My Personal Story
For nearly 9 months after finding that my wife was expecting a baby, every day I prayed, "Father, please keep Mother and Baby safe and healthy." We were so excited.
For several months Baby would kick and sometimes it would have hiccups. There was a real living person in there and we couldn't wait to meet him or her.
When my wife's contractions started I drove her to the hospital. A heart monitor was applied. Baby had hiccups again. Then the strong, regular contractions at 6 minute intervals began. "Not long now!" we thought.
Then, to everyone's surprise, Baby's heart rate dropped from 140-150 down to about 70, but after a couple of minutes it went back to normal again. "Nothing to worry about, I hope" went through my mind. The medical staff went back to their normal routine preparations.
Then the contractions suddenly ceased and Baby's heart activity began to fade away. "Oh God! What's happening?" I thought. "Father, please let everything be all right." I remembered the words of Jesus "Keep on asking and you will receive." I felt sure my wife and the baby would be ok. I had prayed sincerely and Jesus isn't a liar. He wouldn't break a promise.
Two doctors and a midwife had an urgent discussion and then they rushed my wife to the operating theatre for an emergency caesarian operation. I waited in the corridor outside, pacing back and forth, praying for a good result. The baby mustn't die and the thought of my wife dying was too terrible to contemplate.
25 minutes later a surgeon came out. He asked me to come into his office with him. He said in a quiet voice that I should sit down and he offered me a cup of tea, but all I wanted was to know whether my wife and the baby were alive. He then said "I'm afraid there's bad news."
"Is my wife alive?" I asked in blind panic.
"Yes, she's doing well," he assured me "but your baby isn't alive. Your wife had a girl. We spent 15 minutes trying to revive her, but it wasn't possible."
I felt devastated, yet relieved that the news wasn't as bad as it might have been. They left me alone in the office. I sobbed.
The next day the hospital staff took me to the chapel where they left me to be alone. I was able to hold my daughter. She had weighed 7 pounds 15 ounces at birth. My heart was aching and my tears kept on flowing. Her tiny hands were perfect, her eyes were tightly shut and she had dark brown hair. Her skin was cold, she was silent and she was motionless. The daughter I'd prayed so hard for was dead.
My thoughts turned once again to God, but in the place of trust and hope I now felt utter betrayal and anger. I still believed in His existence, but my attitude was very different. How could this so-called all-loving God treat my wife, my daughter and me this way? It was so unfair. God is supposed to be our Father in heaven. What normal loving father would treat his child so dreadfully? Couldn't this all-powerful God simply have prevented this unnecessary tragedy? It was all so pointless. It didn't have to happen like this. Who did this death help? Nobody.
I prayed. "Why, God, why?" I expected some sort of comfort to come upon me, but there was nothing. I knew from my experience, from the experiences of other people and from observing the marvels of nature that God existed, but He seemed to have deserted me just when I needed Him most. What sort of God was this? How could He be so cruel? "Where are You?" I prayed. "Do You care at all? Can I ever trust You again?" No answer of any kind. He had turned His back on me.
Though I never hated God, I felt that the love I'd had for Him in happier times had gone forever. The future looked very bleak.
When my wife was well enough I took her home. We looked with intense sadness at the empty pram waiting expectantly in the hallway. We gazed at the stack of unwanted baby clothes. All this grief could have been avoided if God had only answered my prayers.
Now we were home I continued to pray. "Why? Why? Why?" I felt He'd been cruel to my wife and me and I couldn't imagine what we'd done to deserve it. I looked at the world around me and became more aware than before of tragedies that were occurring every day. It seemed so wrong. Evil people, natural disasters and horrible diseases were causing misery in the beautiful world God had created. Why, if He's all-powerful, didn't He stop these dreadful things from happening?
Although my faith in God wasn't completely shattered, I felt it was very badly damaged, perhaps beyond repair.
