This epilogue consists of the unedited contents of a few sheets of paper I found on the floor that didn’t fit into the story line. Here Steve seems to have attempted to express succinctly and clearly what he believed he had learned in the last days of his life and what he most wanted to share.
1.
When Jesus says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit,” (12:24) He is stating a principle which can be applied in a general way to many situations, as I will illustrate from my own life. But in its context, it is obvious that He is applying it to Himself, to His own willingness to die to free the world from Satan, its present illegitimate ruler, and to draw everyone back to Himself. (John 12:31–32) It is also clear that anyone who claims to be His disciple must have the same end in view if his or her “death” is to bear the right kind of fruit. In the same chapter, He calls Himself “the Light” and says that the person who tries to live without Him “walks in darkness and does not know where he is going.” (1 John 2:11) That is the literal truth of it.
When I enthusiastically fell into the ground of theoretical physics and died there, I also bore much fruit—two incinerated cities and an insane arms race. When I fell into the ground of promoting the peaceful uses of science, I bore much fruit then, too—countless souls of people destroyed by a life turned in on itself, made too easy and too comfortable.
In both cases, my dedication to science was co-opted by the evil one for his purposes because I didn’t listen to Jesus carefully enough, I didn’t pay enough attention to the ground I was falling into, the cause I was giving my life to.
Despite my betrayals and inexcusable shortsightedness, God’s love has never left me, not even in my darkest moments, not even when I was on the wrong track altogether, woefully misguided. If Paul can tell my story for me, this will be evident everywhere in it. I was unworthy of God’s gifts to me in the past, and even more unworthy of His gift to me in these last days. As filled as I am with regrets, He has bathed me in His costly love and forgiveness. I die a deeply happy man.
2.
God and Satan have been trivialized by Western civilization in our time. But God and Satan are not trivial, and by treating them as trivial, Western civilization has actually trivialized itself. Our culture thinks it has moved God from the center to the sidelines. But in fact He remains at the center, and the further our culture distances itself from Him, the more it sidelines itself.
Good and evil in our culture are then regarded in solely human categories. We define for ourselves what is good and what is evil, and we regard ourselves as fully competent both to achieve what we call good and to eliminate what we call evil. To maintain this posture, we ignore any evidence, however solid, that would suggest that we are wrong, that good finds its source and definition in our Creator, not in us, and that evil proceeds not only from us but even more from a creature of vastly greater intelligence and power than we have. Ignoring evidence is always dangerous, but especially in this case, because it leaves us exposed to powerful forces whose existence we do not even recognize. It leaves us utterly defenseless.
Even in some quarters of the Church, God and Satan are trivialized and humanized. Here we have a lot to learn from the early Church. How many ways do we have of understanding the Cross of Christ that do not take Satan into account at all, in contrast to Sacred Scripture, the Church fathers, and the early Church’s experience? I believe that if we had the same consistent attitude toward Satan that Jesus had from start to finish in His earthly life, we would not be so naïve, so vulnerable to his wiles, so astonished and depressed by his victories, so available to serve his cause. We would be on guard, less exposed, and vastly more realistic.
If I were to point to one single element at the root of my wasted life, this would be it. You can’t ignore what Jesus took to be the main issue—”The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” (I John 3:8b)—and still make sense of a life that claims to be following Him as His disciple.
I praise God for Pastor Engstrom’s courage in coming to me. He supplied not just a missing piece to a puzzle. He gave me the grace of leaving this world at peace, much more appreciative of who Jesus is and of what His Cross truly achieved for fallen humanity—victory over Satan, triumph over death, full atonement for our sins, and a reopened gate to paradise.
3.
O Cecilia! You must have looked down on me for a very long time and wondered whether your death had been wasted on me. All the while I thought I was making you happy by giving myself away, I was actually torturing you because I was not giving myself away to Jesus. You hadn’t told me to give myself away to just anything, to die in the service of science or progress or even education, to crawl outside of myself for just any old cause. You were telling me to die and come alive with Jesus, our Light and our Life. You were telling me to get as close to Jesus as you were, and to stay there, and to bear all the fruit that would come from that. You were asking me to die and rise with Him, to share in His victory over sin and Satan and the world. That’s what you were telling me.
If only I had listened to you and Jesus! “Take up your cross and follow Me,” He says, not “Take up your cross and follow your star.” How different things would have turned out if I had paid closer attention to you! As it was, I made myself a tool of Satan thinking I was serving God and ended up making a major contribution to his agenda of destruction and hatred. If I had really been following Jesus, I would have joined the apostles and the saints in His mission to destroy the works of the devil, not multiply them! I was on the wrong side till the very end. I can’t place the blame on Pastor Engstrom for misleading me. The choice was mine. It was all too easy to follow his suggestion and do what I wanted to do as if it were a call from God. I didn’t look back. I kept your portrait and your music manuscript with me to inspire me, but I left your spirit and your deep and honest commitment to Jesus back in the organ room at Christiania.
Do they cry in Heaven?
If so, you must have cried for me a lot. And prayed for me!
Have you met Kay and our little son yet?
I stand in wonder that our gracious Lord did not give up on me. I’m sure it helped to have my three angels in Heaven praying for me. My heart is molten now. Even my pain feels good drenched in God’s love and yours.
4.
What shall I say of my life?
As long as I, a grain of wheat, was living only for myself, I remained alone, terribly alone.
To sprout and come to life, I needed to relinquish my self-enclosed life and give myself away to something greater than I was.
But because that “greater something” turned out to bear evil fruit, not good fruit, in the end I was more alone than ever.
It was only when I finally discovered that the one “greater something” which bears only good fruit in abundance is actually a “Greater Someone,” it is only as I have been giving myself away to Jesus in these last days that my aloneness has melted away.
Forever.
5.
I have very little strength left. Paul is coming tomorrow. I hope he can read this.
With my very last strength, I look back on my life and I marvel that God would send to a lump of clay like me a Cecilia, a Kay, and even a Rolph Eriksen. All of them crossed my path when I was most lost. All of them loved me when I was least lovable. They were angels sent to me from God when I most needed an angel and least expected one.
All eternity will not be long enough for me to thank You, O my God, for sacrificing Cecilia to rescue me, for sacrificing Kay to break me down and drive me into Your arms. Two angels of light sent to relieve my darkness.
O my God, I thank You, I thank You!
With my last breath I will thank you….
6.
Note from Paul: There was one tiny scrap of paper that seemed important as it was probably his very last one. I stared at it for a long time before I deciphered it. Finally I made out these words in the scrawl:
My son. I’ll meet my son!
Our son!!