When hard things surface big questions

Searching for answers and solace

I’ve long lived with the conviction that what we believe matters because it determines how we live. So, when challenging circumstances come along, I tend to try to figure out what I believe about what’s happening and why.

In this, I know I’m not alone. But when someone suggested to me that my husband’s dementia could have resulted from his fear of developing the same disease that claimed his father, thus opening himself up to “the demonic,” I knew I didn’t believe that, not one bit.

The hard things in life have a way of surfacing big questions for all of us, don’t they? If you’re in the midst of something challenging right now, you can probably think of a few.

Of course, there are some questions for which we never find answers. My trust in God allows me a safe place to deposit the things I do not understand. Scripture affirms that “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deuteronomy 29:29). There are simply some things, according to this verse, that are for God alone to know.

Still, I admit that big questions surfaced for me when we got Doug’s diagnosis. Hearing from the neurologist that I would have to become my husband’s “conscience” and “authority,” and that as the disease progresses, his behaviour could become deeply problematic, I began to wonder about things like the source of our personality, moral culpability, and who we are in Christ when we no longer remember who Christ is. How are we to understand Jesus’ command to love God with our whole mind when our brain is so diseased that we no longer know God?

Photo by Towfiqu Barbhuiya

I’m learning, for one thing, that it means we must shift our focus from ourselves to God. I’ve written previously about the former pastor who meets with Doug monthly by FaceTime to provide encouragement and support. From their first meeting, this man has continued to remind my husband, “God will not forget you.”

That is more than a lovely sentiment. It is true.

Recently, I’ve been finding reassurance and comfort in the writings of John Swinton. In his beautifully titled book, Dementia: Living in the Memories of God, Swinton quotes the following prison poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian executed by the Nazis just before the end of the Second World War:

Who am I?

Who Am I? This or the other?

Am I one person today and tomorrow another?

Am I both at once, A hypocrite before others,

And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? …

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!

Bonhoeffer knew in his darkest moments that whatever else he was, he was God’s.

In addition to being an author and theologian himself, Swinton is a former mental health nurse and is currently a professor of practical theology and pastoral care at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

He says it is a “problem” for contemporary Western people that we tend to connect the soul with the mind. “Culturally we place inordinate social value on intellect, reason, quickness of thought, and academic ability,” he explains in his 2020 book Finding Jesus in the Storm: The Spiritual Lives of Christians with Mental Health Challenges. “Certain strands of theological thinking can be sucked into this hypercognitive trap when defining emphasis is placed on intellect and verbal ability, with the verbal proclamation of the name of Jesus assumed as a central and vital aspect of our salvation. When we think like this, any damage to the mind implicitly or explicitly morphs into damage to the soul. This can make it particularly difficult for Christians to live well with mental health challenges, brain damage, or something like dementia.”

That paragraph jumped out at me because I realized that many of my questions have arisen from the tendency to equate the brain with the mind, the mind with the seat of human personality, and the personality with the soul.

I’m still mulling over the ramifications of Swinton’s claim, and I’ve been listening to podcasts on which he’s been a guest to see if I might glean more from his deep thinking. But in the meantime, I find great solace in reflecting on the following words from the Apostle Paul, written to the church in Rome. (Swinton references them frequently in his podcast appearances.) They can be found in the eighth chapter of the biblical book of Romans, beginning in verse 31. And it strikes me that perhaps Bonhoeffer may well have had these very verses in mind when he penned his poem:

“If God is for us, who can ever be against us?³² Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? ³³ Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. ³⁴ Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.

³⁵ Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? ³⁶ (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) ³⁷ No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

³⁸ And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ³⁹ No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

My husband put his faith and trust in Christ’s atoning work long ago. So I can rest in the knowledge that his identity is in Christ, not in his neurology.

God loves Doug beyond all measure, regardless of what may happen to his brain. And so do I.