhat facetiously, yet another acronym to describe boomers at this stage. No longer rolling stones, but not yet the grateful dead, they’re MOSS–middle-age, overstressed, semi-affluent suburbanites.

According to Katz, MOSS (or MOSSY, if you prefer the adjective) is what YUPPIES have become in the 1990s. As Katz says, a MOSS is “41 years old; more overstressed than overworked; affluent but doesn’t feel that way.” A MOSS also is beginning to understand why the world hasn’t changed more over the past 25 years; [and] hopes that the world changes somewhat less over the next 30 years.

And while some social commentators want to discount the existence of a mid-life crisis, psychologists and sociologists assure us that something is indeed taking place. It is not merely media hype or self-fulfilling prophecy. During the years of mid-life, a substantial re-evaluation is taking place.

In actuality, the transition to mid-life is gradual. There are no major landmarks or signposts that signal our entry into this new and uncharted domain. Perhaps that is why there are so many jokes about turning 40 even though nothing of any significance actually happens on one’s 40th birthday. Turning 40 provides a visible demarcation of a gradual process.

The Seasons of a Man’s Life

In the preface of his book The Seasons of a Man’s Life, Daniel Levinson says, “Adults hope that life begins at 40–but the great anxiety is that it ends there.” Fearing this may be true, many baby boomers are beginning to become “frantic at forty- something.” They are making a transition from the years of their youth to a time of adulthood without any hope or optimism.

In his book, Daniel Levinson describes a number of developmental stages in adult life. He delineates an early adult era from the mid-20s to the late 30s. He also discusses a middle adult era from the mid-40s to the early 60s. What is in-between is what he calls the years of mid-life transition. He sees these years as a bridge between young adulthood and senior membership in one’s occupational world.

The psychological study done by Levinson focused on men between the ages of 35 and 45. He found that about 80 percent of those studied went through a time of personal crisis and re-evaluation during this mid-life transition. Levinson argued that the 20 percent that did not encounter a struggle were in a state of denial and would go through this transition later. This raises the first of two assumptions in these studies.

While the stages and themes documented by these studies are descriptive, they are by no means normative. As a Christian, I reject a deterministic model which predicts that everyone will go through a certain stage. While writing an earlier book on the subject of death and dying, I found that not all people go through the same psychological stages of grief. Christians, for example, who have come to terms with their own mortality and the mortality of their loved ones can face death and agree with the apostle Paul that it is better “to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.” Likewise, people who have come to grips with their place in the world may not face a wrenching mid-life crisis.

A second assumption has to do with the subjects of these studies. The major studies of adult development (including Levinson’s study) used male subjects born before the 1930 depression. Comparable studies for women were not done, and studies of baby boomers have not been done.

The men in the study have at least three things in common. They grew up in stable families; they had realistic goals for their lives; and they became adults in an expanding economy. Few experienced divorces in their families. Most had simple goals like “being able to provide for their families” and “being a good father.” They also built their careers in a flourishing economic climate.

These assumptions are not true for the baby boom generation. They grew up in less-stable families and now are raising families in a world where divorce is very common. Baby boomers have much greater expectations and thus have personal goals that are much more difficult to fulfill. And baby boomers reached adulthood when the economy was shrinking.

Such differences make it difficult to apply these studies directly to the boom generation. While some investigators argue that talk about a true mid-life “crisis” is overblown, most believe the current generation will be even more susceptible to a crisis than the previous one.

New Roles

In his research, Levinson discovered a number of themes that surface during the time of mid-life transition. The first is that mid-life transition involves adapting to new roles and responsibilities. By the time you are in your 30s, you are expected to think and behave like a parent. You can postpone this for awhile, and the boom generation has been fairly successful at postponing adulthood by extending the period simply called “youth.” Boomers extended adolescence into their 20s and even into their 30s. Now they are facing different and more demanding sets of roles and expectations. They are taking senior positions in their jobs and must provide care for both their children and their aging parents.

A man in his 40s is usually regarded by people in their 20s as a full generation removed. He is seen more as a parent than as a brother. In the minds of those who are younger, he is “Dad” rather than “buddy.” This message comes first as a surprise and then as an irritation to a man in mid-life.

Another way to look at this transition is to use the definitions of generations used by Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset. He identifies five generations: childhood, youth, initiation, dominance, and old age.

The Initiation generation includes the time of mid-life transition and leads to what he calls the Dominant Generation, where individuals are expected to assume the mantle of leadership, authority, and responsibility. According to Ortega y Gasset, the Initiation and Dominant generations are the two most crucial ones. The relations between them and the successful passing of authority from one to another affect the fate of society. During the 1990s and the early part of the 21st century, this transition from the older generation to the younger generation will be taking place.

Mortality

The second stage of mid-life transition involves dealing with our own mortality. In mid-life we become increasingly aware of death. Living in a death-denying culture shields us from a sense of our own mortality. And being young further heightens our sense of indestructibility. Teenagers and young adults tend to think of themselves as “bullet-proof” and destined for immortality. But by the age of 40, we have seen many people not much older than ourselves succumb to cancer and heart attacks. Many of us have seen death in our own families. The death of a parent is a clear signal that we are now on our own. It also reminds us how short life really is.

People going through this transition not only face a crisis of mortality; they face a crisis of growing old. Baby boomers are entering what I call the “Ache Age.” Vigorous exercise is followed by hurting muscles that seem to stay sore longer. Cuts and bruises that used to heal almost overnight take much longer to heal. Such physiological reminders also focus our attention on our own mortality.

Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has identified five different stages of grief. Although these describe the psychological stages of a patient who is dying, they correlate remarkably well with the feelings people go through in mid-life. Whether it is the death of an individual or the death of their dreams, the emotional feelings are often the same.

Culminating Events

A mid-life transition surfaces from a culminating event. This event serves as a marker for a conclusion of young adulthood. It may be a very obvious one like a promotion or being fired from a job. But it also might be something that no one would be able to identify, not even our spouses. It is a milestone that helps us see that one of our life’s dreams is not going to be realized, and it provides an estimate for future success or fulfillment.

In The Seasons of a Man’s Life, Daniel Levinson argues that the dreams we have are so compelling that nothing short of total success will satisfy. In other words, there is no such thing as modest success. Frequently, the culminating event is seen as evidence of flawed success and often as total failure.

To those on the outside looking in, a man may seem like he has reached the pinnacle of success. But they can’t see into his irrational mind affected by sin. He may have dreams that are hopelessly unrealistic, especially in youth.

It may be that a man is the president of a very successful company, but nevertheless feels like a failure because his dream was to be President of the United States. A man who is very athletic and runs marathons feels unfulfilled because his dream was to play in the NBA. A woman who is one of the top salespeople in the company may feel inadequate because she wanted a family and cannot have kids.

