The Pain of Aging - The Unspoken Experience

The name of this painting is "Dancing and the Art of Growing Old Gracefully" by Paola Catizone in Dublin. Her web site is here.

This is a topic which has been endeared to my heart but which I have not spoken of much, until now. I'm sure this topic will take many postings to cover.

Before I begin I must make a couple of statements. While we attempt to paint aging it the most positive colors, I do believe that it is part of the curse of the immortality of humans. To deny that curse-ness I think is to live in denial. When I've attempted to discuss my feelings about aging with some of my Christian friends, immediately they see me as "just being negative" once again. Or, not having an eternal perspective or, lastly, just being self-consumed. I think this is why I've avoided talking about it until now. But it is part of the human experience. It is painful (both emotionally and physically) and I think it needs a microphone in which to speak and to speak candidly. I will cut to the chase. Getting older sucks. You can put lipstick on it, but is it not still swine?

I think I gave myself permission to speak of the pain of aging when, a few weeks ago, I heard an interview on NPR. I can't remember who was being interviewed but it was a "has-been" actress. She lives here in Beverly Hills (yeah, I'm sitting in Starbucks in Beverly Hills right now). Her entire life had been centered on her beauty. She got everything by her looks.

Like a mummification, the technicians here really know how to preserve age. As she grew older and older, her beauty was well preserved. Until one notorious day. She was driving her BMW convertible, at a high speed, down the Sana Monica Boulevard and a cop pulled her over. She says, up until that point, she had never gotten a ticket . . . just warnings. The cop would recognize her, or she would simply flirt (which she admits being an expert at) and he would blush and let her go. This time though, it didn't work. The young cop didn't recognize her nor did her flirting work (as she was approaching 50). He gave her a ticket. But far beyond the $150 fine, she was completely devastated. Her youth, her beauty was at that line of demarcation . . . gone forever. Of course it had been insidious . . . but this moment was the chief milestone.

She turned around, drove to her Beverly Hills mansion and got totally drunk. She stayed drunk for the next twenty years to dampen the pain.

She was on NPR because she had written a book about her coming to grips with getting older and losing her beauty.

I will be back. I have a meeting that I'm late for. I will try to correct any typos later . . . thanks for your patience.

Kids - Between Jacob and the Jelly Bean

The painting is titled Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by French Romantic artist Eugene Delacroix in 1861.

When I was in high school there was a local mega, Baptist church (before there were such a thing as "mega churches") who had all kinds of tricks for getting kids in church. They had a very large bus ministry. To lure kids to their Sunday school program, they often gave away bags of jelly beans or toys, like balloons or spinning tops.

The church had an assortment of entertainment to try and capture the kid's interest. They had clowns and cowboys. Once my dad was brought in (he was an archeologist) when they did a big program about Cherokee Indians.

I think if you polled most Evangelical parents and asked them to choose one of two paths for their kids, I know the one they would choose . . . path one.

Path one, the Jelly Bean path, is where they go to church faithfully, support the pastor and elders in everything they do, they dress well, never get tattoos, never use a long list of words esteemed by Evangelicals as being bad. They never drink alcohol in case they might offend some "weaker brother" somewhere. They are very, very nice. On this path they substitute dogma for thinking. They believe what they are told to believe and never doubt it. They suppress their raw human frailties deep out of sight and never, ever mention them outside their silent thoughts, alone in their beds in the middle of the dark night of winter.

The second path is messy. On this path, they think and think and think. They don't grasp the 1,2,3 answers to every problem but feel confused, lonely, angry, horny, frustrated . . . and in distress. They encounter God and a deep visceral, almost animal-istic place. They wrestle with God . . . not disrespectful, but in the honestly of emotions. They are known to cry out, "Oh, God where the hell are you! I'm hurting down here!" Yes, sometimes they use unapproved words.

But in the end of this earthly life, those on path two do come to peace with God, having borne the scars of their struggle.

But I would choose path two for all of my kids over path one. I wish I had taken that path much earlier in my life than I did. It is best to feel and to hurt than to not feel at all.

Can You Beat Jesus into a Child? The Myth of Godly Child Rearing

This topic has really been on my mind as of late. I'm sure the real reason is the book, which I am reading; The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler.

