Live Man Walking

New Testament Professor David Scholer has been living with terminal cancer since, I think, about 2002. He appears to have decided not spend his remaining time and energy in the role of a dying man, but to turn himself outward, continuing to invest himself in students, colleagues, church gatherings and whoever else God brings into his life. After four years, he is recognized throughout the Fuller community as a source of liberation, wisdom and joy. He emceed the seminary breakfast Monday morning at the convention, addressing the crowd with humor, warmth and energy. Not until the end, when two men appeared at his sides to escort him down the stairs were we reminded that his body is weak and in pain. This is what I want for myself: to affirm and celebrate God’s kindness in whatever time I have left at least as passionately as I have sought to do over the course of my life thus far.

Charlie Scalise, who, with his wife Pam, has played a critical role in my spiritual formation since I took their Church History and Old Testament courses a decade ago, drew my attention to Dr. Scholer over a meal on Sunday. We were discussing the work done by medieval theologians on the art of dying well and the ramifications of that work in our day, when medical science and modern opportunities for personal advancement afford us the luxury of thinking of one’s personal earthly existence as an end in itself and death as tragedy to be postponed as long as possible. Mortality, for our forebears, was much harder to ignore, so living well and dying well were closely associated in their minds.

I’ve read books and seen movies whose closing paragraphs or scenes had the power to elevate a good story into a great one; I have to think that the manner in which one lives one’s final years, months or moments can have a similar force. As Charlie put it, it is a matter of affirming at the end of one’s life what one has affirmed throughout. In my case, this will call for continued attention to certain practices and disciplines by which I have sought to abide, if not always successfully, since my teen years: the daily habit of Scripture reading and meditation; the habit of choosing, when the choice is given to me, to express gratitude, to make space in myself for someone who is different from me, to forbear rather than to find fault; the mental discipline of referring life experiences and questions back to the central narrative of God’s self-revelation in Christ.

It will especially require a decisive shift in the way I view my current situation. Understandably, I spent most of Friday and Saturday reckoning with the fact that I had suddenly become a dying man, but I see now that this estimation is inadequate. Death was guaranteed long before I received any test results, and having now heard the reports, I’m still alive. For the time being, I am not simply dying of cancer, I am living with cancer. This, to me, is not optimism, which I usually find naïve. I’m not grasping at the unlikely chance that some miracle is going to put this whole misfortune behind me. But right now I’m here. By conservative estimates, I could realistically expect to live like this for another two years; by more generous estimates, perhaps four. Who knows whether I’ll surprise us all with an extra month or year beyond that? I’ll feel a bit silly if five or six years from now I’ve done nothing with the unexpected extra time than wait for it to expire. For now I need to behave like a man who has a future, because, for now, that is exactly what I have.