Intense Introspection

Fourth, mid-life transition involves intense introspection. A consistent pattern of adult life is an early struggle in adulthood to achieve a measure of success followed by a mid-life appraisal of one’s values and philosophy of life. A man around 40 begins to reassess the meaning of life and begins reconsidering the fate of his youthful dreams. He is asking major questions like: Is this all I am going to do the rest of my life? Is this all I am going to achieve?

Many people find that what they thought was going to make them happy isn’t making them happy. They enjoyed law school and the first few years of law. But the thought of practicing law for the rest of their live is not very fulfilling. They enjoyed the first few years selling life insurance, but the thought of selling insurance for another 30 years sounds more like torture than a career.

This is a time when an individual shines a light on his or her accomplishments and sets an agenda for the second half of life. There may or may not be major mid-course corrections depending on the evaluation.

Leaving a Legacy

Finally, a mid-life transition involves leaving a legacy. As we come to grips with our own mortality, we inevitably desire immortality, which is “one of the strongest and least malleable of human motives.” Leaving a legacy means finding a form of immortality by leaving something behind. One is reminded of Woody Allen’s quip that he didn’t want to be immortal by leaving something behind; he wanted to be immortal by not dying. But since that is not possible, then an individual seeks to leave a legacy, and that quest usually forms the core of the second half of a person’s life.

Successful resolution of mid-life comes from determining what legacy–possessions, memories, ministry–we will leave behind. The legacy may encompass family, work, or all of society. It may involve contributions as a parent, spouse, leader, or mentor. These elements of the legacy define the path we will take in the second half of our lives.

Application

These then are the basic themes of the mid-life transition. For the Christian, there are two points of application. First is a personal application. If you are going through mid-life, recognize that you are going to be in a daily battle over three issues.

First, you will have a daily battle with your thoughts. We need to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). We will also have a daily battle with temptation. A key verse to memorize is 1 Corinthians 10:13. And finally we will have a daily battle with sin and must confess our sins (1 John 1:8-9).

The second point of application is to our personal ministry. If we are attentive to this mid-life transition, we will be able to minister to millions of people who will go through this struggle. The 1990s might be the greatest time for harvest in this generation. Until now, most baby boomers have had few struggles. As they confront mid-life, many will be asking important questions that can lead to evangelistic opportunities.

Here are two ways you can help. First, a knowledge of the transition can ease the struggle. Daniel Levinson says knowing the transition is coming is an important antidote to its effects. So a knowledge of this transition can help you reach out.

Second, a knowledge of the Bible can help you to minister. A generation that has been impervious to the gospel may be more willing to listen as it asks the fundamental questions of life. If we reach out in love with a biblical message, we can make a difference.

© 1993 Probe Ministries

Sue Bohlin presents her personal testimony of how Christ led her to a biblical worldview understanding of her physical state. She explains how understanding her situation ministered to her and others spiritually and emotionally.

The most unique and distinctive thing about me is something I absolutely HATED when I was growing up. I’m one of the last polio babies. I got polio when I was eight months old, in October of 1953, just a few months before the vaccine was developed. My left leg was paralyzed from the hip down, but a couple days after I got sick with polio, some limited use started to return to my virtually dead leg.

Polio left me with one leg shorter than the other, one foot smaller than the other, weakened muscles, and a serious limp. I had several orthopedic surgeries and went to physical therapy once a week. Every day until I was 14, I did exercises with a weighted boot strapped onto my shoe. I would cry, “But I don’t want to do my exercises!!!” and my mother would insist, “But you have to do your exercises!!!” Before I learned to walk, I was fitted with a full-length steel and leather brace. I was so glad when the movie Forrest Gump came out, because my kids were able to see what braces looked like, since they never knew that part of my life!

Polio profoundly affected my body, but it only crippled my body a little compared to what it did to my self image. I hated the way I looked. I hated what the polio had done to me, and I despaired every time I looked in the mirror, thinking, “Ugly! You are so UGLY!!”

So I got good at two things. One was repressing the polio altogether. I got in the habit, which I actually have to this day, of avoiding looking in mirrors, or seeing my reflection in store windows, or even acknowledging my shadow. I don’t want to see the way I walk, because it hurts to see the way I walk. I consider myself an expert on denial; in fact, one of these days I have to get that T-shirt that says, “Call me Cleopatra–Queen of Denial!”

The other thing I got good at was a very special fantasy. It was so private, so personal, that I never even wrote it down. I loved to fantasize that when I grew up, I would become a princess, and my polio troubles would be behind me because those sorts of things don’t bother princesses! Now, the chances of a vacuum cleaner salesman’s daughter from Highland Park, Illinois, becoming a princess are mighty slim, but I loved my fantasy.

In high school, the polio got in the way of dating. No one seemed able to just accept me as someone worth going out with. I had friends who were boys, but hardly anyone was interested in anything more than friendship. My sixteenth birthday was bittersweet because I was “sweet sixteen and never been kissed.” High school boys then, like now, weren’t exactly paragons of sensitivity and acceptance! My self-esteem dropped even lower.

I went to college at the University of Illinois to work on a degree in Elementary Education. One day in my sophomore year, something happened that changed the entire course of my life.

A friend was handing out flyers inviting students to see that evening’s performance of an illusionist-magician. I thought, “Great! I love magic!” I love to see women get sawn in two, and the fake levitating, and all that David Copperfield sort of stuff, and I started to get excited about it. But then I noticed the small letters at the bottom of the flyer: this performance was sponsored by a campus religious organization. “Forget it,” I thought. “I am NOT interested in Jesus freaks.” But as the day wore on, I felt like a huge magnet was pulling me to the performance, and I found myself buying a ticket and planning on going. I’m so glad I did.

The illusionist, Andre Kole with Campus Crusade for Christ, was excellent. But I don’t remember his magic nearly as much as I remember his message. For one thing, he stopped halfway through the evening and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to take a short intermission. After the break I’m going to use my illusion to illustrate some spiritual principles. If this will offend you, I want to give you an opportunity to leave during the intermission.” I thought, “What in the world is this guy going to say?” Besides, I had spent one whole dollar on my ticket and I was going to get my money’s worth!

When he started again, he said some things I’d never heard before, but which were quite intriguing. He quoted a famous philosopher who said that we each have a God-shaped vacuum within us, and nothing will fit that shape or fill that emptiness except for God Himself. He quoted someone else who had said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. He pointed out that there’s a huge difference between Christianity and “Churchianity.” Churchianity, he said, is man trying to earn favor with God, trying to work his way to heaven. But Christianity as the Bible explains it is a relationship. It’s God reaching down to man and calling us into an intimate friendship with Himself, not because of anything we deserve or anything we can do to please Him, but because He desires to have a relationship with us.

