Jim Chastain

• Home
• About
• Life is Real – Jim Chastain

Oh Brother!

I was in this cancer center, receiving treatments, minding my own business. Although I was typing away on my computer, a woman sitting not too far away wanted to talk. It didn’t matter that I was busy. We both had cancer, and she was bound and determined to share.

Oh well, I thought. What can you do?

When the conversation began, it was within that great circle we’d all consider normal chit-chat, or at least on its fringes. But the discussion soon moved outside the circle, into what I considered bizarre, perhaps even worrisome, territory. And not too long after that it ventured out even further, into … the Twilight Zone.

She started telling me about all the doctors and hospitals that had committed  malpractice with respect to her medical care. Something about all the abortions she’d had and how the doctors hadn’t taken those into account. I responded to her observations with a polite word or two, then went back to work. But she continued pursuing me, like a bully on the playground. 

“Hey, a group of us are putting some money together to bring in Brother Bob–the faith healer,” she said.

The man’s name wasn’t Brother Bob, of course. It was something else I’d never heard of and have long since forgotten. But my chatty co-patient certainly knew him, this Brother Bob fellow. The mere mention of his name was supposed to impress me, apparently, for she’d dropped his name like a fisherman drops his hook into the water and leaves it hanging for the next hungry fish that swims by.

I didn’t take the bait. Didn’t even glance in her direction.

“And…” she said, with the pause to end all pauses. “Rumor has it he’s bringin’ Sister Clementine with him.”

She spoke these words, which I’m now paraphrasing, with the sort of drama and emphasis one might use upon discovering U2 was planning a secret concert in a friend’s backyard. She seemed to think the news would make the few remaining hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end and the tears flow freely from my dry, bloodshot eyes.

Or, she was a complete huckster. It was hard to say.

(By the way, I apologize to all the Brother Bobs and Sister Clementines out there, faith healers or not. I’ve picked your names out randomly with no knowledge of your existence or healing propensities and with a complete absence of malice.)

“It’s a great opportunity for people like you and me,” she said.

I kept typing, hoping it might somehow discourage her. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed as though this woman was about to hit me up for some money to pay for these superstar faith healers.

“I mean, when the medical route fails you, you gotta go with the spiritual route, right? And these guys are the real thing. There are documented accounts.”

She went on to speak of some of these accounts, all hearsay of course. And then she waited for me to respond.

I stopped typing, looked her in the eyes, and said, firmly, ”I’m really not interested.” Then I started typing again.

But she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Now I don’t know about you, but I believe in the Bible,” she said, somewhat accusatorily. ”And the more I read it, the more I discover how absolutely perfect and true it is.”

I didn’t want to fight her on it. It was the Bible, after all, and people have strong opinions about it. And I really didn’t want to get into religion. Still, I could see where this conversation was heading.

“Did you know that there isn’t a time in the Bible when Jesus came across a sick person and didn’t heal them? You see God wants us to be well! And you know what else? The Bible promises us seven score years. That’s a promise, a guarantee! God’s plan is for everyone to be healthy, to live at least seventy years. Problem is, we’ve gone and messed everything up.”

Now I’ve been to church more than my fair share, and I’d never heard any of this seventy year business. I figured it was pure baloney. Besides, who other than Abraham Lincoln and King James uses the phrase “seven score years?”  

“I want my seventy years!” she said. “And I’d get ‘em if these medical quacks hadn’t messed it all up. But that’s where someone like Brother Bob come in. And faith. You’ve gotta have enough faith.”

I couldn’t remain quiet anymore. Someone had to speak up for all the people who had died of an illness before the age of seventy.

“I don’t believe any of that crap,” I said, suppressing as much anger and indignity as I could. 

“What, the Bible?” she asked.

“I don’t believe that every person in the history of time who ever died from a sickness before the age of seventy died because they didn’t have enough faith or because they didn’t meet the right faith healer. I mean, think about it. What about the plague? What about all the children who’ve died, not to mention the infants? Did they all die from a lack of faith?”

“Children are different,” she explained.

“Okay. So what about all the people who’ve never even heard of the Bible? And what about those who were raised in some other faith? It doesn’t make sense!”

“Well, for them …” she began. But I interrupted her. 

“And why,” I asked,  ”would a person’s ’faith’ be an absolute guarantee of seventy years of good health, but have no effect whatsoever on, say, murder or natural disasters? Do you know how many wives and children are killed each year as a result of domestic violence? Why was it okay for all but one of Jesus’ disciples to be horribly murdered, but it’s not okay for them to die of the flu at age 69?”

“Well…,” she said.

“What about tornadoes and tsunamis? What about all those kids who were crushed to death in China’s earthquakes? Why would one’s faith control one thing but not the other?”

 I was on a rant, I suppose. But this was a touchy subject for someone dying of stage four colon cancer that had spread to the liver and lungs.

“Health is different,” she said.

“Why?”

She went on to explain about prayer and sin and “God’s plan,” before asking some very personal questions about my beliefs and the amount of faith that I’d applied to my current situation.

I countered with how maddening it is when people use that elusive concept known as ”God’s plan” to explain every difficult issue under the sun. I spoke of the guilt and sorrow that results when someone is accused of not having enough faith when they’re fighting to live. And I mentioned the impossibility of knowing, much less proving, how much faith a person has.

“I’ve prayed the prayers,” I said. “I’ve applied as much faith as I can muster to my situation. Yet here I sit. There are no guarantees.”

She remained quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts after our heated discussion. I hadn’t stopped her, but she had realized I wasn’t going to roll over. But before she could start a new round, a nurse stepped into the room and interrupted us.

As it goes with such discussions, nobody had won. Neither of us had changed the other’s mind. We’d simply stated our positions and left them hanging there. She represented a viewpoint held by thousands of others, one that will never go away, one that generates a lot of mail and email for recipients like me. 

Did she have her heart in the right place? Was she just plain dumb or smart as a fox? Were her words the result of anger and depression or was she on to something?

Well, you’ll have to make your own mind up about that. I’m just trying to tell you what happened. But here’s how the conversation ended.

She’d been going on about a certain media personality and whether or not he was a “bleeding heart liberal,” her term for an idiot, someone who was headed, as Billy Bob Thornton might say in Sling Blade, “straight to Hades.” I had responded by saying that, although I sometimes agreed with this person, I didn’t agree with their confrontational tone, when someone’s persona is defined by attacking others.

At this point, my treatments were over and I was heading out the door. But she had one more piece of advice for me before I left, one parting shot: “Hey, if you do give up, you’d better decide which side you’re on.”

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Powered by Wordpress | WP Premium theme by WP Remix
Copyright 2007. Jim Chastain. All rights reserved

• Home
• About
• Life is Real – Jim Chastain