will leave your heart and mind clouded with painful memories of unmet expectations until all you can think is, ‘My life is not worth living any more.’
So, when our lives feel like they’re not worth living any more, who can we look to for hope? Any well-meaning Christian might say that we need to speak to God, right?
But what if the person you feel most betrayed by is God?
You find in your heart a bitterness and an anger you can no longer control and all you can think of is ... Where was God when it all went down? Why didn’t He have my back? If He is the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing God of the universe, how could He let this happen to me?
I know how you feel.
NOVEMBER 2011 – PART I
It was on a cold Los Angeles November night in 2011, when I woke up from a nightmare. It was one of those messy dreams where I felt like a wall of fear was closing in on me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I remember waking up with my heart racing and feeling extremely anxious.
As I tried to shake off the sleep, I could feel pins and needles all over my face and moving down the sides of my head. I took short shallow breaths to calm myself down. With one eye half open, I checked the time on my iPad: 1:10 am.
After what felt like a few minutes, I managed to force myself to fall asleep again – only to step right back into the same nightmare. It startled me, and I woke up again. This time I was awake enough to realise I was experiencing a panic attack. I have always suffered from claustrophobia, so I knew what a panic attack felt like, but the anxiety I was feeling was more intense than I had ever experienced before.
The truth? I didn’t want to face the fear or make sense of it; I just wanted it to go away.
So, I tried once more to force myself to sleep, but every time I managed to doze off the nightmare would reappear. It was like someone kept picking a fight with me and I just wanted to call a truce.
It can be so hard to reason with yourself when you’re caught between half-asleep and half-awake states. But I eventually admitted to myself that whether I was awake or asleep the fear was not going to go away.
Lying on my back and with my eyes wide open, I finally surrendered to the source of my fear.
I was about to turn 40 years old and I realised that all the hopes and big dreams I had harboured for my life had not happened. But, even worse, they couldn’t happen any more.
All the mistakes I had made and all the missed opportunities I had lost could not be fixed. The image and the life I had so fervently and carefully built over my twenties and thirties was lying shattered on the ground. The truth was that I had experienced many successes in my life, even internationally in my acting career. But the important things I had been hoping for had not happened.
It was over.
The despair I felt was so overwhelming, I thought to myself that this is what it must feel like to go insane. I had to do something. As I checked the time on my iPad, I realised at 2 am there weren’t many options available to me other than praying.
I tried not to wake my wife as I made my way to the second bedroom with panic still audible in my breath. I thought about what I might pray and ask God for: ‘God, I need a job and we need money. I need a breakthrough. Make my dreams come true. Please help me!’
But all those prayers seemed pointless to me. Especially since I had prayed them so many times before and look where they got me.
As my knees hit the ground, I was surprised and overcome by the latent bitterness and anger that coated the words that spewed from my mouth. Instead of asking God for the usual stuff, I let rip with a string of accusations that served as evidence that He had let me down.
I felt like a jilted lover. All God’s promises of the happy ever after had come to nothing. The sting of betrayal I felt left me angry and embarrassed. Like all heartbroken lovers, I tried to make sense of it all by casting my mind back to where it all began.
DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING TO GO?
When I grew up, my understanding of eschatology was shaped by my limited understanding of heaven and hell and God’s Kingdom. Eschatology is literally the ‘study of last things’.
Theologically speaking, it is the study of how things end up for us as human beings at the end of time as we know it, or when we die. In other words, where do we end up? Heaven, hell or nowhere?
Well, how I lived my life as a teenager was shaped by one simple question: ‘Do you know where you’re going to go when you die?’
I remember hearing many sermons growing up, ending with these words, followed by, ‘If you’re not right with God, you will end up in hell.’ It scared the living daylights out of me. I mean, who wants to spend eternity in hell? The preacher would then follow this up with, ‘If you’re not sure, come to the front and say the sinner’s prayer. God will forgive your sins. You will be born again and secured a place in heaven.’
Even though it scared me, I always thought it was a good deal. Yet, the next week would roll around; a few parties later and, in a flash, my born-again status would unravel. I’d go back to church the following Sunday, trying to calculate whether I had messed up enough to warrant a walk of shame to the front again.
Sometimes I was ‘brave’ enough to remain seated. After the service, I would ride my motorbike home and be petrified of dying in an accident.
I am sure many good and relevant sermons were preached while I attended church in high school. Even so, so much emphasis was placed on knowing where you were going after dying that this formed in me the worldview that there was nothing more to the practice of going to church. Hanging onto your going-to-heaven status, and making sure your behaviour didn’t screw that up.
This misconstrued understanding of God’s grace and plan for humanity not only led to zero moral transformation in my life, it left me with the paralysing job of trying to stay out of trouble before I died.
Not something I was particularly good at.
I remember one such occasion during my standard 9 year (grade 11). I had been invited to an end-of-term party. I was in the mood to have some fun, so put on my favourite shirt and jeans and got ready to party.
My parents were hosting a church small-group at our house that night. As I was leaving, I quickly popped into the lounge to say goodbye and check what time I needed to be home. There was a good mixture of young and old people and they all greeted me warmly. They invited me to stay, to join them for some praise and worship and Bible study.
I solemnly apologised – I’d already committed to plans for the night. Saying my goodbyes, I got out there as fast as I could.
At the party, I quickly scanned the landscape and noticed a cute girl I’d grown up with. For some reason, our paths had never crossed in the romance department. The timing, however, seemed just right on this particular night. I made a move … Let’s just say things worked out just as I’d hoped they would. Like a thirsty monkey who’d had his fill at the water hole, I eventually rode home on my motorbike.
It was about 10 pm when I got home. My parents and the small-group were still drinking tea and coffee as they finished up their meeting. Leaning against the wall of the big arched entrance to our lounge, I still felt pumped after a successful night.
I struck my best James Dean/Rebel Without a Cause pose, just sans the cigarette dangling out of my mouth.
I was about to ask them for a rundown of their meeting, when some of the women started giggling: ‘Wow, it looks like you had a pretty good night.’
I frowned.
‘She kissed you properly, huh?’ one quipped.
I had no idea what they were talking about. ‘Bed time for me. Goodnight, everyone,’ I mumbled like a responsible teenager.
I dropped my bike helmet and