Andre Kole really got my attention when he asked, “Do you know what a Christian really is?” I thought, “Of course I do! A Christian is someone who isn’t Jewish!” But he said that according to the Bible, Christian means “Christ-in-one,” and that a true Christian is actually indwelled by Jesus Christ Himself. That blew me away.

Then he said, “I’m going to use my illusion to illustrate some points. Just as there are physical laws that govern the physical universe, so there are spiritual laws that govern the spiritual universe.

The Four Spiritual Laws

“The first law is that God loves you and He offers a wonderful plan for your life. When Jesus was on earth, He said, ‘I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.’ Now what do you suppose He meant by ‘abundant life’? I think He meant a life filled with purpose and joy and direction and fulfillment. But as you look around the world today, you see that, obviously, most people are not living that kind of life. Something is terribly wrong.

“That brings us to the second spiritual law: Man is sinful and separated from God. We don’t like to use the word ‘sin’ today, but it’s a word the Bible uses a lot. It’s actually an archery term, and it means missing the mark or the target. It doesn’t matter if you miss the target by one inch or one mile, you’re still missing it. God commands us to be holy and perfect, just as He is holy and perfect. But we don’t even meet our own standards, much less God’s!

“The Bible also tells us that ‘the wages of sin is death.’ That means that the penalty for missing the mark of being absolutely perfect and holy is death–not only the physical death of our bodies, but that when we die, we can’t ever be with God in heaven. It means the death of our spirits as well. And once we commit one sin, there’s nothing we can do to restore ourselves. We’re stuck. There’s a huge chasm between us and God, and there’s nothing we can do to cross it.

“That’s where the really good news comes in. The third spiritual law is that God has provided a solution to this dilemma. Since the Bible says that the punishment for sin is death, someone has to die because of our sin. God didn’t want us to have to pay that penalty, so He sent His own Son, Jesus, from heaven to earth. He took on human flesh–that’s what Christmas is about–and lived a perfect life. Then He died a heinous death on a cross, even though He was innocent, and He died in our place. Three days later, God raised Him from the dead because He was pleased with Jesus’ sacrifice.”

Now, I had heard a lot of this stuff before when I was growing up in church, but it had never had any impact on me. I knew a lot of religious facts, but they didn’t affect my life in any way. I believed that George Washington was the Father of our Country, I believed that Abraham Lincoln was the best president (I was from Illinois, remember. . .”the Land of Lincoln”!), and I believed that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world. They were all in the same category in my head, and they all had the same affect on me– which is to say, none at all.

But I had never, ever heard what he said next, the fourth spiritual law. “Each of us must accept Christ’s gift of eternal life personally.” He explained that Jesus was offering each of us the gift of eternal life, which means not only going to heaven when we die but, starting that moment, He would live His powerful, holy, beautiful life from INSIDE US. Whoa!! This was a totally new concept!! I thought that God stayed in His corner of the universe, and I limped along in my little corner, and never the twain shall meet. But suddenly I was hearing something completely new and different–that God Himself loved me so much He wanted to come live IN MY HEART!!!! As I sat there, reveling in this new information and this incredible offer, I saw that all along, I had thought I was doing all right with God because I was basically a “good girl.” But now I realized that I was missing the boat entirely, because I had never entered into a personal relationship with God at all; I had been caught up in rules and rituals and traditions, and had rejected them all because they had no meaning to me. And here was God offering me HIMSELF instead of those dead rules and rituals and traditions!

My whole spirit cried out in one big “YES!!!!!” It felt rather like a flower turning to the sun and bursting forth in full blossom. Andre Kole prayed a short prayer, which I followed along in my heart, but my real prayer consisted of one incredibly joyful “YES!!!”

I went home to my dorm, where I told my roommates, “Guess what? When I left tonight, we were in a triple, but now we’re in a quadruple, because Jesus is now living in my heart!” They just groaned, “OH NO!! You got RELIGION!!” They dismissed what I was saying: “We know what this means, Sue. There’s a guy involved in this somewhere. We know how you work. Every two weeks or so you fall in love with somebody new, and whatever the guy believes, that’s your new philosophy. Last month you were in love with Tony Hunter, and you thought you were Jonathan Livingston Seagull! So this is nothing more than a fad, and it will pass when THIS guy doesn’t work out either.”

So my roommates waited for the fad to pass. That was 1973.

Just a fad? No way!

It wasn’t a fad, and it didn’t pass, because my new relationship with Jesus Christ was the most real thing that had ever happened to me. My life became a perpetual surprise box. No one warned me that when God came to live inside me, He’d be making all sorts of wonderful changes! They just started happening.

For one thing, my language cleared up. When I was still at home, I was a “good girl.” But when I went to college, my crippled self- esteem made me crave the acceptance of my friends. And since they all had mouths like sailors, I started talking like that too. I was never really comfortable with it (because princesses don’t swear!). But within about two weeks of the night I trusted Christ, I realized that it was as if God reached down into my vocabulary box with a great big soapy sponge and cleaned out all the garbage that was in there–without asking Him to!

I discovered that, for the first time in my life, I wanted to go to church. The friend who had invited me to the Andre Kole show also invited me to his church, which was a block from my dorm but somehow I had never noticed it. I didn’t even own a dress, but I got one, and went to church of my own free will for the first time in my life. I made a startling discovery. The church was filled with college students who were there because they WANTED to be, not because their parents had made them go! From the very first time I went, I was captivated by the lights on in everyone’s eyes. These people were honestly joyful and so glad to be there! Not only that, but they sang all the verses of the hymns, with enthusiasm! This was a whole new experience for me. Then, the pastor got up and taught us from the Bible, relating it to our 20th-century lives. I loved it!

And the third thing that happened was a new hunger to read the Bible. I didn’t own one of those, either. I had tried it a couple of times; when I was in elementary school, a priest had told us one day that if we wanted to read a love letter from God, to go home and look in our family Bible and read the epistles. So I tried it. Didn’t look like any love letter *I* wanted to read! It was too hard to understand, and seemed so dull and boring, I shut the dusty book and put it back on the shelf. Another time, another priest told us that if we wanted to see how the end of the world would happen, to read the last book of the Bible. What a disaster that was! But now I really wanted to read and understand the Bible, so I went to the college bookstore and found the Living Bible, a modern-day paraphrase that I could easily understand. In the first few pages, I found just what I needed: “If you’re new to this book…” It gave a suggested order for reading certain books, and I knew I had the help I needed. I couldn’t wait for 4 o’clock every day, when I could go back to my dorm room and read about Jesus, this new, wonderful Friend who was now living in my heart.

But it wasn’t the immediate changes that I want to talk about. Far more important are the long-term changes that God has been working in my life, healing my self-image and helping me deal with the polio.

