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You suffered a stroke not long ago. How did that affect you personally?

I had a stroke while taking a nap in a beach home. I woke up in an ambulance with my left side incapacitated and really not knowing what life I was going to have after that. I say I was in the valley of the shadow of death fearing something worse than death: incapacity.

My friends from the church gathered all around me and they prayed for a miracle of healing. My friend, Kate, a wonderful trained singer sang this hymn, "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand."

Talk about the right question. I thought, Do I stand on Christ the solid rock? Maybe I have one foot on Christ, the solid rock. But don't I have the other foot on the capacity of my own brain? That's what I've always relied on. That's what got me to Harvard. That's what made me a Berkeley professor. That's what made the wedge strategy.

Yet maybe that's shifting sand, since I'm lying here with the right side of my brain in shatters. Just the conversion wasn't enough. I had to mature. And then that wasn't enough. I really needed to lose the other thing that was most reliable to me that I stood on. I came to this realization that the important thing in life is to be in the place that God meant you to be, doing the thing he means you to do.

How do you relate this personal tragedy to the national tragedy of September 11?

I was home just a few days from the hospital and the stroke therapy when I saw that horrible event. I had hoped it was an Internet hoax. But then I thought, The world has had a stroke, the same thing has happened to the world that happened to me.

Those towers that were hit were described in The New York Times as "our towers of faith," our faith in a great commercial civilization. I compared that to the Japanese admirals in 1941 who thought that our faith was based in the battleships at anchor in Pearl Harbor.

But no, the strength of America is not in its towers or in its battleships, it's in its faith. Of course, I said that, but I wasn't sure it was really true anymore. This isn't the same country we were in the previous decades.

Now we're seeing how the country is almost cringing in fear of these Muslim terrorists from the Middle East. I see professors afraid to discuss the subject because they're afraid of what the Muslim students will do. They're afraid it won't keep the peace on campus. I never thought our country would descend to this level.

We are afraid to search the truth and to proclaim it. We once knew who the true God was and were able to proclaim it frankly. But since about 1960 we've been hiding from that. We've been trying to pretend that all religions are the same.

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Visit DickStaub.com for audio and video of his radio program (4-7 p.m. PST), media reviews, and news on "where belief meets real life."

Earlier Dick Staub Interviews include:

Connie Neal | The author of The Gospel According to Harry Potter talks about leading a friend to Christ through the wizard hero. (Nov. 19, 2002)

Chris Rice | The author of Grace Matters talks about his friendship with racial reconciliation leader Spencer Perkins, his former coauthor and best friend. (Nov. 12, 2002)

John Polkinghorne | The 2002 Templeton Prize winner sees the Bible as "the laboratory notebook" of the Holy Spirit. (Nov. 5, 2002)

Ruth Tucker | The professor and author of Walking Away from Faith talks about doubting God. (Oct. 29, 2002)

Vishal Mangalwadi | The author and lecturer talks about how the Bible shaped India, Western democracy, and his life. (Oct. 22, 2002)

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December (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46