Survivors' Guilt

Everywhere I look at the moment I seem to see cancer. The other day I heard that an wonderful faith-filled woman who I had worked with at World Vision International was nearing the end of her all too short life due to cancer, and two weeks ago a neighbour sadly succumbed this awful condition after only a few months. In fact in the lane where I live, currently fifty percent of the population have cancer of one form or another, a very stark illustration of the often repeated statistic that one in two of us are likely to suffer from cancer at some point in our lifetime.

When I heard about my former colleague and my neighbour, I must admit that I struggled with knowing how to respond. I felt like a fraud standing before the grieving widow offering my heartfelt condolences, and couldn’t help asking myself why not me? We’ve both had cancer – in fact I have had it twice – so why have I survived so far and not her husband? Why have I yet again been given another lease on life while this poor woman has lost the love of her life.? As I hugged her and told her how sorry I was for her less, I felt overwhelmed with a sense of guilt at just being alive, when so many others have lost their lives.

‘Survivors guilt’ was first recognised in the 1960s during a study of holocaust survivors. Psychiatrists found that some survivors of traumatic events came away from the experience thinking that he or she didn’t deserve to survive, and in extreme cases, some actually thought they had done something wrong by surviving. More recently survivors guilt has been recognised as a symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Don’t get me wrong, I am not for one second drawing a comparison between my own trails and the terrible ordeals experienced by victims of the holocaust – such a comparison would be ludicrous and disrespectful. But there is no doubt that facing your own mortality does change you to some extent, and almost inevitably leads you to ask the question – why did I survive while others did not?

There are of course some very obvious medical answers to that question. According to Cancer Research UK, survival rates have doubled in the last forty years and in the UK, at least, fifty percent of people with commonly diagnosed cancers now survive for ten years or more, mainly due to the extraordinary advances made in terms of diagnostic technology and treatments. However there is still a huge variation in survival rates between different kinds of cancer ranging from ninety eight percent for testicular cancer to just one percent for pancreatic cancer. The differentiating factor seems to be how easy it is to diagnose the cancer in the first place, and secondly the treatment options available.

But as a Christian, there’s also a spiritual dimension to the dilemma. If we are all God’s beloved children then why is one person healed and not another? Why does one person live to see another day, and the other have to leave this earth too soon, leaving behind broken hearts?

I think one of the most deeply damaging suggestions is that your survival relates to the depth of your faith. There were, indeed, times when indeed, times when he Jesus credit his ‘patients’ individual faith as a contributing factor to their healing. Such as when a woman who fought her way through the crowds to touch the cloak of the passing Messiah in the belief that it would cure her of the menorrhea who was told ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. God in peace and be freed from her suffering.’ (Mark 5:34).

But there are also plenty of occasions when it doesn’t seem to be important whether the person being healed had faith or not. It is very unlikely, for example, that every one of the recipients of Jesus’s twenty or more mass healing sessions were devout and faith-filled followers, and when Jesus healed a paralysed man at the pool of Bethesda, the apostle John records that the fortunate man had no idea who his saviour even was (John 5:1-15).

And through the centuries there have been a long line of the sickly faithful from the Apostle Paul who cried to God in vain for God to relieve him of the ailment he called the ‘thorn in his flesh’ (2 Cor 12:7) to John Wimber, who ran a pioneering healing ministry and himself succumbed to cancer and heart issues.

So perhaps the most important realisation is that the fact that you have survived is not because God has conferred any special favour on you. I always find it slightly disturbing when people tell me that God has saved me for a purpose. I do believe that I have a God-given ministry to ‘declare the works of God’ (Psalm 118:17), but to suggest that I have been allowed to survive to fulfil that purpose rather suggests that God needs me – a pretty ludicrous suggestion when you think about it. I don’t think the great I AM is reliant on my puny efforts!

It also suggests that my purpose is somehow more important than another’s, which again flies in the face of all we know of the Almighty. God has a purpose for all of us, as Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 12, we are all gifted but God uses those gifts in different ways. So I don’t believe that those of us who have been thrown a lifebuoy have survived because of the special favour of God.

Perhaps the most honest thing we, cancer survivors, can say is that we really don’t know why we are still here. Because if we did understand God’s plans for any of us, then lets face it, he wouldn’t be God.

But what we can do is to take our experiences of suffering and give them purpose, by empathising with others and walking alongside them as they too suffer. And to honour the memories of the fallen, by truly valuing the days, weeks, months or years of extra life that we may have been given.

Kate Nicholas is a preacher, Christian author, broadcaster and consultant. Her best-selling memoir Sea Changed (shortlisted as Christian Biography of the Year 2017) is an account of her unconventional journey of faith and previous healing from advanced cancer.

Her latest book, Soul’s Scribe (launched in 2021) draws on scripture, philosophy, psychology and over 20 years’ of reflection as a Christian communicator to take you on a journey through the various chapters of your soul story, providing you with the tools to share that story in a way that will inspire and encourage others.

Subscribe to Kate’s blog to follow her healing journey

Photo by Janosch Diggelmann on Unsplash