The views expressed in this article are of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
Act I: Virtue
In September 2023, I spent three days in a lake house in Holland, Michigan with theologians, philosophers, doctors, psychologists, and pastors; it felt like a nerdy reality TV show. Our task: to discuss several assigned readings related to chronic illness and the Christian life. Our convener was theologian Todd Billings, who brought together to consider the role that the virtues might play in forming and informing a Christian life in the face of chronic illness.
In my almost twenty years of ministry and teaching, I have encountered first-hand the effects of chronic illness, mental illness, disability, and terminal diagnoses. I have walked through life with teenagers who live with fibromyalgia, parents who raise their children in the face of leukemia, youth and young adults with Down syndrome, and adults with Parkinson’s, Lupus, and ALS. More recently, I have seen young adults with Long Covid suffer unimaginable life-altering debilitation. All of this has taught me that American Christianity is not prepared to handle suffering and death. We tend to treat it as a theodicy to be explained or a terror to be sentimentalized. Very few Christians are prepared to think about and experience suffering within the larger context of their basic theological conviction that in the incarnation, God chooses to become human and to suffer with us. At least, I know I wasn’t.
“All of us live within the limits of our creatureliness.”
My friends in the disability community sometimes use the term “temporarily able-bodied” to describe those of us who do not live with a disability. It is a different way of saying the same thing: all of us live within the limits of our creatureliness. Even though I’ve befriended folks with disabilities and had significant theological conversations with friends who are writing, thinking about, and living with chronic conditions, it never occurred to me when I went to Holland that September that I might become chronically ill. At the age of forty-two, I never imagined that the ableness of my own body was temporary.
By November, it became clear that my whole life was changing. And with that clarity came the realization that I—not just my parishioners—have digested a brand of American Christianity that is not prepared to handle suffering and death with the grace that I would have imagined. In fact, in the face of chronic illness, my first instinct was to abandon some of my most basic and cherished theological convictions. When I needed them most, I found that my convictions were stuck in a vicious mud.
Act II: Vice
One vice has been a recurring problem in my life: anger. When I was a young teenager, I heard a speaker give a series of talks based on Neil Anderson’s popular book The Bondage Breaker (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1993) at a youth camp. To that point, I considered myself a Christian, but I harbored a great deal of unexplained and uncontrolled anger. Always polite in public, I would take my anger out privately on my siblings or in yelling matches with my parents. Over the course of the week, I came to terms with the fact that I was angry at my father for a lot of things, some of which were reasonable and some of which weren’t. The result was that I was in bondage to my anger and the path towards freedom began with my recognition of God’s forgiveness and resulted in me forgiving my parents. Almost immediately, it seemed, my anger dissolved; I was a new creation. The virtue that dissipated my anger was gratitude. I was thankful for the forgiveness I’d received in Christ and was able to extend it to others. Problem solved.
Except that it wasn’t. When I was in my twenties, living in Pasadena, California, and commuting into Los Angeles several times a week, my anger came back with a vengeance. There was still a very angry person inside of me. The difference is that instead of projecting that anger outward, I had learned to control it—or at least its public appearance—by directing it inward and trying to smother it. I allowed myself to be angry with myself so that my anger didn’t hurt others. In retrospect, I probably wasn’t as successful at hiding it as I thought. It manifested itself as a sort of sarcastic pessimism that was off-putting to some but tolerated by others.
Then, when I turned thirty, I got married and discovered that my internal anger had repercussions beyond myself. As my wife and I became one flesh, I discovered, first, that when I was angry with myself, she felt it, and second, that I began to treat her like I treated myself. I was regularly frustrated when things didn’t go the way I imagined. I had trouble giving up control. I eventually learned new coping strategies and new ways to feel in control as I developed a new routine. But when that routine was interrupted by the birth of my first and then my second child, the anger came back to the surface and took a toll on the relationships that I valued.
I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that my anger is bigger than I can manage and my attempts to control my anger often come at the expense of my friends and family because most of my coping mechanisms for controlling my anger are dependent upon another vice that has taken hold in my life: sloth.
