Mitch Albom - Have a Little Faith - A True Story

“Amen!”

“But we gotta fight this thing. And it’s not good enough for just you to get clean. If someone else is trying, you gotta believe in them too-”

“Preach it, Pastor!”

“In the Book of Acts, we read that Paul-after his conversion-people distrusted him because he used to persecute the church, but now he praised it. ‘Is this the same guy? Can’t be! Nuh-uh.’…It’s amazing how folks can’t see you, ’cause they want to keep you in that past. Some of our greatest problems in ministering to people is that they knew us back before we came to the Lord-”

“Yes it is!”

“The same thing with Paul…They saw him…they couldn’t believe that this man’s from Jesus, because they looked at his past-”

“That’s right!”

“They just looked at his past. And when we’re still looking at ourselves through our past, we’re not seeing what God has done. What He can do! We’re not seeing the little things that happen in our lives-”

“Tell it now.”

“When people tell me that I’m good, my response is, ‘I’m trying.’ But there’s some people that know me from back when-anytime I make that trip to New York-and when they hear I’m the pastor of a church, all of a sudden, it’s like “I know you gettin’ paid, boy. I know you gettin’ paid. I know you.’”

He paused. His voice lowered.

“No, I say. You knew me. You knew that person, but you don’t know the person that I’m trying to become.”

Sitting in the back, I felt a shiver of embarrassment. The truth was, I had struggled with similar thoughts about Henry. I’d wondered if, back among his New York world, he’d laugh and say, “Yeah, I got a whole new thing going on.”

Instead, here he was, preaching in a plastic tent.

“You are not your past!” he told his congregation.

Did you ever hear a sermon that felt as if it were being screamed into your ear alone? When that happens, it usually has more to do with you than the preacher.

After all his years of dogged survival, the Reb, I believed, could beat back any illness; he just might not beat them all.

The attack that had left him slumped in a chair, confused and mumbling, proved not to be a stroke at all, but rather a tragic consequence of his multiple afflictions. In the stir of doctors and prescriptions, the Reb’s Dilantin medication-taken, ironically, to control seizures-had been inadvertently increased to levels that pummeled him. Toxic levels.

Simply put, pills had turned the Reb into a human scarecrow.

When the problem was finally discovered-after several terrible months-dosages were quickly adjusted, and he was, in a matter of days, brought out of his crippling stupor.

I first heard about this in a phone call with Gilah and a subsequent one with Sarah.

“It’s amazing…,” they said. “It’s remarkable…”

There was a buoyancy in their voices I hadn’t heard in months, as if an unexpected summer had arrived in their backyard. And when I caught a plane to the East Coast and entered the house myself, and got my first glimpse of the Reb in his office-well, I wish I could describe the feeling. I have read stories about coma patients who suddenly, after years, awaken and ask for a piece of chocolate cake, while loved ones stare in dropped-jaw disbelief. Maybe it was like that.

All I know is that he turned in his chair, wearing one of those vests with all the pockets, and he held out his bony arms, and he smiled in that excited, crinkle-eyed way that seemed to emit sunlight, and he crowed, “Hellooo, stranger”-and I honestly thought I had seen someone return from the dead.

What was it like? I asked him, when we’d had a chance to settle.

“A fog,” he said. “Like a dark hole. I was here, but somehow I wasn’t here.”

Did you think it was…you know…

“The end?”

Yeah.

“At times.”

And what were you thinking at those times?

“I was thinking mostly about my family. I wanted to calm them. But I felt helpless to do so.”

You scared the heck out of me-us, I said.

“I am sorry about that.”

No. I mean. It’s not your fault.

“Mitch, I have been asking myself why this happened,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Why I have been… spared , so to speak. After all, another couple of whatchamacallits…”

Milligrams?

“That’s it. And I could’ve been kaput.”

Aren’t you furious?

He shrugged. “Look. I’m not happy, if that’s what you’re asking. But I must believe the doctors were doing their best.”

I couldn’t believe his tolerance. Most people would have been at a lawyer’s office. I guess the Reb felt if there was a reason for his rescue, it wasn’t to file lawsuits.

“Maybe I have a little more to give,” he said.

Or get.

“When you give, you get,” he said.

I walked right into that one.

Now, I knew the Reb believed that corny line. He truly was happiest when he could help someone. But I assumed a Man of God had no choice. His religion obliged him toward what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

On the other hand, Napoleon once dismissed religion as “what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” Meaning, without the fear of God-or literally the hell we might have to pay-the rest of us would just take what we wanted.

The news headlines certainly endorsed that idea. In recent months, there had been terrorist train blasts in India, greedy executives sentenced in the Enron fraud case, a truck driver who’d shot five girls in an Amish schoolhouse, and a California congressman sent to jail for taking millions in bribes while living on a yacht.

Do you think it’s true, I asked the Reb that day, that our nature is evil?

“No,” he said. “I believe there is goodness in man.”

So we do have better angels?

“Deep down, yes.”

Then why do we do so many bad things?

He sighed. “Because one thing God gave us-and I’m afraid it’s at times a little too much-is free will. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely.

“But we can also choose badly. And we can mess things up something awful.”

Can man change between good and evil?

The Reb nodded slowly. “In both directions.”

Human nature is a question we’ve grappled with for centuries. If a child were raised alone, separate from society, media, social dynamics, would that child grow up kind and openhearted? Or would it be feral and bloodthirsty, looking out solely for its own survival?

We’ll never know. We are not raised by wolves. But clearly, we wrestle with conflicting urges. Christianity believes Satan tempts us with evil. Hindus see evil as a challenge to life’s balance. Judaism refers to a man’s righteous inclination versus his evil inclination as two warring spirits; the evil spirit can, at first, be as flimsy as a cobweb, but if allowed to grow, it becomes thick as a cart rope.

The Reb once did a sermon on how the same things in life can be good or evil, depending on what, with free will, we do with them. Speech can bless or curse. Money can save or destroy. Science can heal or kill. Even nature can work for you or against you: fire can warm or burn; water can sustain life or flood it away.

“But nowhere in the story of Creation,” the Reb said, “do we read the word ‘bad.’ God did not create bad things.”

So God leaves it to us?

“He leaves it to us,” he replied. “Now, I do believe there are times when God clenches his fist and says, ‘Ooh, don’t do it, you’re gonna get yourself into trouble.’ And you might say, well, why doesn’t God jump in? Why doesn’t he eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive?