My Friend, Steve Hays

NOTE: The following is something I wrote on Facebook.  There may be typos, but I'm going to leave everything as it was. For the record, I tend to keep my Facebook settings private and only friend people I either know directly or through another friend.  Some of my friends already asked if they could repost my thoughts on their own Facebook pages, and I said they could since this was intended to be public anyway.

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This is very difficult for me to write. When I think of who has shaped me most into the person I am today, the obvious first examples are God and then my parents, but immediately after them would be the various thinkers who I’ve read. I could easily list out famous names like Augustine and John Calvin, or Jonathan Edwards and Blaise Pascal. Even Aristotle and Plato fit in there. I could spend a long time talking about the authors who I’ve spent years reading and processing, agreeing and disagreeing with certain turns of a phrase. But I never interacted with any of those great minds.

Somewhere around 2007 or 2008, I don’t even know how it started but I stumbled onto a little blog called Triablogue. My first thoughts of it were that I could never remember how to spell the name. It had several authors, but the most prolific writer was a guy named Steve Hays. And I soon learned that it was really his blog, but that he had invited some other writers as well. The first thing I noticed was that Steve was incredibly intelligent. He had a gift at pulling apart an argument and exposing every unfounded premise or unforeseen consequence. Not only that, but he could build up his own position by reinforcing it with every logical argument needed to make it sound. I think most people who’ve interacted with him would agree that his intelligence was obvious.

Somewhere along the line, Steve also found me to be useful in the way that I thought and he invited me to be a writer on Triablogue too. It was astonishing to me, and I gladly took it up. There I met several friends who I still have to this day: John Bugay, Jason Engwer, Paul Manata, and above all Patrick Chan. While there was plenty that went on within the forum of Triablogue, there were endless emails behind the scenes where we would talk with Steve, bounce ideas off him, ask for prayers and encouragement, and the like.

That’s not to say we always agreed on subjects. I had numerous occasions to experience what it was like when Steve’s brilliant analytical mind was set against one of my own positions, and to feel the unbearable weight of trying to defend my own views against that onslaught. I didn’t always change my mind about what I thought, but after going a full round with Steve without crumpling I would know my argument was strong.

Which of course brings us to some of the controversy around Steve. Because Steve was sure of his positions and because he had intellectual weight behind them, those who found themselves opposed to his viewpoint would often feel that Steve’s tactics were too brutal and condescending. He did not put up with sloppy thinking and would point out every single logical error you made, even if it seemed trivial to you. Steve was concerned with the truth of the matter first; your feelings on it were a distant second. This led to many confrontations, to say the least, as a lot of people felt downright insulted by Steve. Throughout it Steve would maintain that perhaps he was not the best suited to being a representative for any particular viewpoint, but he was still needed for the edge cases where he applied.

My own view is that he was far more needed than even he realized. I never felt Steve’s “insults” toward me when we disagreed on a topic were actually insults at all once I examined them. For example, he once asked of me during a debate on a topic, “Are you being intentionally obtuse?” The question stung because at first it looks like he’s insulting my intelligence. But it really wasn’t. The question relied upon me being intelligent in the first place. It was predicated on the notion that he believed in my mental capacity and was frustrated that I couldn’t see the connection he was trying to draw. I took it as his way of saying, “I don’t understand why you can’t follow this.” But of course, I knew that was his intent because of the personal connection I had with him, and many people never got to see that side. They were left with the initial impression and the perceived insult.

For those who could see past their feelings on an issue, Steve’s reasoning was precise and on point. Indeed, many people who said they were insulted by Steve would return repeatedly. These were not masochists. They recognized that Steve was a worthy opponent to their views. And many of them were even convinced to change their minds via those interactions.

Because of all of that, what I’m about to say may strike you as being very odd. But the fact is that despite all of Steve’s vast intellect…he had a beautiful heart. When my wife left me and then divorced me, I was left in a very difficult spot, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I could talk to some extent with Christian coworkers and even did counseling—which I actually still do—to try to recover from the pain. But through it all, the person I could talk most freely to about what I was going through was Steve.

Steve and I agreed on a lot about the nature of God, the nature of good and evil, and our responsibilities to God. I couldn’t discuss my struggles freely with most of my Christian friends, and not any of the Christian counselors that I had, because most of them fundamentally disagreed on certain aspects of God’s sovereignty in particular. Steve and I shared those same views, so I was able to voice my complaint without having to argue against someone’s belief system just to get heard. The response back didn’t start with, “You’re wrong about this, therefore platitude.” Steve would instead respond, “Yes, that sucks. I feel the same way. But we know intellectually what the truth is. Even if it hurts, we can’t deny it.”

I found out over the past five years that my struggles are nearly identical to what Steve struggled with too. In him I felt a genuine kindred spirit because of that. We could be honest and open, and we knew the limits of our intellects and that there were certain things that just would never be resolved this side of heaven. And most of all, we understood the firm foundation of our shared faith in Jesus Christ—the one thing that made everything else intelligible, without which there was no truth or reality.

I’ve known now for about a year that Steve’s time was short. There were a handful of us who knew, and he swore us to secrecy. But as he prepared for his departure, he spent the time counseling us. Caring for us. So I’ll leave you with some words Steve wrote to me and other Tbloggers via email, except the last quote which is from his memoir.

“The more precious the thing you lose, the more you suffer the loss. But it's better to lose something worthwhile then never having anything worthwhile to lose in the first place. And it's better to suffer the loss of a greater good than to suffer the loss of a lesser good. Even though you suffer less or hardly at all, you miss out on the experience of having had the greater good. Many people lead wretched lives from start to finish. They never had the blessing of something precious to begin with.”

“There's a problem when we know all the right words, all the right answers, but it's like we're standing out in the cold, peering through a window to see a living room with a happy laughing family basking in the warm, cozy festive light of the fireplace. We hunger and shiver for what we need but we're sealed off by that pane of glass…. In the providence of God, I think some Christians are called upon to be buffers for other Christians. We take [the abuse] to shield them.”

"For Christians, a fatal disease is a gift. A friend. A doorknob out of this world into a better world. What is dreadful is not the prospect of death, but a world without a doorknob."