I was in my 30s then. I'm in my 70s now. As the years passed, one by one, I noticed things and events which have gradually altered my opinions. I could have stubbornly remained at war with God, but I slowly came to the conclusion that the wiser thing to do would be to see if I could make any sense of the loss of my daughter and of the injustices so evident in the world around me. I would give God a chance. It's only fair, even if He hadn't been fair to me.
Here is how my mind-set gradually changed over more than thirty years, step by step:
- Having experienced real anguish for the first time in my life, I began to be much more aware of other people's tragedies, both close to home and in the world at large. I was well aware that many people had suffered much worse things than we had. I began to actively support charities.
- I read in the Bible that it is better to be angry with God than to ignore Him. God fully understands our reasons and doesn't blame us for being angry with Him.
- Over the years I have met other people whose faith had been badly damaged by the same sort of experience. They were left bitter and angry with God for not helping them in their time of greatest need. For some people the pain and sense of betrayal stretched over many years.
- The tragedy of a life without hope was brought home to me in a dreadful way. The company I was working for was going through some hard times and a colleague of mine had convinced himself that he was going to lose his job. One Monday morning he didn't turn up for work. We found out later that he'd killed himself. A few months after that the firm's fortunes improved and nobody lost their job. He'd lost all hope, his friends had been unable to reassure him, and he knew nothing about praying. It made me realise that hope can mean the difference between life and death.
- In my anger I asked, If God is love, why did He make His son die in agony on the Cross? As the years went by and I learnt more from the Bible I realised that Jesus had actually volunteered to come down from heaven to earth to do it. The problem had been that to welcome everybody to heaven, regardless of what sort of lives they'd led, would have meant a heaven full of sin. Heaven would then be just as bad as earth. Logically, to enter a perfect heaven, we need to have a lifetime of various sins wiped clean. In other words, before we enter heaven we need to be punished for the bad things we've done.
Both Father and Son loved us so much that they had agreed that instead of watching us being punished, Jesus would come directly to us and offer to be our Saviour. He would offer to take the punishment on our behalf, if we believed in Him, and then we'd be forgiven. Problem solved.
Then I had an idea which I was sure was better than God's idea - instead of Jesus taking the individual punishments we each knew we deserved (Jesus' punishment had to be particularly severe because it had to reflect the sins of people much more wicked than me or you), why couldn't God simply forgive everybody who said sorry and let us into heaven at the appropriate time? Simple. In time, though, I came to realise that my idea wouldn't work and God had been right all along. Saying sorry is easy (for most people, but admittedly not for everybody), but how sincere would it be? There would be no commitment and no change of heart. Instead, saying "I believe in You" to Jesus, in His wisdom and compassion, is an outlook-on-life changer and could well result in efforts to make the world a better place.
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- After wondering if I could ever depend on God again after what had happened, I found a theme running through the Bible. It was God saying "Trust me and everything will be fine in the end." I decided to do just that. I gave God the benefit of the doubt and bit by bit my trust returned. Patience and trust are what God asks from us, not conspicuous displays of religiousness.
- I reflected on the fact that life had been very unfair to Jesus. He'd walked from town to town healing the sick and encouraging people to show love for each other, but after three years He was executed. Since then people seem to get satisfaction from ridiculing Him, but His central message was "Love one another".
- I came to realise that bottled-up anger, disappointment and mistrust were unhealthy emotions. Instead of being so negative I went looking for answers.
- I wondered why, if God is love, Christians occasionally talk about fearing Him. Then I found out that to fear God is simply an expression meaning to do the right thing. When faced with a moral dilemma, ask yourself what God would want you to do (the answer's in the Bible) and then do it. It might take you outside your comfort zone.
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My experience, and I suspect the experience of many Christians, was that being born again simply meant no longer thinking of everything in a materialistic way. Instead, the spiritual part of me began to break free. With this new freedom I felt happier and more contented and, with time, I was able to get much closer to God. I try not to be judgmental, though whether I succeed only others can tell, and I don't go around thinking of other people as being sinners because I've got plenty of faults of my own. I'll wait until I've put my own defects in order before I start having a go at other people's!
