As you can imagine there are no real up-sides to having both a son and a brother die within a few months of each other. There is no ‘bright-side’ to look on. But that doesn’t mean good can’t come from tragedy. Perhaps it’s just my annoyingly optimistic nature, but this week we were talking and I was reflecting on what I can see as some positive outcomes of this whole terrible situation. To be clear these aren’t ‘reasons Sam & Steve died’, or me saying I’m glad it happened. Far from it – but if life has to suck then let’s at least take what sucks and try and learn something or do something good with it.

There’s that verse in Romans 8:28 that says; ‘

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

That’s very different from saying God makes all things happen and ultimately works them for good. I see it as letting us know that even in the darkest place God is able to work for good. If you read this verse in the Living Bible it would appear to say something very different:

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

It seems there is some division over how to interpret this verse. With my (now scant) knowledge of ancient Greek I went back to read the verse in it’s original language and in its context and it would seem fair to draw either conclusion based on the language alone. But.,.. it seems abhorrent to me to suggest that God is in the business of manufacturing all sorts of terrible events because ultimately they are part of a bigger plan.

Fact is we never reach conclusion simply on the words. We bring our assumptions and presuppositions to the table. I recognise that I bring the presupposition that God is good – partly based on my experience but mostly based on the description of him throughout scripture. Others seem to bring their assumption of God’s sovereignty being over every detail of life and hence they arrive at the other conclusion.

I understand some people smarter than me sit ok with the ‘sovereignty’ view but it just doesn’t sound like a good God to me.

I can accept that in all things God works for good, but not that he is engineering all things. So with that (much longer than I expected) backdrop here are some things I sense God is working for good in my own life over the last 7 months.

• I am aware of & feel for others in pain much more than I ever did before. In fact I sense that if you look closely (and you want to see) everyone is carrying something. We carry a lost son & brother, but others live with a failed marriage, a severely disabled child, a legacy of abuse… and so it goes on. There are very few people who go thru this life unscathed, but I am not naturally drawn to delve into this more pained side of a person. Nowadays I’m much more willing to recognise, ask genuine questions and then take the time to listen. I’d say my capacity for empathy has at least doubled. (And no snide jokes about 2/10 being better than 1/10 please)

• I have been forced to grapple with key ideas about who God is and what he is like. What is often abstract or theoretical theology is now being activated in ways I never anticipated. The encouraging thing is that it seems some of the things I spouted in the absence of significant pain, still hold true in the midst of it. In some ways I’m surprised at how my theological understanding and experience has withstood this assault and then in other ways I’m just grateful that the ideas and beliefs I have literally bet my life on have come to the fore when needed.

• I have learnt to no longer speak so confidently of the future and my plans. I know more truly that life is fragile and delicate. I have made it to 60 and I’m grateful for that. Previously I had pegged 80 as an age where I may need to ‘ slow down a little’ but that is based on the rather audacious assumption that I will live that long. I feel like I have become much more conscious of my own mortality and the sheer randomness of life. When I hear people say ‘when I retire…’ I find myself saying you might want to reframe that to ‘if I live long enough to retire’. Yeah – it’s a bit of conversation-killer but it’s also reality. I already held the future somewhat tentatively – but this years two deaths have just been a reminder again of the fact that tomorrow is not a guarantee. And that note I keep on my iPhone titled ‘If I die’, has been retitled to ‘when I die’, because there is no ‘if’ about it!

• People can no longer say I lead a charmed life & always land on my feet. It’s true that life has been good for us in so many ways, but the last 40 years have also held dark moments. We tend not to dwell on the hard stuff – partly because it hasn’t been life threatening. I remember losing over $250k in 2009 as we were travelling Australia. Part of managing my anxiety was lying in bed and just saying ‘No one has died. No one is going to die. You have simply lost money.’ It helped. It really did put stuff in perspective. Of course I can’t use that mantra now. I vividly remember being at a conference where another pastor requested prayer for the death of a son. I just remember recoiling in horror at the thought of that happening to anyone. ‘You poor bloke’ I thought. That’s next level intense. I cant imagine facing something like that,’ and then March 24th came around… Those things don’t happen to me… well apparently they do.

