A Humbling Complexity - Chris Tibbetts
I had taken an early flight to Atlanta for a weekend medical conference on lung cancer. The day’s travel was smooth, if somewhat dull. This would be my third medical conference at this particular hotel in Midtown over the span of just a few weeks. The buffalo chicken sandwich in the lobby restaurant was good — they added honey to the mix — but even I was getting a little tired of it. There must have been some pre-COVID conference bookings still being settled, and this hotel held the receipts. I arrived at my hotel, which was around the corner from the meeting, and began walking the few blocks over to the conference. As I walked, my phone rang. It was my friend’s wife. She had never called me before. I answered. “Chris,” she said, “I just found out I have breast cancer. I have some questions for you, do you have time to talk?”
I had time. She had cancer. It’s my area of expertise and it’s a blessing to try to help. But even as I declare “expertise” in such a field, it’s foolhardy to gloss over the reality that “expertise” in oncology is always relative. That’s how cancer has perpetuated, after all. Biologically, it’s pursuing survival just the same as our cells that lack the pathogenic variant. That pursuit of survival necessitates a flexibility and a changeability that both humbles and encourages cancer researchers. The field of research studying cancer’s mechanisms of resistance to treatments has seen some of the most important advances in all of medicine in the past twenty years, yet it’s a vocation that remains quite secure. I pray that statement doesn’t age well.
My friend’s wife had cancer. It’s one of the words in life that makes us stop in our tracks. It’s disruptive, it’s destructive. But the reason it stops us in our tracks is because when the doctor says, “You have cancer,” we don’t know what step to take next. There is a complexity in the severity of diagnosis before which we must confess the limits of our ability. Working in cancer provides a regular reminder of that truth, even if we who work in that field don’t always accurately diagnose its etiology.
The famed hematologist/oncologist, cancer biologist, turned Pulitzer prize-winning author, Siddartha Mukherjee, captures this well in his masterful book, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, where he writes, “In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, the Red Queen tells Alice that the world keeps shifting so quickly under her feet that she has to keep running just to keep her position. This is our predicament with cancer: we are forced to keep running merely to keep still.” Whether Dr. Mukherjee realized the transcendent heft of his words is unclear. Dr. Mukherjee, himself, has made significant contributions to the collective fight against cancer. His concession to the complexity of the natural world, though, sounds very similar to the pastor’s concession before the complexity of the Scriptures. Though a lifetime has been spent in studying the Word, one can never exhaust all that there is to see. There is a humbling complexity beyond our limits because God exceeds them.
Unfortunately, though, we’re quite often content to play in the field we know and in which we’re comfortable. We’re quite content to run in a space where we know the boundaries and the threats. We’re quite content to pretend as if there is no God sitting above it all, sustaining it all, and who has created it all for his own glory. Because if there is, then the world we’ve carved out as a safe-space to control and to live in, is a fiction.
Man may go many years, indeed, perhaps nearly a lifetime believing that fiction. Indulging that fiction. And thinking himself quite wise about all that he’s figured out within it. Yet, the humbling complexity that is has a way of manifesting, whether we want it to or not. Being presented with a CT scan — your CT scan — riddled with tumors can break you. In most cases, one must look beyond themselves for a solution. In some cases, there may be no solution even there. And so we acknowledge the reality that’s always been. Even if we don’t accurately diagnose its etiology. Our frames were not hidden from God when he was making us in secret, his eyes saw our unformed substance, and in his book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for us, when as yet there were none of them. Praise be to God that he has authored such complexity, for how vast is its sum. We could not comprehend it.
What, then, is the point of walking through all of this? I was moved by a patient. Deeply moved. I’ve been moved by many of them over the years. Patients humbly approaching the reality of the Fall wreaking havoc at the cellular level — at their cellular level. But confessing the beauty and the glory of Christ all the while. Standing before their Creator in joy, kneeling before him in supplication. Pleading for a clear follow-up scan. Understanding that their plea may not be granted. Rejoicing in the Lord, who is their strength, their rock, and their salvation all the same. You who walk now, having never heard the word “cancer.” You who walk now, considering yourselves to have a fair amount of “expertise” on what life has in store for you. Understand that your expertise is relative. You do not understand it all, you will not understand it all, because you cannot understand it all. But if you have certainty in Christ. If you have joy in your Creator, your King, and your Savior, there is a vocation that is secure.