back to normal (whatever that means)

Let me take just a moment to offer a brief update. Three weeks out of the hospital, I have most of my strength back from before. Fluid retention is still an issue, but it is down quite bit from the weeks before I went in. Last Friday, after a 6-week hiatus, I got back onto my chemo regimen, and I've not had any difficulties with side effects thus far. Tomorrow morning, I go in for the second half of this cycle.

With the semester closing at Claremont and the new quarter having started at Fuller, I'm staying plenty busy. This week, I finally finished the revision of Fuller's online ethics course--the one I've been moaning about for the last month or so. Since the quarter has already begun, I've felt a bit like a man running in front of a moving train to lay its rails.

augustine, bonhoeffer and collins

One of the side benefits of spending ten days in the hospital is that once I had gained a certain level of lucidity I had all day to read. This allowed me to finish an interesting book that Deb & Murray Flagg brought me. The title is The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, and it’s by Francis Collins, who heads the Human Genome Project. I might not have picked this book up for myself, since the title gives the impression of one more attempt to prove the validity of the Christian faith on the basis of scientific evidence, a task that I find highly questionable on theological grounds. However, Deb & Murray had heard the author on a radio interview and rightly surmised that this was not at all what Collins was trying to do. Rather, his book reads more like a confession of faith, a narration of his own journey as the wonders revealed by led him to questions that science could not address, and an invitation to further dialogue between practitioners of science and faith.

In this sense, Collins follows a line of reasoning somewhat like that laid out 16 centuries ago by St. Augustine. In his Confessions, Augustine credits Neoplatonist philosophers for leading him to the threshold of faith, but concludes that ultimate truth can only be found by subjecting himself to God’s self-revelation in Christ and in Scripture and not through human reason. For Augustine, human reason is structured in such a way as to point past itself to what it cannot grasp. When taken to its limit, reason is finally humbled before the realization that the meaning of human existence lies beyond our powers to discern it; it can only be told to us through divine revelation. Specifically, for Augustine, this means that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ reveal to us what we cannot figure out on our own. It seems to me that Collins takes a similar tack: stopping short of suggesting that natural phenomena somehow prove or require God’s existence, he nevertheless finds himself, having mastered his field of scientific study, filled with a sense of awe that compels him to believe in what he cannot prove and to find in the Scriptures knowledge that transcends scientific inquiry.

In the 1940s, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer approached the subject from a different angle. His approach will help to highlight my main criticism of Collins’ book. Writing from a Nazi prison cell as he faced his imminent execution, he postulated that the world had “come of age,” that is, reached a stage of development in which religion was no longer necessary to explain the workings of nature and human community, and in which we could no longer assume that God would powerfully intervene to make all things well. Moreover, for Bonhoeffer, this was a good thing in terms of Christian theology: “Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the deus ex machina. The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. To that extent we may say that the development towards the world’s coming of age outlined above, which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness” (Letter and Papers, 361).

It’s not that Bonhoeffer is particularly enthused about the “world come of age”—it is, after all, the developed world that produces the Holocaust and the war that is destroying Europe—rather, by virtue of its sheer godlessness, the world that has outgrown religion makes visible God’s true character. God is not the divine fixer who occasionally pops out of paradise to solve our personal problems, but the humbled and rejected Lord who enters fully into the social affairs of a secular world and suffers under its evils. The path of Christian discipleship, in this model, is to engage patiently and painfully in the life of the world, to side with the victims of oppression and exclusion, and to embody the hope of true human community in an often dehumanizing world.

Like Augustine, Bonhoeffer takes humanity’s highest achievements and possibilities as the point of departure from which we enter into faith. But he adds the dimension that this faith specifically takes the form of following Jesus in his weakness and suffering with Jesus the evils that humans are capable of inflicting upon one another.

