Barnacles from a Night Sea

My mother says I get it from her . . . the inability to sleep well at times. Last night was one of those times. I awaken at 1:30 AM and it felt like 8 AM except with a foggy head and raw thoughts.

I don’t know what it is about the middle of the night, but it is a horrible . . . or who knows, maybe a good . . . time to think about things. Problems look bigger and more insurmountable. Sometimes I think the night-time prevents reality . . . sometimes I think it exposes it for what it really is.

I spent a few hours cruising the dark, black sea of the night with my wondering mind at the helm. It always seems that the most emotionally charged thoughts rise to the surface first, especially if they were from a recent experience, such as the previous day or evening. These thoughts stuck like barnacles to the hull of my ghostly schooner of the night.

It was cold last night (relatively speaking) and I didn’t have the motivation to do a lot before retiring. I tired to work on some papers I need to write. But I kept drifting back to the Internet, reading and commenting here and there.

I visited Imonk’s page and read about Mark Driscoll’s statement that Avatar was the most demonic movie of all time.

It was only about a year ago that I started thinking that maybe Mark’s Mars Hill Church was the church I had been looking for, if not his very church (70 miles away) then a church in its likeness.

But after reading the postings on Imonk, then going to the source (a Seattle newspaper story), I started to feel this great loss. I wasn’t so surprised to find that his thinking and mine are on different planets (speaking of Avatar). While I thought the script of the movie was corny at best, the visual imagery was worth the money, especially when viewed in 3 D. I sensed the presence of God in that film, not the devil. Of course not in the spiritual teaching, as if I would ever go to a secular movie for that. But in the beauty of the Pandoran world, created by men (and women) who were in turn created by God. It doesn’t matter what the screenwriters, director, special effects people believe about God and spirituality, they can’t escape God’s fingerprint on their creativity. When I see beauty anywhere, I feel closer to God.

To suggest that the movie was demonic sounds a little kindergarten-ish to me. Will demons actually crawl across the sticky Milk-dud coated theater floor, then up your ankle and sneak into your soul as you sit and watch the movie? Will you go home and start to worship the trees or switch to a pantheistic view of reality because of that movie? If so, then Mark’s church has done a horrible job in preparing you to think for yourself.

But with that said, I started to feel that Invasion of the Body Snatchers feeling again. Where, one by one, everyone around you is being replaced by plant-like clones. Then you find yourself alone in the world.

I’ve taken so many wild goose chases in my life looking for the ideal church. Each time, I’m greatly disappointed. I’m not looking for perfect people, just people with whom I can communicate with outside my own head without having to constantly be on the defensive. I know they exist. I’ve met many at LAbri functions. I’ve met them at Imonk and here. Rarely do I meet them in my own world of everyday life.

No, I’m not looking for a perfect church. Actually I’m not looking for a church at all anymore. I’ve given up on the task. Not because there is no hope of finding a better church home, but knowing of the marital conflict I would create if I did find another church.

I’m not looking for perfect people, actually . . . just the opposite. I’m looking for people who really believe in their souls that there is no hope for perfection in this world. That by going to the right movies, avoiding the right drinks, saying the right things, voting for the right party, will not make you closer to perfection because they know that perfection is unobtainable and is allusive as chasing your own shadow.

I did finally get to sleep . . . it must have been around 4 AM. But before that, my mind gathered more barnacles.

Once again I find a lacking of purpose in my life. There is no way I would admit that when I was an Evangelical because the number one caveat of our personal testimony was that “In Christ We’ve Found a Purpose.” Maybe that was true . . . but again, maybe we were lying to ourselves.

I don’t mean this feeling of lack of purpose in any more dynamic terms than Solomon’s observations about the vanity of efforts. It is easier to feel this way when you are done being a father of little, dependent children. Then, my “purpose” was forced on me every morning when I woke up. There was no time to wonder about it.

But this barnacle came as the result of another hard day at work. I knew that I had gone to bed with stress from a couple of nasty confrontations . . . which are typical.