In summary (and I know that I have mentioned this book ad nauseum) the author is a minor character in the book, who is trying to save his godson, Earnest, from his self-righteous parents. It is the kind of book that I would require all teens to read, if I were a Sunday school teacher, then spend weeks discussing it. But is also the kind of book that I'm sure many Evangelicals would want banned.

The other reason that I'm thinking about it is that my life has been consumed with child rearing . . . up until now. Last Wednesday, my last child finished high school.

Our experience in child rearing has crossed the entire spectrum of approaches. When we first had children, I was a hard-core evangelical and preparing to go overseas as a Navigator missionary. We (especially me) believed back then the following:

1) How a child turns out, spiritually, was completely in my hands.

2) Like forms, which hold poured concrete, the more rigid my boundaries were, the better the kid would turn out.

3) You could discipline sin almost out of a child. By discipline, I mean time-outs, taking away privileges and beating them. The Navigators, which we were around, followed the Bill-lunatic-Gothard approach of beating them with wooden spoons. This was based on the Proverb "Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child."

4) We must do our best to insulate the children from "The World" (whatever than meant).

We were always perplexed by the children of the godly people who completely rebelled. I've been told, and it may not be true, that Dawson Trotman's (founder of the Navigators) own children did not turn out so well. He was a strict disciplinarian. He had his kids memorizing Bible verses from the time they could talk.

In part of this spirit of protecting our kids, I had an honest thought that if we ever came home from the mission field, that we would try and recreate the "Wilderness Family" experience. This was a b-movie series about a family that dropped out of American society and went to remote Alaska (or somewhere remote) and lived off the land. I thought that would be best for my kids, you know, insulate them from anything that could be negative.

But I see things very differently now. First of all, I do think that God has given each child an independent mind and, while we do have a powerful influence on them, we can not determine their outcome.

Second, I really think many parents get caught up in their own self-esteem issues. One day, about 12 years ago, light went on in my head over this. One of my sons had on a very wrinkled shirt and we were trying to load up the five in our van to take them to church. Denise said to him that he must change his shirt because it would be disrespectful to God to wear a wrinkled shirt to God's house. Up until that moment, I might have agreed with her.

But I looked at my son and said, "You know, the real truth is that if you go to church with wrinkled clothes, it will make mommy and daddy look bad and we really want people to think highly of us. Just like you want to be liked in school. That is what this is all about. God doesn't care what you wear. I still would prefer you wear a non-wrinkled shirt but that is all about me looking good to other people."

In the Butler's book, the author makes it very clear, yet not blatantly obvious, that the motives of the parents are all about themselves . . . and looking respectable in their Victorian society (and feeling good about themselves in their insecure hearts).

I'm now at the conclusion that at least 80% of the motives of our child-rearing, when you look honestly, is about ourselves.

I want to come back and talk about this more. For one, I've had the observation that those kids who come out of the right end (meaning like Earnest's parents or the way I was 20 years ago) tend to follow one of two paths. They openly rebel or they are so fearful of disappointing someone (their parents, God) that they play the game of the quiet, good person for the rest of their lives. They, in other words, turn their brains off completely and become hollow shells of people.

I just got a notice that a friend of mine's son is going into the pastorate. I am concerned because he seems to be of the later group. I observed how he was raised and he was raised to never think outside the box his Evangelical parents had created for him. He never read anything but Christian things.

I have also observed in my own heart, that for some of my kids I can never see them in the traditional church. And, in an odd way, I don't want to see them there. The reason is, I would much rather them honestly encountering God on their own, than to go to church services (which I know they hate as much as I do) and faking it. Maybe in a perfect world there is a type of church that would encourage them to keep thinking, creating and yet be a Sunday morning type of church.

I want to come back to this. I've leaving on a trip in the morning to attend a scientific meeting in Beverly Hills (of all places) but I hope to write from there.

Father's Day

I wish I could say a lot about Fathers' Day, regarding my own father and being one myself. This year my own son celebrates this day as a recipient for the first time. However, as they say in Tennessee, I am dog-tired. Denise and I just spent the last few days exploring Vancouver Island's rocky and wind-swept coast by jeep, bike and sea kayak.

Last night we arrived back in civilization, camping in Sidney B.C. and waiting for our morning ferry home. The beach setting was glorious. However, I had the sense that a storm was brewing.

