'Til We Have Faces

My son is autistic. In those four words are a world of sadness, anger and fear which those who are parents will understand. I suppose that it would be natural if I questioned God – why my son? Why me? But this is not the issue for me. I know that we live in enemy territory and that it is dangerous. We all carry the wounds and battle scars to prove it. Travis does, I do, and so do you. No, for me there is another lesson to be learned as I struggle to find a way to reach my son.

God does not cause evil to teach us. But neither is he limited by its existence. In everything, no matter how difficult for us, God can bring about a greater good. The worse the situation the greater the potential good. And so, in Travis' struggle to understand us and communicate with us, God has something very important for me.

As I watch Travis grow and learn I sometimes feel as if my heart will break. For he is a sweet and loving child, as happy as can be most of the time. And as we work with him, looking for the way to reach him, trying to teach him the basics of verbal communication, I sometimes want to just cry. His little face is so earnest. He knows that we want something and he tries hard to please us, repeating the sounds to us that, for reasons he does not quite understand, seem important to us. And at these times I see in his face an unspoken, even unformed thought in his puzzlement about the strange noises we make and want him to make: “Daddy, why do you have to make it so hard? Why can't you just make it plain for me? Make it so that I can understand?” Of course that is exactly what I want to do. But the thing he needs in order to receive my clarification is the very thing which is broken...

Many years ago I read a book by one of my favorite authors, CS Lewis, called “'Til We Have Faces”. The heroine brings her case against “the gods” in which she charges them with being secretive, obtuse, never coming to the point, never just saying what they want and what we need to know, always hiding behind allegory, mystery, ceremony. “Why can't you just talk to us face-to-face?” she cries.

Over the years I have reread that book several times, always feeling that CS Lewis was trying to say something significant, but never quite getting exactly what it was. The book is an excellent illustration of its own point for he never really comes out and “says” it. The “answer,” from the title, is that the gods cannot speak to us face-to-face, 'til we have faces'. But somehow I was never sure what that really meant. It was just a clever turn of phrase, a cute pun.

And this question has not been a merely “intellectual” one for me. Why is it that God can't be plainer with us? Why is it that the God who loves us supremely, who would and has emptied all of heaven to come to our aid, the God who spoke into existence a billion suns in a trillion galaxies – why can such a God not find a way to be plainer about what he wants and what we should do?

Now I know that such things do not trouble everyone. For those who choose not to explore such things, please be patient with one who has perhaps a weaker faith than your own. But for me, I need to ask such questions. And the God I have come to trust seems to honor any question, sincerely ask and diligently pursued, with an eventual answer. The harder the question the more meaningful and significant the answer.

So, as I look into my son's puzzled face, which seems to say “Daddy, can't you make it simple?” I feel a helplessness and a longing for the time and place where Travis and I can talk face-to-face. I am struck with the similarity between what I face with my son and what God faces with me. How can he talk to me face-to-face until I have a face to bring him? If my God is not real it is because I am not real.

I cannot make it simple for Travis because the channel he has that could accept such a message is broken. So I must find other ways to reach him, less direct, less simple, apparently obtuse to his way of thinking. And so it is with God. How can he reach us when we have shut down the best channel by which he can talk to us? He uses hand signals and whistles and an occasional kick in the seat of the pants to try to tell us “Turn on your radio!” Then he guides us as best we allow without it when we don't turn it on.

I am in awe of a God who values my personhood and freedom so much that he doesn't just reach in and turn it on himself. He certainly could. That is a temptation which I do not face with Travis. If I could reach in and force him to communicate, even if it meant making him into a different person, would I show restraint? Almost certainly not. And that is what I think God is facing. He could restore that channel in us, but unless we choose to have him do it he would destroy the very thing he was trying to save. Unless we choose to have God restore us, as us, God would be restoring someone else, a person who looks like us, but one that God made up rather than one who choose to connect with God. And since God is a God of truth, a God who deals only in what is real, without our consent he cannot violate the reality that we build around us.

In truth, I believe that the very channel that is broken between man and God is the channel of truth, what is! God cannot speak directly to us because we cannot bear to know the truth. That is why Satan is known as the Father of Lies. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” That is why Jesus sent the Spirit “to guide you into all truth.” That is why, when God enters your life, its effect is to make you the most real you have ever been. God is beginning the work of teaching you the truth about yourself. That is also why it can be painful – because the truth about ourselves is not all Good News. But neither is it all bad news. And that is what sets us free. That is also why the dishonesty, the lying, the false images and deceit in my own life weigh so heavily on me at times. They are the visible evidence of the break in the channel to the God I have come to admire, trust and love.

So I keep listening, trying to understand the fragments of the truth that come through. And I watch my son and keep working, even when it seems that nothing is working, nothing is getting through. For I know that God is doing the same for me.

My son is autistic. His communications channel with this other world in which we live is broken. But he is a good boy, of great worth who is loved very much. And we keep working with him, rejoicing at every advance, sorrowing with every hurt, looking for the day when we can talk face-to-face.

As I go through life I hear a faint echo from somewhere, in a voice that sounds familiar. I hear God saying

“My son is autistic...”

- Mark Merizan