I entered health care thinking it was about helping people to get better. It was my role in the master plan of God redeeming the world from suffering.

While I do see many patients who want healing and participate in their healing, the ones that leave me drained are those who have no desire for healing. They just want a primal chemical fulfillment of their opioid receptors (narcotic seeking), or they are mad as hell that I didn’t document their pain for their lawyer . . . seeking monetary fulfillment from their fall at Walmart. Or they want to use their pain as a permanent paid vacation . . . and they, once again, are mad as hell that I made them better and that I documented their good health. In the book The Singer (by Calvin Murphy), there is a statement that goes something like this, “For some people you can not wish for health and happiness, because for them, illness and happiness rest comfortably in the same bed.”

I say this in the spirit of Solomon . . . or maybe Caulfield. I come home every night drained and hand over my check to my wife. She pays the bills and there is never a penny left over.

So, this may be another fall-out from a midlife crisis thing, but I do wonder what I should be doing with my life. I don’t want to lay on my death bed with regrets and now I fear I will have them. But at the same time, I don’t have the idealism that I once had about a very specific calling on one’s life from God.

We were always taught that God had one very particular purpose for each person. If you weren’t squarely in the center of that calling, then your life will be made hell on earth. If you were in the center of that obscure calling, then your entire life would be filled with good health, perfect children, perfect marriage and complete Jesus-bliss bubbling over into a constant smirk.

And this brings me to my last point . . . the death bed. In the early hours of the morning (here on the West Coast) I saw the blog update by Denise Spencer. I already knew that Michael was dying so that was no surprise. But to hear her say that in the written word was startling. I’m about the same age as Michael. I care about this virtual friend very much. I’m sorry to turn this into a selfish pondering, but I think Michael would understand. I thought that once again I dodged the lighting bolt of fatality. Just a year ago this week another good (not virtual) friend who was the same age as me died. I felt the same way then. Why wasn’t it me? There is no reason it couldn’t have been me. It wasn’t like my friend was playing with bombs and had an accident. He, like Michael, had cancer. We all are vulnerable.

This always makes me think about our own mortality. If I were to leave a legacy, I would love (besides through my kids) to do it through what I love to do . . . write. I have three completed novels and one non-fiction work that I wish I could have others read. But in the strange raw presence, in the quietness of the dark, my emotions tell me that it is just a silly fantasy. Like those who desire to sing on the stage but never will, I’m just one of millions who long to write worthy enough to be read and to stir people to think about the human condition in ways they may never have before.

Movie Night and a Lesson About Personal Disasters

Okay . . . it is Oscar night . . . so it is a good time to talk about movies. I think I was about to talk about movies even before I realized that the Academy Awards were tonight.

We live in a wonderfully-unique island. I think it was Money Magazine that picked our island as the number one place in America for the healthy, active retirees to move to. Besides being surrounded by water, we have own mountain covered in miles and miles of trails, rock climbing cliffs and etc. We also have at least 5 major lakes filled with fish.

So we attract some interesting people . . . many who’ve made a fortune on Wall Street or Hollywood. One of the Hollywood types (spent years in the business) is leading a movie night at the public library. Denise and I decided to go Friday night. Once we were there, and I realized which movie it was (the Holiday) I was a bit disappointed. I recognized the movie from its trailers that I saw the year it came out. I had the impression that it was a poorly-written chick flick. After all, Jack Black was in it.

However, the man leading the night started telling “behind the scenes” stories about the actors (whom he had worked with for years) and the actually movie. My interest was stirred up.

I have to say, that I did enjoy the movie. I came away with the notion that Kate Winsiet is not just a pretty face but a tremendous actor. I was starting to get that ideal in Revolutionary Road but was confirmed in this movie.

I’ve never been a fan of Cameron Diaz and I guess I’m still not and I’m not sure why. I came away more convinced that Jack Black is a very limited actor. Once he gets out of his character (as in School of Rock) he is simply not very good. The last main actor, Jude Law, will also be to me, the robotic gigolo from AI with music coming form his head and some mechanical apparatus that drove women wild.

