Biography
The Rev. Dr. Tex Sample is Emeritus Professor of Church and Society at the Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. Tex was born in Mississippi and over the course of his life has been a cab driver, a laborer, a roust-about, a pastor, and a teacher. He’s the author of eights books and is currently working on his ninth. Tex lives in Arizona, where he serves as Coordinator of the Network for the Study of U.S. Lifestyles [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

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          and 30 Good Minutes.

"The God Who Loves Us in Suffering" 
Peter Bertocci was a Professor of Philosophy at Boston University when I was a student there. Bertocci was not only a fine teacher; he took a very active interest in his students. He used to tell the story of one of his students who was quite attentive to his work and attentive in his classes. But this young woman was virtually paralyzed in both arms. She had enough use of her right arm that she could gather up a pen in between two fingers and while bending over a desk write notes while Bertocci lectured. Bertocci lectured quite rapidly and had a lot of feeling and emotion in what he said and did. When one listened carefully, one wrote a lot!

This young woman would sit there with that pen that seemed awkwardly gripped between those two fingers and she would write furiously. Bertocci noticed her, of course, and often noticed that she sometimes would be in pain. The pain would be etched on her face, struggling to keep up and obviously needing to stop writing, but she simple refused to. She just kept on taking notes and bearing through the pain.

One day he stopped her at the door as the class was leaving and asked her if she had a minute. She said, “Of course.” He said, “You know, I’ve been watching you. You go through a lot to be here, don’t you?” She said that she did. And he said, “You know, I’d like to know the story. What happened to you? What happened to your arms?”

“Well, I was one of those kids. Many of us, you know, in my generation got polio. And I went through the whole affair: the iron lung, the hospitalization, and the rest. Finally, after what seemed an interminable length of time, they told me that I could go home, but that I couldn’t go home until I had certain kinds of physical therapy. They told my mother that they could actually train her to do the therapy but they weren’t sure at all that she could do it because it would be very painful. Because I would not like it, they felt that my mother would not be able to administer the kind of massage and treatment required. My mother simply responded, ‘Teach me. I’ll do it,’

“When we got home, every day my mother would take me into my room, pull down the windows, close the door, and, Dr. Bertocci, she would begin to rub. And I cannot tell you how much that hurt. At first, I would implore her to stop, pleading with her, ‘Please stop!’ When that didn’t work, I would begin to cry. I would bawl and then I would beg her, ‘Please, please mother! Stop!’ And when that didn’t work I began to call her names. I called her every name I could think of and I even made up a few, but my mother kept on rubbing. After those sessions would end, my mother would leave my room, go to her room, close the door and cry. Dr. Bertocci, that went on every day for a solid year.”

Bertocci dropped his eyes to the floor, obviously moved. But when he did, the young woman raised that one arm and said, “But, Dr. Bertocci!”

I see that story as a parable of God, a God who is with us, who refuses to absent self from us when we suffer, when we’re hurt and when we’re in pain. I see that as a God who suffers for us, that God’s suffering is very active. That’s meant a great deal to me, but I recently read David Kelsey’s article in the Christian Century where he said an additional thing. He says it’s not really enough for God to be with us and God to suffer with us, you need one other thing. And he argues that what you need is God’s active love of us in our suffering and our pain. I think in that story, you get that kind of active love of that mother in her daughter’s suffering and pain, and the kind of strength—the word comfort is very appropriate here—and the kind of comfort that story represents.

In the death of my own son, who was killed accidentally on a motorcycle, I personally experienced exactly that kind of God. I never believed that God intended the death of our son. I believed then, as I do now, that Steven died by accident. At the same time, I also believe that no one was in greater pain over Steve’s death than God and that God was not only actively with us, but suffered with us during that time. You see, I never believed that God willed those kinds of tragic things to happen in the world. I’d been taught places called Millsaps College, Boston University, and St. Paul School of Theology, that God did not bring that kind of evil on people. I believed that then, I believe it now. The God whom I worship is a God who actively loves us in those times.

After Steve’s death, the funeral and all the hard times that that represented—and being under girded by that kind of understanding of God’s relationship to us in suffering and the rest—I do remember one night. I was at home by myself. Everyone was gone. We had a tough time in addition to Steve’s death. The dog that he had given us died within days of his death and I believed that it was a death somehow in sympathy with Steve. And then our daughter’s marriage split up within a week of Steve’s death. But that night I had tried to start the car and even the car wouldn’t work! It wouldn’t crank. I remember standing in the bathroom, just feeling this rage: rage about Steve’s death, rage about that divorce, rage about the dog’s death. But it took that triggering of the car not starting and I found myself simply yelling, yelling at the top of my voice at God. If a neighbor heard me, they had to think I was crazy. And I was calling God names, quite frankly. And when I blew that out and just turned it loose, suddenly I experienced an intimacy with God that would match any time I ever spent in relationship with God. I remember a calm. I remember a peaceable feeling. I remember a sense that finally these things would come to a completion in God that would sustain all of us in our part of the world and hold us together.

