Paranoia & the Father of Lies   

    Paranoids are people consumed by fear and the delusion that other people, God, or unseen forces in the universe are in some way conspiring against them. Hofstadter made it clear that he was not using the label paranoid in a clinical sense, as he was not a clinician. He was assessing movements and not individuals. I am a clinician, and yes, as far as I’m concerned, our country’s political landscape has been taken over by diagnosable paranoid personality disorders. They are either that or hucksters trying to capitalize (as in make a buck) on other people’s fear. Some are politicians but the worst are “opinionators” passing themselves off as jounalists. Making a buck on people’s fear is in my opinion sheer evil. I’m also a Jesus-follower and I tend to frame big picture issues in terms of spiritual warfare. I had thought about calling this piece: Fear and the Father of Lies.

      ”How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be a product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any such venture in the history of man…What can we make of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence…The laws of probability would dictate that part of the decisions would serve this country’s interest.”     Glenn Beck

Talk Radio & Toxic Info-tainment    

    One of my lesser addictions is that of talk radio. On most weekdays I’ll listen to 10 or 15 min of Rush, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Hannity or Mark LeVin while I’m driving to or from the office or other appointments. Hey, I’m not proud of this–but I’m doing much better. I used to listen longer and believed more of what I heard.  It doesn’t take that much any more.

   I always knew that these “hosts” painted with a broad brush and that hyperbole was their stock in trade. However, I listened to be entertained, to get my anger fix and to have some of my prejudices confirmed. I was a “responsible” listener. I sorted thru the nonsense and composed answers in my mind to their most erroneous and outrageous rants. 

    Last summer I was out of the country for ten days on a mission trip to Scotland. When I returned from that trip I felt refreshed, and part of the refreshment was for me not having heard talk radio, or watched the world news for over a week. I did see two day-old copies of  The Scottish Mail  but that tabloid had scant U.S. news. I’ve noted the same refreshing feeling when I’ve come back from other trips away from the U.S. and away from the drumbeat of pessimism and fear that passes for “news” these days.  Consequently, I have come to believe that for me almost any exposure to ”info-tainment” is toxic . The negativity and rancor of most politically slanted talk radio is poisonous to my spirit. But, at least I don’t need to go to a meeting and say: “Hi, I’m Carl, and I listen to talk radio and my thoughts and opinions have become unmanageable.” No, the more I listen the less I want to listen–and that’s a good thing. So why do I still listen? I guess for me the give and take of dissonant ideas is sort of a intellectually pornographic experience. 

Gotcha!

    Oh, BTW, the quote highlighted above is a gotcha. It was not said by Glenn Beck; it was from Sen. Joe McCarthy and it is from 1951. Today, the Communist conspiracy is a distant memory–unless of course you believe that Obama is some kind of “Manchurian Candidate” educated in the madrassas of Pakistan and Indonesia. And we should never forget about the hordes of illegal aliens swarming over our southern border stealing our jobs, our healthcare and creating a crime wave in the process–or that social security is going broke and that our children’s children will inherit a dystopian world of monetary deflation and grinding poverty. Or that the Taliban and Islamo-fascists are chomping at the bit to bring terror to our shores and that we need a multi-billion dollar security bureaucracy to keep us safe. Oh, there are still plenty of politicians who play fear as their trump card.

The Paranoid Style

    In describing the “paranoid style” in our politics Hofstadter used the terms: “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy….The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms–he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization…what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil…The enemy is a kind of amoral superman–sinister, ambiguous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury loving… ” Those descriptives sound as though they could have easily come from a Glenn Beck or Michael Savage rant about Barack Hussein Obama or George Soros.

Fear Based Ads

    One other striking feature of talk radio is the advertisers. The most ubiquitous ads are those for investing in gold. The apparent appeal of gold is that it’s enduring value is seen as a hedge against inflation–and of course when the dollar becomes worthless we can buy bullets and victuals with our gold stash. Then there’s “food insurance”–apparently some sort of MRE dinners with a shelf life of 50 years. Better stock up!  I’ve noted several other ads for products or services rooted in fear such as legal insurance and software that backs up your computer files. The message is fear and its “solution” is found in a product or service. They meld together perfectly.