• I can and am investing ‘fatherly’ effort into other younger men who are in my life. I currently have time, energy and experience to offer and I see a real need for a fatherly approach to leadership within both our communities and our churches. My hope isn’t to establish any formal structures, systems (or programmes to sell on the internet), but just to have time to tune into the spirit and from there listen to who and where he may point me. There was a lot of time and love allocated to Sam that now I will intentionally seek to allocate elsewhere. I hope that if I do make it to 80, I will be able to look around and see many younger people in whose lives I have been invited to share and invest some of my own. That would make me very happy.

So those are some of the ways life has shifted and reformed for me over this time. It has been bad, terrible, devastating – all those words – but these are some of the lights that shine in the darkness. I actually love John’s description of Jesus in John 1:5

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

I sense this is true in our current darkness. The light still shines and darkness will not have the final word.

Oh – and we now have a puppy called Tahnee who is a Retriever cross Border Collie. She has brought an immense amount of joy into our home. I don’t think she would have come along had Sam still been alive, (he brought enough ‘puppy energy’ for all of us) but she has been a sheer beam of light in herself. I never thought we would own another dog, let alone a puppy, but here we are with no regrets.

And so it begins…

It’s hard to describe how it feels 7 months down the road of losing a son. Last weekend we did the paddle out for Sam, an event I was only half looking forward to. I sense there was something of it all centring on the ocean that was both soothing me and burring me. I felt edgy and skittish but also like I wanted to full revel in this one last moment of remembering him publicly and in the place we both love so deeply. Perhaps it was knowing that this was effectively the end of the road for any kind of ‘corporate remembering’ that was knocking me off centre.

As far as the day went, quite honestly you could not have asked for a more beautiful , joyful and sincere time of honouring Sam. 

We kicked off with Rowan’s baptism – a significant moment in itself as he was one of Sam’s best mates during high school. Rowan spoke of wanting to transform a head knowledge faith into a personal experience of God and of Sam as someone who lived a life that inspired and pointed him to God. It was a perfect time to mark one death and one ‘new birth’, and a privilege to baptise him.

Then Morro drove in and sang the song that he wrote back when Sam had first died. It was as beautiful and powerful as I expected and there was nothing I could do but just weep my way thru it. Sam was courageous and fearless but it was this thrillseeker bent that eventually took him out. In a conversation later in the day with one of his diving friends D said ‘Sam was always diving deeper and staying down longer than we were comfortable with.’ Seems he was pushing boundaries in a sport where there is no margin for error.

Jake led us into the paddle out – an ancient surfing tradition, where the person is remembered and celebrated by those who shared the water with them. It was great to see a number of our local men there to be part of the day – men Sam had surfed with – blokes who had shown him the ropes, given him rides home and generally looked out for him as a local grom growing up in Yanchep. 

Around 50 people flocked into the north end of the lagoon and paddled out beyond the reef, forming a large circle as we joined hands. Micah reminded us before praying that Sam would surely be telling us ‘I’m peeing in my wetsuit!’. We splashed and hooted a final farewell to our boy – and then paddled across to the break where 2 ft mush burgers were splodging on a very dry, sometimes bare reef. Our local favourite certainly didn’t turn it on for Sam’s farewell, so the surfing was short lived.

One moment that I remember well was standing and looking out to the crowd as I got the day underway. Seeing locals who had shared this ocean with us for the last 13 years, school friends on whom Sam had left a mark, family – always large chunks of them – and then churchies and valued friends who had come to mark the day with us. I felt blessed to see these people present for Sam – and equally blessed to know they were with us on the journey. I never cease to be amazed at the grief other people carry because of Sam. For some it has rattled their world and it just keeps rattling. 

