Reconciling Faith and Science in a Medical Crisis

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Premiering on Friday, July 16 also mark your calendar now for the culmination of sea life 2021 with the celebrate life live experience in Dallas-Fort Worth on August 28 for more details, visit Focus on the Family.com/C life Dr. Lee. Warren describes the intensive care unit is a place where desperation and hope slug it out to see who the champion will be a says that beeping monitors, hissing ventilators and humming IV pumps push their notes into the year mingling with the steel hints of iodine bodily fluids and waning faith in today on Focus on the Family you hear about Dr. Warren's own personal struggles with God through many trials got hope for you to endure through your trials, your hostess focus president and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller, John, what a beautiful quote of what Dr. Warren faces every day in treating his patients. Dr. Warren has operated on seriously wounded soldiers in Iraq and then continued his practice here but certainly brain injuries from those accidents, others with deadly tumors and is also experienced trauma in his personal life as well and working to cover his great new book I've seen the end of you.

He's arty face more life-and-death situations than most of us will in a lifetime but God has given him the strength to do it but also the insights that I think all of us are going to going about what this fragile life is all about you. This is a really I think deep conversation about the essence of of life and death. Dr. Warren is a brain surgeon and Iraq war veteran. As you indicated Jim and as you said, he's written this book. I've seen the end of you neurosurgeons look at faith, doubt, and the things we think we know and will encourage you to get a copy from us.

The link is in the episode notes Dr. Warren, welcome to Focus on the Family, thank you. I'm so grateful Lisa are both so grateful to be here with you guys. Let me ask you kicking this off this is really interesting content in order to get into it you raised in a Christian home, your parents gave you that foundation of faith that you had a relationship with a friend. I think an elementary school that kinda shook and shaped your world what happened yes that I don't think I realized it until later, but in the third and fourth grade had a young girl that was ahead sir had a crush on Scott Annie in the book and your right foot third yeah for you and Sasha have my first fistfight over her, which I will tell you if I wanted my books of the associate, she at the end of one school year. I just had this vivid memory of her driving off in the bus and waiting to buy my hopes were flying you for seeing her next year and then later that summer my mom told me that she was sick and she might not be back at school and turned out she had at the pediatric brain tumor and a member late in the school year. She came back to class and just look like a different person. She didn't have her personality. She was swollen from what I know now is stairways medication and radiation treatment and all that she had a ring on and just wasn't the same little kid and then she died later that year, and in Isaiah. As I grew up and became a doctor and look back on all that it did just dawned on me.

At some point that my interest in neurosurgery probably started around that time went when a little kid can be taken away from you by something happening in the brain and I remember the talk sat with my mom and how afraid I was in for the first time somebody my age could be sick. I didn't know that at that time that somebody my age could die and I remember how mom always told me that you know faith would get me through those things and calm my fears as I think that was probably a foundational moment for me in becoming a physician and maybe even a nurse. Yeah let's move to your service.

Thank you.

By the way, for serving in the military and at the same time. I mean you saw such trauma because you saw all of the backend of warfare. Those men and perhaps even some women who were injured from their service and that describe that for those of us who will never be in that environment. One most surprising things for me will obviously growing up in the United States and practice United States. We have endless limitless resources right so here we are in a tent hospital in the middle of the war and we didn't have those resources and so we had to think about every drop of blood in every tool that we use in all the saints differently than we do back here but also we took care of civilians and we took care of the enemy and we took care of injured insurgents of what went on an Iraqi insurgent gets injured on the battlefield.

American medics fly them to hospitals and take care that is amazing and most people probably don't know that our American medical core takes care of everybody gets hurt. And so for me it was an eye-opening experience of taking care somebody who had done this bad thing and blown up all of our soldiers were also trying to save them to learn about mercy, and not just about justice, and countless things. It was a really solidified me as a trauma surgeon and this is a human being. I think that experience and even there in in your barracks in that area where you operated you had shelling in things that were going on and it was close to the action that we were mortared every single day that I was in theater hundred and 20 days to order everything every day you specialize in brain tumors GBM I believe is the acronym and let's just let the listeners here what that is what you tend to face with your patients every day so there's a brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme that we shorten thankfully to GBM is easy to say and it turns out to be the deadliest really the deadliest form of human cancer problem with glioblastoma is you really can't cure it and set the whole brain justice has to become cancer and so for the last 40 years or so, the survival rate really hasn't changed us about 15 months. If you have that diagnosis and we take the tumor out and give you radiation, chemotherapy we had about 12 to 15 months. Almost all the time.

The five year survival rate is very close to zero in the 10 year survival rate essentially is zero old sort of joke that if you have a tenure survivor. He probably misdiagnosed them and so had this experience as a as a Christian who was also a scientist, I would see a scan really before I ever met you as a patient.