Fair & Balanced

   However, I try to get a “fair and balanced” view by subscribing to RSN news. This on-line news service publishes pretty much every liberal blog or op-ed piece of note from our nation’s leading newspapers, magazines and on-line forums. Some of their writers are so left-leaning that they are downright radical and some clearly marxist. Some of their views I find as absurb and conspiratorial as the very worst of Glenn Beck. RSN blatantly champions the Occupy-Wall-Street movements world-wide.

    The left ridicules Sarah Palin and fears the sinister Koch brothers–but the right lampoons Nancy Pelosi and invokes George Soros as the puppet-master of progressives. The right’s evil genius is Karl Rove and the left’s is David Axelrod.  The right has ”the mouths that roared” in Rush and Ann Coulter and the left counters with Keith Olberman and Rachel Madow. Boortz calls the Occupiers “occutards” and libs refer to the GOP as ”repuglians.” And so it goes. The symmetry of the the narrative for both the right and the left is stunning. But those who only expose themself to arguments that confirm their own bias don’t see that–and sadly, that is the majority.

M. Scott Peck’s Insight

    I recall Scott Peck writing something to the effect that “laziness” or sloth was the original sin. What he was really talking about was not physical laziness but rather intellectual–that far too much of humanity settles for easy answers and quick fixes. People do not make the effort to think deeply about complex subjects. They mostly seek opinions that confirm their prejudices. What Peck wrote several decades ago deeply impressed me and over the years I’ve made it a point to expose myself to views contrarian to my own beliefs. Some times it is most uncomfortable to revise ones prejudices in the light of new information, but I feel very strongly that it is a worthwhile process. Also, my pastor for many years, Dr. Joel Hunter, has said on more than one occasion that those who we least want to hear from are those who we often most need to pay attention to. In other words, God works thru all sorts of sources–not just those that confirm what we want to believe.

Perfect Love: The Real Answer

    My basic point is that what underlies paranoia is the emotion of fear–and that the what (or who) that breeds fear is the father of lies–pleased to meet you, hope you guessed his name. We as individuals and our nation are being held hostage by those fear mongers we choose to heed and the paranoia we are willing to embrace. It is a sad spectacle to see so many Christians in thrall to fear, anxiety and worry.  We must always remember that God didn’t give us a spirit of fear and that Perfect Love casts out fear.

Path: p » strong

    As nursing homes go it was a pretty good one.  It was only a mile from my house and so I visited her daily. When I missed a day, I would usually go twice the following day. I brought her books from the library and pancakes from McDonalds on Saturday. The pancakes were a welcome treat–a respite from the blenderized slop they feed stroke victims. My mother didn’t watch TV and she conversed very little but she devoured three or four books every week. She had eclectic tastes in books–mysteries, historical romances, biographies, religion–and of course the Bible.

    Those who know me reasonably well know that sadness is sort of my default setting. But Mother’s Day is usually a sadder day than most. A question for discussion in my home church group this morning was what word first comes to mind when you think of your mother. That threw me for a loop. I answered, “love” but in truth my first thought was, “mentally ill.” It was an unsettling question and not one that I wanted to answer truthfully or talk about at that point.

    My mother was quite bipolar and over the course of her life had a dozen or more psychotic episodes and hospitalizations. However, between episodes she was a normal and loving individual. When I was 19, I was an agnostic prone to scoff at her beliefs.  On one occasion she said, “God is love.” I did not know that she was quoting from First John 4, but some part deep within me knew that I had heard truth.  I didn’t give her a hard time as I was wont to do and over the 23 years of my unbelief I held that thought. I also knew that she prayed for me daily and no one else did.

    I am an only child, and the only child of an impaired parent usually tries to rescue them. It’s an impossible task of course–but nevertheless we persist, and when we don’t succeed what’s left is guilt and a sense of failure and our powerlessness. And of course we live out lives being rescuers and co-dependents–trying to succeed at the impossible task we failed at as children.

