Losing My Religion (20 page)

And yet. (There is always an “and yet.”) How to explain Packy Kobuk? On my return home from my winter trip to Alaska, I stopped by Nome’s Anvil Mountain Correction Center, where Packy was serving three months for assault. Sitting in a tiny visitor’s room, I studied Packy’s round face. In St. Michael, the Yu’piks lived in many ways just as their ancestors did 10,000 years ago. They harpooned whales, tracked herds of caribou migrating across the tundra and hunted walruses sleeping on icebergs in the Bering Sea. In midsummer they gathered wild berries, a key ingredient in Eskimo ice cream—a frozen and oddly tasty concoction of lard, fish, sugar and berries. Smells of the outdoor life hung heavy in the village: the salt air, the strips of salmon drying on racks, the seaweed washed up on the beach.

For now, Packy could smell only the disinfectants used to scrub the jail’s concrete floors. Alcohol and a violent temper had put him here often in his 46 years. As a child-abuse victim, who can blame him?

Wearing navy-blue prison clothes, the short, powerfully built man folded his callused hands on the table between us. A homemade Rosary hung from his neck, the blue beads held together by string from one of his village’s fishing nets. All of the now-grown Eskimos I had interviewed over the past week had lost their faith—except Packy.

He had been sodomized for years by Lundowski, who had also forced him to perform sex acts with other children. It began when Packy was 12. In exchange, Lundowski gave Packy coins from the collection box and cakes and casseroles made by villagers. These gifts raised his family’s standard of living in a place where poverty was of the Third World variety.

After eight years of abuse, Lundowski left St. Michael suddenly one morning on a hastily arranged flight with a bush pilot, reportedly chased from the village by angry parents who had finally uncovered the truth. No one in the village ever talked about what happened—except Packy. He had asked for help over the years from at least two bishops, five priests and village elders. Everyone told him to keep quiet and stop stirring up trouble.

Following the death in 1999 of a priest who served in St. Michael and Stebbins, Kobuk was asked by a Jesuit superior to take more than 16 loads of documents, notepads, books and trash from the two parishes to the villages’ dumps in his four-wheel ATV and trailer.

Kobuk said he brought along 15 gallons of stove oil because the priest said the trash needed to be burned. He said the priest fed the documents and books into the flames, eliminating any evidence of wrongdoing that happened in the parishes over the years. (Jesuit officials claim it was a routine housecleaning and that nothing important was destroyed.)

“He made sure these would burn to ashes and made sure there was no trace,” Packy said. “He was reading a lot of them, too, before he threw them in.”

I pointed to the Rosary.

“Why do you still believe?”

“It’s not God’s work what happened to me,” he said softly, running his fingers along the Rosary beads. He spoke in clipped words whose cadence matched the Yu’pik language he no longer understood. “They were breaking God’s commandments—even the people who didn’t help. They weren’t loving their neighbors as themselves.”

I didn’t tell Packy about my own doubts about faith. Listening to him filled me with shame. My faith had collapsed. He had been through much worse than anything I could imagine—raped for years by a man he believed was Christ’s representative on Earth. Told to keep quiet by bishops, priests and village elders. And his belief never wavered.

I asked him to tell me more. He told me that he regularly got down on his knees in his jail cell to pray, an act that brought ridicule from other inmates.

“A lot of people make fun of me, asking if the Virgin Mary is going to rescue me,” Packy said. “Well, I’ve gotten help more times from the Virgin Mary through intercession than from anyone else. I won’t stop. My children need my prayers.”

In the late spring, I met Packy again, this time at his home in St. Michael. He told me he had recently followed the fresh tracks that a grizzly bear had made in the gray sand of a deserted beach. Packy said he could never commit suicide because it was against his beliefs, but he had hoped the grizzly would eat him and end his misery. But then, approaching some bushes where he was sure the bear has hiding, Packy had a change of heart. As he ran back down the beach, he prayed to Jesus to rescue him.

