IVP - Strangely Dim

The Final Word

by David A. Zimmerman

I’ve never thought of myself as pollyanic or even optimistic. I think it’s fair to say that I’m more like Eeyore than Tigger. As my sainted daddy always says, “An optimist can never be pleasantly surprised.”

Nevertheless, I don’t think I’m alone in wanting a happy ending. You invest your time in a book or a film or a conversation, and you expect that you’ll walk away from such an encounter with a positive feeling toward it. The hero will ride off into the sunset with newfound love riding alongside. The city will be at rest, now safe from its most recent and all future threats. Your friend will wrap things up with a “Nice talking with you. See you real soon.”

Even confessional conversations and all-too-real documentaries and nonfiction treatises end best when ended on a hopeful note: “Americans are too fat . . . Here are some suggestions for how we can all lose some weight.” “Bless me father for I have sinned . . . Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”

So imagine my disappointment when I turned today to the last page of a four-hundred page tome about the role of myth in culture and read eagerly to the final word: “despair.”

Despair?!? Are you kidding me?!? What kind of ending is that?!? There’s not even nobility tucked into the word despair. You can read A Tale of Two Cities, get to the last page to witness an execution and still walk away hopeful, even inspired:

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

The End

But walk away with the sound of “despair” still ringing in your ears, and whatever you hear next will carry its taint.

Giving despair the final word doesn’t just say something about a book or a movie or a relationship, it says something about our world. You’ve summed up existence in seven letters; you’ve given the worst benediction ever. The end of one thing is of course the beginning of the next, so to end so hopelessly is to infect your future with hopelessness.

Some assign that kind of hopelessness to death: the ultimate last word. In death we rot, we fade away; all that we’ve spent ourselves on over the course of our life comes to nothing. Death as the last word is a terribly unhappy ending, particularly because it wasn’t intended from the beginning of the story. Death entered the world as a plot point with the rebellion of humanity against its creator, and now death comes to all as we reap what we have sown.

But death has ceased to be the final word in Christian theology. Resurrection serves as an epilogue to death; in rising from death Jesus defeats it and removes its sting. Death is no longer an end but a beginning. Our heroes live happily ever after.

There. I feel better. Despair shouldn’t be allowed to get the final word, and we are good editors who steer the storytellers among us toward a more hopeful finish.

If we can’t bring ourselves to end on a hopeful note, maybe it’s enough to leave our story unfinished, and wait for the climax to be revealed to us. The Bible, of all things, ends on such a note of anticipation, after a thousand pages of staring despair square in the face and daring to hope:

Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.

Now that’s a good book. I know, cheesy. But I feel better.

Spam of the Year

I got an e-mail today that I'd like to nominate for Spam of the Year. It's artful with just a hint of dementia, and it contains no vulgarities or sales pitches for mortgage refinancing or body enhancement. There's probably some kind of viral worm coursing through my computer as I type this, but this spam may be worth it to me.

If you think you have something better, feel free to post a comment. Just keep it clean, is all I ask.

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In the middle of the night, I was walking by the sea, and baby baluga jumped out from amongst the bushes. SO one day Mr. Gregor exclaimed "Why do skater normals have no preppy either?!?!?!" So I wanted to watched. or Maybe if I wanted to watch it then I had a dream that countless historian lost their credit but i dont Remember what it was. I don't like you but can I have your autograph. No one wants your autograph so I started to cry in the pizza shop. Where did Ryan go? He must have moved to Ohio.

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If you know where Ryan went, let us all know. Thanks!

Old Friends

I’m getting old. I can see it and even feel it—the grey nose hairs, the popping joints and the intermittent back spasms. But more than the physical indicators that I’m getting old, I’m getting signals that I’m getting old from all the young people around me. I’ve very nearly reached the age of irrelevance.

You may think me inordinately morose—a coworker of mine told me I have plenty of good years ahead of me—but demographically speaking, turning thirty is tantamount to a kiss of death. You switch from MTV to VH1, and you’re well on your way to NPR. You switch from Sunny D to V8, and Metamucil is starting to sound sensible.

For those of us who try to stay hip, we find that twenty-somethings look at us funny every time we name-drop: “Hey, have you heard that new Coldplay song?” And just in case you’re not conscious of this shift, you get all kinds of reminders from the annoyingly young. Joan Girardi, the title character of the TV show Joan of Arcadia, took a cold shot while lamenting her own aging process: “I’m seventeen years old—that’s half the age of a really old person.”

For all you math fans out there, here’s what the equation looks like:

17 x 2 = Really Old Person
17 x 2 = 34
Dave = 34
Dave = Really Old Person

I’m comforted by the knowledge that I’m not alone in feeling old. Liz Phair, who was hip way back in 1991 and continues to be one of those names I occasionally drop, is feeling her age a bit. She wrote a song about being in her thirties and dating a college boy. One line spells it out in large print: “Your record collection don't exist / You don't even know who Liz Phair is.”

I’m also comforted by the fact that although I’m ancient in the eyes of the young, in the mind of America’s founding fathers I’m very nearly the age at which I can be trusted to run the country. For you math fans out there, here’s another equation to play around with:

17 x 2 = Really Old Person
Really Old Person +1 = 35
35 < Absolute Political Power

So, although I have virtually no chance of actually being elected president, I am now only two months away from having at least potential access to absolute political power. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Joan Girardi.

Lately, though, what’s comforted me more than anything is the relatively new presence in my life of old friends. Until last year, I went to a church that helped people to build relationships by grouping them demographically: married couples were introduced to married couples, retirees were introduced to retirees, and so on. If someone fell outside your principal demographic, they were effectively invisible to you within the confines of the church.

My new church is small enough, though, that it would be silly to group people so narrowly. As a result, I recently spent three months in a discussion group with people who were twice my age. I felt like a student, except that I was treated as an equal. We talked about health and loneliness and family, as I’ve done with my demographic peers in the past, except that these discussions came from a completely different frame of reference. I found myself with a different outlook: in the past I’ve dwelled on my youth and consequently I’ve feared aging; in this group I looked forward and saw people experiencing life in all its fullness, and aging lost a bit of its sting.

Since our group disbanded, one of my old friends was sent to a hospital, and I had my first inkling that I will over time watch many of my loved ones get sick and eventually die—some sooner than others. But the older we get, the more we understand that dying is OK; God uses death to usher his people into a life without tears, fulfilling the vague longing that’s followed us throughout life.

This awareness of death eludes the young but regularly tests the faith of the old, and in that respect having old friends is like a spiritual discipline: none of us is immune from death, and the sooner we face up to that the sooner we can make our peace with God and get on with living.

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Mark your calendars: Batman Begins hits theaters June 15; Fantastic Four hits theaters July 8. For a guy who's inexplicably enamored with superheroes, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . .