Chapter 18b The Gospel of Running

Chronologically, this chapter fits between chapters 18 and 19 that are already published on this blog.


The Gospel of Running

At the start of my sophomore year at Southern Missionary College (now Southern Adventist University), I was comfortably established as a theology major, so I signed up for Greek with Ronald Springett and other classes appropriate to my major.

I met Bill Shelly. I have no idea how we got acquainted. In my earliest memories, he was a striking personality. Devout, certainly, but dashing, debonair, popular, in a completely different league from me. Our becoming friends was entirely his doing. I still can't quite figure out how it happened.

Some time that fall, Bill decided we should run together. Which would be unremarkable except for the fact that I didn't run. Running was systematic misery. In high school when we were required to run a few laps around the football field, all I remembered was my ineffective flailing at the air. My body did not like running. My mind did not like running. I could not imagine running would ever be fun. Maybe for other people, for the guys I heard talking in the cafeteria about running ten miles!!! on Sunday mornings. But never for me.

Bill insisted. He dragged me out to the track and we did a couple of slow laps. Then I sat on the bleachers while he ran another four. We repeated this routine several times a week. Always at his insistence. I progressed to three laps. Then finally four. A whole mile! I was amazed at myself. I could run a whole mile! Wow! Of course, however far I ran, Bill ran another mile. But then, he was an athlete.

Late in the fall, he announced it was time to run the hills. Southern sits up against a ridge, White Oak Mountain. The first time out, I jogged maybe a third of the way up before pooping out. But running down was a blast. Bill kept me at it until I was jogging all the way to the top. Then we would leave the trail and tear down the mountain cross country. In this wild, off-trail running I could sometimes beat Bill. He was worried about spraining his ankles. I was made of rubber and didn't care.

Running became fun. No other single thing anyone has done to me or for me compares with the gift of running. I was attending a ministers' meeting when I was in my mid-fifties. During a break a young pastor asked if I wanted to go jogging with him. I protested I hadn't done any running in months and I didn't want to slow him down. He insisted, so I agreed. We ran down a hill and around a lake. His breathing sounded more labored than I expected. As we began to head back up hill, I upped the pace just a bit. He began gasping. I pushed a little harder, still feeling comfortable, taking immense pleasure in his discomfort. After a few more yards he gasped, “I'm done. You go ahead.” I did.

Having just bared my soul in the meeting about how inadequate I felt in my work, it was sweet to waste a young buck half my age running up hill after months of doing nothing.

I never figured out how to integrate the reality of the blessing of running with a theology of “justification by faith” which became the center of my thinking over the next couple of decades. In fact, I never thought the disconnect between my theology and the greatest physical blessing in my life. There is no vicarious way to receive the gifts running gives. The only way to enjoy the benefits is to embrace the discipline. Because of Bill, I endured the discipline and enjoy the benefits. In recent years as I have become a neo-legalist, running and my theology have come together. But that's getting way ahead of the story.