I discovered Joey and Rory Feek after the country singers were nominated this year for a Grammy Award for best country duo/group performance. The duo’s seventh studio album, Hymns That Are Important to Us, was released February 12. It was a pleasant surprise to find their music. But recently, thousands of fans and I had to ask, “Why did God take beautiful Joey Feek?”
The talented woman, age 40, had a two-year-old daughter, two step daughters, and a loving husband. Many in the country music community were praying for her, including queen Dolly Parton. But March 4, Joey’s struggle with cervical cancer ended. She lovingly expressed her “see you later” to family and friends. Then, under hospice home care, morphine helped to ease Ms. Feek’s pain until her last breath to freedom.
Husband and music partner Rory Feek blogged about their journey with cancer in an elegant and heart-breaking style at http://thislifeilive.com.
You can find a great sample of the Feeks’ music online, but the song I am linking you to at the end of this blog was actually completed by Rory and Joey four years ago to comfort a grieving friend–even before Joey faced her terminal illness. The When I’m Gone video has received over ten million hits. It’s worth two clicks to Vevo and then You Tube.
This month, I also discovered church historian Kate Bowler, 35, a Duke Divinity School professor, wife and mother, who is critically ill with cancer. Dr. Bowler has some wise observations that relate to my question “Why Did God Take Joey Feek?” You can find her interview with Christianity Today assistant editor Morgan Lee at:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/febuary-web-only/kate-bowler-on-dying-and-sure-hope.
Dr. Bowler, whose specialty is North American religious history, has written Blessed–A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. A brief description of prosperity gospel is the conviction that one “has not, because one asks not” and there are “name it and claim it” faith principles. If our prayers are not answered with “yes,” then the fault lies with lack of faith, unconfessed sin, or spiritual warfare.
In Ms. Lee’s interview with Dr. Bowler, the professor mentions positives for believers who lean toward prosperity gospel faith. She observes, “I love their spiritual tenacity. They work harder than most people that I know, spiritually speaking. They really believe that God is making a difference in their everyday life, and they’re willing to put in time praying, serving others….
“I love their language of specificity. They really do believe that God is in the details of their life. Now what that means, of course, is that they work backwards from their biography to God’s intent looking through their lives for evidence of God’s favor. And that can be its own prison. What is lovely about that is we do want to know that God counts the hairs on our heads, loved us since we were born, and cares about family more than we could even imagine. Those kinds of comforts prosperity gospel rightly foregrounds.”
Dr. Bowler said some of the saddest stories from her research were when people in prosperity gospel churches lost their battles to whatever crises they were facing. The church could not “surround them with comfort and tell them that they weren’t to blame or that there were questions and uncertainties beyond our knowledge. They couldn’t tell them that God was present in the suffering of his people, not just in the triumph of them.”
With questions like “Why did beautiful Joey Feek have to die?” I like Dr. Bowler’s theology of starting with our good God and not our misshapen thoughts. She says, “When I work from God to me I can say true and beautiful things. When I work from me to God, I end up lying.”
Ms. Fee asked Dr. Bowler, “How has your prayer life changed in the past couple of months?” She answered honestly: “I’m desperate. I pray for the day, because I can’t get through it without God. As it turns out, desperation is better for me, because I just can’t assume that I’m able to cobble this thing together. Prayer has become radical dependence on the assumption that God will be there no matter what. It’s just been a radical revelation of God’s presence.”
And, “My only prayer for this cancer is that it somehow makes me more of who God intended me to be. I mean that I could somehow be more myself than I would have been without it. And I don’t know what that’s going to mean, but I sure hope. I sure hope it happens.”
Joey/Rory Feek and Dr. Bowler sing in harmony about the most difficult questions concerning our mortality and our ability to do kingdom work in the midst of a suffering world, and even our own sufferings. That’s partly what the season of Lent is all about.
(The top photo of Joey Feek, with her daughter Indiana, is from the Feeks’ Facebook page.)
Dr. Bowler has a blog with occasional entries at: http://katebowler.com/blog/.