True Story…

Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at Stanford Hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liza who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her five-year-old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “Yes, I’ll do it if it will save Liza.”

As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, “Will I start to die right away?”

Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give her all his blood.

Okay, now, how many of you are desperately trying to hold back tears?  (Chang, I know that you have a healthy connection to your emotions so you’re probably not even trying to hold it back… hehe).  Okay, now what if I told you that the volunteer in this story was not me?  Would it make it any less touching?  How about if I told you that this story is most likely fabricated?  Would it mean less?

This story has actually been told and retold as “true” in various forms for around 80 years.  It’s most widely known telling was in the book “Chicken Soup for the Soul” where it is not explicitly mentioned that it is a true story, but one is led to believe that it is.  But considering the many different forms it took over its 80 year life and that there is no real evidence that this actually happened, it is most likely completely made up – or at very least the various iterations are.

There are countless other stories like this one being distributed over e-mail or verbally retold over and over again… and always with the moniker that it is a completely “true” story.  This bothers me somewhat.  It’s not that I think that the stories have no merit in themselves, but the fact that the lie that it is a “true” story needs to be added to them is what makes me uneasy.  I think that people think that by stating that they are true the stories will have more of an effect.  But does it?

One area, though, in which this actually gets me pretty angry is when the story has to do with faith.  I think we’ve all seen them… the stories of how people demonstrate their faith or of how the “scientific” world gets debunked for not fostering a belief in God.  I’m sure everyone has heard the story of the professor who says that God doesn’t exist and that if he did, he could stop a piece of chalk from breaking by him throwing it on the ground.  Usually the school mentioned or the year it happened changes with each retelling of the story.  If you’ve never heard the story click on the following link to get up to speed…

Chalk of Ages… Uncleft for Me

Several years ago, I got a story that actually got me pretty angry.  It was a story about how NASA scientists found that a day was missing which proves Joshua 10:12-13 because they were making some calculations and found that there indeed was a “day missing” in our universe.  As I was reading it with my “engineer cap” on, I was extremely skeptical of their “scientific proof” of this finding.  It didn’t make any logical sense.  First, it is impossible to have a past point of reference to make the measurement today unless the measuring tool existed in the past as well.  It would be the equivalent of stretching out a tape measure without knowing where the beginning was and reading the measurement and saying that at that point is the length of what ever it is you’re measuring.  The language of the story was “scientific sounding” enough to fool many non-critical thinkers and even the name of a real person and company (Harry Hill, Pres. of Curtis Engine Co.) were included to make it even more convincing.  I actually phoned the Curtis Engine Company shortly after receiving the email and wanted to talk to Mr. Hill.  I wanted to see if he knew that his name was attached to this story and, if he did perpetuate the story, to question his sources and findings.  The receptionist actually told me that he had been deceased for several years.  I partly think that it may have just been a way to get rid of me quickly because I’m sure that the company was receiving numerous phone calls.  (update:  on the Curtis Engine Company website there is a blurb about Harry Hill)

So I phoned the guy who sent it to me (who is now a missionary) and argued with him that the story was ridiculous.  We went back and forth about the veracity of the story.  He mostly cited that I didn’t know what kind of methods they used so I couldn’t say for sure.  I mostly argued the implausibility of making measurements backwards in time and that the story sounded like a 12 year-old wrote it.  It got pretty heated.  Finally he said, “why can’t you just have a little faith and just accept it?”

I nearly dropped the phone.

I don’t know… maybe because I didn’t see a chapter or verses marking the pages to give an indication that it was, in fact, scripture… maybe because I had no idea where the story truly came from – scholar or scoffer… maybe because I don’t need an anecdote to verify my faith… maybe because when this story is found to be fraudulent, it will weaken Christianity’s witness to the world… maybe because by lending truth to a lie and having faith in that would actually cheapen the truth.

I understand that people want to have something tangible to vindicate themselves to the world that Christianity is worth believing in.  It seems that the world, especially the scientific world, mocks Christians for not needing physical evidence to support their beliefs.  A story like this one is a “take that!” to the scoffers and may satisfy this longing for believers to be taken seriously.  But in the end, if the story is debunked, aren’t we just proving them right?  And also, considering faith is the belief in something unseen, wouldn’t it be changing what faith is at its core after all?

So everytime I see something like this come across my desk, I try to verify it as quickly as possible so that my friends and colleagues aren’t aiding in the spread of untruth.  We are Christians.  We hold the ultimate truth.  There is no room for lies.

So does it make a difference if a story is true or not?  It matters what the story is about.  If the intent is to entertain or move… I can probably let it go.  If the intent is to support my faith, you’d better believe that it matters.

So to complete this exercise, I’m going to write a story… you decide whether it’s true or not, and see if it makes a difference in how you perceive it.

My aunt Esther was one of the most vibrant women I ever knew, and her faith was inspirational to me.  I never knew exactly how old she was because though I knew she must have been well into her 70’s, she had the energy and enthusiasm of a woman half her age.  She was always asked to speak at women’s conferences and seminars and the like, which she did with great aplomb and vigor… any opportunity to share about how good God has been to her in her life.  Once when I was driving her from her hotel to another speaking engagement in a long caravan of other cars loaded with dignitaries and local pastors, she told me to “step on it” so that we could beat everyone else there just for the heck of it.  Yes, she was a firecracker.  I guess that’s what made it especially tragic when she developed Alzheimer’s.

For the remainder of her years, she was confined to a small bungalow of a home across the street from the church where her husband preached for 20 years… being looked after by a full-time nurse.  And though my sister got married just a few hundred feet away in that church, my aunt could not attend because she was in the latter stages of her disease.  A few hours before the ceremony, I took some time with my father to visit her briefly.  She barely resembled the woman I once knew.

The majority of the time my father and I were there, we spent the time just sitting with her, not really engaging her because she would be going in and out of her episodes of delirium.  She would rant some story about her youth and her teaching days, alternating between Korean, English, and Japanese.  Or she would just say a tirade of non-sensical babbling to which the nurse would attempt to calm her down.  She looked at me and would smile, but I could tell that she didn’t really know who I was and was just being polite in acknowledging my presence more than a few times.  I remember wanting to tell her what an inspiration she was to me in my life and that I loved her, but I knew that wouldn’t have any real effect on her in that state.  It was weird but I missed her profoundly at that moment even though she was right there a few feet away.

Then in what I believed was a brief moment of clarity, she looked at my father and sighed deeply… and in a mix of English and Korean she said, “What am I going to do… I can’t do anything for the Lord anymore… I am useless…”  and I could see the pain etched in her face.

Then my father said something that I will never forget.  He said, “no, this is actually a very very good thing… now you finally have time to pray for everyone…  you can pray all day if you want.”

I will also never forget the look that came over my aunt’s face after he finished.  For the first time since our visit started, she looked at peace.  I know that there is a good chance she completely forgot what he said minutes afterward, but a part of me thinks that she held onto that and in her brief times when the clouds in her mind lifted, she did pray.  She passed away not too many months after that.  Thousands attended her funeral including heads of state and clergy from all over the world.  Many at the wake spoke of her great accomplishments and her influence.  I just remember her as my Aunt Esther (Ahn Ei Sook) who found joy in spending her last days praying.