    When my mother died I didn’t own a cell phone or a computer. The internet and its possibilities was a thing  beyond my comprehension. I did not have a passport and hadn’t been on an airplane in 30 years.  In the autumn of 1999, I wrote the first draft of my first book The Unwelcome Blessing on a typewriter. I was numb for several months and unable to write but I finished it in the Summer of 2000, and when the few publishers I submitted it to didn’t welcome it with open arms I threw the manuscript in a stack on a shelf where it remained for five years.

    Over the past 12 years my life has evolved immeasurably and in ways I could never have imagined–three trips to Europe, mission trips to Latin America and six or seven trips to California, plus three more books. It has been a time of incredible blessings. And yet I feel very alone and, at times, like I’m still living out my mother’s incomplete life.

    e e cummings wrote: “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)”

    For the past year or two I’ve been paying more and more attention to internet blogs that one might term “theological.” There are some very bright, very knowledgeable folks out there policing Christianity. I gather that a lot of these folks have either gone to seminary–or wished they had. However, these self-annointed guardians of orthodoxy give me no comfort. For heavens sakes, I recently saw one that had Billy Graham on their watch list. Apparently Billy once said or wrote something that smacked of universalism. Several other writers who I’ve thought of as intellectual mentors were on their list as well. Give me a break. One would hope that these biblical thought police have done more for the Kingdom than just opine on doctrine. It’s immeasurably sad if their total focus and contribution is criticism. Their arrogance is simply stunning–arrogance to the nth degree.

    I attended R.C. Sproul’s church, St. Andrew’s Chapel,  for about two years. I would imagine that he would rank somewhere in the world’s top twenty theologians–and in the top five of Reformed or Calvinist theology. His preaching is expository. He preaches thru the Bible a few verses per week. I have heard him say on two occasions about particular passages of scripture, “I have no idea what that means.” He is a man of considerable ego and yet he is willing to admit when he’s stumped.  Another gifted preacher who I’ve listened to for many years, Dr. Joel Hunter, said on one occasion that its been estimated that everyone’s theology is about 20% wrong. I found that an interesting declaration but also one with the ring of truth. Dr Hunter was agreeing with some biblical scholar who had voiced that opinion.

    I think that the Bible police are insecure folks who have more than a tad of OCD and also have a need for absolute clarity and zero ambiguity tolerance. However, IMHOP some of the ambiguity in scripture is there to allow room for the Holy Spirit’s leading. In the parlance so common today, the Bible police are “anal” –and to the nth degree.  I feel sorry for them. The root of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is fear. I think the “good news” didn’t really register with these folks. They’re afraid they might have missed something in scripture and a wrathful God would condemn them to eternity in Hell.  But they apparently missed 1st John 4:18, the one that says perfect love casts out fear.

    I came upon this Francis Chan quote the other day. For me it had the ring of truth. It was in a short video of him talking about the topic of Hell.  It reminded me of one of my pet ecclesiastical peeves–that of Christian writers “explaining” God to us like we’re a bunch of ignorant proles.  In pretty much any Christian bookstore there are dozens of titles about knowing God, experiencing God, describing His attributes, explaining what He’s up to and telling us how to summon Him like some kind of a genie in a bottle–what kind of worship and evangelism makes Him happy, etc.  Hmmm, I think we need another book about grace. I know, most of these authors are trying to be helpful. They want us to understand their experience of God and in most cases to share in their joy.  Now, I’m more than ready to admit that some of these writers are wiser, more learned than I, and that they have been walking with the Lord for much longer. But I’d still bet that they only know a fraction of the whole YHWH story.

     I think of Paul in Rom. 9:20 echoing passages from Isaiah: “But who are you, O man, to talk back to God. Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, Why did you make me like this.”

