Life's Ramblings

Church was deep. The topic: one of the pastors passed away from cancer last week. He was young; 30’s, wife, three kids. WTF? People were sad, confused, angry, broken. I don’t really participate in church stuff, so I didn’t know him. At church another pastor talked about his life and final days. He often battled depression and despair. Of course. He was wasting away, becoming weaker every day from the chemo. The day before he passed away, he laid his hands on each of his children and gave them his blessings. I couldn’t quit trying to imagine what a dying father’s hand feels to a kid, how his final words would sound, the concept of an “end.” The pastor at church talked about inner strength. It was encouraging. There are verses in the Bible that talk about how “what is seen is temporary, but the unseen is eternal.” To me it’s an extremely attractive thought, but a ridiculously hard thought to process. Is it wishful thinking? Believing that there is a deeper level abiding underneath the sensory? And if God is part of the deeper level, why do strong-spirited, loving 38 year-old fathers die from cancer while their kids watch? In my brain research group meetings, a phrase often uttered is “Biology is messy.” That is one thought that I always include in the thought blender. In addition to random chaos, imperfection is rampant in the world. It’s not an answer, really. Just another thought. Christian answers drop dead at my ears. I think the Christian faith possesses many brilliant concepts that help many find strength in God; it’s just that my ears have become immune to Christianese. It happens. A lesson in the relevance of language. And in the irrelevance of regurgitated aphorisms. I’m kina like Job from the Bible, except not righteous and don’t have very many crises going on in my life. But I try to justify my position to God. I still think I’m right in a lot of cases; in all the other cases, I used to think I was right. I still hope there’s an “unseen” where our inherent knowledge that perfection exists proves true, where maybe biology isn’t so messy, and where once in a while a bridge or two cross over to what is seen.