I know folks, at this mid-to-later era of life, who were once very spiritual, but now balk at God’s existence. I know others who spent most of this life railing against faith and inwardly focused, only to find faith in their later years.
I was thinking about this the other day when I saw a video of Anthony Bourdain, the late, famed chef visiting a pierogi kitchen. I enjoyed Bourdain’s shows, if in some ways watching like I was gawking at a car crash. He seemed to be living what many would deem his dream life — traveling the world, getting sloshed with a tight work crew of fellow traveling friends all around the world and being paid millions to eat local cuisine on every continent.
Much in the manner of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, Bourdain seemed to arrive at exactly what he’d invested his life chasing only to find it hollow. Like Cobain, Bourdain ended his own life.
I was surprised, but, in retrospect, as a former addict, I understand how all that partying was numbing him from something — all gallons of Ouzo, Saké and Mexcal filmed going down the hatch were a confession of interior pain and emptiness.
My numbing agents were hard drugs, but the gutted sense that life held too much pain and too little meaning was the same.
At this point in life, I have folks I love dealing with life-threatening diseases. Cancers, neural conditions, respiratory and cardiac issues, among other things.
Some of them have great faith; some call themselves atheist or agnostic. Some, angry at the disorder burdening them, have become angry at God. Others have turned to him.
I suppose I understand both responses.
Life is hard. Anger at its unfairness makes sense. So does realizing a need for God when no one else can offer any hope.
My own outlook on the matter — even as I’ve had a very difficult run of months health-wise — was formed early on in my walk with Christ, after I was rescued from my addiction.
One of the early investors in my walk was my friend Jay Giblin, a trucker down in Arkansas these days. We were talking outside of a coffee shop about a mutual friend whose faith was being battered by a run of tough health and bad luck and Jay said to me, “Carl needs to remember that this ain’t home no more. He’s a citizen of Heaven, waiting for the day he becomes a permanent resident. This world doesn’t feel like home because it’s not supposed to.”
I asked him to clarify, and he said, “If God made Earth nothing but joy, how would he shape us? We’d be pets, not participants in his plan. And if this place were heavenly, what would the point of heaven be? We get some good, some great… and lots of rough. We’re shaped more in the bad than in the easy stuff.”
I was pondering that when Jay spoke again.
“Remember that, Hogan. This place won’t feel like home because it’s not home. One day, we’ll find out what home really is, but for now we’re not supposed to feel comfortable.”
I doubt Jay even remembers that conversation from nearly three decades back, but it really helped me in a lot of ways.
Working through the pain of a broken body, going to visit someone in the hospital when all I feel like doing is having folks feel sorry for me instead, putting one foot in front of the other even when the gout-ruined joints are screaming can be a tough sell to myself some days.
It’s a lot easier to do when I keep the notion that this place is for training and serving, and that home awaits when this is done.
I pray for my friends whose faith has faltered, and for those who’ve never been able to find it, because I know that in it resides an approach to peace with reality that I couldn’t find anywhere else.
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