Leaving the Light On For You: A Response to “Lights Out”

This post is an assigned response to Paul Louis Metzger’s article “Lights Out: Shining a Light on Caring for the Dying in a Multi-Faith World” which addresses the need for cultural and multi-faith sensitivity on the part of chaplains serving the terminally ill on palliative care teams. The dying process is a time when patients’ desires and as well as those of their immediate families, are to be considered carefully.  Dr. Metzger advocates for a kind and respectful approach and cautions that “Gentleness and respect require that we do not force our views on others.”

Please Don’t Point Your Light in My Eyes

Just as having a spotlight pointed at your face is obnoxious, so too some witnessing approaches and methods can cause us to close our eyes tightly. Light can be encouraging, helpful, and even attractive, but when pointed into someone’s eyes it can also be something oppressive to hide behind. Christ’s light is not to be wielded as a weapon. It is helpful in providing care that shows our faith well, “adorning the doctrines of God” (Titus 2:10), to understand what other people believe, how they are feeling, and why they so feel and believe as they approach their death.

While time is short, and the need is urgent, there is no call to be pressing or pressuring on our part—unless it is in prayer. I find that there often comes a new openness to the spiritual realm on the part of the person suffering. This is a great mercy from a loving God. As the things they have trusted in are stripped away they see their emptiness and begin to search for something, or someone, with enough throw-weight to carry their soul into the next life. So should we! I am reminded of  Paul’s “near-death” experience described in 2 Corinthians 1:8-10,

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

As a pastor, my job is different from that of a chaplain…and is unchained from multi-faith restrictions. However, my approach should also be “gentle and respectful” and never forced or coercive, yet neither should it miss the rescue opportunity by being too timid. Dr. Metzger writes,

Yes, as Christians committed to the biblical hope, we long to share about our faith in the eternal security of life with God in the resurrected Jesus through faith in his love poured out by the Spirit (Romans 8:18-39; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Romans 5:5). But hopefully we also desire to live out the biblical exhortation to do for others what we would want them to do for us (Matthew 7:12). If we wish to be treated with respect and not have others force their views on us, no matter how well-intentioned, we should respect them and not force our views on them.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. We do long to share our faith, not to somehow win or control another but to simply share the blessing we have received. We also agree that no spiritual decision should ever be forced; neither a baptism by Jesuits 500 years ago nor an evangelical’s “sinners prayer” or a Shahada by Muslims today.

Ladybug, Ladybug, Please Don’t Be Offended…but Your House is On Fire

I remember a John Leo column from the early 80s (Newsweek) where he told non-believers that they should not be offended when evangelical Christians witnessed to them, for it was a sign that they really cared. If you believe your neighbor’s house in is on fire you will be motivated by human decency to warn them. Like the person warning residents that their house is on fire, sometimes witnessing is neither subtle nor soft-spoken.  I agree. If we really believe the Bible, we should care enough about our neighbors to tell them.

When I think of watchmen, I think of the well-known passage in Ezekiel 33. A watchman’s job was to warn the city of the approaching danger. However, the responsibility to respond to the warning is on the people of the city, not the watchman. The watchman need not force the city to respond to the coming danger; he gives his observations and leaves the response to the people.

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, speak to your people and say to them,

Jerusalem before dawn

If I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them, and make him their watchman, and if he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, then if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman's hand. (Ezekiel 33:1-6)

Delivering My Soul…and Yours

So the trick is to “deliver our soul” (v. 9) by warning those in danger. But there is a catch that I don’t remember noticing before. In verse two we find that the watchman's role is conditional; it is conferred by the people taking one from “among them” and making “him their watchman.” When we apply this watchman principle to our own lives and ministries (I have, since my name means “watchman”) have we ever stopped to consider whether “my people” have made me "a watchman" for them? Or do we just assume that we can be freelance “watchers and warners” without first earning the relational trust of others? If we don’t listen authentically how can we ever be “among them” enough to be trusted as a watcher?

I read Metzger’s post as suggesting that we need to be relationally trustworthy before others might ask us for our input into the great crisis moment of their lives. God doesn’t want any to perish (2 Peter 3:9) not even the really bad ones (Eze. 33:10-11). Even so, people die every day, many without really hearing the life-giving gospel of Christ. Could it be that our methods of urgency are too transactional (“Do this...and get that”) to allow others to truly join us (or for us to join them) on a spiritual journey that no person was designed to walk alone? I don’t want to be a roadblock, how about you?

We need boldness—boldness to listen long, to love with the love of Christ who loved us while we were his enemies (Romans 5:6-10, to consider the needs of others more than we impose our own perception of their needs upon them, and that they might see Christ in what we say and do, as well as in what we don’t.

The following poem I wrote a few years ago in response to my father-in-law’s emergency surgery, his 33-day struggle for life in the hospital’s intensive and critical care units, and his death. He was not open to discussing spiritual things earlier in his life and would leave the room when others talked about or answered questions about Jesus. However, after his wife died he stopped leaving the room, but still didn’t participate in any spiritual conversations—until the day he was scheduled for emergency cancer surgery and his ears were opened to hear the voice of the Lord calling him. His transformation stunned us all. The following poem, written in the first-person, was inspired by that process and such scriptures as Matthew 7:1-14 and 19:23-26. I hope it speaks to you today.

The Narrow Gate

Utterly burdened beyond strength

Looking, facing, fearing

Narrow gate’s eye of the needle knowing

I don’t, can’t, won’t fit.

Despairing painfully of any solution

But pressed, drawn, nonetheless by

God’s possibilities, and

My latent mortality.

Dreadful as death’s door was

From a distance, now

Up close, uncomfortably close,

Squinting against the needle’s eye

Perhaps glimpsing bright sparks beyond,

Through my grimace.

How could I trust,

Transition, from here to there

Through this impossibly narrow

Moment of prolonged surrender?

Yet I am sought, welcomed

Comforted as I hear his voice with

Others he has led this way before.

I reach for the rope

Grace’s already threaded

Sticky scarlet cord grasps me

In suffering’s fellowship.

What is earthly, mean, camelish,

Scraped off, exfoliated, removed,

Wrung out, expressed into a disposable bag,

What was once my focus, now

So much medical waste.

Good riddance.

The brass buttons of my autonomy

Catching on eternity’s door

I fight to free them, until with embarrassment in

Purgatory of my last years, days, 

Giving up I ask for help

Slowly casting off the uniform of my birth

While putting on that of His

Through learning to love.

My eyes seem to blink away the mist

Suddenly seeing truly

Awesome God

Yet I am not consumed.

What was pressed, pulled through the eye

By the power, possibility of God’s love

Weightier, more expansive

Than I ever was before.

© Greg K. Dueker

We need to leave the light on for others to find their way. May it be the kind of light that draws us near and delivers all from fear.