First, about six young attractive women were camping alone a few sites up from us. Then about dusk, several car-loads of young men, each with large brown bags under their arms (that had a jingle of liquid-filled bottles) arrived. I could see the writing on the wall.

All heck broke out about midnight when the inebriated group of about twenty came in from their beach campfire. They were out of control screaming, car racing through the campground, fighting, crying, guys and girls each shouting the "F word" as spacers between all other words. This and who knows what else, continued the next three hours. I was about ready to confront them (but I knew that would not end pretty) or call the police. However, my cell phone was dead.

During my on again, off again contact with REM sleep I had one dream from that insecure place in my soul. I dreamt that it was the end of Fathers' Day, and I had not heard from a single offspring as if it were just another day. But that turned out not to be true. I've heard from 4 out of 5 and the night is not over yet.

The lack of sleep was not a problem as I knew I didn't have to go to work today, plus I had a relaxing two and a half ferry ride ahead where I could catch few Zs. But I've already written more than I had planned and my eyes are slowly closing.

So, out on the very remote and craggy coast of B.C.'s Vancouver Island I spotted the old fir tree stump (pictured at top) acting as the "nursery" for five new fir trees. The tree and its relationship with its offspring captured fatherhood better than I can with words right now.

In honor of my own father here is the link to my old post about him.

The Gift of Guilt - The Curse of It

Pictured is of course is Joran Van Der Sloot in his happier days, when he had maybe only killed one girl and wasn't facing life behind bars in a dirty Peruvian jail.

This posting isn't about him but the concept of guilt--both good and bad guilt. There have been comments made in the media, by experts, that Van Der Sloot seems to exhibit sociopathic behavior. I will make the assumption that he is guilty for killing both girls (as that is where the evidence is pointing) and I do believe that he probably is a sociopath.

Sociopaths, along with several other personality disorders (for reasons that are not clear) seem to have no conscience. Their brains (and we could get into a long debate about nature vs nurture) seem to be incapable of experiencing normal human characteristics such as empathy, compassion and guilt.

But of course guilt is a gift. Without guilt, we would all start to look like Joran. Our cruelties would be magnified many times over. I think God for the gift of guilt.

But the most difficult thing about guilt that it, as a sense or emotion, is vulnerable just like all other emotions in this broken world. Therefore, guilt is often misused and can be our down fall and albatross.

I was thinking about this issue for several reasons. Of course Joran’s face has been in the news of late every time you turn it on. I hear the chatter about sociopathic personalities. I just can’t relate. I feel so much empathy for the young Peruvian girl, and her family, that I just can’t imagine taking her life in cold blood for a billion dollars. I would much rather give my own (mostly spent) life in place of hers.

But then, I’ve had a rough week with my own personal guilt, which I do realize that it is the broken, destructive kind. I think the last catalyst in this thinking was Ester’s comment about comparisons . . . which are usually motivated by an unhealthy guilt.

I’ve done plenty of things in my life to be feel real guilt about. I have a lot of true flaws and sin. However, I’m also one of these people prone to false guilt. For example, if there was a guilt spectrum and on one extreme end were the sociopaths, on the other end are those, such as myself (and there are lot of us) who struggle with low self-esteem, social phobias and etc. We have a big guilt handle in the center of our foreheads (like a unicorn). People love to grab this handle to get us to do the things they want. Maybe the ring in a bull’s snout would be a better metaphor.

We are all like these guilt manipulators, some much worse than others. While this is played out in all aspects of life, I do think that within the church guilt manipulation finds a comfortable home. It is somewhat of a no-brainer to figure out why church life is so conducive to guilt manipulation.

I hear guilt manipulation language virtually every Sunday. Most preacher’s use it. Christian parents use it all the time. It is a way of life within the church. The pry bar of guilt is “Jesus.” With language like, “I love Jesus’ church. Therefore I support it whenever we have a program. It’s too bad that you do feel that way.” Or the Christian parent says to their child, “God is disappointed in you when you don’t do what mommy says.”