Interview with Tex Sample

Lydia Talbot: Tex, we are all moved profoundly by your message and, of course, your sharing the tragic death of your seventeen-year-old son, Steven, on a motorcycle. Your dialogue with God was ragingly angry but you were also able to come to grips with this terrible struggle, in reality, out of the framework of your faith. What works for people or what words do you use for people who do not have faith or say things like, “I lost my faith?”

Tex Sample: I don’t know what the words are. They come up at strange times. It seems to help with people who lose children, for example, to know that you’ve also lost a son or a daughter. And in our case, I often will tell that story simply because there will be people inevitably in a room or an auditorium where I am speaking who fairly recently lost a child or perhaps a spouse, or whatever. And it seems to help them to come over and see somebody who survived it. I’ve even had people say that. “Your son died how long ago?” And I say, “Seventeen years.” And they say, “Well, and you’re surviving?” And I say, “Oh yeah. I’m surviving.” In fact, let me say one other piece about that. I think, too, part of the thing that God does in loving us—and that’s what I would say—I think God’s grace is what is so powerfully operative there. I think one of the dangers of losing somebody that close to you is you take on the identity of a victim so that you become a person who’s lost a son, in our case. And that kind of seeing yourself as a victim I believe means not only that the grief work has not been done but that the conversation with God needs to go farther. Because, you see, if your identity is all in being the victim of a death then you really haven’t gone on. I miss Steve. I will always miss Steve. I don’t ever want to get over him. But it’s like an amputation, you know. It heals.

Talbot: A dismemberment.

Sample: It heals. But the vacancy is there. It’s not there. But there is a sense in which, too, there is a warmth and good memories about Steve. And you can cherish those without making loss your identity as a person.

Daniel Pawlus: I’m curious to pick up on what Lydia said. You study American culture and lifestyles. I’ve always been interested in people that don’t have an active faith life or a faith that they turn to. What do you find that people turn to in these times of suffering if they’re not plugged into some faith?

Sample: Well, I think there are two things. One would be that they turn to friends or people they are close to. And I don’t think that there is any way to get around the power of having people surround you and enable you to make it through that night. So that’s very important. You see, what I believe is that God acts whether people believe in God or not. So I would argue that no one gets through these times without God but they might not be aware of that God is actively loving them through those times.

Talbot: Our viewers, many of them right now listening to this program, are suffering or know people who have suffered a death of a loved one or whose cancer is back. What’s the first step in learning to trust the journey?

Sample: One thing I don’t want to do is to trivialize suffering, to argue that suffering is always good. Suffering sometimes destroys people and it can certainly distort a life. But in terms of a first step in dealing with it, I would think facing into it is a very important piece, getting past that denial. “Yes, your son is dead,” or “Yes, I have cancer,” or yes this. My mother used to say to us, taught us this many times: lean into the pain. She didn’t mean enjoy pain. She didn’t mean become compulsive about it. But she meant don’t run from it, don’t hide from it, face into it, lean into it, know it’s there, and deal with it. So I think that helps. In other words, don’t escape into illusions or fantasies or distortions. Face into how angular and bad and difficult things can be.

Pawlus: I loved what you said about accessing that rage. I think a lot of us are afraid when we’re suffering to really yell out at God. You found that to be very helpful for you. How about for other people?

Sample: I had the benefit of some great teachers. One of the things they taught me was that raging at God was a form of prayer. Now, if you do that all the time there may be some other things going on! But I think raging at God is a form of prayer.

Pawlus: Is that a place to put the pain and the panic?

Sample: Sometimes. But sometimes you put the panic and the pain into the panic and the pain. Rage can be a way of deflecting yourself away from the pain. Rage can be a way out. Instead of being hurt, you’re angry. So sometimes you really need to be hurt and know you’re hurt. Do you know what I mean? But sometimes, I think, you just need to rage. You just need to blow that out of there.

Talbot: Who helped you most in seminary or growing up in your journey to come to this kind of sensibility?

Sample: Peter Bertocci helped me a lot obviously. Walter Muelder was immensely helpful to me. Paul Deats and Howard Thurman, the Dean of the Chapel at Boston University. Those people were great helps. The faculty at St. Paul School of Theology was an enormous help to me during that time.

Pawlus: Thank you very much, Tex, for sharing your thoughts with us and your great insights.