Recently, an apologist that I owe everything I’ve ever typed on this website has passed away. His name is Steve Hays. Hays was a defender of conservative Christianity. He was very well-read in various areas. Whether Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Theology proper, Charismatics gifts, to OT liberalism. I had often sent him questions that bothered me and he would give me an informative answer. He was a sort of spiritual mentor for those that read his blog religiously. I wish to share his memoir with some of my comments. It wouldn’t be one of my articles without a quote from Hays:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/06/steve-hays-1959-2020.html
In his memoir, you get a personal look into his life that he would share in certain articles(usually in the realm of practical theology). Here are some words I believe many of us could relate to:
I’m drawn to stories about people living on the edge. People in
crisis. Where life is unendurable until somebody enters their life,
and it’s like that’s when life really begins for them. I think part of
it is owing to the fact that I’ve always been socially isolated to
some degree. Gifted children don’t relate to other kids on their
own level. In addition, some of my father’s remoteness rubbed off
on me. Combine that with the further fact that my parents weren’t into pop culture, and that left less common ground with my
peers.However, a fringe benefit of my spectator status is that I
was never sucked into the delinquent behavior that teenagers
frequently commit when they socialize.
I think that makes me attuned to how many desperately lonely or alienated people there are in the world. I have a natural connection with outsiders because that’s what I’ve been all my life.
I’ll always miss his ability to deconstruct an event and see the point behind it. He was creative in all his analysis. Able to help one see past the appearance for the reality. This appears in his memoirs over and over again. He does this in his autobiography on multiple occasions to reflect over his life. He takes on his grandmother’s death as an occasion to help the reader understand death a little better:
Sunrise lies beyond the setting sun. It cannot be reborn in the east unless it dies in the west. And once it dies, there’s nothing left to keep us here. Only darkness remains. Unbelievers rage against the dying light. But for the saints, our light must die below to then ascend to the zenith of meridian glory. Before we rise to light everlasting, our sun must set.
He explains how his childhood made him relate to the Biblical themes of light and darkness. Hays was always able to unpack biblical metaphors in a way that was unmatched. It was not too long ago that his insights were compiled into a book:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/11/in-thy-light-we-see-light.html
Here Hays talks about the death of his father. Something I hadn’t prepared for so young:
For a final time I ran my fingers through his luxuriant white hair, then with a last backward glance, left the room. My father had died a month shy of my fortieth birthday. It’s shocking to see your father dead. I remembered him through a child’s eyes, when he was younger and stronger, when he was my provider and protector. He gave and gave until he gave out. You never know how close they are to the end until the moment comes–like a fence that seems sturdy to the eye, but is riddled with dry rot within. Had I been more confident in his state of grace, the separation would not have left things hanging in the air. After he died my mother had a dream in which he told her he was waiting for us. But one shouldn’t put much stock in such things. I continue to pray for him, to pray that God saved him before he died. Some answers to prayer are retroactive.
I never had to see my Father widdle away to nothing. He was always strong with thick hands and never vulnerable(so we thought). I saw him in his casket. His face bruised and nothing resembling the man me and my sister use to jump on while he laid on his couch. A shell, empty of any life that remained. His arm stiff as roadkill. An image that remains on my mind.
Later a party was conducted in honor of my father. It contained family, friends, and memories. My Father wanted a party for when he died, but it brought me no comfort. I love my dad, but not for the drunk he wanted to be but for the helpful father he was. I don’t promote the “drink and be merry” lifestyle. I only see death, sin, and perishing when it is around. The life he chose, later had come to take him at the age of 50.
We had just started to become closer, an actual family. The struggles of life brought us together, but the struggles of life also tore us apart. As quickly as it happened it was over. He’ll never get to see any more of his grandchildren and we were never what we could’ve been.
The worst part is that he died a nominal roman catholic. It was a sort of theistic Hedonism that means nothing in the long term. I wish and pray he died in faith, but I rather doubt it. I can’t celebrate with that on my mind. So, I would sneak away to his room during the party and mourn the life of my father. He never said he loved me, I knew he did but it would have been nice to hear it. Maybe a trait he picked up from his old man(but I wonder if my grandfather even liked my father).
The fact we ultimately don’t have our family. Some do, but even they will die off and be forgotten. When at my father’s house during the party some family members were only there because their parents were there. My brother probably bitter anger towards him(or maybe just lacking feeling, it’s hard to have emotions for strangers) and my sister drinking her misery away trying to pretend she wasn’t sad. Ultimately, only we have is God. Hays recounts this fact while writing about how his Father and his Aunt Grace didn’t have anyone show up at their funerals:
He had suffered a heart attack the month before his death. Even though his brother was in town at the time, he didn’t stick around for the funeral. Neither did any of his grown children who lived in the area. The only people who came were the pious members of my mother’s family. The same was true at Grace’s funeral. A friend to many, she died without a friend, and even her only surviving brother—the apostate—absented himself from the funeral. Blood may be thicker than water, but the only indissoluble bond is sealed by the blood of Christ.