This takes me to one of my two main hesitations concerning Collins’ book. The God he describes is the God depicted in mainstream European theology from the fourth century to the middle of the twentieth: a majestic, powerful God who reigns sovereign over all things, makes them well and maintains them in their right order. This portrayal works well among relatively wealthy and comfortable societies, and suggests that developments beneficial to the members of such societies are expressions of divine benevolence—not necessarily an unbiblical view, but an incomplete one. It lacks another important characteristic of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, that ours is a God who suffers, who willingly and patiently endures the chaos of a not yet fully redeemed creation.

As theologians have attempted to make sense of the enormous destruction and violence that humans have inflicted upon one another at various times and places over the last hundred years, and as the voices of faith communities comprised of the victims of economic deprivation, political persecution, and ethnic scourging have come to the fore, this side of God’s character has gained more attention. That it could go missing from Collins’ picture of God is, to me, a serious weakness in his book. It may also correspond to a frequently heard criticism of the Human Genome Project in general: that for the sake of genetic diseases, which constitute the main health concerns in developed countries, it siphons resources away from such matters as malnutrition and infectious disease, which are of more immediate concern to the members of underdeveloped countries.

My second hesitation has less to do with the book itself than with its reception among Evangelicals, with whom Collins seems to identify. He rightly foresees that many will reject his book outright for his acceptance of evolution, but this doesn’t matter to me. My concern has to do with those who will embrace his book. Specifically, I fear that they might make the same mistake that we have made with C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity for the last fifty years: that we will confuse a defense of the faith with the content of the faith.

In the 1950s, Lewis demonstrated the rationality of the Christian faith, and many appreciative readers let it end at that. Christian faith and practice consisted of little more than any well bred post-War Englishman would have come up with on his own: love for God and county, love for one’s fellow human being, chaste moral behavior, obedience to existing laws, circumspection, patience, modesty—not too different from the picture of Christianity one now gains from Collins. But our faith is more than that. It looks specifically to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, to his roots in the Hebrew prophets, and to the practices of the early church. From these sources it draws a subversive force, one that resists existing political and economic structures, and names the ways that they rob humans of their dignity, destroy community, deface creation, and limit our capacity to love one another. In Jesus it discovers an ethic that overcomes evil not with force but with truthfulness and forgiveness, and that loves enemies even at the risk of death. It would be difficult to derive this kind of ethic from The Language of God.

For all that, I consider it well worth reading. Collins wisely distances himself from such past apologetics missteps as appealing to God fill in the gaps that science can’t explain (a strategy that consistently breaks down when natural explanations are discovered for previously unexplained phenomena), and he rejects the “Intelligent Design” argument, a variation on that strategy which argues that evolution can’t account for nature’s “irreducible complexity,” and that therefore the world must have come into being through deliberate divine intentions. Instead, he offers the simple testimony that, for him, the awesome beauty and intricacy of the natural world led him to faith in the Christian God, and that this faith need not be seen as enemy or hindrance to serious inquiry into the nature and mechanics of the created world.

(P.S. Greg Crowthers, Ben McFarland, and Daniel Phillips, I would especially welcome your responses, since I’ve no doubt that you’re all familiar with Collins’ book and have probably put some thoughts into its scientific and/or theological merits.)

home, and almost out of the woods

"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine!
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you.
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."
--Isaiah 43:1-3

I do not know how to express adequately the tremendous gratitude I owe to so many of you who prayed, visited, sent notes and flowers, helped to disseminate information and in countless other ways gathered around Karla and me over the last two weeks to carry us through this very unusual experience. Mom & Don, who came down from San Jose to offer whatever services they could, and to be a calming presence in the hospital room; Glenn & Shanti for sending out daily updates; Deb & Murray for coming by daily with an instinctive sense for what to say and how long to stay; our church community at Altadena Baptist, who so thoroughly surrounded us with prayers, visits, and acts of kindness that I could feel myself being lifted up and carried through the most difficult times; our brothers and sisters at Bethany for their frequent notes and calls, the peace plant they sent us, and the scrapbook filled with thoughts of friendship and encouragement; friends from all over the country who reached out to express their love and prayers; Kirsten & Scott and their church community for putting together a quilt to remind me that I was also in their prayers; the outstanding nursing staff in ICU; and so many others who took the time to come by once or twice and remind me that I was not alone. And of course Karla. How can I describe what it's like to share a life with someone so utterly and gratuitously committed to my well-being, who seems to love me more even as I get weaker, who willingly sacrifices so much? What has come home to me over the last two weeks--more than the precariousness of my health or any sense of dread of having to go through something like this again--has been an overwhelming realization of the large number of truly wonderful people whom God has allowed me to know and to connect with, and the humbling knowledge that I could never reciprocate a fraction of the love and support that they have lavished upon me.