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- The mental picture of God assigning a "to be answered on" date for every prayer grew in my mind. He knows everyone's life span. To keep the promise that all prayers will be answered He needs to answer each prayer at the most appropriate time in the person's life, which might involve considerable delay. God delays for a reason, not because He doesn't care. Perhaps He wants to strengthen us so that we can better help others. If prayers from long ago haven't been answered yet, never ever give up. Don't forget that giving you something better than what you asked for counts as an answered prayer.
- I used to fret about a missed lifetime with my daughter, but now that I'm getting older (I hate the word "old" !!) I realise that she went straight to heaven as a sinless baby and will be with me for all eternity. The Bible says there is no illness in heaven and that our bodies will be recognisable as they were when we were in our prime. Disabled people will be able bodied. Mental illness is unknown in heaven.
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- After the death of our daughter we had another daughter. She is a lovely person, as are her sisters, but she would not exist if her elder sister had survived. We had planned for three children, but now we have four, one of them being in heaven. Children are a blessing.
- An agnostic friend of mine once asked me if I found it difficult, as a scientist, to believe in God. I said it was not at all difficult because I could see evidence for God in the incredibly elegant laws of nature and in the wonderful words of wisdom of His son Jesus Christ. I told her I found it easy to believe in the Creator God.
- This is how I now get my head round the concept of an invisible Lord who, nevertheless, is close to us, even though we can't see Him. Being a scientist I think of it in terms of dimensions, though whether my theory corresponds with the actual facts, God knows (literally!) If my brain is not capable of fully understanding this world, no wonder it is difficult for it to understand the idea of a better life to come!
- I have now come to terms with the saddest event of my life. Now that I'm old(er) I see events from a different point of view. I gave God a second chance and I'm no longer at war with Him. (I bet He's relieved about that!!! Me versus the Lord. On reflection I see it was a bit of an uneven contest).
- In this, "My Personal Story" recently there has been a new development which has focussed my mind on why there is pain in our lives.
Not long ago I had a routine blood test and I expected the result to be a formality. Unfortunately it wasn't. The result was so unexpected that it prompted my doctor to say that cancer was a possible cause. The cancer in question is often symptomless and painless for a long time. Only when the disease has spread do nasty things start to happen.
If I hadn't had the blood test and if I do indeed have cancer in its early stages (the tests are on-going), I would have had to have waited for pain to start to warn me of trouble. Like many people in that situation, I might have ignored the pain until the illness was too advanced to treat.
As I have recently been realizing, in some circumstances pain can act as an important warning of danger. Pain can save lives. Not all pain is meaningless.
- The following handful of Bible verses sum up Christianity for me.
In the beginning God created the universe.
Genesis 1,1
[On being asked what the greatest commandment was] Jesus answered," 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and most important commandment.
The second most important commandment is like it: 'Love your neighbour as you love yourself.' "
Matthew 22,37-39
"Do to others as you would have them do to you."
Luke 6,31
For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3,16
[Jesus said to the man dying on the cross next to Him] "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."
Luke 23,43
- I had to choose between atheism (i.e. a universe which created itself at a random point in infinite time, which is held together by totally random forces and where human behaviour is not subject to any rules) and religion (i.e. the presence of a designer / creator god who gives us rules to live by). Option 2 seemed much more in agreement with the scientific facts. Then I had to choose one of the major world religions. In spite of the Church being far from perfect, Jesus' message of love, peace and hope seemed to me to be the one most likely to reflect the ethos of a creator-god. So now I am a Christian again. There can only be one true religion and I'm convinced it's Christianity.
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- After wondering if I could ever depend on God again after what had happened, I found a theme running through the Bible. It was God saying "Trust me and everything will be fine in the end." I decided to do just that. I gave God the benefit of the doubt and bit by bit my trust returned. Patience and trust are what God asks from us, not conspicuous displays of religiousness.