I would look at your images and see that brain tumor and I would say to myself seen the end of the analyst can happen to you say that again because this was profound all see the end of the guy I just could see it in my mind like it was a movie playing and I've seen the end. I know it's gonna happen. I know what the biopsy can look like another conversation were about to have. I know what the pathologist going to tell me I know when you're you can get chemo when you get sick when you harassment to fall out when you stop eating.

I know when it's gonna come back and I know when you die and I can see it in my mind like it's true already and so I struggled then because I also know that as a doctor you are better serving your patients if you give them hope and if you help them maintain hope because you have higher much higher quality of life and you go through everything better and even have a better outcome in every way we can measure it.

If you maintain hope and so here I have a situation where I don't have hope for you and the Bible tells me God can cure you, and I don't really believe it because he never does it with this tumor and so I'm supposed to sit down and try to doctor you even if I can't cure you, and what I do that that's really the question I was struggling with as a physician, I decided to write this book why that's such a OnPoint and I'm sure you hear from Christians who may be critical of you saying, well, God can work miracles and you need to trust in God and your Christian Lee.

How did that begin to synthesize a night. I understand it. I mean, you're the hard scientists, but a man of faith.

So these worlds were colliding. I can only imagine the conflict in you they were not united, I started having to do what scientists do, decided to study people and how they handle hard things and how they manage to to get through them or not get through them and I started noticing that the common theme of people who do well even if they diet seems to be that they find something to hope for.

And often times that was the resurrection, and in the afterlife and and all the things Jesus offers us to start understand what Jesus means in John 16 when he says I'd come and give you life even though you die and if you believe in me you have life and will never die and so I started seeing people who could find that in the darkest moments and it gave them something to hold onto and they had a better outcome, even if they died from their tumor and I decided what makes sense for me is to doctor people with things that will help them even if I can't fix the problem and I would think you know being a man of faith and a scientists. The reality is this. Life is just this moment is right for us and there's something eternal ahead but we cling to this is that this is the right track, and that's why we have fear and we have doubt we maybe have hopelessness and that's the great news of the gospel of Jesus Christ that there something beyond this contract.

This is in it. Let me ask you just to get some of the stories of your patients out of your wonderful book. I've seen the end of you. You talk about patient that you called Samuel and what was his story with GBM and what did you see so Samuel is the guy that is the typical patient include of us, he's a good guy does it all right. It's got a strong family goes to church always seems like cancer.

It's those guys right now that the nice guy and he's driving to work one day and has a seizure on his birthday Rex's car almost wrecked his car and finds out that he's got a brain tumor and I come to meet him and take him to surgery and it turns out to be a glioblastoma and and he just exemplifies this solid belief and been walking out faith in Jesus Christ where he never wavered like a sad he stressed because he doesn't want to lose is why you leave his wife as little kids, but he never gives up hope and he says this beautiful example of what it means to really walk out your faith in Jesus Christ, so that conundrum is bad things do happen to good people and good things do happen to bad people on the right rainfalls on all of us. So it's just a filter problem that we have what we would pick out the ones we want to be sad about. We don't pay attention to the other ones, but that everybody has trouble Dr. Warren you mentioned Joey patient a moment ago.

I do want to hear his story. What what was Joey about what did he show you Joey not be the favorite person that Lisa and I illicitly surround offices. Though we ever took care of enjoys this guy typical when you meet him, his criminal he's in.

He he was fighting a DEA agent got hit in the head and knocked out skull fracture blackness brain and had to take him to the operating room and in the midst of the blood clot. There's a brain tumor that he did know he had and so that seems like a fortuitous thing for him because he had he not had the head injury from being a bad person right be in a fight with the cop.

He wouldn't have known he had this benign tumor until it became a cancer most likely so could of saved his life right and I given this news.

That to me felt like good news. Have we found this early stage brain tumor and ticket out you can be okay. Most likely, and he still mad about it. Turns out Joey's had a bad life is parents of one of his parents died, the other abandon them. He's been in jail is how come the hard times of drugs and he just had a really rough life and he doesn't see anything good out of anything for him. It's just another example of God hates him. Maybe God is not even real and and the course of cake taking care of Joey. He had a grandmother and a sister who never gave up on him and a chaplain who befriended him and ultimately, even though his cancer came back. I want to give the whole story why you want people to read the book but basically the last year of Joey's life in which is tumor came back he lost his strength and he ultimately passed away.

He described that is the best year of his life and the reason was he fell in love he found Jesus. He found hope he believed he was going to get to see his grandma again when he went to heaven reconciled with his sister made amends for a lot of things in line through and he found the purpose and meaning of his life and found happiness.