Sloth is often associated with laziness that manifests itself as inactivity; in my case, sloth tends to manifest itself as over-activity. During my twenties I developed the bad habit of escaping my emotions by maintaining a busy schedule. I would go from grad school to volunteer work to group hangouts to bed. I kept myself busy and around people to avoid an overwhelming depression that has been with me since my sophomore year of college. Busyness became my way to deal with my anger. To this day, when I feel my anger welling up within me and I’m in a difficult conversation or situation where I cannot escape, I turn to busy work. My wife and I will be in the middle of a significant conversation, and I will get up and start doing the dishes while we are talking. Over the years, I thought I had put my anger behind me; it turns out I was just trying to outrun it.
Last fall I lost the race.
Act III: Vicissitudes
On November 19, 2023, my empire crumbled. As with most things that crumble, there had been cracks. But I refused to notice them. It seemed easier to believe that they were superficial, not structural. There were the physical cracks—discomfort in my hand and fingers from regular smart phone use, discomfort in my knees after workouts—but it was the relational and spiritual cracks that caught me off guard. Physically, my problems could be attributed to aging. Most of them even seemed likely to disappear with lifestyle changes. Relationally, my marriage was strong; my wife and I had recently made a unified decision to relocate our family to the Tampa area of Florida and to accept a new pastoral call. The process brought us closer together. Spiritually, my relationship with God felt stronger than it had in a while. I celebrated a successful summer of ministry with youth and young adults, baptizing a recent high school graduate after a powerful summer mission trip. I counseled two young couples as they prepared to marry and officiated their weddings. Finally, I discerned that God was calling me to a new position in ministry with a new congregation.
2023 was my year, in a lot of ways, and November 19 was meant to be the climax. My third Sunday as pastor of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church would be the day I was officially installed as Senior Pastor. My parents and in-laws were scheduled to come into town. In the morning, I would baptize my nine-month-old son, Ezra, with our whole family in attendance. In the afternoon, my peers from the Presbytery of Tampa Bay would gather at our seaside church and install me as pastor. Then, my family would enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving week together.
Just after I baptized my son and mere hours before I was to be installed, I completely fell apart.
A month earlier, I experienced inflammation in my ankles after a road trip to Dollywood with the family. The following day, the inflammation migrated to my wrists and the pain was overwhelming. I managed it with water and Naproxen. Within days it was gone.
On that same trip, I was exposed to COVID, and my immune system went into overdrive. My family and I ended our quarantine just in time to say goodbye to all our Alabama friends and for me to fly to Tampa to preach my first sermon at our new church. A short turnaround between flights forced me to run through the Atlanta airport, causing some of my COVID symptoms like coughing and inflammation to return. From that point forward, I experienced regular inflammation in my joints.
The following week was a blur: a return trip to Alabama, packing up the moving van, living in a hotel, and almost losing the house we signed a contract for in Florida. We lived on the road and in guest rooms until our house was ready. And then, just like that, before we were even settled, we had our first visitors. Family from both sides were coming to celebrate my installation and to witness Ezra’s baptism.
The week preceding the service, my inflammation began to spiral out of control. My feet swelled to the point where every step was excruciating. My leg muscles weakened to the point where I needed assistance to stand up and sit down. The Naproxen no longer seemed effective.
I decided to muscle my way through the Sunday services and then to seek medical help on Monday. I could barely stand to preach the first service, so I cut my sermon short. Then I went to the Emergency Room. The ER doctor was less than hospitable. From his perspective, I did not have an emergency. So, after checking my vital organs, he sent me home with a referral to a rheumatologist. I was bed-ridden for several days, then diagnosed with arthritis, treated with steroids, and ultimately prescribed Sulfasalazine. I began an elimination diet that required me to become gluten-, dairy-, caffeine-, and alcohol-free for several weeks. I began taking regular doses of fish oil, magnesium, and turmeric. In a single week, my life changed dramatically.