As the crowd settled back on the beach Toby (Cosi’s bro) sang a song he wrote the day after Sam died. It had beautiful lyrics and spoke to the love Sam had for Cosi and the hope they had of spending their lives together. The loss of that future is one of the things I lament most deeply.

On reflection, I wish we could have held the paddle out sooner, but conflicts with dates and dodgy weather pushed us out to here. The emotional overwhelm of the day has caught up with me now and I am feeling the like we have reached the ‘end’ of a long process. And of course the question that emerges is ‘what now?…’ 

I guess it’s just more stepping out day after day, choosing to find the joy in life while also holding the constant sorrow. There still isn’t a day goes by that I don’t find myself wondering, pondering, questioning the whole thing. How could one breath have made such a difference? Where exactly is he now – yeah I get ‘with Jesus’, but where exactly and what form is he in?… How will we be reunited and when? 

Life is in the process of re-forming and emerging from the chaos. We now have a puppy and that was a good decision. Tahnee has simply been a source of great joy and while there have been a few ‘sacrificial’ pieces of homeware chewed and destroyed by her, there are no regrets.

On Nov 16 we head to Tassie for two weeks with Danelle’s sister Janene and Stu & Carolyn, a holiday we planned a fair while ago and one I have barely given a thought to. That said, Tasmania is easy to love and Danelle has done a lot of the planning for us already. The decision to hire two cars should pay off too as we won’t have to decide between craft shops and surfing 🙂

As business slows down, I intend to see a bit more of the beach and to make sure Tahnee learns good habits. Remember that Bible verse?… ’Train up a dog in the way she should go and when she is old she will not depart from it…’

As I was working on a caravan recently the owners were present and chatting with me. She told that her husband was a police chaplain. ‘That’s an interesting job’ I said. 

‘We were pastors for 33 years’ she said, ‘but we got a bit burnt out.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I said ‘That sounds tough…’

I listened for a bit and then said ‘I used to be a pastor myself.’

I could see her face get that bemused look as I knelt on her floor and tried to mount a heater. I probably didn’t look much like a pastor – and I too was bemused that I had said ‘I used to be a pastor…’ Was that really the case? Had I reached the end of the road with that vocation?

My hunch is probably not, but right now isn’t the season for diving into anything complex or challenging. In my own gut I feel like I’d enjoy a decent challenge, but I know Danelle isn’t ready for that and there is no value in pushing into anything. I’m very happy to cruise, enjoy another quiet summer and do bits and pieces here and there as needed.

And then we see what 2025 holds… Def gonna be a better year than 2024.

Living in a ‘tolerant’ western culture, absolute statements about religious faith can go off like dog farts (and right now we know all about those). You make the call and realise that the room has gone quiet. People are wondering – has anyone else picked it… or is it just me? (And I put ‘tolerant’ in quotation marks because we actually aren’t tolerant of everything)

Anyway let’s get dirty like our pup above and throw around some difficult ideas…

One of the challenges the Christian story brings is it’s abundance of absolutes – claims made by Jesus or the biblical writers that are bold, strong and at times even offensive to those reading them. Case in point would be Acts 4:12 ‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to humankind by which we must be saved.’ 

There isn’t much room for negotiation on that one. Jesus himself makes this exact claim in John 14:6, ‘I am the Way,Truth and life – no one comes to the father except through me.’ It’s places like these that we get the language of ‘Jesus being the only way to God.’

A more popular view would be that we are all climbing the same mountain just from different aspects.  Ultimately we will all – Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Sikh etc – reach the ‘top’ using our own guides. I feel like that is a more likeable and digestible approach in a pluralistic western world. Let’s just hope that whatever we are doing takes us up the mountain.

