Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with “aggressive” prostate cancer, according to a statement his office made yesterday. The statement added that his diagnosis included “metastasis to the bone.” Characterized by a Gleason score of nine out of ten, it is classified as “high grade” and could spread quickly. Mr. Biden and his family are reportedly reviewing treatment options, though his office added that the cancer is hormone-sensitive, meaning it likely can be managed.
President Donald Trump responded on his social media platform Truth Social that he and First Lady Melania Trump were “saddened” to learn the news and added, “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.” Numerous other political leaders voiced their support as well.
“Questions about things that matter always”
Theologian and novelist Frederick Buechner wrote:
We are much involved, all of us, with questions about things that matter a good deal today but will be forgotten by this time tomorrow—the immediate wheres and whens and hows that face us daily at home and at work—but at the same time we tend to lose track of the questions about things that matter always, life-and-death questions about meaning, purpose, and value. To lose track of such deep questions as these is to risk losing track of who we really are in our own depths and where we are really going.
There was a day when avoiding life-and-death questions was nearly impossible. Most people died at home surrounded by their families, many from illnesses that are curable today or accidents that are now preventable. World wars forced millions of people to fight in conflicts they never anticipated and hundreds of thousands to die on battlefields they never imagined.
Today, however, people more often die in antiseptic hospital rooms far removed from the rest of us. When they die, mortuary professionals prepare their bodies to render them lifelike, then families bid them farewell in cemeteries before the rest of us gather for “memorial services” where they are present only in memory.
We even speak of death in ways that shelter us from frightening realities. People do not “die,” they “pass on” or “depart.” If they die in ways that don’t seem threatening to us personally, we all too easily dismiss their reminder of our own mortality. If someone has a heart attack but I don’t have heart disease, or dies from cancer I don’t face, their death seems less relevant to me.
It is the same with tragedies in places we don’t live, from Russian drone attacks on Ukraine, to “extensive” Israeli ground operations in Gaza, to a suicide bomber who killed at least ten people in Mogadishu yesterday. There is something in us that seeks a way to reframe news of mortality to make it less relevant to us.
Then comes the announcement that a former president of the United States has “aggressive” cancer that could prove fatal. He presumably has the best health care possible. Yet his age cannot be reversed, nor can the fact of his humanity.
When we read of his diagnosis, whatever our partisan positions, we are saddened for him and his family. And we are forced to face the fact that his story is in some way our story.
“Making mud pies in a slum”
Here we find one way an all-loving God redeems death: by using it to prove our mortality and thus lead us to live this life for the life to come.
If left alone, we will try to make a paradise of this world. We will make the best we can of what we have, ignoring all that awaits God’s children in his paradise. As C. S. Lewis noted,
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
The best circumstances in this fallen world cannot begin to compare with the glories that await God’s people in the world to come. For us, death is but the door to eternity, the path out of the car into the house, the necessary means to a glorious destination.
When God has been most real to me
But why does an all-loving God allow so many people to die in pain and suffering?
The means of our deaths do not change their outcome or larger purpose. Why, then, does our Father so often permit us to suffer as we do? Across more than four decades of pastoral ministry, for every church member I have known who “died peacefully in their sleep,” many others suffered before they died, some terribly, and many have suffered as they died.
Here we find a second way an all-loving God redeems tragedy: by using it to draw us to himself in faith we would not choose if it were not so necessary.
Paul learned through his “thorn in the flesh” to trust a Power greater than his own (2 Corinthians 12:7–10). When he and Silas sang hymns to God at midnight in a Philippian jail, they were freed miraculously and their jailer was converted to Christ (Acts 16:25–34).
The times God has been most real to me have been those times when I needed his reality the most—the early death of my father, the cancer diagnoses of our son and grandson, those days of deep discouragement in the spiritual deserts and “dark nights of the soul” that Christians sometimes face.
The faith to have faith
Perhaps you are in such a “dark night” today. If so, know that Jesus feels what you feel and weeps as you weep (John 11:35). When you cannot find the strength to hold onto him, know that he is holding onto you (John 10:28). When you lack faith, you can pray for the faith to have faith (Mark 9:24) and find a peace you cannot understand that will sustain your heart and mind (Philippians 4:6–7).
If you’re not in such a “dark night,” perhaps you know someone who is. Perhaps you would pray for them right now, asking Jesus to speak to them in their pain and to be the Great Physician of their soul. Perhaps you would join me in praying for President Biden and his family as they step into their own journey with mortality, asking God to redeem their days for his glory and their good.
And when you wonder if you should trust Jesus with your suffering, perhaps you would take a moment to reflect on the unspeakable suffering of soul and body he chose for you. Tim Keller asked:
“If Jesus Christ didn’t abandon you in his darkness, the ultimate darkness, why would he abandon you now, in yours?”
Why, indeed?
Quote for the day:
“Affliction is the best book in my library.” —Martin Luther
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