Act IV: Validation
During the days after my emergency room visit and my first appointment with the rheumatologist, I laid in bed, surrounded by unopened boxes, wondering if I made the biggest mistake of my life. We left a strong support network within driving distance of family and a job that did not depend upon me being in the pulpit week after week; we traded in every ounce of equity that we had built up to move into a smaller home with a much higher mortgage and interest rate; and, when I was supposed to be in the prime of my working life, I was suddenly incapable of even standing up.
My leg muscles weakened to the point where I could not hold myself upright. The pain continued to migrate around my joints, and I had been ordered off the naproxen without an alternative recommendation.
Two months prior, I read Ross Douthat’s memoir, The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery (New York: Convergent, 2021). Douthat documents the drastic ways that his life was altered by contracting Lyme Disease: years of pain, the impotence of modern medicine, a family pushed to the brink of financial ruin. I could not help but see myself in his story.
It didn’t help that the ER doctor asked me several times about bug bites, target shaped rashes, and requested a detailed account of all my recent travels. The symptoms were there; the blood work was inconclusive. For days, I began to wonder if I was now a member of the community that lives with tick-born illnesses.
“Mostly, I wondered—repeatedly—if I had made the biggest mistake of my life.”
Or maybe it was worse. Google searches of my various symptoms seemed to multiply the possibilities. At different points over two days, I wondered what my life would look like going forward if I had Lupus, or Multiple sclerosis, or even ALS. I thought about whether my wife would be able to raise two kids and care for a disabled spouse. I wondered if the debts I had recently taken on with the new house could be paid with a reduced income and disability insurance. I wondered if the church that I was three weeks into pastoring would be forced to look for their sixth pastor in five years and, if so, if they could survive another round of instability. Mostly, I wondered—repeatedly—if I had made the biggest mistake of my life.
My limbo was shortened by a last-minute appointment with a rheumatologist the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I was nervous about the appointment. When I was in the ER, the doctor seemed perturbed that I was there. He sent me home without so much as a prescription to manage my pain and a reluctant referral to a rheumatologist. By this point, I had read several stories of people with chronic illnesses. One commonality regarded the medical establishment’s skepticism toward patients whose symptoms come and go quickly or migrate around the body. The rheumatologist listened to my story, had me perform a few exercises to describe my pain, tested my leg strength, and then looked me in the eyes and said, “You are sick, but we are going to figure out what it is, and we are going to treat it.” It was the first moment of relief in almost a week. Validation. With that, he wrote a prescription for a steroid and sent me to get bloodwork done.
A week later, I returned to his office with the inflammation greatly reduced thanks to the steroid. He diagnosed me with inflammatory arthritis. I probably have rheumatoid arthritis, but we will not know definitively until the illness progresses to a point where the bloodwork can be more definitive. I am relieved to know the name of my illness, but I am unsure how this will change my life going forward.
Act V: Vindication
The week or so between cancelling my installation service and receiving my diagnosis was illuminating. In that time, I learned how vicious my life had become. Faced with the reality that I had little control over my circumstances, I was forced to acknowledge that I am an angry, violent, and ableist sinner in need of God’s grace. In my mid-twenties, I embraced a Barthian Reformed theology that emphasized God’s sovereign action on behalf of helpless humanity. In congruence with that theological shift in my thinking, I came to champion a radically inclusive gospel that hinged on God’s ability despite any and every human disability. Likewise, I began to think of myself as a Christian pacifist, believing that Christians ought to live in the world in a manner that eschews coercion and violence as means of control.
In bed in a still unfamiliar home in Florida, I discovered that the revolutionary ways my theology had changed were mitigated and moderated by my need for control. The stories I told myself and others about God’s transformative work in my life were carefully crafted in a manner that allowed me to remain the primary actor in my life even as I spoke about God’s action. The fact that I remained unconverted in the deepest parts of my soul became harder and harder to ignore as I lay there considering my mortality.
