Admit that you need God’s help

In the last article of this series we discussed why the first step in experiencing God’s hope when facing an uncertain future is learning to trust him, even when doing so doesn’t make much sense. Today, we’re going to continue that conversation with the second step in that process: admitting that you need God’s help.

My father died at the age of fifty-five from heart disease. He did not drink to excess or smoke. He did nothing to cause the disease that took his life. He was a victim of the fallen human condition, the unchanging fact of innocent suffering in our broken world.

So are you. So am I.

A beloved friend and colleague died on his sixty-second birthday of pancreatic cancer. A vibrant athlete and friend who coached my older son in Little League baseball and traveled with me to Israel died a few years ago of ALS.

On a much less significant level: I have dealt for many years with a degenerative spinal condition. A four-level spinal fusion stabilized part of my lower back, but I still experience progressive neurological degeneration. I now walk with a cane and am never without pain. I did nothing to cause this condition. It is my part of the “crooked timber of humanity,” as Immanuel Kant described us.

I say all of that to say this: the tragedy of 9/11 and the threat of tragedy that has followed is only one dimension of a larger story that affects and afflicts all humans at all times.

When I served as a missionary to the island of Borneo during college, I met tribal people who had never seen an American or experienced electricity or running water. They had no idea what year it was or who was president of the United States. 9/11 would have been in nearly every sense irrelevant to them. Terrorists that threaten us would have no interest whatsoever in them.

But they faced threats from jungle animals and jungle diseases that we know nothing about in the US. Saltwater crocodiles, the largest reptiles on earth, are a constant presence along their riverbanks, while venomous snakes are present seemingly everywhere.

Here’s my point: if we are going to find hope in facing an uncertain future, we will need to admit that we need such hope. Not just as a nation, as I discussed earlier, but as individuals.

This is harder than it sounds.

Three foundings for three purposes

America was “founded” at three different times for three different purposes:

• The Spanish founded Saint Augustine, Florida, in 1565 to serve as a military outpost and as a base for Catholic missionary settlements to reach the indigenous populations.
• The English founded Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 as an economic venture to generate profit for investors, search for gold, and find a water route to the Pacific Ocean.
• The Pilgrims founded Plymouth Colony in 1620 to establish a Christian and civic society; the Puritans came to New England in 1630 for the same purpose.

Here’s what these founders had in common: They believed they could do what they set out to do. They were some three thousand miles from their homelands, building lives on an unmapped continent. They had no way to know what peoples and perils they would face. When you think about it, the founding(s) of our nation were among the most audacious and courageous initiatives in human history.

This belief in themselves and their future infused them with courage for what was to come. They fought and defeated the mightiest military force the world had ever seen to win their independence. They then forged a united nation from thirteen very disparate colonies and began settling an uncharted western frontier.

Over the generations that followed, Americans won world wars, weathered depressions and recessions, survived epidemics, pandemics, and natural disasters, and grew to become the mightiest military and strongest economy in human history.

No wonder we are such a self-reliant people.

Our country was built on the premise not only that “all men are created equal” but that we have the right and capacity to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. We stand on self-reliance and celebrate self-made heroes. We believe there is nothing we cannot do when we put our minds to it.

But when it comes to the innocent suffering endemic to the human condition, like quicksand when we’re trapped in it, the harder we fight the worse it gets.

We can make things better in the short run, to be sure. I’m grateful for every medical advance that makes disease less deadly and less painful. My father lived nineteen years after his first heart attack due to the expertise of brilliant doctors and caregivers. My back condition would be far worse apart from the intervention of a brilliant surgeon and amazing physicians.

But the death rate is still 100 percent. We have eradicated smallpox, but not COVID. We are living longer lives, but death still comes.

“Ways of escaping reality through religion”

Unfortunately, it is also part of the American psyche to ignore what we cannot solve. Thus, we devise euphemisms for death (people merely “depart” or “pass on”) and invent fantasies for what happens when we die (we simply move to a “better place,” and so on.

Christians are not exempt. Theologian and novelist Frederick Buechner described some of the ways religion can be escapism:

To deny the prevalence of pain in the world and the perennial popularity of evil. To abdicate responsibility for them by assuming that God will take care of them very nicely on his own. To accept them as divine judgment upon the sins especially of other people. To dismiss them or to encourage others to dismiss them by stressing the promise of pie in the sky. . . To maintain your faith by refusing to face any nasty fact that threatens it.

These are all ways of escaping reality through religion and should be denounced right along with such other modes of escape as liquor, drugs, TV, or any simplistic optimism… which assumes that if everybody would only see it our way, evil would vanish and all would be sweetness and light.

If a patient won’t admit they need a doctor, they won’t see one. The first step in every Twelve Step program is admitting the addiction that brought the person to seek recovery.

If you have cancer, denying that you are sick or trying to cure the disease yourself, while expressive of the American self-reliant ethos, is clearly the wrong way to go. If you’re going to get better, you’ll start by admitting your malignancy and seeking the help of those who can treat it more effectively than you can.

With regard to true hope for an uncertain future, the same is true of our minds and souls.

If you and I are going to find transforming hope in the face of an uncertain future, we will begin by admitting that we need such hope, that we cannot defeat our greatest enemies or conquer our gravest challenges by ourselves.

“In your light do we see light”

In other words, we will admit that we live in a world that is broken.

When humanity fell, the created order fell with us: “The whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22). Diseases and disasters were not present prior to sin, but they are ubiquitous now.

What’s even worse, Satan is now “the ruler of this world” (John 14:30), plaguing believers and nonbelievers alike. With regard to the latter, Paul warned us, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). With regard to the former, Peter cautioned his fellow believers, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

As a result, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). As the psalmist noted, “The dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence” (Psalm 74:20).

This is because, as Jesus noted, “people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). The good news is that, as our Lord testified, “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (John 12:46).

If we stay in his presence by his Spirit, we “walk as children of light” and “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness” (Ephesians 5:8, 11). And we can pray with David, “In your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9).

John testified of Jesus: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4–5). It never will.

The darker the room, the more urgent, attractive, and powerful the light. But we must seek and trust this light, admitting that we need what we do not have and trusting the “light of the world” to be our light (John 9:5).

When Simon Peter found himself sinking into the stormy Sea of Galilee, he could have tried to swim to safety or appeal to help from those in the boat. Instead, he wisely employed the shortest prayer in the Bible: “Lord, save me” (Matthew 14:30). The Greek is translated literally, “Lord, save.”

And Jesus did.

What storms have found you today?

To whom will you call for help?