Healing a Crippled Self-Image

The more I read and studied the Bible, the more I learned to see myself as God said I was, and realized that what He said was so much more accurate and trustworthy than how I felt. I’m a woman, and the way I felt about myself completely depended on external things like whether my hair was clean, whether I was wearing make- up, and the time of the month. So I could wake up, force myself to look in the mirror, and whimper in defeat–then, 30 minutes later, not be so depressed once I’d had a chance to do something about myself. But as I learned to embrace the truth about what God said I was, that it was more valid than my fleeting feelings, it profoundly changed the way I felt about myself.

When I studied Genesis, the first book of the Bible that explains the beginnings of everything, I learned that when God made Adam and Eve in His image, that made them infinitely valuable–not because of themselves, but because of their Creator. And, because I’m descended from Adam and Eve, I learned that I was also made in the image of God, and that makes me infinitely valuable as well. But this was a truth I only learned in my head; I didn’t learn it in my heart until my first son was born.

The whole time I was pregnant with Curt, I prided myself on being a thoroughly modern, non-emotional mother. I knew that newborn human babies weren’t particularly beautiful, as compared to, say, newborn lambs. When I saw my baby, I was going to say, “Yes, that’s a baby all right. Take him and clean him up, and when you bring him back we’ll bond.”

And then Curt was actually born.

When I first laid eyes on this child who was made in my husband’s and my image, this child that God had made by taking Ray’s intangible love for me and my intangible love for him and creating a tangible baby that we could hold and love, I thought, “WHOA! This is THE most BEAUTIFUL baby the world has ever seen!” I instantly fell in love with this little bundle of baby, and he was infinitely valuable to me, NOT because of anything intrinsic with him–I mean, all babies do is eat and sleep and poop and cry–but because he was made in our image.

A few days later, in the hospital, I had him on my lap doing a finger and toe check, and just sort of smelling his awesome newborn-baby smell, when I suddenly realized with a rush of mother- tiger protective love, that IF ANYONE SO MUCH AS LAID A HAND ON THIS CHILD, I WOULD PERSONALLY TEAR THEM LIMB FROM LIMB!!!! I didn’t know I could love anyone that much, but I loved my baby with a ferocious, passionate love that surprised and overwhelmed me. (Okay, okay, I realized this was probably hormones, but it sure felt real enough at the time!) Then, as I lay there in the hospital bed overtaken with these strong emotions, I suddenly realized something else: that if I, being such a finite and limited human being, could love my child so ferociously and passionately, how much more must my heavenly Father, who is infinitely huge and powerful, love me? God loved me even more ferociously and passionately than I could imagine, and that meant that even if the rest of the world thumbed their noses at me and rejected me, if I knew that God loved me like that, it wouldn’t matter.

Another truth that God used to heal my broken self-image came when I read in the gospel of John that “as many as received Christ [and I had], to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” I learned that simply being a human being doesn’t make us a child of God–that just means we are creatures made in His image. I became a child of God when I trusted Christ to save me from my sins, and according to what Jesus said, I was born again at that point into God’s family. Shortly after I learned about being a child of God, I came across one of my favorite names for God in the Bible: “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” Then suddenly I put the two things together: if God is the King of Kings, and I am a child of God, then the female child of a King is a PRINCESS!!

 

 

I made it!! When you look at me, I might not look like much on the outside, but I know that I am a princess on the inside because my heavenly Father the King made me one when I became His child!!

The Hole in My Soul

The other area where God keeps working with me is the whole issue of polio. After I’d been a new Christian for a few months, I heard about a counselor who was sometimes able to pray for people and they received physical healing. So I made an appointment and went to see her.

I said, “Look, I’ve had polio almost all my life and I don’t want it anymore. Would you please pray for me and heal me?”

She replied, “Well, I must tell you that sometimes God chooses to heal people in heaven, but first, tell me about how you feel about your polio.”

“I don’t like it, and I want you to heal me.”

“Not so fast. How do you feel about God for letting this terrible thing happen to you?”

“Everything’s fine with God and me. Could we just get on with this?”

“No, wait. Having polio is an awful thing. Aren’t you just a little bit angry with God for letting this bad thing happen to you?”

I instantly thought, “Good girls don’t get mad at God,” and said, “NO, I’M NOT ANGRY WITH GOD!! Please, just pray for me and I’ll get out of here.”

The counselor smiled gently at me and said, “Sue, I’m afraid that no amount of healing is going to happen in your life until you’re honest with God. I can see that you have a great deal of anger and bitterness and resentment toward God for letting you have polio, and you need to deal with that first.”

“You’re not going to heal me?” I asked plaintively.

She shook her head and said, “I’m not the One who does the healing. I think you need to go pray about what’s going on inside of you first.”

I was terribly disappointed. I had had such hope that finally– FINALLY–I would be rid of the awful, horrible effects of this disease! Polio had ripped a huge wound in my soul as well as damaging my body, but this woman wasn’t going to do things my way. Sadly, I got in my car and drove home.

Along the highway, I prayed, “God, this woman seems to think I have all this anger and bitterness and resentment stored up against You because of the polio. Is there anything to this?”

It was as if God said, “Finally, My precious daughter, you ask the right question!” I realized that I had been stuffing a lifetime of disappointment and pain into an emotional basement, and God was opening the door that I had kept shut for years. Feelings and memories started coming back to me out of the basement, like the time I was about ten years old.

I knelt next to my bed one night and poured out my heart to God. “God, please PLEASE heal me! I hate this polio, You know how much I hate this polio! Please, please give me two normal legs! I hate my body, I hate limping, I hate doing the exercises with the boot, I hate going to physical therapy. I hate the lift on my shoe, and I hate having my left leg shorter than the other, and I hate having to wear such ugly shoes. Oh God, I want to go into a shoe store and buy one pair of beautiful shoes so bad! I hate having to wear different size shoes! And You know I can’t wear high heels with my leg and foot being so weak. And God, if I can’t wear high heels, how can I get married? Everybody knows that brides wear high heels on their wedding day! Besides, who would want to marry me with polio anyway? I hate this toothpick leg, and I hate hate HATE the way people stare at me in public, especially little kids. God, please PLEASE heal me tonight while I’m sleeping!”

