No, Time Doesn't Heal All Wounds

Thoughts on Faith, Healing, & Stand-Up Comedy (Messed-Up But Managing #27)

There are certain sayings in life that are so trite, so overused, and so commonplace, they just make me bristle when I hear them. They feel like a stale Panda Express fortune cookie trying to pass off its chance idiocy as decisive wisdom. You know the kinda thing I’m talking about, right? Here’s one: “Everything happens for a reason.” Ugh! I hate that one. Really, everything happens for a reason? No. No it doesn’t. There’s a reason everything happens, sure! But everything doesn’t happen “for” a reason, as if it’s all pre-planned and baked into some divine orchestration.

Rapes and murders and tragedies weren’t planned before the foundation of the world or “for” some sick reason. Nah. There’s no way I’m subscribing to that theory. My messed-up haircut this week? There’s a reason it happened, but it didn’t happen “for” a reason. God wasn’t in on that. If he was, he’s got some explaining to do. And for those who don’t believe in God, neither was “the universe” in on it. There’s also the classic: “Time heals all wounds.” Dumb! That’s like saying ice cream also solves generational trauma. (My wife might actually argue that point.)

Okay, I’ll back off a bit and, I’ll admit, to me, that saying at least sounds good. It’s short and catchy. It feels wise when you slap it on a coffee mug next to a broken little stick man. But if sayings had a short bus, this one would definitely be on it. Right there in the front seat. No, friends, time doesn’t heal anything. It just doesn’t.

Let me get philosophical for a second. Time is a thing. It isn’t a person. It has no hands, no heart, and no agency. It can’t hug you, stitch you up, or bring casseroles to your door (thank God!). Time is also, to some extent, a social construct. Humans made calendars, not the other way around. Ethiopia, by their calendar, is living in 2017 right now (Google it!). And parts of Kentucky are still living in the 1800s. Throughout history we’ve had Julian and Gregorian calendars. We’ve also had solar calendars, lunar calendars, and lunisolar calendars.

The idea that time, this made-up measuring stick, is going to magically heal your wound or broken heart is like thinking your Fitbit is going to fix your marriage. Not happening! Cultures make up ways of keeping time. And, quite incredibly, God, who is transcendent and above time (i.e. eternal), is also immanent, for he steps into time’s bounds, regardless of the culture, and operates within it. He alone can do this.

But let’s be honest for a minute: if time healed all wounds, then no one would still be mad at their ex. Or their dad. Or their HOA board. But here we are, decades later, still avoiding eye contact at the grocery store or the community event or the Thanksgiving table. Friends, time doesn’t heal a darn thing. Time isn’t a being. Time has no agency. Time is literally incapable of healing anyone or anything.

Rather, here’s the truth: God heals. Whether it’s right away, or slowly, or through other people, or with help from therapists, or after several failed attempts at journaling, it’s God who brings healing. It is patently not time, the abstract tick-tock of some invisible clock, that heals. And even when it feels like healing isn’t happening, God is still at work. God heals; time doesn’t.

This might not seem like it connects to comedy, but it does. Comedy is very much the art of telling the truth in a way that makes the pain and absurdity of life easier to carry. And the best comedians I know aren’t the ones who’ve avoided wounds, they’re the ones who’ve learned how to show their scars under stage lights. They’re the ones who bring them out front and center and put them on display. That, in itself, can be healing for the comedian and audience alike. That’s also why healing doesn’t look like forgetting. Sometimes it just looks like laughing through it and at it with others until the memory doesn’t hurt so bad anymore.

And why does this matter? Why am I saying this? Because if we keep telling people that time will heal them, we set them up to feel like failures when the pain doesn’t go away. When that happens, they think something’s wrong with them. But if we can be honest and say God heals, and sometimes he does it through faith, community, work, medicine, therapy, prayer, hard conversations, and even stand-up comedy, then we give people real hope. So, no more giving people magic clock dust! And the next time someone says, “Time heals all wounds,” gently correct them saying, “Nah, actually, God does that.” Nothing trite about that.