I had a great heart, once. “Strong as an ox!” I used to brag.
The numbers backed up my boast: blood pressure 125/70, cholesterol normal, and heart rate a low, low 45.
Weight had never been my problem. Contrary to what people usually experience, I had more difficulty gaining weight than losing it. I grew up skinny; people would say that if I turned sideways they couldn’t see me. The photographs taken at our wedding tell the story: six feet tall, I weighed only 139 pounds.
But a funny thing happened during my doctoral program: my clothes began to fit tighter. The moment of truth arrived at a fellowship dinner at Andrews University where I was teaching. I met a former student whom I hadn’t seen in several years.
“Mr. Johnsson,” she exclaimed, “you’ve ballooned! You must have gained 30 pounds!”
Lacking in diplomacy though her remark was, it was like a blow between the eyes. She was right. Slowly, imperceptibly, during the doctoral studies and after, I had put on more weight than I had ever carried before.
Just at that time some students formed a running club, the Berrien Springers, and organized a fall 10-mile run-walk event. I entered. After seminary classes were done for the day, I’d change, drive to Lake Michigan, and run on the sand by the water.
Slowly, farther and farther, until one day, a few years later, I tried out for the marathon (26.2 miles). More marathons: I entered 20 in all, completed 17.
During that time, the 1970s and 1980s, running began to take off in North America. The writings of Jim Fixx did much to popularize running. He maintained that if you could finish a marathon, you’d never have a heart attack. (Famous last words: Fixx, a marathoner, died at age 52 when his heart failed him during a training run. As early as death came to him, however, it was nine years later than for his father, who died at 43.)
I had always been a walker; now I was a runner as well. All told, I figure I’ve run and walked at least 50,000 miles over the years—twice around the globe. So there was no doubt: whatever health problems I might face, they would not involve my heart. It was as strong as an ox.
In March 2014 Noelene and I decided to make a quick visit to Australia to catch up with family and friends. Two weeks before departure I had my annual physical checkup. Everything was normal, the numbers good. Of course: strong as an ox.
I needed a divine angiogram.
“You’re fine,” the doctor said. “I’ll see you again in 12 months.”
We flew from Los Angeles to Sydney, that long, 14-hour, nonstop slog across the Pacific Ocean; then on to Adelaide, where it all began for me. Taking an apartment by the beach, we settled in for a couple weeks of quiet relaxation.
As usual, on Sabbath we went to the Prospect International Seventh-day Adventist Church, a small but warm fellowship that always makes us feel welcome (they even presented us with certificates of honorary membership!). As usual, they invited me to preach, and as usual, I accepted.
I chose a new topic and gave it my best (you might say I put my heart into it). Toward the close I began to feel very tired and struggled to bring the message to a conclusion. Greeting the people as they exited the service, I felt the need to lie down.
I began to experience heaviness in the chest. Some friends were busy preparing a picnic lunch, but just as they were about to ask the blessing on the food, I told them: “I think I need to see a doctor.”
By now the tightness in my chest had become a pain on the left side. A niggling sensation crept down my left arm until I could feel it in the wrist.
At the emergency center the cardiologist in charge ran the usual checks: EKG, blood pressure, heart rate, and blood work. Everything tested normal except for one blood factor, which was slightly elevated.
Of course, just the way my heart always checked out: strong as an ox. I told the cardiologist that it was probably all a matter of acid reflux, that a couple of antacid pills could settle the problem.
He was puzzled. “Have you taken any long plane trips recently?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” I told him. “We just landed in Australia from America 48 hours ago.”
“Then we must test for a blood clot in the lungs,” he said; and I was whisked away to a different area of the facility.
After an hour he came back to say, “I have news: no blood clot.”
“That’s good!” I said.
“Is it?” he rejoined. “It’s not good for me. If you don’t have a clot in your lungs [from a DVT—deep vein thrombosis], what is giving you chest pains?”
He went away. Through the open door I could see him pacing back and forth, deep in thought. Eventually he returned.
“Listen,” he said. “All the tests show normal for your heart, but I don’t want to let you leave. We’ll keep you for a few more hours and run the tests again. If they still indicate no problem, we’ll release you.”
I was still confident that the chest pains arose from acid reflux and urged that I be given some antacid pills. Eventually, to please me, they brought them.
Not long after, the situation changed dramatically. My blood pressure shot up. Reading the EKG, the cardiologist exclaimed: “No time to lose! You are having a heart attack right now. Every moment is critical!”
Then it was into the ambulance and a wild ride with sirens wailing, lights flashing, down the wrong side of the city street. I barely comprehended what was happening; a paramedic stayed over me, talking continually, monitoring body signals.