My guilt this week occurred completely outside of the church setting. I have nasty confrontations with patients virtually every day. Since I work in chronic pain, it is usually with patients who doctor-shop just to get more and more Oxycontin. I call them on it. They scream profanities and tell me over and over what a horrible person I am (this is part of drug-seeking-behavior). One almost destroyed the front of our clinic a few weeks ago. Now I’m not talking about patients who really have bad pain and want relief. Most of my patients are like that. But I do have many that could not care less about good treatment, but only wanting narcotics.

But, using the language of psychologists, I do “internalize” these verbal assaults. After such an encounter yesterday (and the patient was one of the worse drug abusers in the area) I woke up in the middle of the night with this strange hybrid of anger and guilt. The sharp words, which she said to me, make me really feel like a looser even though, on a rational level, I know better.

The last piece of the puzzle is again my latest book, The Way of All Flesh. It depicts the art form of Christian guilt manipulation at its best. A deeply devout couple (the father, a Victorian-era pastor and his pious wife, Christina) are much closer to Van Der Sloot—heartless, sociopathic end of the spectrum. They perform acts of extreme mental and emotional cruelty on their son Ernest under the disguise of righteousness.

But the hardest thing for us guilt-prone people is to see daylight between the false guilts and the genuine ones. I often have guilt over the things I post here. I can’t count the times I’ve made a post only to awaken in the middle of the night (guilt is always most acute in the middle of the night, both the good kind and the bad), and go and delete it. I have guilt about the photo I posted last time when Denise saw it and was disgusted and told me it was poor taste. I feel guilt when I share deeply personal things, as I have of late. I also feel a lot of guilt when these posts, as they often do, focus on myself.

But rather than being my own personal diary about nothing (to put it in George Costanzas’ words) I am really interested in the much bigger picture of human nature and how these things play out within Christendom.

This does also come back to a monistic view vs dualistic view. In the Christian dualistic view, the only things that are important are “spiritual.” Thus, if you feel guilt, it probably the Holy Spirit convicting you. The Dualists would never consider earthly matters such as personality traits, biology, genetics and etc.

I will rest my thoughts on this.

For the Sake of the Gospel--Keep Your Damn Mouth Shut!

Yesterday I read through a four page psychiatric report of one of my favorite patients, whom I will call Paul. I think I’ve been drawn to Paul for several reasons. For one, he is about my age. He is also the graduate of the Christian seminary, which I respect most. He had been a pastor for about twenty years, the last decade of which was spent as an associate pastor in one his denominations largest churches.

I had also known that Paul suffered some type of emotional trauma as a result of his tenure under the senior pastor at his last church and that pastor is well respected throughout their denomination. However, until I read his report, I did not realize the hellish details of his experience. In summary, this senior pastor was very abusive to Paul in every way but physical. Paul is now sure, and the psychiatrist agrees, that his ex-boss suffers from both a narcissistic personality disorder and a borderline one . . . in case you are not familiar with the terms, neither are pretty.

Towards the end of his ordeal, Paul went to the denominational authorities. It quickly became very messy as Paul’s boss was well known, the author of many books and tracts and extremely manipulative and confident. He seemed to have the face of a dove but the heart of a jackal, a jackal with rabies. By the time the ordeal was over, Paul suffered a total psychological collapse and has been in such a state for the past five years, unable to work or hardly to function. Paul’s abusive boss . . . well, he was promoted to regional director.

But, reading the report, one of the last straws that led to Paul’s emotional demise was the secrecy in which the “trial” was held. The denomination did not want anyone to know of this problem. Paul felt that most of the congregation would have supported him if they had known, but, everything was done behind closed doors.

It reminds me of my own experience as a missionary. It was very similar to Paul’s (and the real reason I connect with him), however, I admit that my own messed up thinking had a part in my own personal demise.

However, I will never forget our re-entry into American culture. I had notified our mission board that I was resigning and that it was over some serious issues of spiritual abuse by our boss. The response to my provocative letter was complete silence. Not even a thread of curiosity. We sat in silence for months. After being with the organization for 15 years, it was we suddenly died and no one really gave a damn. This was one of my greatest disillusionment. We had been taught that our organization was almost perfect. Not that I expected them to be totally on my side, but at least I thought they would be interested in hearing about it.

Finally I called them (six months later). I will never forget that conversation. I spoke to the director of missions. He was a man that I had had a lot of contract with before going to the mission field, like he was a dear uncle or something.

