In September televangelist, Pat Robertson, stirred up controversy on his show, “The 700 Club,” when he suggested it would be permissible to divorce a spouse with Alzheimer’s to marry another as long as the ill partner was provided for. When questioned about how this fit with Christian wedding vows, he responded, “If you respect that vow, you say ‘till death do we part.’ (Alzheimer’s) is a kind of death.”
Robertson’s assumption here—not an uncommon one—is that what fully makes us “persons” and our lives worth living is our cognitive understanding of ourselves and our stories. However, there is a problem with Christian leaders viewing personhood and social-spiritual commitments this way. It does not match up with how God has created and operates in the world and the Church. Our individual lives and stories do not end when we start to forget who we are.
This issue became personal to me this summer when for the first time in my life my grandfather forgot who I was. For the last several years, I have taken the week of my birthday off from my job in North Carolina to visit my grandparents in their small Michigan town. We have always been close as they raised me from infancy till age 8 when my mother remarried.
This particular visit was different from the previous ones. I had scanned hundreds of old family photos from ca.1903 and onward with the purpose of sitting down with my grandparents and typing out the names and stories behind each one. For a history geek like me that wants to preserve where we come from, this documentation is important. So, in edition to eating lunch and dinner, running errands, and watching “The Price is Right” together, the first several days we also spent a lot of time on the back porch chatting about family history and going through photos while I played scribe. Then midday on Tuesday, July 26, 2011, it was like a switch was flipped and reality changed.
Having been on the porch for about 10 minutes with both grandparents going through pictures, my grandmother and I got up and went into their backyard storage shed to try to find some old records that my grandfather had recorded. (In addition to his day job, he was a country musician in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. We were shocked to recently discover that an MP3 from an extremely rare 7-inch record he did in the early 1960s called “Skid Row” is on a radio station’s website. It is the 6th song listed, by Conrad Stoneburner. He is the one singing and playing guitar. Click here to listen.) After being in there just a few minutes, my grandfather came in, pointed right at me and said angrily to my grandmother, “I want him out of here now! I don’t know who he is, but he needs to go away.” I stood there stunned and quiet. On one side of this moment stood his disorientation and on the other side mine. Over the next several days he would try to throw me out of the house four times, only to be stopped by my grandmother’s emphatic reminders of who I am.
In an instant I became a stranger to the man who taught me how to tie my shoes and to ride a bike. He is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and my grandmother is taking care of him. The experience left me disoriented and wondering who this man is now that he has forgotten me. Looking to Scripture, the answer became clear: he is still my grandfather.
One of the most fundamental realities that the Church can learn through the Bible is that we are known, loved, and cared for by God first (e.g. Ps 139; Jer 1.5; Gal 4.9). This is reflected in the very shape of life. We all start out as infants whom are known by our parents and families before we know them. To be known when we are not able to know makes our lives possible.
Our individual stories—which carry and convey our personhood and lives—do not end because we start to forget them. This is true because they have never been just our own. Each of our stories is interwoven into those of others, as wife, husband, son, daughter, grandson, neighbor, friend, etc. God has others around to carry us and to remember our stories when we no longer can; each of us becomes part of the narratives of others. In this, our finite connected stories are taken up into the larger story of Christ.
A person does not ultimately exist as a person in her or his cognition, but rather in a story, a story told by God through communities of people. In this, faithfulness to a forgetful grandfather who knows not what he does becomes a reflection and a playing out of the faithfulness of God through Christ to a forgetful world that does not remember where it comes from, that it is loved, and that it is ultimately heading toward being beautifully restored. Someday grandpas will no longer forget and will be rescued, because God has not forgotten them and will never leave them behind like faded memories. This is something that even televangelists should try to remember.
Robertson’s assumption here—not an uncommon one—is that what fully makes us “persons” and our lives worth living is our cognitive understanding of ourselves and our stories. However, there is a problem with Christian leaders viewing personhood and social-spiritual commitments this way. It does not match up with how God has created and operates in the world and the Church. Our individual lives and stories do not end when we start to forget who we are.
This issue became personal to me this summer when for the first time in my life my grandfather forgot who I was. For the last several years, I have taken the week of my birthday off from my job in North Carolina to visit my grandparents in their small Michigan town. We have always been close as they raised me from infancy till age 8 when my mother remarried.
This particular visit was different from the previous ones. I had scanned hundreds of old family photos from ca.1903 and onward with the purpose of sitting down with my grandparents and typing out the names and stories behind each one. For a history geek like me that wants to preserve where we come from, this documentation is important. So, in edition to eating lunch and dinner, running errands, and watching “The Price is Right” together, the first several days we also spent a lot of time on the back porch chatting about family history and going through photos while I played scribe. Then midday on Tuesday, July 26, 2011, it was like a switch was flipped and reality changed.
Having been on the porch for about 10 minutes with both grandparents going through pictures, my grandmother and I got up and went into their backyard storage shed to try to find some old records that my grandfather had recorded. (In addition to his day job, he was a country musician in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. We were shocked to recently discover that an MP3 from an extremely rare 7-inch record he did in the early 1960s called “Skid Row” is on a radio station’s website. It is the 6th song listed, by Conrad Stoneburner. He is the one singing and playing guitar. Click here to listen.) After being in there just a few minutes, my grandfather came in, pointed right at me and said angrily to my grandmother, “I want him out of here now! I don’t know who he is, but he needs to go away.” I stood there stunned and quiet. On one side of this moment stood his disorientation and on the other side mine. Over the next several days he would try to throw me out of the house four times, only to be stopped by my grandmother’s emphatic reminders of who I am.
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| My grandfather is the one on the left, Conrad Stoneburner. This picture is from the early 1960s. |
In an instant I became a stranger to the man who taught me how to tie my shoes and to ride a bike. He is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and my grandmother is taking care of him. The experience left me disoriented and wondering who this man is now that he has forgotten me. Looking to Scripture, the answer became clear: he is still my grandfather.
One of the most fundamental realities that the Church can learn through the Bible is that we are known, loved, and cared for by God first (e.g. Ps 139; Jer 1.5; Gal 4.9). This is reflected in the very shape of life. We all start out as infants whom are known by our parents and families before we know them. To be known when we are not able to know makes our lives possible.
Our individual stories—which carry and convey our personhood and lives—do not end because we start to forget them. This is true because they have never been just our own. Each of our stories is interwoven into those of others, as wife, husband, son, daughter, grandson, neighbor, friend, etc. God has others around to carry us and to remember our stories when we no longer can; each of us becomes part of the narratives of others. In this, our finite connected stories are taken up into the larger story of Christ.
A person does not ultimately exist as a person in her or his cognition, but rather in a story, a story told by God through communities of people. In this, faithfulness to a forgetful grandfather who knows not what he does becomes a reflection and a playing out of the faithfulness of God through Christ to a forgetful world that does not remember where it comes from, that it is loved, and that it is ultimately heading toward being beautifully restored. Someday grandpas will no longer forget and will be rescued, because God has not forgotten them and will never leave them behind like faded memories. This is something that even televangelists should try to remember.
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| This is I, my grandmother, Betty, and my grandfather, Conrad, in front of their place in Michigan |
