Travolta in Saturday Night Fever

“Why couldn’t God have given me a life like John Travolta or Dolly Parton or Clint Eastwood?”

“You don’t know me well, but if you did, you’d know I’m one of the world’s nicest guys. Real polite. I try real hard to make other people’s days better. I hold doors open for people; no one does that anymore. I don’t say a mean word to anybody, even when they deserve it. I’m a good person. So why didn’t God give me a life like Travolta or them others? Don’t I deserve better than this?”

He looked at me expectantly, this crusty middle-aged man who, the first time I introduced myself as a chaplain, responded with, “A chaplain is the last person in hell I need to talk to!” Our first encounter was right before he lost his lower leg. Instead of helping him prepare emotionally for his amputation, he allowed me only to dial the phone for him before he kicked me out.

He was a handful for our staff that first stay — gruff, demanding, foul-mouthed, a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge — except this Ebenezer, who I’ll call Benny, was constantly counting other people’s money piles.

Several months after his amputation he was back, this time with breathing issues. I reintroduced myself and this time his greeting was a snort followed by, “A chaplain? Well, God hasn’t done anything for me lately!”

I wondered how soon he would kick me out this time, but I was in for a surprise. Despite Benny’s barnacled attitude and thinly veiled religious digs, he really needed someone to listen. For the next hour he spewed a litany of woes. He lived a good life, respectful of others, tried to be a good person. He was an artist with an undiscovered opus of Pulitzer-worthy poetry. He tried hard to get published and when that failed, Benny spent his entire savings to self-publish one of his works. No one ever read it, save Benny’s friends, and they didn’t pay for their copies.

Not many friends left. Family somewhat disinterested. No wife (though he talked about a potential Mrs. with a wistfulness I’d only seen in pining young women). Then he comes down with this disease and that condition and loses his leg and that’s a real pisser. Can’t drive anymore. Dialysis sucks. Rehab was going well and he was getting the hang of his new prosthesis until he got hit with this latest spate of illness. Now he’ll have to start all over with the rehab.

Funny thing about Benny — he was realistic and undramatic about his prognosis. Doc told him he has 5 years tops, and that’s only as long as he can steer clear of infections and viruses. Not much of a chance of that in the rehab centers and assisted living facilities that have become his homes. Though he was matter-of-fact and calm about his future, he raged about his past.

Benny’s life was a soggy and disintegrated mess of should-haves, wished-I’ds, and if-onlys. And to give him his due, there really wasn’t a lot he could have done to change his circumstances. It seemed he never caught the smallest break. I was sympathetic. But then he got back to his schtick about how God owed him a life like Travolta and Dolly and the man who played Misty for me.

I tried to push back a little and pointed out that those celebrities’ lives can’t be as shiny as they seem.  He guffawed. I pointed to Travolta’s son’s death two years ago and to Dolly’s obsession with plastic surgery. Is their wealth and fame really a good indicator that their lives are so great — that they are satisfied? They may have everything they wanted, but do they have everything they need?

When I asked Benny about his faith story he stitched together a vague sentence about the Lord. He believed in God but didn’t really care about worship, or the church, nor did he really live much of his life as an offering to God. When I asked him about what I saw as unreasonable expectations of God, this was Benny’s bottom line:

“Well, he’s God, isn’t he? He owes me something better than this!”

I thought about my visit with Benny for several days. It took me awhile to untangle why our conversation left me spellbound and speechless — which I rarely am. As I burrowed down into my silence, I discovered four reactions.

1. Benny’s arrogance made me queasy. It gave me the shakes. If ever I expected lightning to strike and the ground to swallow someone up, it was then and there. To sit in a bed and rail against the Creator of the universe for not giving you health and wealth and fame, when all you did for the Lord was be nice to other people and occasionally hold open doors!?

2. I was in awe of Benny’s lament. His litany of woes and his calling God to account echoed much of what I read in scripture.  (Check out Psalm 88!) Benny’s words made me uncomfortable, but they were honest. I rarely meet Christians who are willing to be this honest about their lives or their faith, or have the chutzpah to address God the way our biblical ancestors did. Good for Benny. He can teach us (me) a thing or two.

