‘What If…?’

Do you ever look back on your life and wonder if it could have been different?

Perhaps most people have now and then had thoughts like this: ‘If only I had that time over again’ or ‘I’d give anything to go back and change that’. You look back ruefully at your life and consider what you might have done differently if you had the chance. You might have many regrets and you desperately want to undo some of your bad choices of the past.

Of course that is not possible, and the past is set. Sure, writers of science fiction and fantasy have long spoken about time travel and redoing things in the past. Think of the 1843 novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, or the H. G. Wells’ 1895 book The Time Machine.

Or consider It’s a Wonderful Life, the 1946 American Christmas fantasy film directed by Frank Capra. And you might have grown up with the 60s sci-fi television series The Twilight Zone. It featured over a dozen episodes looking at the issue of time travel and whether past events could be changed.

Just one of them can be briefly mentioned. “No Time Like the Past,” which aired in March of 1963, was about a man who sought to go back in time to change key events, such as the German sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915, preceding WWI. The man also sought to go back to Germany and assassinate Hitler just before the outbreak of WWII.

These and other stories raise the question, ‘What if…?’ What if we could have stopped Hitler back then? What if we could have prevented the assassination of Lincoln in 1865? What if the 1963 assassination of JFK could have been prevented? How would things be going today if Charlie Kirk was not assassinated last year?

My own reflections on the past

So many questions. But we know that we cannot change the past. We can only live with the results of past choices. Last night I was thinking about all this as I was tossing and turning in bed. OK, no surprises there: my mind is always in overdrive, pondering countless things.

But I was ruminating on the events that had led me to become a Christian. In particular, I thought about what would have happened to me if the events that took place on a momentous day in mid-August, 1971 had not happened, or if I had just missed the circumstances that had brought them about.

I have told that story elsewhere, but the short version goes like this: I was a depressed, suicidal drug-taking hippy who was going downhill real fast. Having just graduated (somehow) from high school, I worked in a dreary plastics factory, and spent all my free time with my hippy friends getting high and listening to rock music.

That morning a friend took me to Madison, Wisconsin where I bought three new rock albums, and a bag of psilocybin (‘magic mushrooms’). Getting back to my small hometown, I hopped on my bicycle and was headed to a friend’s place to listen to my new finds and get stoned on my new drug purchase. But I never got to do either. As I said in my write-up about this:

Cheryl, a hippy girl that I had known well, was with a few others, driving down the street in the opposite direction. I pulled over and had a chat – and that was the beginning of the end for me. It was the rather unexpected and unplanned – on my part – end of my old life. And it was the start of a new life in Christ – albeit a rather circuitous one with many detours and false paths.

 

She had just got back from a Christian commune in the mountains of New Mexico. She was telling everyone about Jesus and her new life in Christ. She was certainly excited and radiant. She seemed to be a new person, and wanted everyone to discover what she had. She was more than happy to tell me all about her story and her Jesus.

That is part of the story that I discuss in detail in my four-part testimonial: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2012/06/27/coming-home-my-testimony-part-1/

God’s providence

Consider how things MIGHT have turned out. If I had left my house a few minutes earlier or a few minutes later that day, I likely would never have bumped into Cheryl. I may then have continued on my not-so-merry way, with the drugs and despair further taking their toll on me, and another suicide attempt might have been successful.

Needless to say, if so, I never would have eventually gone on to do missions work in Europe, met an Australian gal there, move permanently to Australia, and do twenty years of CultureWatch ministry, among other things. Obviously you would NOT be reading this article, as I would not have been around to write it!

All because this “chance” encounter with Cheryl on that weekend afternoon some 55 years ago! A cynic or critic might just say meeting her that day was merely coincidental. But the Christian would say that God had his hand on my life all along, and at the right time and the right place he had this encounter happen to turn my life around 180 degrees.

It does little good to endlessly speculate on the various ‘what ifs’. What if I had stayed alive as a depressed drug-user for a few more months? Would another Christian have come along and shared gospel truth with me? Would a bad drug overdose have sent me to hospital? Would the police have arrested me for selling dope?

Who knows what MIGHT have happened. But what I do know is what DID happen. God met me at my point of need, at my place of brokenness, and he rescued me. He turned me around from being a no-hope hippy to a person with a reason to live, a purpose in life, and a mission to engage in.

Thankfully young Cheryl at the time was brave enough and loving enough to share the truth of Jesus Christ with me, and now I have been able to do the same for over a half century. I do not put this down to luck or chance, but to the matchless grace of God and his loving providence in the affairs of men.

Afterword

As I was about to post this, I came upon a quote from the late, great Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer. What he said nicely ties in here. Consider this: even if we COULD go back and change things, do you really think our new choices and actions would be so much better than the original ones that we now regret?

That is, while hindsight is always useful, we are still fallen and finite, and we could simply do more wrong things or make more faulty choices if we could do it all over. The following is what Schaeffer said in an interview conducted by his son Franky in 1981 when he was struggling with cancer:

Francis: God is not a dispensing machine. God is a personal God, and I must allow Him to answer my prayers in the light of His wisdom instead of my limitedness.

Franky: And that’s not a cop-out?

Francis: Not at all. It’s rooted in the heart of all things and that is, He’s infinite; I’m finite. I’ll tell you something, nothing could terrify me more, and I’m being very serious, nothing could terrify me more than that I could ask for anything today and get it, because I don’t know enough.

Franky: Including, for your own health?

Francis: Oh, absolutely. Just as much as for anything.

Franky: Are you willing to say that as a person who, ok, let’s face it, has cancer that’s serious enough so it could be killing you?

Francis: Yeah, of course… If I could wave a wand or push a button and get rid of it, in one sense, of course I’d do it. Who wants cancer? Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s no pleasure to live with this thing on top my head all the time… But on the other hand, more profoundly, I think I can honestly say sitting here that I would rather trust God’s wisdom than mine.

Wise and faith-filled words. We have all made countless mistakes – and worse – in life. It might be tempting to want to go back and try to do things over. But we can’t – we can only live for today and tomorrow. So we must trust God to guide us, override our errors, and redeem our bad choices.

And that he can do if we fully rely on him and put our trust in him.

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