Close Encounters of the Potentially Lethal Kind

In a song titled “My Back Pages,” Bob Dylan sang about his perspectives and actions of the past. Perspectives and actions that seemed to make total sense in his youth, and about which he had great certainty, but which with the passage of time had become less self-evident than they were back then, and more weighted with doubt and questions.

Dylan goes through the six verses of his song describing the way things seemed to be back then, each followed by the refrain: “Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.” What he described was a type of reverse living in which answers and certainty became more elusive with age rather than the other way around.

I can relate.

In my youth, I assumed—and was told by many who were older—that when I “grew up” I’d understand life’s conundrums more completely. But the reality is that I had a lot more answers and explanations—at least, I thought I did—and I shared my perspectives with greater certainty and greater dogmatism back then than I do now. Which means I was really certain and really dogmatic as a youth!

Let me illustrate how this might work in a real-life setting.

One of my favorite texts in childhood—and one that gave me great comfort and confidence—was Psalm 34:7: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.” 

To me, that psalm was a definitive statement about how God and his angels operate. There were no fine-print exceptions, no qualifying clauses, no escape hatches. I assumed it meant exactly what it said. And that it always applied: If you fear God, you’re going to be cared for and protected. 

The converse also seemed clear: If you don’t fear God, you’re pretty much on your own. So don’t get your hopes up about any divine intervention for you. 

With age, however, my absolute application of that text began to soften. And not just when I happened to be struck by adversity and someone else had good fortune. It equally perplexed me when I was the one who was protected from a potential disaster while someone else received a lethal—or nearly lethal—dose of it. 

As noted already, very early on the formula seemed simple: The good are promised protection; the bad aren’t. Such binary thinking made sense to me—until it didn’t. Until I saw too many spiritually committed people I knew—or knew of—who were not protected, but were hit with major adversity.

One summer during my college years, I was working on a construction site where we were building a major senior-citizen housing complex. The walls and trusses were prefabricated and brought in from elsewhere on semi trailers. A crane had to be used to lift the walls and trusses from the trucks and gently set them down where they belonged, guided by members of the construction crew.

The crane we used for the task was large. It had rubber tires and could be driven on the road—but not with the boom attached. To be transported, the boom had to be detached from the crane and hauled on a flatbed trailer, then reattached at the job site.

One morning the crane and boom had both arrived. As a group a workmen were getting the boom attached, the crane operator was sitting in the crane’s cab, with the engine idling. I had worked with him before and knew he was a friendly sort, so I leaned against the crane and was passing the time of day with him while we waited. 

When the boom was fully attached, the workmen signaled that it was ready to use. The operator revved the crane’s engine, causing me to step back a few feet. Then, forgetting what he was doing and his surroundings—which is rare for crane operators—he raised the boom right into an overhead high-voltage high line. 

There were great fireworks when the metal boom made contact with the high line. Before the operator could lower the boom, the wire had burned through and the ends had fallen to the ground, where the still-electrified end of the wire bounced around in the grass like grease on a hot skillet. 

Because of the insulation afforded by the crane’s rubber tires, the operator did not get electrocuted when the boom hit the electric line. But had I still been leaning against the crane—as I had been only seconds before—both the operator and I would likely have been electrocuted, perhaps fatally.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I describe such dire possibilities. About the same time as my close call, a local driver of a truck used for delivering cattle feed drove under a relatively low-hanging electric line in a barnyard. He must have forgotten that a piece of equipment used in unloading the feed rose a few few above the rest of the truck.

He came to a stop with the metal protrusion resting against the electric line. The rubber tires provided the insulation that kept him from being electrocuted—until his feet touched the ground while his hands were still on the truck’s door. He was fatally electrocuted.

As over the years I’ve told my too-close-for-comfort story and several others like it, I’ve had people make comments such as, “God was definitely looking out for you.” And it feels good to think I was so important to God and in such a positive relationship with him that he made sure I stepped away before the crane became electrified. But such an assumption also leaves me uneasy. 

The “Why me?” question isn’t one that people ask only when they feel they’ve been abandoned. It’s one that crops up—for me, at least— when I seem to have been miraculously spared some terrible outcome even though I don’t see myself as any better—or even as good as—others who haven’t been delivered. 

I still like Psalm 34:7. It’s still a favorite. And I still quote it. Typically, when I do so, however, I add a caveat that, for reasons only God knows, that Bible promise and many others with a similar strongly stated message aren’t always fulfilled in the manner we as humans would think they should be.