Then I proceeded to help God out by giving Him helpful suggestions on how to go about healing me. “You can take the extra muscle from my right leg and transfer it over to my left leg. Then stretch the left leg so it’s as long as the right, and pull on my toes so they’re not crumpled up anymore. And in the morning I’ll run downstairs yelling, “Mom! Mom! God healed me!” and she’ll call the Chicago Sun Times, and it’ll be on the front page: “God Heals Suburban Girl.” And I won’t be able to go to school because I’ll need to go to a shoe store and pick out some beautiful shoes like everybody else’s, since my different-sized shoes won’t fit. Oh! And God, I’ll be able to SKIP down the street! I’ve never been able to skip!! It’ll be great! Now, I’ll just go to sleep and while I’m sleeping, You work a miracle. Then, in the morning, I won’t even have to throw back the covers to see what You’ve done. I’ll know.” I fell into bed exhausted, having poured out my hurting heart to God, and so hopefully confident that He had heard me and would do what I asked.

In the morning, I was right: I didn’t have to throw back the covers to see what had happened during the night. I knew without checking: absolutely nothing. NOTHING!! God had ignored me! I was furious. “God, how could You? I poured out my heart to You and You ignored me! You KNOW how much I hate the polio, You KNOW how much I want to be healed! It’s no big deal for You to do this for me! If You could part the Red Sea, I know you could heal me! HOW COULD YOU????” Then suddenly, I realized that, in my little ten-year-old heart, I was yelling at God, and I was horrified. Good girls don’t get mad at God! So I took all the feelings of anger and disappointment and grief and stuffed them all down in my basement, along with all the other feelings I’d stuffed down there over the years.

And now, here I was, 20 years old, and all these feelings and memories were flooding back, and I realized that the counselor was right. I did have a huge amount of anger and bitterness and frustration stored up against God. . .and I didn’t have a clue as to what to do about it. I’d never heard anyone speak on “What To Do When You’re So Mad At God You Want to Spit in His Face.” That sounds blasphemous! But that’s how I felt, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

So I prayed, “God, I don’t know how to handle all these feelings, so I’m asking You to show me what to do. And God, it looks like You’re not going to heal me of the polio either, are You? So please help me deal with it. I’ve always hoped that when I was grown up, it would magically go away, but that isn’t going to happen. You’re going to have to show me how to deal with the polio, too.”

God is faithful, and He answered my prayer. In two ways.

God is Always in Control

First, I learned what has been the single most comforting truth I’ve ever learned as a Christian: that God has always been in control, and nothing has happened to me that He did not allow to pass through the grid of His love and purpose for my life. It was as if there were a suit of armor around me from the moment I was conceived, and nothing has touched my life that God did not purposely allow to get past the armor. I did not get polio by accident; there was a reason for it. When God saw that polio virus heading for me, He allowed it to do the exact amount of damage to my body that was in His plan for me. But once again, this was a truth I only learned in my head, and the heart-understanding didn’t come until the day I took my second son Kevin to an immunization clinic for a shot.

I held him in my arms so that he was facing outward, his little thigh exposed. When the nurse stuck him, he wheeled around, and just before letting out a huge yell, he fixed me with a look of intense betrayal. I knew that if he had been able to put into words what he was feeling, he would have screamed, “You’re my MOTHER!! I can’t believe you let this woman attack me with that huge STICK!!” I thought, “Oh Kevin, I know you can’t understand why I would allow this woman to attack you with that stick. Honey, I drove you here so she could attack you with that stick.”

What I wanted to say, but it would have been pointless, was “Baby, I know how hard it is for you to understand what’s happening. But my Mommy mind is so much bigger than your Baby mind, there’s no way I can explain that I know what I’m doing, and I’m letting you hurt because I love you and I’m acting in your best interests, even though all you can feel right now is the pain. I’m so sorry, but you’re just going to have to trust me.”

I thought, “I’m going to take you home and give you some Tylenol, and you’ll start to feel better, and in a few days all the pain and discomfort will be gone, but the good medicine inside you will make you strong and healthy for many years. Some day you won’t even remember that today happened, but the benefits of this shot will last for a long, long time.”

Right about then we walked out into the sunlight, and God spoke to me very quietly, on the inside: “My precious Sue, I know how much you hurt because of the polio. I hate it too–in fact, I hate it even more, because it was never part of My perfect Creation in the beginning. When sin entered the world and spoiled everything, polio was unleashed into My beautiful world. I hate for you to suffer like this. But just as My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, I can’t explain to you what I’m doing with the polio any more than you can explain what you’re doing to Kevin, and that his suffering is good. Sweetheart, you’re just going to have to trust Me.”

Then I realized that just as Kevin’s pain was going to go away in a matter of days, leaving him years and years free from the pain from the diseases he wasn’t going to contract, I needed to see the pain of my polio’d body in the scope of eternity. If my body lives to be 100, which is a very generous estimate, and I have to deal with polio for over 99 years, all that time is still only going to be the length of a pinprick compared to the billions and billions of “years” I’m going to live in heaven–in a perfect body. My life on earth does have it difficulties and pain, but it’s still temporary when I remember that the majority of my life will be lived in heaven where all pain will be behind me. And just as Kevin’s vaccination produced health in his body, I realized that God was using polio to produce character and depth and His kind of beauty in me, which will last for all eternity.

Giving Thanks for Everything

The other way God answered my prayer was in discovering a little book (Merlin Carrothers’ Power in Praise) that said God wants us to give thanks for everything that happens to us. Not just in everything, not just the things we think will work out all right, but everything that comes into our lives. The reason we can give thanks is because of the first lesson I learned, which is that God is in control and has unseen, unknown purposes for what touches our lives. The Bible never tells us to FEEL thankful; it just says to give thanks, which is an act of the will and not of emotion. I looked it up, and sure enough, in black and white, there it was Ephesians 5:20. Even in the Greek!

The book is full of story after story of how God changed people’s hearts when they thanked Him for things they hated but couldn’t change, and I knew I had stumbled across some wonderful wisdom. I remember where I was the first time I told God “thank You” for the one thing I never, ever thought I could give thanks for: my polio.

“God,” I started, “I certainly don’t FEEL thankful for polio, but Your word doesn’t say to go by feelings but by faith, and Your word says to give thanks for all things. So I thank You for letting me have polio. Thank You for my limp. Thank You for the problem that shoes constantly give me, and how hard it is to find them for my mismatched feet. Thank You that I will never be able to wear high heels. Thank You for the way people stare at me. Thank you for all the physical therapy I had to go through, thank You for the boot, thank You for the surgeries, thank You for the brace I had to wear. Thank you that I don’t know how well my body will hold up as I get older. I thank You for all these things.”

As I disciplined myself to say “thank You” for these things I hated but couldn’t change, something interesting started to happen. I realized that saying “thank You” enabled me to relinquish all the pain and anger I had stored up in my emotional basement, and God took it away and replaced it with His peace. Pain had carved huge caverns in my heart, but now instead of being filled with all the negative emotions I had hidden in there, all that space was now filled with peace and a marvelous joy that came from trusting in the One who loves me perfectly. (In fact, since I’m only 5 feet tall, sometimes I think I’m bigger on the inside than I am on the outside!)