    Maybe we know the whole story. Maybe not. I think scripture tells us what we need to know–not all there is to know. I think there’s a hint of narcissim and OCD in those of us who demand from God that He explain Himself–that He answer all of our questions.  In Exodus 33 Moses asks God: “If you are pleased with me, teach me Your ways so I may know You and continue to find favor with You.”  God doesn’t directly answer his question at that time:  ”The Lord replied, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’” I find that interesting. Give us rest from what? Probably freedom from our anxious striving and questioning when we are truly open to His Presence. In the following verses God indicates that He is pleased with Moses and that His Presence would go with the Israelites.  Then Moses says, “Now show me Your glory.” Was he asking or demanding? In any event God gives him a glimpse of his back as He passes by, and I think that’s what we get as well. God the Father, YHWH, is pretty much unknowable by us. We get just a glimpse. Who is knowable is Jesus. One couldn’t go wrong in reading and rereading dozens of times all of the “red letter” passages in their Bible.

   In our first serious dialogue about her work my friend stated that 43% of women in this country were “post-abortive.”  I was incredulous. I assumed she was exaggerating. I couldn’t believe that nearly half of all women in this country have had abortions. I argued with her. I said perhaps 10 or 15%–maybe even 20% but surely not 43%. That number simply couldn’t be accurate. I learned later that this number came from Planned Parenthood.

    I became a born again Christian in 1979.  At that time I had no particular feelings about abortion. I had read in some New Age book that the soul entered the body at birth and so in my mind prior to then the unborn baby was mere tissue–just a tenuous blob of protoplasm. I might add that my college education was in the mid-1960s when nurture was everything and nature didn’t count for much–that who we were was the result of learning and life experience, and not something biologically inherited and nurtured in the womb. Everything prior to birth, including the Divine, was pretty much irrelevant.

    As I gradually grew into a more mature Christian during the 1990s I began to feel more convicted about abortion. But I did not know much about the topic. From time to time my pastor would announce that he and our church were “completely pro-life” but he never preached a sermon on it. It was always mentioned in passing and I came to realize that pro-life to him was more about feeding the hungry and being good stewards of God’s creation.  Abortion was a hot-button topic and also apparently not a topic important enough to warrant a full sermon.

     I had many subsequent conversations with my friend on the subject of abortion. I also attended a seminar on post-abortion syndrome put on by Ramah.  I started hearing the pain of friends and clients who were post-abortive. The Holy Spirit was softening my heart and convicting me of this monstrous evil that was stalking God’s creation. A growing awareness of the magnitude of the problem when taken together with the harping, misleading rationalizations of the pro-choice community helped make this tragedy completely manifest. I would never be able to look at a young child or a pregnant mother the same way again. Every time I saw a helpless infant or an adorable 3-y.o child I saw a potentially aborted fetus. Every young unmarried woman who decided to have her child instead of abort became for me a bit of a heroine. I would never again be able to countenance a politician or a pastor who could equivocate on the subject–abortion had become the spit in my soup.

    In 2010, I wrote Jesus v. satan: The Message of the Wilderness Temptations. It is based on the story of Jesus’ 40-day struggle in the wilderness found in Luke 4. I saw the three temptations as: bread/materialism, power/control and safety/trust. In the section on power I give numerous examples of the evil inherent in people seeking control over others. I view the urge to control others for our own selfish and often nefarious needs as the ultimate soul sickness–the complete anti-Christ mode of living. In my opinion living to control others is antithetical to a life submitted to Jesus and to His control. I included a chapter on abortion in the section on power and control:

   ”Just as slavery was the signature evil of the 19th Century, now the killing of millions of unborn children is the characteristic evil of this secular age. Millions of young women have bought into the lie that their bodies belong to themselves alone. Abortion is after all legal, and being legal there is the implication that it is somehow moral. In this country alone 1.2 million young women decide each year to exert ultimate control over another life. World wide the number of abortions exceeds 45-million a year. That comes out to over 120,000 tiny lives ended per day. Except for identical twins, each of those children is a totally unique creation shaped in the Creator’s image. The unique mix of DNA in each of those lives came about only once in eternity. How many artists, scientists and geniuses were snuffed out in this holocaust of the unborn? God cannot be pleased with His power being usurped so wantonly.

