The Travail of Mark Twain

As the twentieth century dawned, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), saw the world “darkened by military actions of the so-called Christian powers; nation preyed upon nation, the strong upon the weak.”  “The time is grave,” he wrote.  “The future is blacker than has been any future which any person now living has tried to peer into.”

The world always looks and feels “blacker” when your own personal life seems to be a living nightmare.  Life tumbled in on Mark Twain.  In the 1890’s he was overwhelmed by the death of his daughter, Suzy.  In the same period his  other daughter, Jean, was suffering with epilepsy.   Even his financial situation was “black”—he went bankrupt! His wife, Olivia, who had never been really well, continued to suffer illness after illness.  There is little doubt in my mind that Twain prayed in his sorrow and pain (as we all do):  “Let this cup pass from me!”  But it didn’t! I suspect he prayed more than three times and asked God, like the Apostle Paul did,  “to take it away from me.”  But it wasn’t taken away!

Isn’t it natural that Clemons would wonder if God really is “our loving father?”  He wrote a number of scathing satires (a direct cry of his own heart—of his doubt, his pain, loss and suffering) titled, “The Victims,” “In My Bitterness,” “The Myth of Providence,” and others.  He castigated the “middle-class church” for its selfishness and the ways in which alleged Christians  practiced prayer.  In the satire of “The Lost Ear-ring” he wrote about the great concern over a young lady’s loss of an earring of no real value, and  how she prayed and how God’s providence got the credit for restoring it to her when it was discovered that the trinket has fallen into her apron pocket.  Is an earring more significant to God than a daughter’s life?  In his satire of “The Holy Children” he wrote, “Unbelievers had scoffed when prayers are offered up for better weather, and for the healing of the sick, and the staying of epidemics, and the averting of war—prayers which no living man had ever seen answered.” But the Holy Children claimed that “special providences were at the bidding of the prayers of the perfect.” Since Twain knew he wasn’t perfect, this, then, must be the reason his fervent prayers for “special providence” on behalf of his loved ones were never answered.  

Someone said that their prayer for a Covid-19 patient was answered and the one for whom they prayed survived.  Did they pray for only that one?  Does God only respond when we happen to pray? Does that mean that our prayers determine who survives and who does not?  There are many Mark Twains in our midst crying out right now and wondering.  Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Mark Twain says, “The unexamined Christian life is not worth living.”