So I called and asked, “John, are you interested in why we came home and resigned?”

John: “Hmmm . . . not really. I guess you just weren’t missionary material.”

Me: “John, there were some really bad things that happened. Doesn’t anyone want to hear our story?”

John: “I think you should just keep your mouth shut. For the sake of the Gospel of Christ, keep you big mouth shut!” Then he hung up.

I returned to my serious thoughts of suicide. Christianity had only been a myth . . . just a mirage in the urban desert.

Then I was thinking about the ordeal in the Catholic Church and the abuse of children. I think the culture has now changed. But, just a couple of decades ago, the paramount issue wasn’t the emotional state of these precious little children, nor justice, but appearance. They felt they must keep the church looking clean at all cost.

Something is very wrong with this picture. I’m not a big fan of the WWJD brand. However, I think if Jesus was here he would relate to this situation entirely different. Like with the woman at the well, He couldn’t care less about appearance, but about the honest place of human hearts. I could see Him sitting in a church congregational meeting and saying things so offensive (because they were deeply honest) that they would ask Him to leave.

I’m thinking about coming back and telling a couple of other stories but I will see. But to me, the "Gospel" isn't about giving an image to the world that we have all our crap together and we never have "issues." To me the Gospel is that Jesus has taken all our guilt and bestowed His righteousness on us. But, maybe I'm wrong.

The God Badge

I had to get up early this morning and drive my son Quentin to the bus station. It was a nice surprise having him home from graduate school for a couple of days.

I sit here in the ole coffee shop, now that I'm up way too early to go to the office, thinking about the "God badge effect." This is where we manipulate others while wearing the God badge. We all (Christians) do it.

I was thinking about it for two reasons. The first one is directly related to my (my as in owner not writer) book, The Way of All Flesh. While my other books have raised interesting questions, as it relates to this issue of Christian Monist Vs Dualism, this book is like the turkey to Thanksgiving dinner. It is central. It takes a very candid and transparent look at a pious family in Victorian England in the mid 1800s. But you could easily transfigure the story to modern American Evangelicalism and not miss a beat.

I won't expound on the story at this point (but hope to later) but you see two parallel universes. One is the raw, selfish and sometimes barbaric motives behind actions. Then, on the surface, are the godly "Christ-centered" pretense. The author does a great job leading you by the hand between the rows of madness and piety. I will explain more later. However, if you were the product of a deeply pious home (pastor's kid, missionary kid, or just a garden variety Jesus-freak's kid) you must read this book.

The other God badge issue is some subtle guilt I feel for missing an important church meeting last night. I mentioned it a few weeks ago. It was to discuss the acute shortage of elders and deacons at our church. It frustrates the pastor that no man is "willing to step up to the plate for God's church." That's where I feel the guilt, but it is a false guilt.

I didn't go to the meeting because I knew that it would make me very frustrated. Either I would sit and listen with a smile on my face as we talked about the superficial universe issues . . . or I would open my big mouth, talk a bit about reality, pissing everyone off.

The meeting, I'm sure, had a good 45 minute lecture by the pastor giving a very good Biblical support for eldership. He is a very good teacher. I would have no problem with that. But here is the other universe. I've been an elder and as I stepped down, I told myself, "never again." The tough situation is that in this church the pastor made all the decisions and put our names at the bottom as co-signers. When I had people walking up to me challenging the decision (which I found out about at the same time they did) I felt very awkward. I have been in chruches where you could approach the pastor if you felt they were overstepping their boundaries. Not here. It aways becomes us against the Pastor and God. I have seen it played out like that in other chruches too.

But I was thinking about this "God badge." It is like the sheriff (corrupt sheriff) in a small town who uses his badge to get sexual favors, extortion and etc because that sheriff is the "hand of the law." How can you argue against "God?"

I wish that we could approach the pastor. I've tried and he gets extremely defensive.

I've seen this badge used throughout my life and I'm sure I've worn it a lot myself. I remember in our early days of marriage me telling Denise she had to do such and such (which really had selfish motives on my part) "because God wanted her to."

We used God guilt a lot on our kids when they were little. "You know when you don't do what mommy and daddy wants, then this makes God very sad."

Well, my other excuse for not going to the meeting was that Quentin was home. Even if I really wanted to, I still would have stayed home to be with him.