3. In Benny I was startled to see myself. In a previous post “Seduced by Onions” I talked about tumbling off my spiritual pedestal. In too-rare moments of clarity, I realize that I’m just another Israelite whose faith in God frays when the way to the promised land is long, dusty, and desolate. Benny loudly spat out words that I’d been hiding in my soul for years. Somewhere deep inside of me there’s a miser who is constantly taking stock of other people’s blessings, comparing them to mine and realizing that I’ve come up short. I’ve descended to that dank place where all I can crave, reach for, and smell is what God owes me. Seeing myself in Benny made me feel…

4. Shame. Shame is the moment I realize how much I’ve been focused on myself. That I’m holding on with a death-grip to what I feel I’m owed and promised, rather than being focused on God’s goodness.

When I come back to God’s opus, the Bible, I remember that God never promises a trouble-free life, a painless existence, a quick and easy way to the milk and honey. Jesus is not a TV evangelist that flashes a mega-watt smile at you through your flat screen and tells you that if you just pray hard enough, if you believe enough, live right enough, or send in a generous donation, that you’ll be healed, or rich, or happy.

In contrast, if we sit at Jesus’ feet for even a few minutes we would hear him prepare his disciples for a tsunami of woe. Jesus tells his followers to prepare for being hated — by pretty much everyone. To get ready for persecution. For feeling like they don’t belong in this world. For being thrown out of places of worship. For being disconnected from their friends and family. For being killed for their beliefs. For grief. For feeling alone and abandoned by their Savior. (see John 15:18-16:33)

Is this God — who doesn’t make our lives easy, doesn’t protect or heal us from every disease, doesn’t give us wealth and fame like Travolta or Dolly or Eastwood — really a good God?

Yes. I can say that God is good (even when he doesn’t give me what I want or think I deserve) because I believe that God is who he shows himself to be in the Bible.

God’s character is not nullified or lessened when the circumstances of my life go to pot. 

God never abandoned his people even when they doubted him, complained about the food, worshiped idols, disobeyed his commands, and otherwise acted like petulant children for forty years in the desert. Not only did God not abandon them, he renewed his covenant with them, led them through the darkness, provided food and clean water, overcame every enemy, and always, ALWAYS loved them. Presence, provision and love — that is the character of God, which doesn’t change like shifting shadows (James 1:17).

If every good gift comes from God, then why are Benny and I so quick to blame God for the bad things that happened?

Why can’t we, in the sucky moments in life, trust that God has not changed? That he is with us, giving good gifts, and loving us — even when we don’t feel the love for, or from, him?

We pave a road called Pain when we create or entirely reshape our image of God based on our circumstances. If life is rosy and rich and full of laughter, God is good, a righteous savior, the very embodiment of love. But if life is uncertain, riddled with loss, or fraught with bad luck, then God is a dead-beat dad, a slimy politician, an adulterer.

We walk down the road to Peace when we start with, and hold onto the image of God, that God himself paints in the pages of scripture.

Benny and I need to make a U-ie. We need to somehow disconnect our spiritual GPS from the cultural and circumstantial maps that make us think that we’ll find God on Indulgence Street. God never promised to give us everything we want. In fact, Jesus painted a very clear picture of the difficult road believers would travel. But God did promise his people across the ages that he would never leave nor forsake them (Deuteronomy 31:6). He proved his character through thousands of years of history – stories we can read in the Bible. God crowned his character with love when he sent his son Jesus to die for all sins, for every sinner. Even the crusty Bennies and the doubting pastors. And if that weren’t enough, God gives us the gift of his Spirit, the Advocate and Comforter who is with us until Jesus returns.

Presence. Provision. Love. Those are good gifts. That is the Good God who knows our every circumstance, knows the number of hairs on our heads, and laid every grain of sand in the sea. If this God knit me together in my mother’s womb, knows me by name, doesn’t change, is with me, providing for me, and will always love me, then that reality is better than any life that I can ask for or imagine. Even better than Eastwood’s.