“God Friended Me” is a show on CBS that just ended. The basic premise is that this guy starts getting friend suggestions from an account named “God,” all of whom need some special help from him and his friends. It’s a little bit of a weak premise, but a decent show nonetheless. It’s very progressive in its characters—the main character, Miles, is a black atheist who is the son of an Episcopal bishop and whose sister is gay. The female lead character, Cara, is white, and of course becomes Miles’s love interest. In the series finale, a major story thread revolves around whether they should tell each other how they feel. Cara knows second-hand about Miles’s feelings but doesn’t reciprocate, yet doesn’t want to ruin the friendship. I know, kind of a cliche.
I started thinking about relationships more generally. The issue that Miles and Cara were confronting is this: everything that happens in and around a relationship affects it irreversibly. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but always the relationship is different afterwards.
I currently advise seven graduate students and one postdoc. We meet once a week to discuss their work, their progress, their plans, and anything they may need help with. For the most part, I’m pretty easygoing, perhaps too much so. Occasionally I need to get tough with one of them and push them to be more productive, or to focus more on one topic rather than another. Other times, they are struggling with some non-work-related issue and the discussion ventures outside the norm. In either case, the relationship is different afterwards. Usually, showing some humanity—on both sides—means that we come out with a greater understanding of each other and future discussions are better.
Sometimes, though, it goes sideways. I had an advisee a few years ago with whom the relationship soured. I think we were both at fault. Basically, our expectations of each other were not aligned with reality. After each incident, there was no going back. We eventually reached a point where we could not work together. He switched advisors and successfully completed his Ph.D. The problem wasn’t his ability to do work, nor was it my ability to advise students. Our relationship just didn’t work any more. There was no way to take back things we said and did in the past.
A few years ago, when Rhonda was dealing with facial pain and things were pretty bleak, our pastor, Lou Ellen, wrote me a note. She reminded me, among other things, that “the only way out is through.” We cannot change the past, and the past always affects the present and the future. There is no forgetting what happened–it remains in our subconscious. All we can do is trust that there is a way out, and that God will walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death.
And yet sometimes, there is rebirth. Consider the nation of Israel after their captivity in Babylon. They could have chosen to assimilate with their conquerors, but they chose instead to retain their identity. After Nehemiah returns…
17 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.” 18 I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, “Let us start building!” So they committed themselves to the common good. 19 But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they mocked and ridiculed us, saying, “What is this that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” 20 Then I replied to them, “The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we his servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem.”
Nehemiah 2:17-20
God was with Nehemiah. He knew that they could not turn back time and avoid the destruction of the Temple. But they could rebuild it. In so doing, though they never again achieved the glory of David and Solomon’s kingdom, they became a holy people, dedicated to God, a nation out of which Christianity would emerge to spread God’s name to the farthest corners of the earth.
We cannot reverse the damage done to our relationships, but with God, we can rebuild them.