But the point that I took away from this movie was certainly subtle. I don’t if any of the million who saw it came away with the same thought.

In the movie, the charter played by Law was a widower. He made the comment that he was very emotional and could cry at the drop of a hat. He didn’t connect these dots, but I had the feeling he could cry so easily because of the disaster of loosing his wife (and the mother of his two little girls).

Cameron, on the other hand, told the story that she couldn’t cry no matter how hard she tried. And she did try, like when she found out that her live-in boyfriend had been causally boinking his 25 year old receptionist. But the Cameron character did make the connection between the unexpected divorce of her parents (and she was an only child) to her inability to cry.

This is where my mind began to wonder about how personal disasters influence us. I used to be like the Cameron character (I don’t know why) but I could not cry. I did not cry at my father’s funeral and I loved him very much. But after I went through a series of two personal disasters, I now cry very easily. I feel pain very deeply . . . where there is pain to feel.

I can remember a young girl, a patient, came into see me because she was acutely depressed. She told me her story. Her and her high-school sweetheart both came to Michigan Tech (where I was providing care in the student health clinic). They had gotten engaged the year before and she was very much in love with him.

She worked at the campus cafeteria. One night she had to go to work, leaving her fiancée and her roommate (also her best friend) playing a board game in her dorm room. When she got to work, she learned that the banquet that she was suppose to set up for had been cancelled. So went back to her room, opened the door and found her sweetheart and her roommate/best friend naked in bed together. Both of them tried to convince her that it was causal sex because they were bored . . . but that was a silly response. She was devastated of course.

As she told me the story, in tears, suddenly I began to sob uncontrollably. She must have thought I was nuts. But I do hope she knew that I cared.

But I’ve meet many people in life who have gone through personal disasters There are some who visit here (this blog) who have known far more pain that I have. Many people come out of these situations more stoic (Cameron character) and rocks. Many of us, however, are broken to the point that we will never be put back together again (like Humpty Dumpty). Maybe spending the rest of our lives broken . . . is a good thing.

I will be back to proof read this so I’m sorry about the typos but I have to run.

In Other Words

Another way of saying what I was trying to say in that last post was captured in a paragraph I read this morning in As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.

Faulkner is speaking through the mouth of Anse (Pa). It is a horribly dysfunctional family (like most) with layers and layers of psychological drama. When one son seemed to go more nuts than the rest and another son raised the question of the sanity of his brother (after his brother burned down their host's barn and then was picking a fight when someone commented that his dead mother was stinking) his father said the following (in his Mississippi dialect):

Sometimes I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

Can the Fall be Contained? Part III (last) The Sea of Lies

As an introduction, I would like to share the video below and I will discuss it on the other side.



When I’ve shown that video to lay-friends (those who don’t work in medicine) and even a few times I’ve shown it to medical people, I’ve had the response, “Poor thing. What a horrible condition.”

However, if you show to us who work in neurology, who deal with spells and movement disorders everyday, it takes about 3 seconds to know that the movement disorder that this young lady presents with . . . are completely fake. I am confident that if you showed the video to the top 1000 movement disorder specialists in the country that 99% will sake fake. However, unlike TV shows like House, theses majority are not simply arrogant and the really smart doctor will find the true organic (physical) cause. The few medical people who supports someone like this, giving a “legitimatization” to the disorder, usually has their own agenda.

I know that my perspective may be tainted a bit (but not in a bad way) because I see these cases every day. It is estimated that 1/3 of patients who come to a neurologist’s office are having fake spells or symptoms. We call these “psychogenic.”

When I’ve shown that video to lay-friends (those who don’t work in medicine) and even a few times I’ve shown it to medical people, I’ve had the response, “Poor thing. What a horrible condition.”

However, if you show to us who work in neurology, who deal with spells and movement disorders everyday, it takes about 3 seconds to know that the movement disorder that this young lady presents with . . . are completely fake. I am confident that if you showed the video to the top 1000 movement disorder specialists in the country that 99% will sake fake.

