Final Lessons From Charlie

Saying goodbye to the best dog in the world

I saw the signs. I knew it wouldn’t be long. But I kept thinking, “As long as he’s happy. . .” I was wrong.

Of course he acted happy. That’s what dogs do. It’s an instinct that they can’t resist. When they were in the wild, they had to hide their weaknesses and put on a show of strength. Otherwise they’d be attacked by predators.

Pretend to be happy. Pretend everything’s okay. Even when the pain is almost unbearable.

Poor Charlie.

Maybe I just wasn’t ready to let go of the best dog in the world. The one who trusted me more than I trust God. The one who, unlike any other dog that I'd ever known, loved people more than he loved food.

So I let him suffer for too long.

I knew he had an uncontrollable, inoperable growth. But even as it continued to expand, it didn’t seem to bother him. He didn’t seem to know that it was there.

In the last few weeks, though, Charlie had begun showing signs that something had changed: Eating a little less eagerly. Occasionally acting restless. Straying from his usual routines. Failing to come to me in the evening, when he knew he could get some extra attention. At other times, appearing more needy, seeking more strokes. Lying out in the sun more often. He’d learned from his achy joints that heat could reduce pain.

I should have recognized what was happening.

It wasn’t until late one afternoon, when I took a closer look at his growth, that I could see clear indications of how very much it was hurting him. Poor Charlie.

My heart broke. Partly because I knew the time had come when I’d have to say goodbye. But even more because I’d allowed this dog that I loved so much to suffer needlessly.

It was too late to contact the doctor that day. And I needed to process my next steps, to be certain that there was only one way to relieve his pain.

The next morning I called the vet’s office as soon as it opened and made one last appointment for Charlie. I sat by his side as he fell asleep and as the overdose of anesthetic was administered. I said my last farewell with tears in my eyes.

How do they do it? How do dogs put on such a good show of being strong and happy even when they’re in agony? Don’t they realize that it only makes their suffering worse?

Hiding our pain

And yet we humans often do the same thing. Pretend to be happy. Pretend everything’s okay. Even when the pain is almost unbearable.

Not so much with physical achiness. In that case, we rush to the medicine cabinet or to the doctor. But we do it with emotional suffering.

“Don't cry out loud. Just keep it inside, learn how to hide your feelings.” (From “Don’t Cry Out Loud.” Lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, 1976.)

“I am a rock. I am an island. And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries.” (From “I Am a Rock,” by Paul Simon, 1965.)

“In order to shield my pride, I’ve tried to cover this hurt with a show of gladness.” (From “The Tears of a Clown.” Lyrics by Smokey Robinson, 1967.)

Songs from my youth voicing our human tendency to hide our pain and weakness. To imagine that remaining aloof from others and maintaining our pride will feel better than taking the risk of being hurt. Why don’t we realize that it only makes our suffering worse?

We’re not dogs. We’re not compelled by instinct to pretend that we’re strong, that all is well. Yes, there are predators out there who will try to take advantage of us in our weakness. But there are also sources of comfort and strength. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4, italics added). “God . . . comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NLT, italics added).

Unlike dogs, we’ve learned as a species that we grow stronger emotionally and spiritually by facing our pain, revealing it to trusted friends, and allowing them to minister to us in our time of need. Why is it so hard to do that?

Seeing others’ pain

One reason I didn’t understand how much Charlie was hurting was because I didn’t try to look closely enough to see for myself how bad it had gotten. I was willing to take him at face value.

How often do we as Christians treat our fellow sufferers the same way? How often do we simply accept the show they put on instead of trying to peer beneath the surface? How much anguish could we address and relieve if we just took the time to look at the signs and reach out to them?

As with Charlie, the signs are usually there. A lack of appetite. Increased restlessness. Changes in routines or habits. Withdrawing from others. Acting more needy. Self-medicating.

Are we willing to see them?

Once I realized what was happening to Charlie, my next steps were obvious and straightforward. That doesn’t tend to be the case with human beings. Our emotional struggles are more complicated than a dog’s physical pain. Trying to be there for someone who’s hurting inside can get messy.

But if it’s done with prayer and compassion, desiring what’s best for the sufferer, being in tune to their needs and to the Holy Spirit’s leading rather than forcing our own agenda on them—and apologizing and learning from our mistakes when we fail—God can use us to help relieve their pain.

This isn’t optional. It’s what Jesus did when He walked this earth. It’s part of our calling as His followers. Part of His plan to heal those who are hurting.