Packy’s heart aches for the church in St. Michael. Until recently, he couldn’t bring himself to set foot in it. Instead, on Sundays, Packy walked through his dilapidated village, reciting prayers and parts of the Catholic liturgy that he had learned from Lundowski. Packy included a prayer for his molester, who died in 1995. The Alaska Native asks God to accept his molester into heaven.

“I pray for Lundowski, for this soul,” Packy says. “I just want to heal.”

It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be.

—
SIGMUND FREUD,
THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION

 

A
FTER MY TRIP
to Alaska, my head finally had to admit to what had happened in my heart three years before, when I had stopped attending church. I no longer believed in God—at least not a personal one who lovingly looked over me and answered my prayers. But before I officially surrendered my faith, I made one last stab at trying to recover it.

I turned to John Huffman, my pastor at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach. He had always been a spiritual Superman to me—and not because of the national reputation that landed him on the board of directors for evangelical powerhouse organizations such as World Vision and
Christianity Today
. It was because he had lost a wonderful 23-year-old daughter to cancer at the height of his very public ministry and handled the tragedy with incredible grace—a gift, he would tell you in his booming baritone voice, that came from God. He had been through life’s cruelest moment, tested like few had, and his faith remained steadfast.

I also liked John because of his approachability. Though a first-rate intellectual who had earned a PhD, he also was a weekend athlete and a huge sports fan, and had a good sense of humor that allowed him to poke fun even at his own tendency to drop names. It was an attractive combination. I took John to dinner and told him about my crisis of faith. I asked him if I could e-mail him some tough questions about Christianity. He agreed without hesitation. Rock solid in his faith, I think he welcomed the challenge.

My questions were basic, verging on the clichéd, but I desperately wanted some solid answers I could grasp so I could climb back up into my faith. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God get credit for answered prayers but no blame for unanswered ones? Why do we believe in the miraculous healing power of God when He’s never been able to regenerate a limb or heal a severed spinal chord? Here is our exchange:

Bill: “Okay, John. I’ve been holding off until I think of the perfect question to begin. Since that hasn’t happened, let’s just start here. Does it bother you that God seems to get a pass no matter how a prayer turns out? If the prayer is answered (and someone recovers from a grave illness, for example), then God is said to be a loving Lord who cares about His children’s wishes. They asked and they received.

“But then when the prayer doesn’t get answered (the person dies, for example), the Christian will say: Well, it’s God’s will. Or the prayer was answered, but not in the way we expected. Or we simply can’t know the Lord’s mysterious ways.

“The bottom line is: God seems to be praised, or at least still believed in, no matter how the prayers turn out. Is that just too convenient?”

John: “I know what you mean. I must admit that I get a bit ticked off myself at the insensitivity and even narcissism of people who seem to blithely dismiss life’s tragedies, exempting God from any responsibility while they grandly praise Him for everything good that happens.

“I remember how hurt I was when my daughter Suzanne died of cancer at age 23, while I heard some Christians praising God for His goodness on matters as small as getting a parking space to items as big as the fact that their child diagnosed with terminal cancer was finally healed.

“At the same time, I’d have to admit that I probably fall into the category somewhat similar to those you’ve described, as I find myself troubled with those people who wouldn’t think for a moment to express gratitude to God for the good they experience but are quick to damn Him for anything that goes wrong.

“Genuine gratitude can transform one’s life. The capacity to thank God for the blessings and also praise Him in difficult times, in my estimation, is a sign of maturing faith. As much as I hated losing my precious daughter, every so often someone would come to me and say, ‘Why in the world would God allow your daughter to die, given all the good you do as a pastor?’ My genuine response would be, ‘Why shouldn’t I experience this pain? Why should I be any more exempt from loss than anyone else?’

“I don’t think that God is in the business of zapping people indiscriminately. He didn’t create sin. He didn’t create disease. He didn’t create spousal abuse. The buildup of sludge from all of our centuries of human disobedience to God takes its toll.