    The militant feminism of the 1970s helped bring about much needed equal rights for women. Unfortunately, mere parity was not something to be grasped for some. They needed power and their efforts reached a crescendo by the 1990s in an “I am woman hear me roar” craziness that reveled in goddess worship and the official enthronement of powerful women as predatory as she-wolves in corporate boardrooms, sports, media and entertainment. No longer was motherhood held as sacred and in fact was often viewed as inconvenient. Along the way to empowerment came Roe v. Wade in 1973 and the Supreme Court’s decision to allow legalized abortion. Mothers were not merely equal now, they officially held the power of life and death, and this god-like power had ridden in on the coattails of something which should have been a blessing.

    In this country only about 7% of abortions result from incest, rape or to save the mother’s life. The other 93% are because being pregnant or having a child is in some way inconvenient. For some, I suspect the motivation was simply because they could–it was an exercise in power.  It was easy, it was cheap and it was legal.  I recall reading of a couple “celebrating” an abortion because their lives were being “freed up.”

    Post abortion syndrome is the psychological consequence which most women who’ve had abortions suffer. It is a pervasive depression that dogs the sufferer like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) does the survivors of combat. Over the many years that I’ve been a counselor I have treated dozens of women for the emotional consequences of abortion.  Some women knew immediately that they had made the wrong choice. Others engaged in denial and repression only to have the symptoms of guilt, anxiety and emotional numbness surface years later. Many turned to alcohol or drugs to deaden the pain, or developed eating disorders to gain a false sense of control in their lives.

    In my opinion post abortion syndrome is the greatest unrecognized emotional disorder plaguing our society at present. It is unrecognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a distinct disorder due to the desperately evil lobbying efforts of the pro-choice and Planned Parenthood crowd.

    Some picky but heartlessly misguided parents have testing performed on their unborn children to guarantee having a perfect baby. Fetuses not deemed ideal are then aborted. Another practice tangentially related to those abortions is that of single professional women and childless couples surfing sperm banks to find genetic material for the perfect baby. In this era of elitism and excellence why should anyone settle for average–as in selecting a child from a questionable gene pool and with possible special needs. Why not instead get sperm from some Harvard educated Aryan with athletic credentials?”

    The degree to which the pro-choice crowd currently mocks the pro-life movement is stunning. Planned Parenthood has a recent directive to pray 40-days for “choice” and abortion is termed “sacred care.”  They ask their followers to ”give thanks” for abortionists. This warped initiative echoes the 40-day prayer vigils of the pro-life movement. It appears to be as a result of their discomfort with the fact that most of the Republican presidential candidates are stridently pro-life. Perhaps they sense that change is in the air.

    I have nothing but compassion and a deep empathy for women who made the mistake of “choice” and then regretted it. Those who are in-Christ are forgiven and I believe they will meet all of their children again in eternity, and that the children they didn’t have will greet them not with condemnation but with joy.  Back in 1978, my ex-wife was “late” and made an appointment at an abortion clinic.  But the following day her period started and she cancelled the appointment.  I was so self-centered and hard-hearted at the time that when she told me I felt little or nothing. Had she actually had an abortion I would be overwhelmed with sadness today–not sadness for the child, but sadness for my wife and myself.

    The issue is not young ladies who chose abortion. God forgives them. My quarrel is with a society gone mad with ego and power and the satanically driven thought that our lives and our children’s lives belong to us and to no one else. If there is an Armageddon in our planet’s future, I think it will be because our God is righteous and the power of life belongs to Him alone.

    Arthritis is a bitch. Still, there are days when I feel as good as I ever have. But that’s an illusion that’s  gone the next morning when I slowly unfold myself from sleep. Sometimes I feel great until I try getting up. But one of the good things about aging is that if you’re truly awake (and many aren’t) you know things that young people don’t. Sometimes they think you’re really brilliant but you’ve just picked up all sorts of semi-relevant junque thru living life and reading the newspapers–and when they’re my age they’ll likely know as much and probably more. And their children will say to them, “What’s a newspaper?”

