Dr. David Martin on choosing belief over non-belief

“It’s Just … Life!”

The patient is 100 years old, with snow white hair and startling blue eyes. Though her vision is poor, her eyes are bright and alive. “Did you ever think you would live to be a hundred?” I asked her. “Never,” she exclaimed and laughed good-naturedly. Silently, I wondered if a 100-year-old woman could truly be happy. She lies in her bed most of the day, half blind and half deaf, but when I asked her if she was, indeed happy, she responded with a confident, “Oh, yes!” Firing questions at the elderly can sometimes cause them to feel interrogated, but I chose to forge ahead with just one more query. “How do you stay so happy?” She hesitated a bit, “Oh, I don’t know,” and then with vigor, hands exultantly clasping the air, she declared, “It’s just…LIFE!”

Earlier in the day, I had talked to a man who related his life story. At one point, he had entered college to become a minister and instead became an agnostic. He and his wife had an uneasy marriage for many years and made the decision to divorce when the children were raised and gone. When that day came and the conversation turned to divorce…fate (or God) intervened. His mother called with the news of a cancer in her lungs, and a request that her son and his wife move in with her as caregivers. They put off the divorce for the sake of family – they figured that they could wait a bit longer to part ways. I guess they could have said, “It’s just life!” His mother died eighteen months later.

Four days after the funeral, the subject of divorce surfaced again. During that conversation, the man’s wife felt strange, and mentioned that she could not tell the difference between her husband’s comments and the voices from the television. (Life erupted once again). A trip to the emergency room revealed an aggressive brain tumor. Surgery would be followed by radiation to the remaining diseased tissue, in order to buy his wife six months. Instead, she had two good years, but the radiation eventually took its toll, rendering her mentally and physically incapacitated. All this took place more than nine years ago.

Several times during the telling of his story, this man expressed faith in God. He was articulate with his story; his expressions of faith were low-key, but quite genuine. While listening, I kept wondering how one could go from being an agnostic to having faith in the midst of great suffering and sorrow. (So, of course, I asked him.) I won’t go into all of the details of his answer, but I can tell you what I understood from our conversation. For him, nothing else made sense. He had depended on his intellect all of his life, but when it came to suffering, there weren’t any answers that satisfied him. He found joy in caring for his wife, taking her everywhere with him, until recently, when she could no longer physically do so. He chose to believe, it seems to me, rather than descend into despair and loneliness.

Despair seems the inevitable end of intellectualism. All you have at the end of life is the power of your own mind. We are magnificent creations, but those who make gods of their intellect are worshipping a flawed and weak god. This man chose LIFE! He chose a view of God that was bigger and stronger than his mind. He chose belief over non-belief. He chose a relationship, and in doing so, he chose not to be alone in his trials.

We all choose.

I hope your choices bring you the peace that comes to a person who has struggled with doubt and disbelief.

I hope you come to terms with your place in the world.

I hope that at 70, 80, or 100 your eyes twinkle and your hands thrust into the air with the satisfied declaration, “It’s just LIFE!”

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