The first thing I had to acknowledge was how quick I was to anger. I could no longer get out of bed and do things for myself. In the first day or two, I was sheepish and grateful. “Oh, thank you so much for covering for me,” I told my wife, as she balanced caring for me and our children, handling all the household chores, and entertaining out of town guests. Then, as she predictably grew tired, I felt a little entitled and frustrated. Finally, as things began to remain undone, I grew angry.
After the anger, came the confrontation with my violence. Like my anger, violence and all other forms of coercion are really about control. I have a control problem. I need to be in control. And when I can’t be in control, I struggle to keep my anger in check. Though I’m not physically violent, I do resort to words and other petty behaviors to try and regain control of my surroundings. The less control I have, the more likely I am to lash out verbally. Before arthritis, I was able to maintain a façade. As I lost control, I was forced to come to terms with the fact that although I fervently believe that God has called us to live peaceably in a world that we cannot control, I still live and act as if I am in control and I use non-physical types of coercion to gain and maintain that control.
Facing my anger and my tendency toward violence unmasked yet a third problem: I continue to live, act, and think in ways that are essentially ableist. I believe that at the heart of the gospel is the claim that while we are unable to effect or even contribute toward our own salvation, God is both able and willing. This has given me compassion for folks living with cognitive disabilities when it comes to my view of the scope of God’s saving love. And yet, I have found it increasingly difficult to extend that love to others—and even to myself.
From my bed, I began to think about all the people I knew who lived with chronic illness. I wondered how many times their pain failed to register my sympathy. I also thought about how they demonstrated dignity, grace, and patience to the point of obscuring the effect their illness had on their lives. I thought about my wife, how her feet swelled like mine during both pregnancies, how it must have hurt her to walk on them as much as it hurt me, and yet she continued to work and to parent with little recognition. Finally, I thought about the people in my life who lived with invisible illnesses: the people I love who live with mental illness. I thought about how I lacked compassion when their disabilities impinged upon my freedom.
As I thought about all these people, one word came to mind: magnanimous. I could not help but reflect upon the fact that I was for the first time experiencing what a lot of people experience day in and day out. Where they demonstrated virtue, I was prone toward vice. If you would have asked me one year ago how I thought I would handle death, dying, or chronic illness, I would have told you that I aspired to be a paragon of the virtues that my faith instilled in me: patience, forbearance, gratitude, peace, and supremely, trust. Instead, what I found was that at the first hint of bodily decline, I slid right down into the muddy swamp of vice. Where I expected myself to be the embodiment of magnanimity, or greatness of soul, I found only pusillanimity, or smallness of soul.
In her book, Glittering Vices (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2020), Rebecca DeYoung remembers discovering the concept for the first time in the writings of Thomas Aquinas:
Those afflicted by this vice, wrote Aquinas, shrink back from all that God has called them to be. When faced with the effort and difficulty of stretching themselves to the great things of which they are capable, they cringe and say, “I can’t.” Their faintheartedness comes from relying on their own puny powers and focusing on their own potential for failure, instead of counting on God’s grace to equip them for great kingdom work (p. 2).
During my illness, I have been forced to come to terms with my own sin in a new and ever more humbling manner. I have been brought to the point of confession: confession that where I thought I was strong, I am weak; confession that where I thought I was capable of love and forgiveness, I was harbored anger and sloth; and finally, confession that when I thought I was trusting God, I really trusted myself alone.
I have yet no recovery story, no anecdote about how I moderated my vices with the virtues of meekness, perseverance, and magnanimity. And that is, perhaps, as it should be. For even amid confession, I remain certain that my redemption has always been and will continue to be beyond my ability to secure. It is secured by Christ alone. Nevertheless, I am convicted that my lifelong discipleship in the way of Jesus failed to produce the virtues that would make me Christlike in the face of death and illness. For that, I can only pray, maranatha.
The Faith and Illness Initiative at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, is currently receiving applications for pastors to participate in its 2024 Colloquy September 16–18. Applications are due May 26, 2024. For more information, see https://fii.westernsem.edu/.
David Hunsicker (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is the Senior Pastor at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Dunedin, FL. He is a fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians’ St. Basil Fellowship.
