On Sickness

It didn't take long last week for me to lose my voice. It was probably Tuesday when I started getting hoarse. It never really left, not to the point where I had to whisper and gesticulate everything, but I was noticeably lacking in the vocal faculties.

One thing I was able to squeak out was when I told Theresa that this meant I'd probably get sick. Theresa rightly argued that it wasn't the lack of voice that would get me sick, but stress - it was stress that made me lose my voice, and it was stress that would probably get me sick.

That, and germs.

Kids bring germs. We probably ought to have biohazard suits. Even then - who knows what kind of crazy bugs they're bringing with them. We take whatever precautions we can, to stop colds, flu, lice outbreaks, what-have-ya. But stuff gets through.

By the time Thursday came, I had the runny nose, and that lasted through Friday into Saturday. Congestion. Cough. All that.

Let me amateur-psychoanalyze this thing out for you. When a full-blown cold takes my body over, I eventually start to lose my mental and emotional balance. To a certain extent, the spiritual balance too.

I think that when you're sick, and your body has begun to divert energy from your brain to fight the illness, the first thing to go is humility. When you are visibly sick, everyone suddenly thinks they're a doctor and you've lost all sense. And it gets really, really annoying.

Now, I'm a grown man. I've had many, many, many colds that have done many awful things to me. I've also dealt with more than my fair share of allergies. In fact, I spent the better part of my Junior year of high school with a box of kleenexes in my backpack.

So I know how to medicate myself. The last thing I want is everyone giving me medical advice. Actually, the last thing I want is everyone telling me how horrible I look while I'm trying to look decidedly non-horrible. And this always, always happens when I stagger out of my house, usually with most of a bottle Dayquil in my system, mustering composure, propping up my eyelids, trying not to look like a zombie as I wander out for food or some such basic need. Not an easy thing to do clutching a roll of TP.

I especially don't like medical advice from teenagers. You are 15. I know Vitamin C is good for me. Don't tell me to go to bed.

On Saturday morning, I emerged for the debriefing meeting for the week. There was going to be pizza after the meeting. After weeks of rice and beans and chicken, I wasn't about to let some stupid old cold keep me from delicious pizza. And then there started a long succession of people telling me how horrible I looked while dispensing unproven medical advice.

I've already been sick a day and a half. I'm coming out of it. Already took my Airborne. I have more DayQuil in me than I should.

Back.

Off.

Of course, I was more diplomatic than that. At least I think I was.

I went to the meeting. I got my pizza. And I was miserable. I became, I think, a very unpleasant person. Any humility had long since departed. Anything I'd put into the schedule that wasn't well received, I took personally. My patience was gone, I really just wanted to be out of there. I definitely couldn't handle listening to anyone speak Spanish. "Just tell me what they said and let's move on." Jokes were no longer funny - there went the sense of humor. I can't say what all else disappeared.

We piled in the van and drove back from the Laundromat and Domino's. I don't remember saying anything, just thinking that the pizza wasn't good enough to warrant me being out of bed right then. It was Domino's, after all. So when we got back, I handed off the keys and walked away from them all before anyone could tell me what to do. It was my way of saying, "I know. You were right. Shut up. I'm going to bed."

The Hardest Thing in the World...

...is probably iron. Or titanium. Or calculus.

Or maybe not.

From our earliest Sunday School lessons, we're taught that to get to heaven, you have to ask Jesus into your heart. Finding chapter & verse for that is a little tough to do ("...confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord," Romans 10:9, comes close. I guess.), but it's something generally accepted, something no Christian is really going to dispute. You won't hear anyone advise a toddler that he's woefully misguided in believing it. We can pretty much all agree that asking Jesus into your heart, in other words asking him to be your boss, is where salvation begins.

The simplicity of it is astonishing: The key to immortality is simply to believe. We're dead and doomed until we do it. And while I'm not a fan of oversimplified Christianity-as-a-ticket-through-the-pearly-gates theology, belief in Christ is essential to Real Life. To be frank, the simplicity is necessary in dealing with kids, but becomes a big problem when dealing with adults. It's a big hangup. It is the hangup of all hangups. It's the sultan of snags, the colossus of clogs, the - okay, no more Babe Ruth analogies in my theological discourse.

"You mean to tell me that to live forever, all I have to do is believe Jesus was who he said he was?" It's all too simple. There's no way that's all there is to it. There are lots and lots of excuses for people to reject Christianity, and this is a big one. I've had to stop at this point countless times when trying to straighten this whole thing out in my head. It just can't be this easy. There has to be something I can do. There has to be some amount of money I have to donate, some number of souls I have to save, some vast and confusing code of conduct for me to follow. Right? There's no way all I have to do is just believe something.

Except.

Except, it isn't simple. It's the hardest thing in the world to do. Ever since Adam took a bite of a watermelon (I like to picture it as a very large watermelon and I think I'm allowed to) it's always been all about us. That's what sin is: It's putting ourselves in front of others. Ingrained from birth is the desire to serve ourselves. It's all about personal achievement and self-serving opportunity. We have to compare ourselves to others, and find some way to elevate us over them. This is where the simple-sounding confession becomes the hardest thing in the world: Inherent in believing that Jesus is who he said he is is the confession that we are not who he said he is. Following Christ begins when we stop following ourselves. That's the point at which God says, "Okay, it's not about you anymore. Now we're cool." It goes against countless generations of believing it is all about us.

It always comes back to pride and humility. This is why we find it so hard to apologize, to fess up for wrongdoing, to admit our own shortcoming. We simply cannot allow the flaws and chinks in our armor to show. The myth is, sadly, perpetuated even in the church. And the church and Christianity and all of this are simply not engines that can run on self.

(Don't get me wrong, Christianity isn't completely void of achievement. God built us to want to achieve things, I think. Otherwise, nothing would ever get done and none of use would ever move out of our parents' basements.)

The world finds Christianity so hard to buy because they think something is simple when it is anything but simple. It's actually really, really hard.