“But ultimately, I may end up sounding just like the persons who give you trouble. My ultimate affirmation is let God be God and acknowledge that He is in charge. He knows what I don’t know. And frankly, if I’m totally honest with you, a life of gratitude is one that bows before the Sovereign God arguing with Him on those things that trouble me, lamenting the losses of life, but ultimately saying, ‘Thank you for your blessings and help me handle the painful losses, because I know that You know what I don’t know. You, God, are infinite; I’m human and finite. Right now, I only see in part from my human perspective. You see the big picture. Thank you for the blessings and thank you for giving me the strength to handle life’s tragedies and even to voluntarily involve myself in the pain of others, helping them in a way in which I allow my heart to be broken by the very things that break the heart of God.’”

Bill: “So the seeming randomness of God’s blessing and intervention isn’t random at all, but we can only understand the bigger picture after death? In the meantime, the crooked, atheist businessman prospers and the child of devout Christian parents dies. Why would a loving God make this impossible for us to understand? What’s the point of that?”

John: “I guess I’d have to accept your observation that the randomness of God’s blessing and intervention isn’t random at all and that perhaps we can only understand the bigger picture after death.

“But I’m not prepared to quite leave it at that.

“I am a rational person, like you, and I do want left-brain answers to just about everything.

“I’ve discovered that there are some good answers to some of my questions in life, like ‘Will we have a wreck if I irresponsibly take a left turn into oncoming fast-moving traffic?’ The answer is quite easy for me to see. It’s my own error, stupidity, mental lapse or selfishness that causes tragedy and may kill me and my loved ones. For such activity on my part, if I survive, I must face the consequences.

“However, I doubt that what is an answer for me, as the one who caused the accident, is an adequate answer for the family of those in the oncoming car who lose a spouse and a couple of children. They may be forever in this life screaming out to God with the question, ‘Why?’

“Yes, at times to me God’s apparent random blessing and intervention or apparent absence of involvement seems quite arbitrary and even whimsical from my limited perspective.

“The Bible does address the very question you raise about the crooked atheist businessman, the age-old question, ‘Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous go wanting?’ The Bible declares that ‘The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.’

“I don’t think it is that the loving God intentionally makes it impossible for us to understand. I don’t think that that is the point. I think the point is that I am human, finite, and God is supernatural, above-human. God is infinite. The fact is that He has not chosen to reveal everything to us. I can whine and complain that He hasn’t, demanding that God make it possible for me to understand everything. But when I do that, I’m getting pretty close to self-worship, lifting myself to the position of God, or perhaps even to a position superior to God, demanding that God function on my ground rules instead of me, humbly in worship, functioning on His.

“Perhaps as you suggest, we will understand all this when we die. It’s also possible that, by then, it will be irrelevant. The Bible says, ‘By then we will know as we are known.’ Our whole perspective will be different.

“The bottom line for me is that right now I choose to trust God. That’s faith.

“Job, who innocently lost everything, declared in faith that ‘though He kill me, I will trust Him!’ That’s faith, the very essence of my existence as a believer in Jesus Christ. But even in the process of trusting Him, I am free to talk with Him, argue with Him in prayer, lament the unfairness and raise questions directly to Him about the apparent random nature of evil and good. But at the end of the day, I thank Him for His blessings, and I am determined to love and trust Him for what I simply don’t understand.

“In all honesty, to be human is to not know it all. To be divine is to know it all. I in my not-know-it-all-ness would rather bow in worship before the One who does know it all and trust Him rather than to demand all the answers. God is good enough even though I don’t understand everything, including the death of my daughter and other of my more private, painful realities. Instead of lashing out in destructive anger toward God, if there is a God, and the unfairness of life, I am prepared to trust Him in those areas that are a mystery and may remain so all through this life.”

Reading John’s words, I was glad I picked him to answer my questions. From a Christian perspective, his answers were nearly perfect. He was giving me the best Christianity had to offer, but I just didn’t believe it anymore. I replied to John that though I appreciated his response, it was frustrating because I had seen too many innocent people live out lives full of tragedy and pain.

Bill: “The only way I can make sense of these tragedies (if God allowed them to happen) is if I measure the length of a tortured life (a sexual abuse victim, a severely handicapped child) against that of eternity.