Even while he was dying, and so they just exemplify the idea that your life is not about the number a few days is about the quality of your days is about what you do with them and how you feel during them and he was able to show me how to separate circumstance from a motion and that's that turns out to be the key for how you find happiness and hope no matter what you're going through. Let me ask you in the book you specifically talk about that dilemma you've touched on it but to be more specific you would say you would see the end of your patient and know what lies ahead for the minute kind of put a contradiction how to pray for your patience and described that I can feel it, but it was so. I used to think that prayer was about telling God what he wanted and he either said yes or no and in the more so the score of how many yeses and how many knows was a measure of how much he loved it right.

I sort of thought that I really learned it from Pastor John. My prayer is not about bending God's will to years of spending your will to his. And so, as I evolve through learning how to take care of these people who were going to die no matter what I did, I learned that helping them come to peace with that helping them find a new way to look at the rest of the days that they had a new way to make sure that their families were okay that their marriages were okay that their legacy with your kids were okay was teaching them how to pray a prayer of asking God to fill them with hope to fill them with a new way to to see the things that were going through and so I was learning how to Dr. people when I couldn't save them. That's good, that's then you don't have a sense of futility.

I would think that you know this is our right and there's there is hope.

At the end of this after Samuel died. When your patience. There's a chaplain friend of yours who gave you some great spiritual insight and advice. I think all of us will benefit from that. What did that chaplain say to you, so Pastor John a call them in the book just basically help me understand that somebody dying isn't the end of their story.

Like you want when you look at the overall number of promises in the Bible.

All of them point to hope for a future resurrection writing and it can be hard to see truth in those promises. When you read one like Romans 828 and it says that God can work everything for good essay.

How can he work Samuel dying and leaving behind two little kids for good. How can that be and he'll say something to me like will now you're going to for the rest of your life you're in a Dr. people better.

You can help people see and find hope in the darkest moments of their lives in a better way and that'll turn out to be good that'll turn out to be a good part of Samuel's legacy down and so the chaplain really just helps me to help me to reorient my thinking away from loss means God doesn't care. Death means God isn't paying attention or doesn't doesn't want to hear your prayers and actually guys always always doing the thing that's good for us.

In the end, and is not about how long you live. I've heard somebody say it this way, God is always in your corner. This is all your circumstances again may not may not make you feel that way.

He is there in them and were learning things through them right. Some people might be thinking okay well Dr. Warren's Nero surgeon, even though we went to the war you know what he's above the fray of life, but you have had it like right in the bull's-eye.

You lost your son. Describe the circumstances. What was going on and what happened to your boy so Mitchell was this beautiful kid really witty fun.

Love Jesus, like many teenagers he had a couple rough years and and got kind of confused about some things and we were as he went off to college that left couple years where we were as close as we had been and he was trying to figure out his own way and nine July 2013, he started calling more and we were starting to feel a little more hopeful and then our church does this 20 our church in Alabama did this 21 days of prayer event every start of every school year were you really focused and pray for the kids and pray for your family and all those things and and on the morning of August 19, my phone rang and Mitch called and he and we had this long talk long this woman had in forever and he said I don't come home back in school. I realized where I need to be and what school I had this great hope in an nicely lovely and I said I loved him.

His last words we respect each other and on the morning of August 20. The prayer that morning was from the youth pastor at the church about praying for your kids and how God was going to give you victory in your in your child's lives and so we were just filled with the cements open and not later that day he was stabbed to death, and died.

We don't even know the circumstances, the police never really could figure out what happened to boys died in that house that night and their best friends and we don't really know in salute week we were sort of taken from this place were we thought it was all gonna be okay only been praying so hard for so long and it seem like God was answering our prayers and then he was gone and it was just this huge chasm. Why would something you it's one thing if it if you didn't think it was gonna be okay. It's been like that happened, but it was worse for us a thing because we had so much hope Christ felt like God played a trick on us and and so tight I it was also ironic because I was in the middle of writing this book about how to help people in hard times and all of a sudden I went from observing them to be one of them and that passes when Isaiah says here in the furnace of suffering that this will we were in so I really for a little bit wasn't sure what I believed anymore just wasn't sure that God could really let something like that happen in an be who he said he was.

That's powerful and you know my brothers had that experience, he lost his son to cancer when he was young and you know I said to him, is there a day that goes by, you don't think of Bobby and he said no every day and I think people again. You would think, given the processing that you are doing trying to figure out where these patients are dying.

I don't know how to pray for them.