Something else that was interesting happened as I made myself give thanks for this horrible thing I hated but couldn’t change. In addition to giving thanks by faith but not by feeling, I found that there were a bunch of things that I could easily, and with feelings of gratitude, give thanks for. I thank God for my parents, who loved me enough to make me exercise and endure surgeries so that I could walk as well as I did. I thank God for my husband, who, even though he’s a runner, has never made me feel in the least bit inferior for not being able to keep up with him, and who is exceptionally gracious and sensitive in making allowances for my limitations. I thank God that if I had to have polio, it was in my leg and not in my arms. I’m a calligrapher, and it would be awfully hard to do hand lettering with my toes! I thank God that, even though I have to use a wheelchair in places like airports and amusement parks and malls, when I get to where I’m going, I can get up and walk. And there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t thank God for my handicap permit! I get the best parking spaces!

I love happy endings, but this story doesn’t have one. At least not as far as my earthly life is concerned. I still have to discipline myself in my reactions and attitudes concerning my body, because I’m now forced to deal with post-polio syndrome. 30 to 35 years after the onset of polio, a whole new set of symptoms crop up: bone-crushing fatigue, increasing muscle weakness, and pain. So far I don’t have much trouble with the pain part (thank You LORD!!!!), but I’ve had to completely restructure my lifestyle to accommodate a body that is losing strength and ability.

One day, as I was reading 2 Corinthians 12, I puzzled over Paul’s re-statement of what God told him concerning his thorn in the flesh: that His power was perfected in weakness. I knew there was a nugget of comforting wisdom in that, and asked God to reveal to me what He meant. He answered my prayer one day when I was looking out a large plate glass window. Next to it was an expanse of brick wall. I was able to look out through the window and see not only a beautiful landscape outside, but I noticed that the sunlight was streaming in through the window. The sun was shining on the other side of the brick wall, too, but I couldn’t see it. Then I realized that a glass window is fragile, transparent, and easily broken, but it lets the light shine through. A brick wall is strong, opaque, and is difficult to break it down, but nothing gets through it. When we are weak, whether physically or emotionally, we’re like the fragile glass window, and God’s power can stream through us, bringing power where we are powerless. When we’re strong, like the brick wall, it’s difficult to trust God because we’re content in our own human strength–but no light, no supernatural power comes through. I am at the place where I’d rather be a window than a wall, because I want God’s power and light to shine through me more than I want strength within myself.

At the time of this writing, I’ve had a chance to share my story with over 10,000 women, and I’ve never yet found a person who didn’t have some sort of private heartache. Everyone has something about herself that she hates but can’t change. Mine is on the outside, but for the majority of women, their heartbreak is on the inside. Allow me to encourage you to think about two things as you consider your private heartache.

What To Do With the Things You Hate but Can’t Change

First, think about how much God loves you. He proved it once and for all by sending His only Son to die a horrible death in your place, so that you could be reconciled to Him. One truth has been of untold comfort to me: His love is stronger than my pain.

Second, the way to truly relinquish the anger about your private heartache is to give thanks for it. It occurred to me one day that every difficulty in our lives is a beautiful gift wrapped in really ugly wrapping paper. That’s because God loves paradoxes, and He wraps His best gifts in tremendously daunting “paper.” Imagine if someone held out a gift to you wrapped in the newspaper that had spent several days at the bottom of the garbage can, soaked in chicken juice (ew YUCK!) and covered with coffee grounds, with maggots crawling all over it. You’d say, “What in the world kind of gift could possibly be inside such a grotesque wrapping?”and shrink back from it. But God does exactly that. Many of us never get past the paper to open the gift. But that’s what giving thanks will do for you–get you past the ugly wrapping paper to the choice gift inside. For me, it was a heart full of peace and joy. For others, who were sexually abused for example, it’s the delight of discovering He will restore the chunks of your soul that other people stole from you. For still others, it’s learning that even though you never had the earthly Daddy you should have had, you have a heavenly Daddy who loves you more perfectly and intimately than you can ever know till heaven.

But giving thanks is not a magic formula; it doesn’t do any good unless you first have a personal relationship with God by knowing and trusting His Son, Jesus Christ. It is essential that you turn from depending on yourself and your own efforts, and trust Jesus to save you from your sin, placing yourself in God’s hands. If you’re feeling like there’s a rope wrapped around your heart and it’s being tugged from the other end, please let me encourage you to identify that as God Himself, pulling you toward Himself and saying, “I love you! I created you to be in fellowship with Me! Please come to Me and give Me yourself so I can give you Myself.” If that’s what you’re feeling, I suggest you tell God something similar to what I’m going to share with you, and what Andre Kole shared with me the night I trusted Jesus:

“Dear God, I realize I’m a sinner and You are a holy, perfect God. Thank You for sending Your Son Jesus to die on the cross in my place. I trust Him now to save me from my sin and to come live inside me. Please make me into the person You want me to be. Amen.”

Bethany Hamilton looks like any fun-loving young American teenager—bright eyed, smiling, excited about what she enjoys doing. She’s athletic, attractive, trim, tanned and blonde—qualities that in this culture can open many doors.

But Bethany faces a special challenge that many her age do not. She is missing her left arm just below the shoulder, lost to a shark attack while surfing in Hawaii in the fall of 2003. The 1,500-pound tiger shark also chomped a huge chunk from her surfboard. She’s fortunate to be alive.

Bethany, who lives on Kauai, was the state’s top-ranked female amateur surfer before the attack. Such a loss might seem devastating. USA Today reports that Bethany seems undismayed. Merely three months after the mishap, she was surfing competitively again. She aims to be among the world’s best surfers.

Rather than hiding her left arm under clothing, she displays it in tank tops and calls it “Stumpy.” When her prosthetic turned out to be too light in color to match her suntan, she nicknamed it Haole Girl, slang for a non-Hawaiian. She peels tangerines by holding them between her feet and using her right hand.

How to account for her bright spirits? Determination and dedication seem part of her makeup. But is there something more?

Her dad gives a clue. “She’s not suffering,” Tom Hamilton told the newspaper. “Somehow God gave Bethany an amazing amount of grace in this. I am in awe. She never says, ‘Why me?’”

Bethany confirms her father’s analysis: “This was God’s plan for my life, and I’m going to go with it… I might not be here if I hadn’t asked for God’s help.”

This surfer girl’s simple faith astounds observers. She has become a media darling—with TV appearances on Oprah, 20/20 and Good Morning America. Book and movie offers have come. She threw out the first pitch for baseball’s Oakland Athletics on opening day. Through it all, her family ties remain strong.

Her optimism echoes that of an early follower of Jesus, Paul, whose life-experience log included unjust imprisonments, beatings, stoning, shipwrecks and social ostracism. He was convinced that “God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love” Him.