At the Royal Adelaide Hospital, which was only a few blocks away, a heart team was ready and waiting. I was wheeled immediately into surgery. I was still clad in Sabbath suit and shoes as a catheter was inserted into my right wrist for an angiogram. This procedure, which enables photographs to be taken from inside the heart itself, revealed that one artery was 100 percent blocked; this had brought on the heart attack.
An hour later, still struggling to come to terms with the events of the Sabbath afternoon, I lay in a bed in the coronary-care unit. The medical team, working with speed and precision, had cleared the blockage and inserted a metal stent. Blood was flowing again; I had no more chest pains.
A text came to mind and stuck: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9, KJV). This thought often came back to me during the six days in the hospital that followed. It is still with me.
“Strong as an ox”—how wrong I had been! In fact, as the angiogram showed, my heart was diseased. Not just one artery but several had plaque buildup.
Lying in the hospital bed, I began to recall evidences—nothing major, but several minor indications—that all was not what it should be with my “strong-as-an-ox” heart: increasing fatigue at the close of the day, shortness of breath while walking hills, occasional spikes in blood pressure. The signs were there, if I hadn’t been so confident that nothing was wrong.
Nor do I fault the physicians who failed to warn me that I was on track for a heart attack. How could they have known? All the usual tests indicated otherwise. Only an angiogram—a highly involved procedure that itself entails risks—could reveal the true state of my deceitful heart.
Noelene and I became acquainted with the cardiologist who supervised my case. Professor Steve Nicholls, recently returned to Australia after eight years on the faculty of the Cleveland Heart Clinic (a leading facility in the United States), took time to share some of his knowledge concerning the heart.
“If you consider the sum total of what could be known about the heart as A-Z,” he said, “we know only about A-F. Why do some people
with low cholesterol like you get a heart attack, while others with higher cholesterol do not? We don’t know.”
He made it clear that there is no guaranteed way to prevent a heart attack—not diet (I am a vegetarian) or exercise, or medications. Hereditary factors and the aging process take their toll, in spite of our best efforts.
Were all my years of careful living therefore in vain? Not at all. Without them, my heart attack might have occurred 20 years earlier. Furthermore, being in good health meant that I recovered quickly and enhanced the chances of any follow-up surgery being successful.
Among the many miracles that Jesus performed, we don’t find any that clearly involved heart disease. That is perhaps because people died much younger and led simpler lives, and so heart problems weren’t common. (We do find one instance of a heart attack in the Old Testament, in the story of the miserly husband of Abigail, named Nabal, whose heart “died within him, and he became as a stone” [1 Sam. 25:37, KJV].)
Jesus spoke often about the heart, but always in a spiritual sense, referring to the seat of our affections and motivations. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” He said, “for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8, NKJV).* “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34, NKJV). “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Matt. 22:37, NKJV).
The popular religion of Jesus’ day—the system governed by priests, scribes, and Pharisees—put emphases on externals, on behaviors, especially ritual purity. But Jesus taught a radically different path to God: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23).
In sharp words of condemnation He rebuked the hypocrisy of religious leaders: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean” (Matt. 23:25, 26).
My deceitful heart fooled me into believing that it was as strong as an ox, when in reality it was diseased. Spiritually, my deceitful heart would still fool me into believing that all is well with my soul; that I am better than “sinners” and sundry souls outside of the kingdom, that I have confessed and served the Lord so long that He just has to save me—when all is not well.
During the weeks that followed the heart attack I had a lot of time to think about what had happened. I reached a startling insight: my concern with healthful living contained a heavy element of legalism.
For years I had emphasized grace in my preaching, writing, and teaching. I thought that grace had suffused my life and ministry. And it had, but not my lifestyle.
As editor of Adventist Review and Adventist World I wanted to be at my best for the Lord. I was a good Seventh-day Adventist health reformer, and I looked the part.
When I left the Review office and switched to part-time work, the pattern didn’t change—traveling the globe, writing, speaking, and always five or six projects on the burner.
I was—had been—a legalistic health reformer. I thought I knew it all, could do it all.
One day—March 15, 2014—the Lord pulled me off the treadmill of life. He struck me down and, after all those self-satisfied years, showed me what I was doing and where I was headed.
I needed a divine angiogram, administered by the Spirit, to show me how much I needed help from outside. And out of that revelation, and my acknowledgment of need, the life-giving creative power of Jesus is flowing to give me a new heart and new life.
Christ’s heart, full of grace, and His alone, is as strong as an ox.
* Texts credited to NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