Some angles on this that I find challenging:

1. Each religion makes different claims – it is a nothing more than a matter of simple logic to say they cannot all be true. Christians see Jesus as the saviour of the world, through his death on the cross. Without this act of love and forgiveness we would spend this life and the next separated from God. Jesus is our ‘point of difference’ and we cannot frame it any other way. When Muslims claim Jesus is a prophet, but not divine they make a statement directly contrary to what Christians believe. We simply can’t both be correct. If we accept that both are equally true, then we have to accept that some people will be able to call black ‘white’ and vice versa without contradiction. Doesn’t make sense does it?

1. The Bible – The scriptures I use as my means of discerning faith decisions and making sense of the world are not open to the possibility of all other faiths being equally able to save. For Buddhists who do not believe in the existence of a God we can’t even have the same conversation because there is no God to discuss. I appreciate that accepting the Bible as having genuine clout on these issues is an under-lying assumption that not all would bode well with. Perhaps its because I have spent my life immersed in this book that I come to these conclusions. Or – and I hope this is true –  my experience and interactions with this book have proven credible and trustworthy.

1. The conclusion matters – given we are essentially discussing the meaning of our existence and our purpose both on this planet and beyond, it matters that we think carefully about our conclusions. It just doesn’t work to say ‘it will all work out in the end.’ Because it might… but then again it might not… And I realise there is a lot to process, but these questions are often left to lurk in the backs of our minds until something jars us into serious thought.

1. Jesus – the life of Jesus and the claims he makes are either true or outrageously ridiculous. I am assuming the gospels are accurate historical records of what took place in that time and they portray him as the saviour of the world / the Messiah / the king whose kingdom is not of this world. He calls people to follow him, to place their faith in him and to trust him for an understanding of how to live both now and into the eternal realm. So if what he says isn’t truth then he is a con-man / deceiver (who also died for that lie)…

One of the inevitable questions we face in asserting Jesus as the ‘only way’ is that of ‘so does that mean that every person who ever lived and who didn’t hear about Jesus is consigned to eternity in hell? That would seem very unfair I agree. If you were lucky enough to be born in a country with Judea Christian heritage then you have all of that as your back-story whereas if you were born in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Anywhereistan then you are at a significant disadvantage.

And then, given we are in a secular age and the Christian story has diminished in our consciousness most people not raised in a church-going Christian family will need someone to guide them to a point of belief and faith in Jesus. What if the person who has been explaining faith to you does such a terrible job of it that you conclude it is a load of nonsense?… If you ‘heard the message’ but couldn’t make sense of it are you lost for eternity? (Surely an all powerful God could have sent you a smarter evangelist to present the message?…)

And of course there’s the question of those with significant cognitive disabilities – how do they come to a point of faith? Can they even?…

I could go on, but you get the point. This stuff gets messy fast.

It’s where I come back to assumption number 1 – my primary theological building block = God is good. 

If God is good then he won’t treat anyone unfairly when it comes to a time of judgement. If you lived in a place where you never got to hear anyone speak of Jesus then a good God is unlikely to say ‘ah… sorry – sucks to be you…’ If God is good then we will be treated justly. In Romans 2, Paul writes of those who have never heard and says:

14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 

There is an innate sense of right and wrong that has been hardwired into our being and in the absence of any experience of faith, it seems this will be our guiding light – of course it doesn’t mean it will always get listened to.

When we are talking about the eternal destiny of every person who has ever lived then we are discussing a massive subject and one with plenty of conundrums… 

What can we be sure of?

God is good – I know – I keep banging that drum, but it’s gotta be a starting point.

Jesus is the only way to God. 

I keep hoping like CS Lewis did that there may be a second chance to reassess the evidence post-mortem, and some universalist theologians would suggest that for God to achieve his purposes (his desire that all be saved) then this would be essential. But there is also plenty of scripture to suggest that there will be a cut off and some will not be ‘saved’ or welcomed into the new creation.

Jesus as the only way is one of those ‘lines in the sand’, that I hold to, but how God accomplishes this may be more mysterious than I am able to imagine.