Life can throw many curve balls: serious illness, accidents, terrorism, domestic strife, employment hassles, theft and more. Answers to “Why me?” and “What to do?” are often complex. Accompanying feelings of fear, confusion, grief or despair should not be ignored or minimized.

But perhaps a perspective that includes God in the picture can be a starting place for coping. Maybe the surfer girl’s belief and trust have something valuable to say to a society filled with pain and risk.

During a winter New York City media tour, Bethany spontaneously gave her ski jacket to a homeless girl sitting on a Times Square subway grate, then called off a shopping spree, citing her own material abundance.

Something very significant is happening in this young athlete’s life. Watch for more.

© 2004 Rusty Wright

From classroom to boardroom, from sports to shoplifting, people try to get something that’s not rightfully theirs. What are the roots of dishonesty? Why do people cheat? How does cheating impact society? Is there a solution? Rusty Wright considers cheating.

 This article is also available in Spanish.

Cheating Ways

Cheating is rampant these days. Just ask the nation’s retailers, educators, and investors. From classroom to boardroom, from filling stations to airplanes, folks everywhere are trying to get something that’s not rightfully theirs.

The Wall Street Journal has reported a rash of petty personal cheating ranging from zipping through turnpike tollbooths without paying to pocketing restaurant silverware.{1}

One Los Angeles network television employee described the rush he felt from sneaking into an airline First Class seat from his coach section. “It was exhilarating,” he explained of his stealth upgrade. “I felt like I robbed a bank.”

A Las Vegas restaurant lost $10,000 in pilfered ashtrays during its first two weeks of operation. A New Jersey engineer refuses to pay automated tolls on the Garden State Parkway because he feels the toll plazas are poorly designed and irritating. The state established a bad system, he reasons, so “you have to abuse it.” Convenience stores report massive losses from “pump-and-flee” customers who fill their gas tanks and take off without paying.

A Knoxville-based theater chain watches for discount cheaters who purchase pay-by-phone automated tickets at undeserved senior discounts and hope ticket takers won’t notice. Shoppers buy party dresses and power tools, use them, and return them for refunds. A California bookseller laments the customers who try for full-price refunds on books they’ve purchased from discount outlets. “You want to send them to Miss Manners,” she says.{2}

Prominent sports figures have been flagged for un-citizen-like conduct. George O’Leary lost the head football coaching job at Notre Dame within a week of his hiring for padding his résumé. U.S. Olympic Committee president Sandra Baldwin resigned after confessing lies about her academic background.{3}

Golfers not only adjust the lay of the ball. Some duck pricey greens fees by sneaking onto the course.

I know something about golf ethics. My childhood Miami home bordered a golf course. Occasionally, stray balls landed in our back yard. Neighborhood kids decided a ball was fair game only after the golfer had walked by without retrieving it. But it was entirely ethical, we determined, to cover the ball with a large almond leaf until the golfer passed.

What are the roots of dishonesty? Why do people cheat? How does cheating impact society? Is there a solution, and what is it? This article explores these themes.

Campus Cheating

What part does education play in cheating? Duke University president Nannerl Keohane says that 45 percent of Duke students have cheated at least once during college. US News and World Report quoted one Duke student who plagiarized an assignment: “It’s not a big deal because it’s just a mindless assignment. It’s not a final or a midterm.”{4}

The Center for Academic Integrity reports that:{5}

• On most university campuses more than 75 percent of students admit to some cheating.
• About one-third of students in one nationwide survey admitted to “serious test cheating.”
• Half of the students in that survey admitted to “one or more instances of serious cheating on written assignments.”

The Internet expands choices and convenience. Web access and a credit card can buy ready-made term papers or customized writing. Cybercheating can backfire though. Special computer searches sometimes allow suspicious professors to discover the original sources in only minutes.{6}

Cheating is bad enough when students do it to boost their academic standing. It’s a mess when teachers and administrators orchestrate it. So-called “high-stakes testing” has tempted some educators to cheat to retain their jobs, earn merit pay or even preserve their schools. Some states base financial allocations on school test scores. Administrators anxious over funding cuts prompt teachers to provide, shall we say, inappropriate assistance.

New York City teacher Stacey Moscowitz gave her students answers to tests, raising their scores and the school’s academic ranking. She says the school principal encouraged the practice. Later, Moscowitz felt she had betrayed her kids. Students needing remedial help did not qualify for it due to their artificially high test scores.

Moscowitz blew the whistle, prompting an investigation by Edward Stancik, the New York City School District independent investigator. Stancik found fifty-two educators implicated in thirty-two schools. Among the methods he uncovered was the “scrap paper” method: Students took the exam on scrap paper, a teacher corrected the answers, then the answers went onto the standardized answer sheets, so as not to reflect erasures. In the “group testing” method, students called out the answers, the group agreed on the correct answer, and everyone filled it in.{7}

Cheating in school might seem fairly harmless to some. Lots of people do it. But what happens when corporate leaders cheat?

Corporate Cheaters

Corporate cheating has had devastating effects. U.S. corporate scandals have seen thousands of employees lose their jobs while stocks plummet and corporate executives are led off in handcuffs. Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, AOL Time Warner, Adelphia, Xerox . . . sometimes the patterns of financial scandals can be confusing.

Consider a simple illustration. Suppose you want your local bank to lend you money so you can purchase your dream house. The bank views you as a means for them to make money. They want to assess their risk of investing in you to be sure you can pay them back faithfully and with interest. So they check your credit, income, assets and liabilities, and get you to fill out lots of forms.

Suppose you deceive the bank into believing that your financial status is better than it really is. You lie about your income and indebtedness. They believe you and lend you the funds. You buy your castle, then can’t make the payments. You default on the loan, declare bankruptcy, and the bank loses its money.

That’s a snapshot of just one type of scandal plaguing corporate America. Corporations that cook the books look like better investments than they really are. Investors buy their stock, driving the price up and enriching leaders who profit personally from stock gains. When irregularities are exposed, companies restate their actual earnings and indebtedness and lay off employees. Investors, realizing they’ve been hoodwinked, sell their stock. Stock prices plummet. Investors question the sincerity of other corporations and are reluctant to buy. The market system falters.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan summarized for Congress corruption’s impact on the nation: “Fraud is theft. . . . It is indistinguishable from going into a bank and stealing something. . . . Our free market capitalist system cannot function in an environment in which fraud and misrepresentation are critical elements, because trust is so essential to making that system work.”{8}

Corrupt CEOs wielded power similar to economic “weapons of mass destruction,” said University of Minnesota accounting professor Brian Shapiro.{9} Consumer advocate Ralph Nader called it “greed on steroids.”{10}

Moses, the great liberator of ancient Israel, once received some counsel on leadership from his father-in-law, who advised him to pick able leaders who “fear God” and “hate dishonest gain.”{11} Not bad advice. As national scandals have shown, to do otherwise can be disastrous.