I'm a scientist, I mean I could see that a new year. Very logical in your thinking and then have this happen, which turns everything upside down. The things you thought you knew the things you thought you were resolving with God were right back in your face. Did you have that moment. I mean, I tend to be more of an emotional person. This way work I be saying, Lord, what you doing why this did you have that kind of moment. I did of course I did badly lease on Albury parents. I think you would. You couldn't be truthful if he said he didn't doubt God and some of those moments and I started going back to what I knew which was reading the Bible every morning having a process that I follow through and I would read something and I wouldn't believe it. At the same time, and I started feeling like I marked it comes to Jesus and says, I believe, help me my unbelief right but somehow I knew that if there wasn't a resurrection of the promise for the resurrection wasn't true then I didn't have anything to hope for, because it the idea that I could see my son again some day was enough for me to be able to put my pants on the next day in and try to go make a cup of coffee and make that they happen and one by one. Every day some little bit of grace would happen if somebody would call it just the right time, or virtually day on Bible Gateway will pop up and it would save the Lord is close to the broken hearted Psalm 3418. Where would say something like that that verse were Paul says if we don't have the hope of the resurrection.

There were to be pitied more than all men yeah that's right I could see that and so asked that I had this one moment crystal-clear moment. I can see my mind where I saw the promises God says that all Scripture is true. Another one that says it's impossible for God to lie and so that those two things are true, then the hope of the resurrection has to be true to, and therefore all those other promises have to be true and I just decided Lisa and I sit down one day and we decided that we believe that we were to start just pressing into it and every day something happened somebody called some something occurred and had just enough manna just another power to get through that day and over as the days went by better didn't go I like your brother Bobby doesn't go away, but you start that the light starts coming back on because you believe it's true. And then it starts showing you that it's true and this will happen for us will and I hope that's the hope that people are hearing right now let me in here because this is the question I mean when you look at all this. What word of encouragement do you have for the people listening right now that are going through so much they might have the prodigal child they might have the tumor, they might have some other diagnosis that brings mortality right into focus for them and maybe they haven't done the right thing said the right things perhaps are not drug dealers but maybe they haven't lived up to their spiritual potential in Christ, what advice you have for that person that devastated and hasn't found the rails to run on well I would say this, it did, it doesn't matter what you do for a living or how much money you make or how much influence or power over status you having in this life. Because if your kid dies or if you find out you have a brain tumor you're the same as everybody else in that moment.

You are a broken human being and the height from which you fall. If your life is built on all those things on the need to have good circumstances or the need to have high income or the need to have status or whatever. Then when you lose those things because your body doesn't work anymore because you can't find your way to get to work. As your child died and you can't put your pants on that day you lose everything. So what I would say to people is those aren't the things that should define your life because they can be taken from you the things she should define your life, is the fact that somebody loved you enough to die for you and that their real hope of your life is and is and what Jesus said would make your joy complete, which is to trust in him because when those hard moments happen.

You will find that it's true that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and you will find it is true someday that God can work things for good as he did for us. I started writing and blogging and podcasting 2014 as a way to communicate my family and that she began to be shared around the world and all that in my blog and podcast and stuff started becoming something we would hear from other people about and in the year since we lost Mitch two different people have written to me and said they didn't commit suicide because of something I wrote or settle my podcast and so it's not a good the smallest quantum physics things work. Something can be true and not true at the same time as a whole another story, but but in God it it's is capable of taking something bad and having something good come from it. At the same time it's not good that my son Mitch daughter that your brothers son Bobby died, but it is good that we can press on and help other people and and show them the light again and it is good that I write because people have been saved by that site so so friend out there listening. Your hope cannot be on things that can that you can lose or that can be taken from you. Your hope has to be in something that's beyond what you can see right now and that's Jesus, it's up.

He said the company were all broken people. That's the reality of this life. No one's going to live forever. Everybody hit that fit in the road, even if things are sailing along right now, which makes that verse that you mentioned a couple times so true that he's close to the broken hearted. I love the next part and saves those crushed in spirit and that might be the whole purpose of what we walk through this temporal life so that we can have eternal life with him.

That's right meant Dr. Warren. This is been fantastic. I so appreciate the fact that you labored through the pain, emotional pain to write this book.

I've seen the end of you neurosurgeons look at faith, doubt, and the things we think we know beautifully done and so full of great content to make us think that what this life is truly about been a privilege to have you here with us not to be with you just think you and Focus on the Family is here to help if your grappling with these weighty issues. If your find yourself in a very dark spot and don't know where to turn Scripture not plugged into a church. We can talk to somebody on the staff there were don't have any Christian friends give us a call. Focus on the Family has caring Christian counselors will be really happy to connect you with one of them. They can talk through where you're at and give you some next steps toward finding healing and finding light and hope. We also have Dr. Warren's book as Jim mentioned, I've seen the end of you let us know if you can send that to you. Are numbers 800 the letter a in the word family were stop by Focus on the Family.ca and John, as we often do, if you can give a gift of any amount Focus on the Family will send you Dr. Warren's wonderful book is our way of saying thank you ministry and if you can afford it, just get in touch with this trust with others will support us and cover the cost of that we don't want to just get in touch once again are never here 800 K on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here at Focus on the Family. Thanks for joining us today to be with us next time.

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