I recently had a heart attack – 100% blockage in left anterior descending (LAD) artery that runs down the front of the heart and supplies the front and main wall. That kind of heart attack is commonly called a Widowmaker, which is a nugget of information I am glad I didn’t know that at the time.
Why did it happen? Plaque dislodged and moved; that is the only thing that is clear. To quote my doctor, “Sometimes it just happens.” Occasionally the marathon runner keels over while the 85-year-old obese lifetime smoker does not. There are general principles that tend to lead to generally predictable results – and then there are particular people who are unpredictable. I appear to be the latter. Now I am taking a handful of pills every day, slowly reentering into the ebb and flow of life, studying how to fill my body with things that promote heart and artery health, and offering prayers of gratitude that God has allowed me more time with my wife, my boys, and my friends.
Frankly, I’m not certain what to say to others about my survival and recovery. My dad died of pancreatic cancer in his fifties; a friend, a fellow pastor, died this past year from a massive heart attack. I have officiated funerals and celebrated miraculous recoveries. The moment I say, “I am thankful that God in His sovereign mercy allowed me to live,” I am aware of the multitude of others who will respond, “Then why did God in His sovereign mercy not spare the one that I loved?”
I’ve asked the latter question before. My dad’s death made me revisit the problem of evil – why does God allow so much brokenness and pain in the world? But life on the other side of a heart attack has brought about a new kind of question for me. I’m revisiting the problem of good – why does God bring life, hope and healing to the ones he does? Specifically, why me? I’ve had two DVTs and a heart attack in the past five years. That’s not a good track record. Yet here I am. Why me and not my dad or my friend?
My answer has been a work in progress for years, I suppose. I am certain it’s not complete, but I hope it is reflective of progress in a biblical understanding of how God interacts with the world.
God allows plenty of things to happen that are just life, and they happen because He has ordained the world to work in this way.The sun rises on the evil and good, and it rains on the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45). There are times and seasons for good and bad things (Ecclesiastes 3). We reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7). The world on this side of the Fall has thorns and thistles that are at times fatal. In all this, God is not absent.
- He was present in the Creation that he infused with a particular kind of order and natural law (Genesis 1; Hebrews 11:3; Colossians 1:6.
- He is present in a world that ‘groans’ as the earth and the people on it await an ultimate redemption from the broken state in which that law currently unfolds (Romans 8:22-23).
- He will be the One who ultimately restores all things to their rightful state (see Acts 3:21, which is probably fleshed out in Romans 8:20-21, Romans 11: 25-26, and 1 Corinthians 15: 25-26).
God created a universe to run in accordance with His design. We might not understand everything about that design or why natural laws (as we understand them) unfold the way they do, but they are nonetheless present. It’s why science works. However, there’s another crucial part to the story. Because of sin, the world is in a corrupted state (Genesis 3). Genesis uses the imagery of thorns and thistles despoiling a paradise (Genesis 3:18), and speaks of the sorrow that will now accompany that which was meant to be joyous (Genesis 3:16). It is within the context of this systemic brokenness that some hearts fail and others don’t, or some genetics predispose us to cancer and others do not. It’s the way the a ‘groaning’ world that God created and sustains now works (Hebrews 1).
Even Jesus acknowledges this. Luke records Jesus’ response to a crowd wondering why some particularly bad events had happened.
Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:1-5)
In other words, there was not some supernatural quid pro quo going on in those events. They happened because the world is spiritually and physically broken. At minimum, a sovereign God allows His system to unfold in accordance with a purpose and design that includes its current brokenness. So why did I have a heart attack? One possibility is that it’s a result of genetic and lifestyle thorns or destructively spiritual thistles that entered the world because of sin.
However, I also believe God acts in the world. I firmly believe miracles happen, but they are miracles because they are not part of the ordinary flow of life.[1] They are the extraordinary moments when God chooses times, people and places in which to intervene for reasons that are often beyond our ability to comprehend. Yet they don’t always happen. Jesus refused to heal everyone around him (Mark 6); Paul was never relieved of his “thorn in the flesh”; he left Trophimus sick in Miletus (2 Timithy 4:20) and counseled Timothy to drink wine for his frequent stomach problems (1 Timothy 5:23). So while the Bible and history are full of miraculous events, they certainly aren’t predictable or necessarily expected.
It’s not always clear why God says ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a prayer for life, safety, or health. We have a limited understanding of physical laws in the natural world; why would we expect to have a full understanding of the deeper laws at work in the supernatural realm? We see reality as if through a muddied window (1 Corinthians 13:12). That’s why we get this kind of advice on prayer from James:
Some of you say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Listen carefully: you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. Even the rabbis told you this. Have you forgotten the uncertainty of life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. You must remember our dependence on God. Instead of making these great plans as if you have everything under control by your own power, you ought to say what you have been taught: “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-16)
God gives and takes away (Job 1:21). God brings blessing and calamity (Isaiah 45:7). He gives sight and makes blind (Exodus 4:11). Amos asked after a disaster, “If a calamity occurs in a city has not the LORD done it?” (Amos 3:6) If we are going to accept that God acts in the world – and if we are going to take the Bible seriously – God acts in the world in ways we won’t always understand or even like.
This may be an odd parallel, but many of our popular stories highlight the peril of believing we can “play God” and change things in a way that we think must be for the greater good. The largely forgettable movie The Butterfly Effect reminds us of the folly of thinking that we somehow have the wisdom to know what to change to make the world a better a place. When Bruce clicks “yes to all” in answer to prayers in Bruce Almighty, chaos ensues. When Stephen King’s characters in 11/22/63 go back in time to make the world a better place (and ultimately to stop JFK’s assassination), they ruin not just individual lives but the world itself.
If we accept the biblical description of God’s wisdom and power, we must accept that God will decree or allow things we simply will not be able to comprehend. {2}
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So what words do I use to describe God’s presence during this time of my life? Do I say he allowed my heart attack but caused my healing? Am I not just as biblically justified to say he allowed or caused them both? (God did, after all, cause Zachariah’s affliction in Luke 1).
Sitting where I am now, it strikes me as presumptuous to assign God roles or reasons. God is either sovereign, merciful and loving (and all of His other attributes) all the time, or God is not. If faith is “trusting, holding to, and acting on what one has good reasons to believe is true in the face of difficulties,” [3] I cannot waver simply because of my emotional response to what God allows or causes. A God of mercy is the sovereign ruler of the world, and under His watch my life was spared and my father’s was not. Whatever internal dissonance I have because of this is a reflection on my ability to truly understand God’s mercy and love, not God’s ability to show it.
I wonder if part of the glory of Heaven will be the ability to see how God has infused history, even in the darkest of times, with mercy, grace and justice in ways we had formerly been unable to grasp. Perhaps the inability to ever do so is part of the suffering of Hell.
So here’s what I do, and I pray it is correct: I thank God from the bottom of my heart that I have been granted more time, and I will continue to pray for health and life for myself and others. Through either His permission or decree, He has allowed all of us reading this more life – and through His permission or decree, we may not be alive to do so tomorrow. Either way, I remain confident that His steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 136), and that one day I will understand how His constant presence and continuous mercy have been at work in a beautiful, broken world.
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[1] I recommend Miracles by C.S. Lewis; Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (2 Volume Set) by Craig Keener, as well as In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, by R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas.
[2] Joni Eareckson Tada has offered an excellent overview of “36 Purposes of God in Our Suffering.”
[3] This is Tim McGrew’s excellent definition.
of all the things god cures, why has he never cured an amputee