Anniversaries

    March 2012, is a month of anniversaries: tomorrow 3/30 is the 25th anniversary of my divorce being final in 1987. My friend Barbara (my witness) and I showed up in Judge Kirkland’s office promptly at 10:00 at the court-house in Sanford. He remembered me from having testified in a couple of custody and abuse cases. We made small talk while we waited a few minutes for my wife to show–but she didn’t. We signed the papers, he pronounced the marriage over, and then Barbara and I went and had breakfast. I don’t recall feeling anything except a mild sense of relief.

    Earlier this month (3/6) was the 40th anniversary of my wife and I meeting in 1972. She was a cocktail waitress at the Back Door in Winter Park at the edge of the Rollins campus. I was in Florida on vacation looking for a job and I went to the Back Door accompanied by a date. My wife to be was an unusually attentive waitress. When she came to the table to ask if we needed another drink she would stand behind Lynn and make eye contact with me. When it comes to things like this I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but in this instance I knew that the eye contact was a seduction of sorts. In a few days Lynn and I returned to Illinois. But I couldn’t get this waitress with the great legs and green eyes out of my thoughts. I write about our holy introduction and five-year courtship in a whimsical essay on my website: “Pioneer Obit - The Little Satellite That Could.”  It’s about time, my life and the first man-made object to escape from the solar system–and it’s also a chapter in my book DiosPsyTrek: But God Had a Better Idea. 

Numbers and Time

   I recall reading somewhere, perhaps in Dane Rudhyar’s book on the astrology of personality, that those of my birth sign, Capricorn, tended to be obsessed with time. I certainly have been. But I’ve come to believe (along with Einstein) that the passage of time is an illusion–that in fact past, present and future exist all at once.  When you believe everything is happening all at once it gives you a different perspective on things.  For example, the Kingdom of Heaven becomes not some place or some time in the future but another dimension amidst us now. 

    I wouldn’t exactly call it a gift but I can remember dates and numbers from my life better than about anybody I know. I remember things like phone numbers, birth dates and other numbers that I’ve lived–okay, so it’s probably OCD.  But I believe there is a reality in numbers and the pseudo-science of numerology that we barely understand. The Bible is chock full of numeric symbolism. There is also the gematria of the Kabbalah. Gematria is the assigning of numeric values to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. I think the ancient Hebrews understood that there was perfection in YHWH’s creation and that they could somehow apprehend His reality thru solving the mystery in numbers and the symmetry in geometric ratios.

    BTW, today 3/29, is the birthdate of my old girlfriend Laura. She was truly one of the finest, most loving people I’ve ever known. We dated for a little over a year in 1988-89, and I’m certain God put her in my life to help me heal from the emotionally abusive marriage. After we broke up we remained friends. She died of a brain tumor on 11/24/91. She was only 42. That particular November felt like the nadir of the upside down arc that is my life. Besides Laura dying, I was troubled by a host of nagging issues. I kept having the image of me putting a gun in my mouth and blowing my head off. Eventually the persistence of this image scared me to the point of getting down on my knees and praying.

Old Dudes

   When I start dwelling overly much on my age I think about some older dudes the Lord has graciously brought into my life over the past few years. I know they were put there to give me hope. I’ve written several blogs about my 92-y.o. neighbor, Angelo.  But first there was the indomitable 80 y.o Stanley Spiegle who I served with in the Red Cross in Texas after hurricanes Rita and Katrina in October of ’05.  Stanley is a retired psychologist who lives in Santa Fe.  He flew to Houston to spend two weeks sleeping on a cot in a county exhibition hall and counseling trauma survivors.  He and Angelo are both WW II veterans of the AAF–Stanley, a B-17 navigator and Angelo a B-24 ball-turret gunner.

