Embattled Christian

Fall is here in all its glory and if my dear webmaster gets my picture posting capacity fixed I’ll share some pictures. We’re digging potatoes from the garden. I made a delicious zucchini chocolate cake with one of three zucchini that made it to significant size before the return of the dark stopped growth cold. Now, after taking a vacation from writing for a month and a half, I’m ready to launch my fifth year of Embattled Christian.

We had planned to do a lot of hiking this summer.  We ended up doing more golfing than hiking.  But as it turned out, I’ve had to do some serious metaphorical rock climbing.  I’ve been driven from the spiritual plateau that two years of cancer treatment and miraculous recovery along with tremendous loving support have blessed me with. Somewhere in the rugged spiritual mountains that tower over me is wisdom that can only be obtained through pain and hard work.

Years ago I stumbled on to a mountain climbing movie from which I’ve taken both inspiration and indignation.  “Into the Void” documents a terrifying dilemma of survival which haunts the climbing world to this day. After conquering the west face of  Siula Grande in Peru and beginning their descent, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were engulfed by a storm. The two men were tied together when they slipped and fell. Simpson’s calf bone was thrust up through his knee and into his upper leg. After heroic efforts to save his companion, Yates, unsure whether Simpson was alive or dead and certain to fall himself if he stayed attached to Simpson’s dead weight, decided to cut the rope. Simpson fell into a crevasse and miraculously survived the fall but was alone in the dark and cold and in excruciating pain.  He managed to crawl to a place in the crevasse where he could see light.  He then inched his way toward that light and out onto the glacier, then across the glacier, down the mountain and finally back to camp. Crawling toward that light, toward safety, healing, and warmth is powerful imagery for all us as we struggle through life’s dark wildernesses.

Simpson comments,  as he reflects back on that moment at the bottom of the crevasse that, had he believed in God, he doesn’t think he would have made it. I suppose he thinks the godly would have slipped blissfully into the afterlife without a struggle. Elsewhere I’ve read of a skeptic expressing the opinion that his lack of belief in an afterlife made his last moments with a dying loved one more precious.

In response to the above sentiments I indignantly respond, “Since you don’t believe in God how can you possibly know what sweetness, bitterness, intensity of feeling, or love a believer feels!”  Having fought through cancer, chemo-therapy, and devastating radiation treatment I’d say I have some insight on how hard a believing Christian is willing to fight to live. But then I am stopped by my own argument. What do I know about the heart of an atheist and what an atheist feels?

What I do know is that believers and unbelievers are all subject to the same human hungers, passions, desires and temptations. Believers and unbelievers have access to wisdom and sound principles of living. Believers and unbelievers respond nobly and ignobly to life’s challenges.  We all spring from the same fountain of life and suffer the same variety of afflictions.

We are all children of God. So it should be no surprise that whether we believe in God or not we all have within us the divine source, the spark of life and goodness that is in and through all creation. We all need and have the capacity to respect and love one another and behave decently toward one another. We all listen to or bury the call of the divine within us by our thoughts and actions. We all suffer or are blessed to the degree that we seek out that which is true, just, pure, lovely, honest, virtuous, of good report or praiseworthy.

What we believe does not change our common template, “the image of God”. What we believe or do not believe does not change our common origin, as Wordworth so vividly wrote, “from God who is our home.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 3:13 am and is filed under Christian living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.