I know that my perspective may be tainted a bit (but not in a bad way) because I see these cases every day. It is estimated that 1/3 of patients who come to a neurologist’s office are having fake spells or symptoms. We call these “psychogenic.”

Lay people, especially Christian lay people (meaning again, non- medical people) are quick to believe these symptoms are real. They are also very hesitant to accept them as psychogenic. But when they finally do accept them as psychogenic, then they see it as simple, first-person sin. What I mean, is that they think this person sits around and one day says, “I’m going to start faking seizures or other medical problems.” Therefore they are just bad people. But it is far more complicated than that. Many of these people are lying to themselves and they actually believe the symptoms that their sub-conscious is faking.

The psychological reason for most somatization disorders (or what use to be known as hysterical, psychological, or hypochondriacal disorders) is based on our fundamental desire to have value. Short of winning America’s Idol, one of the most “convenient” ways to become very important . . . oddly . . . is to become very sick. You are very important when your spouse, your family, your friends and your church are very worried about you and are constantly praying for you. You can quickly become the center of attention. But this is on a very deep, psychological level. When I try to tell these patients that they are faking it, they usually become extremely angry as do their families. Actually, the only time I’ve ever been assaulted by a patient was when I told her that the seizure that she had just demonstrated was not a real seizure.

So my point in all of this is that we live in a sea of lies because of the Fall. In my opinion there has never been a person, except for Christ, who was completely sane. It is just the matter of degree. I think in one sense, all insanity is a function of lies. Much insanity is a brain problem, but even that brain problem distorts reality . . . thus is a form of lying. People (like me) who have a tendency towards depression have a mood disorder. But a mood disorder is a lie about reality. You can think, “It is hopeless because no one cares about me, I’m a looser, life sucks” and etc. So those things are distortions of truth.

The same is of course true with anxiety disorders where we have a distorted view of dangers. And then there is psychosis where all of reality is distorted or lied about (by our brains).

So, the fall has created this sea of lies that we must swim in. And, of course, Satan is the Lord of lies (John 8:44 44You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.)

But can we manage the Fall to the point that we can rise above the lies and always know just truth? I don’t think so. So, we can’t trust ourselves completely. So, in my opinion we can’t always speak with authority. This is not to say we can never know truth. We don’t have to reach the point of only knowing; Cogito ergo sum.”
To follow up on this point, so if we live in this environment of lies, it is not only acceptable or is our responsibility not to believe everything we hear or everything we tell ourselves. So when a Christian says, “God told me such and such/” Well, it is legitimate to think . . . maybe He did . . . or maybe He didn’t. I’ve talked about this before, but I do believe that doubt is a gift and a safeguard from drowning in this cold sea.

Here is a follow up video:

Bart and Frank at Thrive

The older I get, the more hours I spend in Thrive (in the winter . . . the summer I exercise out doors). While I run on the treadmill, it gives me the chance to catch up on all the cable channels we don't get.

Honestly (and I know this sounds a little gay) my favorite channel is HGTV, especially International House Hunters. However (maybe my more masculine side speaking) I love to channel surf between the 8 TVs.

I had been working on my last post regarding "containing the fall" but I'm going to interrupt that work with what I saw on TV tonight.

If you ever watch MSNBC side by side with Fox . . . and you switch back and forth between them, they both seem like comedy. Why? Because they are each so over the top in the spin they try to put on the "issues." It really is ridiculous. I know that I may be stepping on toes but it appears that anyone who is a loyal fan of either Fox or MSNBC must not be thinking very deeply.

I had to turn away from HGTV when MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was talking about something, then she showed a photo of Bart Stupak. You see, I was living in Bart's neck of the woods when he was first elected (I was living in Marquette. Michigan and he is from Escanaba I believe). He was a highway patrol officer before he ran for congress. His brother was my lawyer in a professional situation. A good Catholic friend of mine was an advocate and friend of Stupak.

I wasn't going to switch channels until I next saw the same photo of the C Street house that I posted two days ago. I already knew that Bart was one of the C Street renters.

