COMMENTARY: Why I Didn’t Ask `Why Me?’ When Diagnosed With Cancer

c. 2006 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Recently I was diagnosed with cancer. Between that day and the beginning of my treatment two weeks later, I was surprised by community and surprised by what it is not _ small groups, churches that “are there for me” or people calling to wish me well and add […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Recently I was diagnosed with cancer. Between that day and the beginning of my treatment two weeks later, I was surprised by community and surprised by what it is not _ small groups, churches that “are there for me” or people calling to wish me well and add me to prayer lists.

To be sure, these heart-felt expressions of concern are welcome, especially in times of duress. I deeply appreciated each that I received. But for too many churches, this is what community has become _ emotional support, hand-holding and “sharing” the stricken’s journey.


This is not community. It’s sympathy, an emotional response that requires its recipients to focus on self. Consequently, both the sympathetic and the affected focus on one question: Why me?

For those two weeks, I was burdened by fears of what I could lose (my children, my wife, a career that’s just beginning to take wing), the unknown (what type of cancer, is it treatable, how do I tell my loved ones?), and loss (too young, too much to live for). But in this sea of worries, and surrounded by sympathy, the “Why me” question never crossed my mind.

Once I recovered from the shock of the diagnosis, and began moving forward, I was struck why this most natural of questions, the one upon which the Bible’s book of Job is based, never occurred to me. My Sunday school class at Tabernacle United Methodist Church in Fredericksburg, Va., had taught me that community and sympathy are not synonymous. This realization surprised me most, however, because during those stressful few weeks, the class did nothing to help me deal with the diagnosis.

They didn’t because I had not informed them.

Indeed, my class helped build the foundation that would enable me to endure this burden well before the diagnosis had been made. And that foundation is our bond. But not a bond in the traditional sense, for what unites us is not time (we meet weekly for less than an hour), nor friendship (we share little interaction outside the class). Our bond is the mind, that most wonderful of God’s gifts to man.

For those rightly concerned about the health of the Protestant mind, spend a Sunday with us. We have jettisoned contemporary Sunday school literature that focuses on how we feel and instead focus on the Bible’s deeper historical and textual meanings. Instead of searching for answers to eternal questions in Scripture alone, we look for meaning in the lives and books of those who have gone before and the lives of those with whom we gather each week.

This type of community forces us to look without, not within. It is the type of community that enabled Dietrich Bonhoeffer to survive and thrive for two years in a Nazi prison camp before being executed, and that has enabled two millennia of saints to endure worse misfortunes with grace.

It teaches us that pain and misfortune, as well as grace and good fortune, are a natural part of life, and that each of us will experience the worst in due time. But this type of community is far from fatalistic, far from resigned in believing that God isn’t present in our lives.


Groups that focus on the mind and challenge us to wrestle mightily with all aspects of Scripture, faith and tradition also push us out of the comfort of the church and into the community to serve and live life to its fullest. They require that we exercise our God-given gifts as aggressively as we can.

Community is not what enables us to endure, it’s what empowers us to move forward.

I am fortunate. My cancer was not life-threatening. In fact, it proved life-giving. For two weeks, I feared, I grieved and I worried. But I never asked, “Why me?” Because my community has required me to live, and live fully for the years we’ve been together, for myself, and for God, who expects us to live our lives fully for him.

Why me? Why not me? That’s the question community forces us to ask.

MO/PH END RNS

(Martin A. Davis Jr. is the senior writer with the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.)

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!