Do you think I will ever find God?
- Father John Powell
This story was written by Father John Powell, a retired professor at Loyola
University in Chicago. Father Powell is advanced in years, but the story is still fresh in his mind.
By Father John Powell
A
TRUE STORY about an Atheist Theology Student Who Was Found by God
Some twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students file
into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the first day I first saw Tommy. My eyes and my mind both
blinked. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders.
It was the first time I had ever seen a boy
with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion then. I know in my mind that it isn’t what’s on your head but what’s
in it that counts; but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped.
I immediately filed Tommy under "S" for strange... very
strange. Tommy turned out to be the "atheist in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at,
or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father-God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester,
although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew.
When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final
exam, he asked in a slightly cynical tone: "Do you think I’ll ever find God?"
I decided instantly on a little shock therapy. "No!"
I said very emphatically.
"Oh," he responded, "I thought that was the product you were pushing."
I let him get five steps from the
classroom door and then called out: "Tommy! I don’t think you’ll ever find him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!"
He shrugged a little and left my class and my life.
I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line:
"He will find you!" At least I thought it was clever. Later I heard that Tommy had graduated and I was duly grateful.
Then a sad report,
I heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body
was very badly wasted, and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was
firm, for the first time, I believe. "Tommy, I’ve thought about you so often. I hear you are sick!" I blurted out.
"Oh, yes, very
sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It’s a matter of weeks."
"Can you talk about it, Tom?"
"Sure, what would you like to know?"
"What’s
it like to be only twenty-four and dying?"
"Well, it could be worse."
"Like what?"
"Well, like being fifty and having no values or
ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real ‘biggies’ in life."
I began to look
through my mental file cabinet under "S" where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification
God sends back into my life to educate me.)
But what I really came to see you about," Tom said, " is something you said to me on the
last day of class." (He remembered!) He continued, "I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, ‘No!’ which surprised
me. Then you said, ‘But he will find you.’ I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time.
(My "clever" line. He thought about that a lot!) But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant,
then I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against
the bronze doors of heaven.
But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great
effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit.
Well, one day I woke up, and instead
of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that
I didn’t really care... about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that. "I decided to spend what time I had left doing something
more profitable. I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said: ‘The essential sadness is to go
through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those
you loved that you had loved them.’ "So I began with the hardest one: my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him."
"Dad"...
"Yes, what?" he asked without lowering the newspaper.
"Dad, I would like to talk with you."
"Well, talk."
"I mean... It’s
really important."
The newspaper came down three slow inches. "What is it?"
"Dad, I love you. I just wanted you to know that." Tom
smiled at me and said with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him: "The newspaper fluttered
to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me.
And we talked
all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel
his hug, to hear him say that he loved me. "It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged
each other, and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years.
I was only sorry about one thing: that I had waited so long. Here I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually
been close to.
"Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn’t come to me when I pleaded with him. I guess I was like
an animal trainer holding out a hoop, ‘C’mon, jump through.’ ‘C’mon, I’ll give you three days... three weeks.’ Apparently God does
things in his own way and at his own hour. "But the important thing is that he was there. He found me.
You were right. He found me
even after I stopped looking for him."
"Tommy," I practically gasped, "I think you are saying something very important and much more
universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make him a private possession,
a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love. You know, the Apostle John said that.
He said God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.’ Tom, could I ask you a favor? You
know, when I had you in class you were a real pain. But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into my present
Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing it wouldn’t be half as effective
as if you were to tell them."
"Oooh... I was ready for you, but I don’t know if I’m ready for your class."
"Tom, think about it. If
and when you are ready, give me a call." In a few days Tommy called, said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for
God and for me. So we scheduled a date. However, he never made it.
He had another appointment, far more important than the one with
me and my class. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed.
He made the great step from faith into vision.
He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard or the mind of man has ever
imagined.
Before he died, we talked one last time. "I’m not going to make it to your class," he said.
"I know, Tom."
"Will you tell
them for me? Will you... tell the whole world for me?"
"I will, Tom. I’ll tell them. I’ll do my best."
So, to all of you who have
been kind enough to hear this simple statement about love, thank you for listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant
hills of heaven: "I told them, Tommy...as best I could."