So I switched over from House Hunters. Rachel has such an agenda. She spends about 30 minutes doing a character assassination of Bart because of his support of the pro-life position. It was plain silly. As part of that attack, she also attacked the C Street House ministry brutally. It made me feel a little guilty for my statements. I stick by my statements but I certainly don't support Rachel's obvious agenda.

So I switch back to HGTV. After a few minutes I glance over only to see another familiar face, Frank Schaeffer. So, I had to switch back.

I've debated in my mind if Frank and I are on the same page or not. I think mostly we are. I certainly hear a lot of bad things about him. But, those bad things come from the same people who would say bad things about me.

One person is a good friend of mine and was also one of Frank's mother's best friends. She feels that Frank has gone over to the dark side.

Then, there are the people at church. Because I'm noted for being a fan of LAbri, I've had several people at church come up to me, shaking their heads and saying, "Did you hear about Frank Schaeffer? He's fallen away from the Lord."

I'm not so sure he has. I loved his Crazy for God as well as his fictional (semi-autobiographical) works. I think these people at church would assume that I've fallen away from the Lord if they all my opinions.

Anyway, I missed the main story that Frank was asked to comment on. But apparently, there is a group of men called the Operation Exodus, who believe in taking up weapons (machine guns and etc.) and creating some kind of army, a Christian army based in churches, with the goal of defending our boarders against the aliens and fighting the Muslim terrorists. Frank, in his emotionally charged voice (that sounds like his Dad's voice) lashed out against this group and right wing nut cases. I'm sorry, but with that I have to agree. I've always thought that Jesus and guns make strange bedfellows.

Can the Fall be Managed? Part II

I can always sense a real difference in my perspective and many of those at the Evangelical church I attend. For example, in once such exchange at our Bible study, when I commented that the church needs to communicate to its members and visitors that it is a “safe place” (as many of our families have left after they, or their kids got in trouble). Another man disagreed strongly. He said the church should not be a safe place but a scary place, where people sense God’s wrath. He also suggested that, in his opinion, we are far too soft on sin.

I heard from the pulpit and a couple of church leaders a few years ago that the reason that so many youth leave the church is because we cut them too much slack. It was suggested that if we banned our teens from getting tattoos, wearing baggy clothes (or low cut blouses) and require them to attend church every Sunday (while they are under our roof) that when they grow up they would be much more likely to stay in church.

I strongly disagreed with this notion and I was the only one in our Sunday school class who did. It is the same mentality that you can “beat the sin out of them.”

The same man who said that we are soft on sin, thinks that I’m especially soft on sin. But I think we are in different places in our lives. I don’t mean this in any kind of arrogant way, but he is a relatively new Christian (about 10 years). So I think he is still in that idealism that I had during my first 15 years as a Christian. That sin is manageable and I can grow the point that I’m no longer vulnerable.

Now to clarify what I am thinking a little further is that I am not advocating that we have a free pass based on the blood of Christ. I’m not saying, (as some in the early Church did) that we should sin freely now because there is no hope of overcoming sin. I’m not saying that we should grab a hooker and some meth and take off to a fancy hotel . . . hey, wait a minute . . . that’s exactly what Ted Haggard did! And Ted, if you listened to his messages, was in the camp that we all should “shape up” and over come our sin and be godly. He taught that sin was manageable. I’m sure he thought of himself as a “godly man.”

No. What I’m saying is that we should put every effort to do what is right, which is defined within Agape-ism. However, we must never believe that the Fall is manageable or that we can remove ourselves from its influence.

How many times I’ve see (pick your adjective; strong, mature, godly) Christians abruptly leave everything Christian. They didn’t have to slowly “backslide” over years. I think of Norm, people told me that he was the godliest father they knew (had 7 kids, 5 adopted handicapped ones). He instantly left his family and moved in with a co-worker who was half his age. He left and never looked back (he was literally voted the “father of the year” the previous year). Then I think of a good friend Carolyn, who, while in the middle of an extreme discipleship program (designed to mentally beat the sin out of us) abruptly, literally overnight (and this was after years of being in the discipleship program) returned to her drug culture. I think of a Baptist pastor in my small town who out of the blue, grabbed the wife of the Methodist pastor and fled to the beach to live.

