One in a million? So why me?

The GP I saw last week (concerning my 'flu and chest infection) wasn't my usual one, so I had the same conversation I have with every medical professional who has read my history for the first time. First they don't believe that I'm not (or wasn't) a smoker and then they tell me how unusual I am. I've been meaning to ask someone who might have a clue just how unusual (statistically) this actually is. Am I one in a million? Or even less common than that? My Australian oncologist (who was the most senior figure in the department of a large hospital) said he'd never seen or heard of any analogous cases. The GP last week said that even if I had been a "champion smoker" since being a teenager I would have been desperately unlucky to have ended up with my cancer at that age.

This raised for me an issue that I deliberately put aside early on, namely, the cause of my cancer. If I am really so rare, am a just a total fluke or were there certain triggers in my genes and/or and environment that are to blame? My decision early on to avoid attempting to answer the scientific question of causation was based on asking a few of the top experts and finding they had no clue whatsoever, especially given my lifelong failure to consume even a single tobacco product (except second-hand, of course, which comes free of charge, though perhaps not of consequence). So I figured that if the experts had nothing to suggest, then my own search would likely prove either fruitless or a source of paranoia (rather than finding one cause, I would be likely to find hundreds of potential culprits, namely the carcinogens scattered throughout modern life that are almost impossible to avoid). I simply said to myself, "I am a man of cancer and I live amongst a people of carcinogenic lifestyles".

Theologically, based on the books of Job and Ecclesiastes and also John 9, I affirmed that the consequences of particular sins do not always fall on the wrongdoers, but that there is a tragic element to the world's brokenness in which suffering is unevenly and unjustly distributed. Not that any are innocent of wrongdoing, but many who suffer are innocent of the wrongdoing that caused or contributed to that particular suffering. Thus, asking "why me?" is often not a very productive question.

There is of course far more to say about this, but the comments from my GP briefly opened these questions and let me think again about why I had put them down again.

Blog Title

What does it mean?
My title is borrowed from a phrase by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4.8. Here it is in context:

   For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
   We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture--“I believed, and so I spoke”--we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

- 2 Corinthians 4.5-18 (NRSV)

Paul is speaking of his own ambiguous experience in life. He lives the reality of following a crucified and resurrected Lord and his experience embraces both realities: suffering in this present age in the midst of a groaning world, yet filled with the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead. And this is the experience of all Christians: neither a triumphalistic walk in the park through wealth and health, but nor a bleak and hopeless spiral into pain and despair. Nor simply a mix of light and dark. But a rich yearning in a cracked world, where experiences of failure and suffering become occasions for the revelation of God's mysterious resurrection power: his power is "made perfect in our weakness", Paul claims later in this same letter, because it is at these points that the nexus between human effort and success is broken, and it becomes apparent that our frail existence owes everything to God. We have the treasure of life and new life in Christ hidden in the clay jar (the ancient equivalent of a throw-away styrofoam cup) of a bodily life constantly thwarted by illness, sin and ultimately death. The goal is not a Platonic escape from the body into a 'spiritual' extra-bodily existence, but is nothing less than our own future resurrection from the dead in a renewed universe.

But while we wait, my experience of the Christian life is often well summed up by a phrase that has been something of a personal motto since it struck me powerfully back in 1998: perplexed, but not in despair.

And to wax a little indulgent, here is a piece of angst poetry from my 20-year old self when I adopted the motto.

perplexity without despair

Wandering slowly up the garden path,
      trapped between conceit and metaphor:
      an adult playing at adult games.
Uncertainty, aimlessness, ignorance.

Wondering slowly between vague mistakes,
      undefined ideas far from ideal,
      far too bored to misspend a minute.
Introspection, paradox, transience.

Pondering when, what and whether to think,
      looking at a world of perceptions,
      but not out for other perceivers.
Fragmentation, finitude, selfishness.

Pandering to wind, wave, whether and whim;
      often vanquished at the death struggle,
      yet stalwart with this treasure within.
Vacillation, tragedy, assurance.

(31/10/98)
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