Hays continues his story to the death of his mother, to his problems with evil(the suffering of his grandmother, aunt, and mother), his dreams, and then his final testimony. He was a faithful son to his parents and stood by them until the end. A life marked by prayer and loyalty. Not only to his family but to God and his word.
The first time I had correspondences with Hays was in the comment section of this article in regards to idealism:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/07/idealism-and-van-tilianism.html
I had already had been reading his website for a little while. I had come across it while studying presuppositionalism. I think I was 16 years old and I have read him every day all these years. My entire adult life. He has greatly influenced my spiritual growth. He is a personal hero of mine(the second I have lost within a month). I wish to have faith as strong and informed as him.
The last time I had correspondence with him was with another of my myriads of questions. I always liked to ask him questions on posts like these. They weren’t ever that active and a goal in my life has been to not be a bother:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/05/unearthing-bible.html?m=0
I wish I would’ve known he was dying. I would’ve prayed for him. He liked being private. Well, he’s reunited with his family in glory, now.
I wish to end with select quotes from his memoir and from those recollecting their private conversations that have left an impact on me:
For Christians, a fatal disease is a gift. A friend. A doorknob out of this world into a better world. What is dreadful is not the prospect of death, but a world without a doorknob.
Yet she retained her faith, right up to the bitter end. Hers was a faith etched in tongues of fire–unquenchable to the last. Some Christians have faith-shattering experiences. It leaves their faith in pieces. And in this life they can’t repair it. Some pieces are missing. This causes some Christians to lose their faith. Sweeping away the remainders. But others cling to the shards of glass. Even a shattered faith is better than no faith at all. Sometimes God melts the broken glass and reforms their faith, like a glass-blower. But in other cases, only heaven can replace or refit the broken pieces.
So we walk by twilight. Yet twilight comes in two kinds: dawn and dusk. One faces into the rising sun while the other faces into the setting sun. Is it the twilight before sunup or the twilight before sundown? Are we walking into the night or walking into the light? Is the darkness lifting or descending? Is the worst behind us or ahead of us?
God sometimes sends a miracle to light our way. Yet a miracle is not a floodlight or heat lamp to turn a frigid winter night into a balmy summer day. A miracle is not a spotlight shining with a steady beam. No, a miracle is a blinking light guiding travelers to the world beyond. A lighthouse has a rotating beam that shines in darkness. It doesn’t provide interior illumination for a ship at sea. Rather, it directs the ship. It draws the ship to land, to safe harbor. Although miracles happen in this world, they point to another world. God performs enough miracles, now and then, here and there, to remind us of a better country from afar. A beacon of hope beyond the pain, and hope beyond the grave.
The more precious the thing you lose, the more you suffer the loss. But it’s better to lose something worthwhile then never having anything worthwhile to lose in the first place. And it’s better to suffer the loss of a greater good than to suffer the loss of a lesser good. Even though you suffer less or hardly at all, you miss out on the experience of having had the greater good. Many people lead wretched lives from start to finish. They never had the blessing of something precious to begin with.”“There’s a problem when we know all the right words, all the right answers, but it’s like we’re standing out in the cold, peering through a window to see a living room with a happy laughing family basking in the warm, cozy festive light of the fireplace. We hunger and shiver for what we need but we’re sealed off by that pane of glass…. In the providence of God, I think some Christians are called upon to be buffers for other Christians. We take [the abuse] to shield them.”Yet what I miss about her are not the special things, but the ordinary things. A smile. A look of recognition. It teaches us to be thankful for the mundane blessings we’d normally slight or take for granted. Death is so brutal.
In the end, that’s what life comes down to. A Bible. A patient. A prayer. An aging, dying parent with a child by their bedside. Strangers–doctors and nurses–circulating through the room at odd hours. In the end, there is nothing more to this life. There never was. Just love. Immortal love. Love above and love below.
Sometimes in life we know when we reached a turning-point. The worst is behind us. Nothing worse can befall us. Things will be better from hereon out. Yet some turning-points in life are invisible. It may be just around the next bend or over the next hill, but we can’t see it. There will be a day or week when we do everything for the last time, although we may not know it. For my sainted loved ones, the pain is past, the longing gone, the sorrow over, the patience requited, and the waiting rewarded. Far above the stars, where angels chime the watches of the night, they join the everlasting choir–in the tintinnabulations of a thousand-thousand bells.
Further Suggestions:
The Council 