So, a few years ago, when our pastor told me that he was to going start discipling us elders as his inner circle, I knew my days were numbered. I have been discipled almost to the point of having a virtual lobotomy. If 20 years of hard discipling by the Navigators (the modern re-inventors of discipling) didn’t take, I wasn’t clear what he could do with me. I know that tomorrow, lest I am careful, I could be capable of the most distressing sin. So I must pray, “lead us not into temptation lest we should sin against You.”

If you want any more proof of he condition of us "spiritual" ones, you can follow this Google search for the words, "Pastor Arrested." The pages go on and on and on.

Spiritual Elitism - - - Can the Fall be Contained?

(Pictured: The C Street House in Washington, DC)

I believe that a huge topic is at stake here and I don’t if I can put it into words. It has to do with how manageable is the Fall of Adam. Another word, which may or may not be synonymous, is sanctification. Can we, as Christians, ever escape the effects of the Fall?

Two things brought this to mind recently. The first was the comment by Alex after Feb 19 th’s posting. Alex put a link to this blog. To make a long story short is was about a family coming to the blogger’s church. The 7 year old adoptive daughter, Lydia, was accidently killed by her Christian parents. Her Christian parents were practicing a type of child-rearing techniques (including severe corporal punishment) advocated by a very conservative pastor in Tennessee. I personally know of another case that is like this one. The Tennessee pastor believes in “entire sanctification” or where Christians can contain the effects of the Fall to the point they never sin anymore. So, you can literally beat the sin out of your kids in other words.

Then that night I heard on NPR another story about the “C Street House.” I’ve heard of that place before. But, in case you haven’t, I will explain in brief.

The “C Street House” is a secret ministry set up to disciple, at a very elite level, members of congress or the Senate. The purpose was to help create godly leaders of this country. Very little is known about it except it is listed as a church for tax purposes and it is operated by the same people who set up the annual Prayer Breakfast.

This house has been in the news lately because three of these elite disciples have been behaving badly. Maybe you could call it, “Disciples Gone Wild.” One of the disciples is Mark Sanford, who was recently caught slipping off to Argentina to visit his mistress. Seven days before he was caught, another associate of the house, Mark Ensign (Senator from Nevada) was caught in an affair. Now put this in context with the fact that only a handful of men meet the standards of living in or associating with that house. These are the spiritual and power elite.

Now, I’ve read that Cal Thomas and others have defended the house in the aftermath of those scandals along the lines of not judging the entire work based on a couple of bad apples. Or, more like, Jesus is all about forgiveness.

But that’s not the criticism that I voice here. My criticism or question is, can we really manage our sin in this way? Is there really a ladder of climbing out of sin into “godliness” or spirituality?

I think that my personal fall from Evangelicalism started when the godliest men I ever knew . . . were guilty of some of the worst sins I could imagine. But it took me a while to believe it. I’ve told the story before about the most hard-core disciple I ever met (he was a Navigator staff guy) disappeared one year and returned the next year with a new wife who was half his age. None of us asked a single question about it, even though it was the elephant in the room. Then, there was my missionary boss. I had him on the highest human pedestal of spirituality. He did some bad things. Then there was myself, I’ve been capable of some bad things.

I want to think about this a little more and do another post or two. But in summary, I think the way you look at sin really determines if you are an Evangelical or not. Evangelicals believe that they can achieve spirituality. In the same breath, they can relegate the non-Christian, or even the “weak Christian” to a much lower level of worth and existence. That’s why Evangelicals don’t like non-Christians. They don’t like their music (like KD Lang) or their art, or their books (especially if they have words like shit in them). But when you see that not even a sheet of onion-skin paper couldn’t fit between you level of spirituality and that of the worst human, you are not only more grateful for the mercy of God in Christ. But you also don’t trust anyone. I don’t trust my own spirituality. I don’t trust that of any spiritual leader. Actually, the more they seek the limelight, the less I trust them.