 

What Does God Know?

The problem

There's something that's always bugged me about the theology that I’ve heard over the years. (If you’ve read many of my articles, you know there’s more than one something. I just want to address one in particular here. But don’t worry—I still stand firmly on the foundational beliefs of the faith. All my questions relate to the details of the theologies that have been built on that foundation.)

In my last post I said, “There’s a sense . . . in which God actually hurts.” (I should have added a reference to Genesis 6:6 here, but I didn’t think of it at the time.) “Because of that, He understands our pain more deeply and completely than we can ever imagine” (italics added). That’s what I’ve been taught. I’ve heard it from many wise sources. I’m willing to accept that there’s some sense in which it’s true, so I was okay with saying that in my article. But if we take it too far it can lead to serious errors in our view of God.

From what I understand, this idea is at least partly based on two passages in Hebrews.

Hebrews 2:17-18: For this reason, he [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Hebrews 4:15-16: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

These verses seem to imply that the Son of God, a full-fledged member of the Trinity, was only able to sympathize with our weaknesses and become merciful by taking on human flesh and seeing what it was like to suffer from temptation. If God, as the Son, had not experienced being human, the Godhead as a whole (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) would be unable to really understand us.

The greatness of God

But God is GOD. He knows all. He understands all. He created all there is out of nothing. He created the full potential range of our emotions and thoughts. Even before the beginning, He knew us, not just intellectually, but deeply, richly, intimately, completely (Psalm 139).

The mistake we make is to think that if God hasn’t experienced something for Himself, then He can’t really understand it or sympathize with those who go through it. That tends to be true for us. We usually need to live through something ourselves before we can really understand how it feels to someone else. But I don’t see how it can possibly be true for an all-knowing God.

So maybe there’s something different about this concept of Jesus’ learning to sympathize with our weaknesses than what I’ve generally heard. Maybe it’s not that He absolutely had to have some kind of human experiences in order for God to really understand these strange creatures who have physical bodies, who feel pain, and whose lives end in that bizarre event called death.

Maybe the reason Jesus took on human flesh was because of our weaknesses and our needs, not God’s. Maybe it’s so that we can understand Him better, not the other way around. Maybe we desperately need the reassurance and confidence that comes from knowing that He’s been through everything that we go through. Maybe we wouldn’t believe that He could ever “get” us otherwise (even though He always has).

So what about those passages from Hebrews? What are they trying to tell us?

I’m not an expert on Scripture. I don’t understand it all. But I wonder if the teachers I’ve heard have been looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe the author of Hebrews is talking about the Son’s perspective during the thirty-some years of His incarnation.

Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. (Another mystery that we’ll never fully understand.) God never changes (Malachi 3:6), but as a human being, Jesus learned and grew. Luke 2:52: “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” (This boggles my mind. How does God the Son grow in favor with God the Father???)

Maybe the passages from Hebrews mean that as a human being Jesus developed into a merciful and faithful high priest. As part of the Trinity, even prior to the incarnation He was merciful and faithful beyond anything we could ever deserve or imagine. (But maybe He didn’t take on His specific high-priestly role until after the resurrection?)

It was certainly as a human being that He made atonement for us. He sacrificed His own human flesh.

It was definitely as a human being that He suffered from temptation. James 1:13: “God cannot be tempted by evil.”

Resisting temptation has never been something that we can do all on our own. God has always been capable of helping those who are being tempted. David was asking for God’s help with it—and expecting a response—when he prayed in Psalm 141:4, “Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take part in wicked deeds with men who are evildoers; let me not eat of their delicacies.”

So the idea that He can now help those who are being tempted can’t mean that God had to learn how to come to our aid through Jesus’ experience. Maybe it means that we can now relate to a human Jesus, who suffered when He was tempted. This change in our perspective gives us a powerful tool for resisting the temptations that we face. A tool that people who lived before Jesus’ time didn’t have.

The kind of teaching that I’ve heard tends to foster the misconception that God was somehow lacking in His understanding of us mortals until Jesus came along and discovered what we’re really like. That does a great disservice to our great God.

Whether or not God changes in some very limited ways, such as when Jesus experienced being human, is one of the big unanswerable questions of the Christian faith. But I suspect that the deeper relationship between God and people as revealed in the Hebrews passages means that we’ve been given the great privilege of being able to come closer to understanding Him, not that He needed to become human in order to fully understand us.