Burn the Maps

Jeff and I watched Touching the Void this weekend. It’s the retelling/documentary about a survival story. Two men…mountain climbing in the Andes I think. I can’t remember all the details. It’s just an absolutely unreal story of survival.

It’s worth checking out.

The thing that really struck me the most in the movie was this part where one of the men talked about how he was raised a devout Catholic and had long since stopped believing in God.

He said he had often wondered if, when he was about to die, or in some sort of dire situation, he would call out to God for help. If deep down, a tiny part of him still believed, and would reach out for that in the last few moments.

That was the situation he found himself in. He had broken his leg, been assumed dead by his climbing partner, been cut loose, and had fallen into a crevasse. He was totally alone; he had no plausible way of getting out or surviving more than a few days without food and water, and he was freezing to death.

He said during that time, it never once crossed his mind to call upon God. He said he knew then that he was a true atheist, one that believed that after death there was nothingness.

Nothingness.

In order to fully understand what I’m saying here, you would have to see the movie, but for now you have to take my word for it that there were a thousand different times and ways this man could have died. Yet he was alive, years later, retelling his story for the audience.

He was alive.

And he attributed the entire thing to his own strength and determination.

I had an extremely hard time with this.

You break your leg
You’re hanging in this open space, thousands of feet in the air and your friend doesn’t know whether you’re dead or alive, he’s attached to you.
He decides that you must be dead and he cuts you loose…if he hadn’t you both would have died
You fall
Hundreds of feet
Breaking through and landing in a crevasse
You survive
There is no logical explanation for why you would survive a fall like that, but you open your eyes and continue
You realize that inches away from where you landed is a sharp drop off…had you not landed where you are you would be dead
You spend the night in the bitter cold and darkness
The walls are unclimbable and your leg is shattered
You decide to slowly lower yourself deeper into the crevasse, maybe there is a way out
You find an opening and as you lay on your stomach and try to drag your body along the snow toward the light, you realize it is a false floor and you could fall through at any moment to your death
You make it to the opening
You drag yourself out into the open air
All this time you have no food or water and the temperature is well below freezing
You still have miles upon miles to go before you reach base camp
You drag yourself slowly, setting goals to keep your mind focused
You stumble upon your friend’s footprints that will lead you safely through the maze of dangerous hidden crevasses
You survive snowstorms during the night
The footprints disappear yet you still manage to avoid the hidden crevasses
You find a source of water. Had you not, you would have died in a few hours time
Meanwhile your friend is urged by a fellow traveller that they need to leave the base camp…it’s not healthy for him to stay in this place, they need to leave and notify your parents that you are dead…if they are gone once you reach the camp, you will surely die…yet your friend is not ready to leave, he does not know why, but he insists they remain a bit longer
You reach the rocky part of the journey, where you navigate the rough terrain by hopping on your good leg and crashing into the ground again and again
That night you are close to death. Your mind starts to fail you, the first time this has happened your entire trip, and you are in and out of consciousness
You call out for your friend in the darkness
He hears you
He finds you
You survive

Of course I believe in free will. I believe there were a thousand different times that man could have chosen to give up, to lay there and die, and to drift off to “nothingness”.

But do not try and tell me that you were alone- that it was only due to your own strength and determination that you got to that base camp. How blind can a person be? How can you not see all the ways in which you were accompanied and protected by some higher power along your journey?

His inability to see the miracle of his survival left me speechless and shaken.

I have my own problems with the Catholic Church, which many of you already know.

And I fear that at times my issues with the Church as an institution have blinded me to the miracles of survival within my own journey.

I am so sorry for that.

I know I have been protected and guided.

It just took an atheist to remind me.