Cheating’s Costs

Epidemic cheating has serious costs. Whom can you trust?

TIME magazine compared what executives of seven troubled companies received (in stock sales and severance) with what their shareholders got.{12} Adelphia’s John Rigas gained $4.2 million in severance. When Adelphia filed for bankruptcy, its stock was worth 14 cents, a decline of over 99 percent in about a year. Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling made $78 million in stock sales over a two-year period. Shareholders got a bankrupt company.

Have your medical insurance premiums been rising? Some of the increase may be offsetting corruption losses. Big names in healthcare like Columbia/HCA, National Health Laboratories, and GlaxoSmithKline have paid millions in fines to settle billing or fraud charges or investigations. While corporate accounting scandals may seem complex, much of the healthcare crisis involves outright theft such as overcharging for hospital care. This profitable game has even drawn drug criminals and the Russian mafia. Some have called the healthcare industry terminally ill.{13}

The African Union claims “corruption costs Africa almost $150 billion a year.” That’s about one quarter of the continent’s gross domestic product.{14} One Nigerian doctor told me bribery had become so commonplace in his country that corporations were including bribery allowances in staff budgets. They called it “public relations.” Problems arose when employees began pocketing the “public relations” money instead of using it for bribes.

Identity thieves use computers to snoop. The biggest identity theft in U.S. history garnered information on 30,000 people. Thieves used pilfered data to siphon bank accounts and tap credit card accounts. The prosecutor described the situation as “every American’s worst financial nightmare multiplied tens of thousands of times.”{15}

Cheating that may begin in school can have disastrous results in society. Duke’s president Keohane aptly summarizes: ” (A)n education that involves cheating instead of learning . . . is no education at all. . . . (I)n the real world, when you set out to build a bridge or craft a legal document or begin brain surgery, just knowing what the result is supposed to be is of mighty little use in making it happen; pity the poor patients and clients!”{16}

Why do people cheat, and what is the solution?

The Psychology of Cheating

Why do people cheat? Some seek the thrill of beating the system. Others want to make ends meet, protest high prices or achieve difficult—perhaps unattainable—standards.

Actress Winona Ryder’s shoplifting conviction prompted questions about why a wealthy person would steal items they could easily afford. Often anxiety or depression accompanies kleptomania. The rush of theft may assuage deep emotional pain. Young shoplifters have stolen on dares from their peers.{17}

Desires for approval, advancement, avoiding embarrassment–all influence self-esteem. People sometimes take foolish risks to feel good about themselves.

Self-centeredness and lax standards seem obvious roots of dishonesty. The Securities and Exchange Commission began requiring CEO’s of major companies to personally affirm “in writing, under oath and for publication ” that their corporate reports are “complete and accurate.”{18}

Restructuring business relationships to avoid conflicts of interest could reduce temptation. Stiff penalties–suspension, expulsion, prosecution–may help slow moral hemorrhaging. Strong role models, peer support, and ethical codes are significant.

Ultimately, honesty is an individual matter. Alan Greenspan told Congress of “an infectious greed” that influenced corporate scandals. “Greed is not an issue of business,” he emphasized, “it’s an issue of human beings.”{19}

My sophomore year in college, I swiped a plastic bucket from behind the lectern in the psychology lecture hall. It had been there every day during the semester. “No one wants it,” I convinced myself. “It deserves to be taken.” I used it to wash my car.

Two years later, I encountered a statement by an early follower of Jesus: “If we confess our sins to him, he (God) is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.”{20} I not only needed to admit my theft to God. I needed to make restitution.

My booty long since lost, I purchased a new bucket and carried it sheepishly across campus one afternoon. Finding no one in the psychology building to confess to, I left the bucket in a broom closet with a note of explanation. Maybe a janitor read it. My conscience was clear.

Solid spiritual commitment can help develop inner strength to resist temptation and act honorably. It can provide reasonable standards for civil society. And it can bring forgiveness and power to rebound from personal failure.

This article is adapted with permission from Rusty Wright, “Our Cheatin’ Hearts,” The Plain Truth, September/October 2003, pp. 6-10.

Notes

1. Eileen Daspin, “The Cheater Principle,” The Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2000, pp. W1, W16.
2. Above illustrations and quotations are from Ibid.
3. The Associated Press, “Wilson Firing Reportedly Due to Discrepancies in Bio,” AOL News, June 29, 2002.
4. Nannerl O. Keohane, “A Climate for Honor,” DUKE Magazine, May-June 2000, p. 20.
5. Center for Academic Integrity research summary is at http://www.academicintegrity.org/cai_research.asp.
6. Peter Dizikes, “Pay Grades,” ABCNews.com, May 7, 2002, http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/plagiarismbusiness020507.html; Robert J. Bliwise, “A Matter of Integrity,” DUKE Magazine, May-June 2001, p. 3.
7. NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, “Cheating Teachers,” PBS.org, April 26, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june00/teachers_4-26.html.
8. Reuters, “Highlights of Greenspan Q&A to US House Panel,” AOL News, July 17, 2002.
9. Nancy Gibbs, “Summer of Mistrust,” TIME.com, July 22, 2002, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,320782,00.html.
10. Ralph Nader; Matthew Cooper, “10 Questions for Ralph Nader,” TIME.com, July 31, 2002, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,332031,00.html.
11. Exodus 18:21.
12. “Seven Top Executives with No Retirement Woes,” TIME, July 29, 2002, p. 31.
13. Healthcare information taken from Carl Quintanilla, “Health-care industry rife with fraud,” MSNBC.com, November 12, 2002, http://www.msnbc.com/news/833915.asp#BODY. The Web site dateline did not list a year for this article, but I accessed it in November 2002 and am assuming that 2002 is the correct year of publication.
14. “The world this week,” The Economist, September 21, 2002, p. 8; and “Small place, big wave,” The Economist, September 21, 2002, p. 73. The words in quotation marks are the Economist‘s.
15. Larry Neumeister, “U.S. Charges 3 in Historic ID Theft Case,” The Associated Press, AOL News, November 25, 2002.
16. Keohane, loc. cit.
17. Nadya Labi, “Why Did She Do It?” TIME.com, November 12, 2002, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,388993,00.html
18. Calvin Woodward, “Corporate Ledgers Teach a Few Tricks,” The Associated Press, AOL News, June 21, 2002.
19. Jeannine Aversa, “Greenspan Chastises Misleading Execs,” The Associated Press, AOL News, June 17, 2002.
20. 1 John 1:9 NLT.

©2004 Probe Ministries.