Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Job–in a world without the epilogue

Last night, as I was channel surfing, I stumbled across a PBS documentary entitled “The English Surgeon”–about a world-renowned neurosurgeon by the name of Henry Marsh who donates time and expertise to the plight of Ukrainians suffering from neurological disorders.

There was one harrowing scene in which Dr. Marsh and his Ukrainian colleague Igor speak to a patient by the name of Ulyana. She’s a meltingly beautiful young woman who came to them for treatment.

Marsh is looking over her scans. She has terminal brain cancer. Marsh and Igor hem and haw and agonize over how to break the news to her. She’s oblivious to their exchange since Marsh and Igor communicate with each other in English, of which she knows not a word.

On the outside, she looks like a woman in the pink of health and prime of life. Yet on the inside she has a time bomb which they can’t defuse. It’s only a matter of months before it detonates in her head.

There she sits–serene, trustful, hopeful, and beautiful–blissfully and poignantly innocent of the gut-wrenching exchange which these two physicians are having in her presence. They try to conceal their real feelings, lest their awkward, restive body-language betray the enormity and the futility of her situation.

In one respect it’s rather reminiscent of the prologue to Job. Just as Marsh, Igor, and the TV audience know something fateful about Ulyana that she does not–God, Satan, and the reader know something fateful about Job that he does not.

The quandary for Marsh is how to let her down as gently as possible. How to let her know that her situation is utterly hopeless. There’s no good way of putting it. Marsh can’t quite bring himself to tell her on the spot that she’d doomed. That she’s bound to die young, and there’s nothing that he or anyone else can do to help. So he asks her to come back with her mother.

It’s a dilemma. On the one hand, she’s entitled to know. Because she’s personally and profoundly affected by the outcome, the truth can’t be kept from her. But precisely because she’s personally and profoundly affected by the outcome, which is inconsolable, that’s a hard thing to tell her. What do you say when truth is your mortal enemy?

Ulyana is desperately lost, but doesn’t know it–while Marsh is desperately lost, but knows it. Which is better?

Ulyana’s plight is aggravated by the fact that, for Marsh, the brain is all we are. Once the brain is gone, that’s it. End of story.

Atheism is Job without the epilogue. All the pain. All the loss. Unending drought until, one-by-one, every living thing is brittle and brown.

7 comments:

  1. So do you think that, in this situation, the truth should be held from Ulyana? Or do you, like me, think that the truth should be told? Likewise, with atheism, do you think that religion is a good thing irregardless of whether it is true or not? Or do you, like me, prefer to know the truth, no matter how painful it may be?

    Atheism isn't Job without the epilogue, life is Job without the epilogue (although, if your own life is really that terrible, I pity you). Some of us are man enough to accept that.

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  2. "Some of us are delusional enough to pretend that life has any meaning when our (non)beliefs indicate it clearly doesn't."

    I fixed it for you.

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  3. Also, and this might be nitpicking, "irregardless" is not a word. Not a real one, anyway, despite how it remains in the vernacular.

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  4. "Atheism is Job without the epilogue. All the pain. All the loss. Unending drought until, one-by-one, every living thing is brittle and brown."

    Can't the same be said of Calvinism? For the un-Elect, there is no hope to be found in God. He is their enemy and has no desire to redeem them. All their earthly sorrows and travails are just a prelude to the torment they will endure forever in the Hell He created especially for them.

    Even nihilism offers no such darkness. At least it doesn't present to the soul the premise of an everlasting and omnipotent foe.

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  5. JOHN SAID:

    "Can't the same be said of Calvinism? For the un-Elect, there is no hope to be found in God. He is their enemy and has no desire to redeem them. All their earthly sorrows and travails are just a prelude to the torment they will endure forever in the Hell He created especially for them."

    Hope for some is quite different than hope for none. And there's also a big difference between living in a moral universe and living in an amoral one.

    "Even nihilism offers no such darkness. At least it doesn't present to the soul the premise of an everlasting and omnipotent foe."

    Retributive justice isn't darkness, but goodness.

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  6. "Even nihilism offers no such darkness."

    Therein lies the heart of the problem. Only a fool searches for which belief makes the best offer.

    Search rather for what is true and believe that, no matter how hard.

    Turn to God and repent that you might be spared.

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  7. "Even nihilism offers no such darkness."

    That's only because "darkness" has no meaning for a nihilist. There is no light, no darkness, no meaning whatsoever. Only futility. But not believing in meaning doesn't mean there is no meaning (excuse the pun). It means nihilism is foolish.

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