So here's what happened. On Friday, March 23, I received the encouraging report from Dr. Iqbal that my tumors had shrunk considerably. However, cancer is not the only health problem I'm facing at this point. I also have congestive heart failure (likely a result of previous cancer treatments), and an array of cardiovascular problems that stem from that. On Saturday afternoon I was suddenly taken out by a respiratory infection that brought by blood pressure down to the 70s and made it almost impossible to stand up without feeling like I was going to faint.

On Monday morning, we were able to arrange an emergency meeting with my cardiologist's partner, who immediately assessed that I needed to be in the hospital, where I could receive medications to bring my blood pressure back up while still getting rid of excess fluid in the legs and around the lungs. On Tuesday, I was moved from a regular room to the Intensive Care Unit, and by Tuesday night it was clear that I was facing a more serious situation than either Karla or I had imagined. I was diagnosed with acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is a bit like pneumonia, only worse. The respiratory specialist who saw me that night suggested to Karla that it might be appropriate to start contacting family members and preparing for the worst.

It's hard to describe the hodgepodge of sensations that went through my mind and body those first two or three nights in ICU: calm, agony, fear, gratitude, delirium, resignation, desire, contentment. Physically, the first few days were pretty miserable. I had so much fluid in and around my lungs that I had to struggle to breath. The doctor had placed me on a 1200cc/day fluid restriction, so I was always thirsty. Late at night, my mind brought up images of children around the world who do not have access to potable water--the children to whom the Kingdom belongs. For a brief moment I felt a kind of solidarity with them, but I quickly awakened to the hypocrisy of that claim, in light of the fact that I was hooked up to thousands of dollars worth of medical equipment and surrounded by trained specialists working to restore me to health. No matter how you look at it, I've lived a rather cushy life.

By the weekend I had clearly made it through the worst, and on Monday I was released from ICU into a regular room. A part of me thinks that if I had been sent home the next day, it would have been for the better. But the doctors wanted to make sure that my blood pressure, sodium, and potassium were up to their normal levels, so they held onto me until Thursday. Unfortunately, the surest way to raise those numbers was to cut back on my diuretic and bring my fluids back up. As a result, much of the fluid that had been squeezed out of me in ICU came back, so that soon after returning home I was again having difficulty breathing and moving around.

Friday morning there was talk of my being readmitted to the hospital. Fortunately, I was able to work out a plan with my cardiologist for bringing my fluids back down, keeping my blood pressure up and warding off further infection. My breathing and energy level have improved noticably each day since. I'm still a bit fatigued, but am definitely on the road to recovery.

The cancer diagnosis back in November profoundly changed my thoughts about the future and my current priorities, but the change was relatively abstract. I think this experience has had a more concrete impact on me in terms of daily dietary changes, taking advantage of the gifts presented with each day, and focusing more specifically on how I want to spend my life. Somehow, I had developed the notion that I would see a six month warning signal, which would gradually tick down like the battery level indicator on my cell phone. But it's just as likely that at some point, after feeling fine, there will a sudden systemic breakdown from which I will not recover. I have little time to waste on unimportant things. Karla & I need to ask ourselves, if I have only 6 or 7 months left, what specific things I hope to do in that time. A few months down the road, God willing, we can ask ourselves that question again. I hope to be able to return to that question many, many times.