“Do you think along those lines? That even the worst life on Earth will be like a pinprick compared to eternity?”

John: “Thanks for not backing off from the toughest of questions. I can feel your frustration. I believe that what you have described breaks the heart of God. In fact, this is why God came in the Person of Jesus Christ to make possible a new beginning in this life, not only in the life to come.

“Yes, even the worst of life on earth will be like a pinprick compared to eternity. That’s not a good enough answer for me. I believe in a literal heaven in which all of us who repent of sin will be healed persons, experiencing a wholeness of life beyond anything possible here on earth.

“But as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, mine is to not give blithe promises of ‘pie in the sky by and by.’ I say that not to minimize the reality of God’s promises for the life beyond this life but to comment on the possibility of ‘eternal life,’ a God-quality life right here in this life as well as in the life to come.

“That’s what Jesus was talking about when he said, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoso-ever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life.’ He was describing not just ‘everlasting life,’ He was describing a God-quality life available to every one of us, no matter how horrendous our circumstances are both in this life and in the life to come.

“Bill, you and I both are traumatized by our professional experience. You as an investigative reporter see the rotten underbelly of human experience and the unfairness of life, the consequences of sin, heartbreaking emptiness of the abuser and devastation of the abused. I as a pastor join you in this professional hazard of seeing the worst of life on a regular basis. When I pastored in Pittsburgh, one of my members, a pediatric neurosurgeon, came to me in a faith crisis. All he saw day after day was innocent little children rendered para- or quadriplegic by accidents or whose lives were threatened by malignancies of the brain. He came very close to an emotional/spiritual breakdown, wondering how a good God could allow such human tragedies. People like the three of us see life at its very worst and can sometimes forget that even the most tragic victim of life’s unfairness can have good days, experience joy and be grateful for life’s tender mercies.

“We also can forget that often the abuser was once abused. There is no ultimate healing until we recognize that all of us are fallen men and women in a fallen and broken world in which each of us needs both to offer forgiveness to others and to experience God’s forgiveness of us.

“The only way I can handle the tough kinds of questions you’re asking is not to just delay them all to be solved in the life beyond this life. But I need also for this life to know that God is walking alongside each of us as our friend, even the most broken and hurting.

“This is a little bit longer response than I expected to give. Let me conclude by mentioning a German theologian by the name of Juergen Multmann, who wrote a classic work titled
The Crucified God
. In it, he notes the biblical statement that no human being is capable of looking into the face of God. Traditionally, that is thought to mean that the glory of God is such a blinding light of beauty and grandeur we could not exist in His presence. He toys with the idea that the reverse may be true. It’s possible that the very God of all creation so identifies with us in the worst of our pain, bearing our sins on the cross, the weight of humankind’s inhumanity, that His very face is so distorted in anguish for us that we cannot stand looking at such a grotesque sight.

“The only way I’m able to handle the kinds of tough questions you’re raising is to get there and identify with this gruesome underbelly of human existence and, with God’s help, have some small role in bringing His healing. There’s no greater joy than to sense the gratitude of one you are able to genuinely help, if only by simply being there for them.

“I know this response isn’t that of a neat little answer perfectly packaged with a bow on it. I’m not prepared to crumble in total despair. I have yet to see a person who, when push comes to shove, will not acknowledge their many blessings even in the most tragic of circumstances.”

No matter how good his responses, I felt like I was wasting John’s time and stopped the e-mail exchanges. He was an excellent pastor, but he couldn’t reach me. He was a stubborn optimist, facing all the same challenges to logic and emotion and believing in spite of them. He wasn’t falling back on an impersonal, transcendent God in the background; he was insisting on a God who could intervene and often chose not to stop pain. It all sounded so empty to me, even as I admired him. For years now, I had tried to push away doubts and reconcile an all-powerful and infinitely loving God with what I had seen, but the battle was lost. I couldn’t keep ignoring reality. I couldn’t believe in Christianity any more than I could believe two plus two equals five. My worldview had shifted. There was no time machine that could send me back to a more comfortable period when believing in God was natural and automatic.