This is a hard one to write.
But it's SO Him.
"BE POSITIVE..."
He even wrote it in all-caps. "BE POSITIVE..." Oh Robbie, I hear you. I can see you smiling as you say it.
"BE POSITIVE..."
Even now? Even in this? Even while my wife has your kids at the indoor playground today with ours while your wife is downtown studying 'cause she misses you so dear?
I don't think I can be.
"BE POSITIVE..."
I don't feel like it man. I feel like our life is never going to be truly, unabashedly positive again.
"BE POSITIVE..."
(I feel like he's getting annoyed now)
So, here's the thing. In the face of Robbie's death the only way to "BE POSITIVE..." is if I *actually* believe that God exists, that Jesus is God, that the whole story is true.
Is the whole story true?
I gotta' say, these days, I struggle with that three or four days out of seven.
"Wait a minute, aren't you a Pastor? Don't you have to preach every week? How are you doing that if you're really struggling with unbelief in the way it seems you are?"
It 'aint easy lemme' tell you.
In my last pastorate I spent a year or so learning how to preach 'the light' from 'the darkness' so I'm not a complete stranger to this, but I would be lying if I didn't admit that that 'garden variety season of sorrow' was NOTHING compared to what I (and we) are dealing with now.
The simple truth is half the week I'm kind of not on speaking terms with God then, around Thursday or so, I start to think about Sunday and start meditating on my text, then--because I've done it so long--I'm able to effectively (almost clinically) construct a sermon, then--when I arrive at church on Sunday--I just hope that the Holy Spirit fills the proceedings and gives me enough juice to speak with unction and conviction in the face of my unbelief.
Crazy right?
It's true that I'm so low that I realize that what I call 'The Holy Spirit' might just be a 'feeling' I get by being part of a 'group dynamic' that I've been conditioned (through years of being raised in this environment) to 'receive' as positive, and/or life-affirming.
I realize I could be completely deluded, that Robbie could just be dead (like Steve Jobs said in his book when thinking about death, "Or maybe it's just 'click' and you're gone...") and we could just be waiting our turn. It could be true that he's only alive in our memories now (like every day when I use our bodum to make coffee the way he taught me) and that life just sucks and that there's no meaning and no purpose and no plan.
I realize I could be (in the ultimate sense) of all people, most miserable, 'cause my faith is a farce.
I get it.
So, to deal with that (and I'm having to deal with it, such is the depth of despair and hopelessness that assails me regularly in the wake of Robbie's death) I've turned to a very, almost-utilitarian approach to this whole Christianity thing. I think to myself, "So, what IF this whole thing is a farce. What IF I'm deluded? What IF there's no hope, no meaning, no reason?
How's it working out for you, this whole 'being deluded' thing?"
And the simple answer is...
Pretty well.
I look at Kate and the kids. I look at my folks and the Halls. I look at his closest friends. I look at my family.
None of us have given up hope. No one's gone off the rails. No suicides, no bankruptcies, no people running off on their spouses to go 're-discover' themselves in the midst of this deep season of doubt.
So, none of us are losing our minds.
Could it be because we've already lost them?
Aha! Now we begin to round the corner, don't we?
See, if we've already 'lost our minds' (having believed in actuality, all these years, what we've professed to believe) then we've got no more mind to lose, which means that what the Bible says is *true*. It IS functionally true in us that "neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord..."
Which is why none of us (not even sweet Kate) has decided to kick the bucket.
"But you've already said the love of God isn't real..."
I SAID sometimes I'm not SURE it's real anymore.
So call it something else. Call it 'culturally learned or conditioned warm fuzzies'. Well, they're working for us. Yes, I said it. Whatever it IS that's helping us, it's very clear that there's something that's helping us.
Which takes us back to 'ground zero' in terms of our belief system.
If SOMETHING is working, all we have to do is figure out what that something is. So we look around at life to try and figure it out, and here, we find ourselves in the same territory we've been walking since we were children and came to faith in Jesus.
See, we looked at trees turning color come fall and we thought this couldn't just be by accident. We studied world religions in university and realized that all of them were basically the same except for Judaeo-Christianity and it seemed, further, that they were all kinda' borrowing from Judaeo-Christianity and it was abundantly clear that our Profs. only hated Christianity which made us very suspicious that that must mean that they suspected only Christianity was true 'cause, otherwise, if all the religions were truly the same, if the (supposedly) many paths up the spiritual mountain were all really ONE path, then why single one out to be rejected?
Oh...'cause it's TRUE! That's why.
We watched babies being born, we went on canoe trips together. We saw God's majesty in creation. We built ministries and saw hundreds (thousands if you combine all our efforts) of people's lives changed by this *thing* that was supposedly just a delusion. We saw God's Spirit at work in His Church. We looked at our marriages and found that, of everybody we knew, our marriages (those of our dearest, closest friends) were really the only ones that seemed truly happy and functional. We saw God's goodness at work in His promises fulfilled. Could it be random luck that made all this the case, or was it our collective ACTUAL, RADICAL, AUTHENTIC, HEARTFELT, LIFELONG belief in the LIVING, RISEN, LOVING Jesus Christ the-God-of-the-universe that was *doing* it for us?
Man, you do the math!
We were at his funeral together. There's no-one alive who could've stood in that room and felt what we all felt and kept a straight face (or dry eyes) while protesting that what was *really* happening there was some kind of powerful 'group hypnosis'.
Idiots.
Fools.
Unbelievers.
The only answer in the face of this that is of ANY worth is that JESUS IS REAL, JESUS IS GOD, JESUS IS OUR FRIEND, JESUS HAS ROBBIE AT HIS SIDE EVEN NOW, AND JESUS IS RETURNING TO TAKE US ALL HOME ONE DAY UNLESS WE ALL DIE FIRST!
That's right.
We still believe.
That's right.
We STILL believe.
Robbie's body is in the ground on a hill that we all drive by at least once or twice a month and, though it hurts (oh, but it hurts) as we drive past, it doesn't hurt to the point that it drives us off the road.
What it's doing instead is forcing our eyes to Heaven.
'Cause we still believe.
And THAT'S why we can still...
"BE POSITIVE..."
(Oh good, he's nodding now)
Love you man.
T
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