    The following summer ’06, I had the pleasure of going on a mission trip to Barcelona. One of my fellow missioners was 79-y.o Jack Terman. We spent two weeks supporting an outreach ministry of Kasr el-Dobara church in Cairo working with Muslim immigrants to Spain. He seemed to handle the rigors of a stretched comfort zone better than I. Jack is a retired engineer. In the understated way of mid-westerners of his era he mentioned that his first trip to Europe was with the U.S. Army in 1945.  Jack, Stanley, Angelo–members of the greatest generation and imhop men amongst men.

    And then there was another old dude on the trip to Scotland last summer. A group from Celebrate Recovery (CR) stayed in a Teen Challenge drug-rehab for 10 days. Our goal was to teach them the CR model. I figured I’d be far and away the senior member in our group of twelve missioners, but no, Ralph LaVigne had me beat by almost a full decade–lookin’ great at 78. His witness for the Lord and to a life of sobriety was powerful for the lads at Sunnybrae to hear. He was a valuable addition to our team.  

Cycles 

     Having a bipolar heritage I’ve experienced first-hand the power of natural rhythms and cycles. I’m not so convinced of the validity of the cycles in astrology but nevertheless I find them interesting. Dane Rudhyar believed that our lives are played out in cycles of four and seven– proceeding thru four cycles of seven years and seven cycles of four years (28 years), and that our earthly journey and our destiny was completed at age 84 by living thru three 28-year cycles. Eighty-four is the number of years it takes the planet Uranus to circuit the sun.  It takes just under 30-years for my ruling planet Saturn to circuit the sun. Thirty years ago I used to be deeply into all that New Age stuff–now, not so much.

    I think I always wanted to be a “Christian” when I grew up. But it just takes a long time for some people to become who they really are. It also explains why I was consumed by anxiety and a nameless dread during the 23 years that I wandered thru agnosticism, Taoism and new age silliness. Anyway, I’d like to think that the strange journey I’ve had is part of God’s plan to touch people in ways that more conventional lives don’t. I know was looking for God, but apparently in all the wrong places. Jesus was knocking on the door of my heart but for 23 long years I wasn’t answering.

    Now, I don’t like calling myself a Christian so much. Christians have kind of gotten a bad name. Also, it kind of messes with the secularist’s heads when you say to them you’re not a Christian, and then add “I prefer Jesus-follower.” That’s what He said to Peter, “Follow thou me.”

    Today the term codependent is used to describe just about anybody who is insecure and looks to others to fill them up emotionally. The center around which their life revolves doesn’t have to be an addict. In fact, it’s more likely to be a narcissist, or in some cases, even a “normal”– a non-diagnosable person. In the old days we described those people in official psychobable reports as having “unmet dependency needs.” Today they’re labeled codependent. However, if in fact their life does revolve around an addict they are usually also labeled: “enabler”–meaning they help the addict remain an addict.

    Most friday nights I attend a Celebrate Recovery (CR) meeting along with 120 other folks at Northland Church. CR is a totally Christ-centered 12-step program that addresses addiction, codependency and a host of “hurts, habits and hangups.” I ended up in CR almost two years ago strictly out of curiosity but I stayed–mostly because I enjoy the worship and the fellowship. The small group I attend in the program is the men’s codependency group. I haven’t been in a relationship in years but I know that that’s my basic make-up.

    In its simplest form codependency is an addiction to a person.  I can illustrate that with a tidbit from my own testimony. When I was in my late-20s and early-30s I drank an enormous amount–beer, scotch, wine, mixed drinks–I wasn’t terribly picky as long as it contained alcohol. In fact, over about a six-year period I can recall only one day of total sobriety. It happened because I ended up spending the night in a motel in a county that was “dry.” I didn’t have a bottle in my luggage and when the desk clerk gave me the bad news I panicked and almost checked out. Looking back I can’t believe that I was that far gone but I was. The good news is that about a year later the Lord gave me a wife who was tougher than booze. She didn’t particularly like me drinking (even tho we met in a bar), and over the first couple months we were together I pretty much quit. I was allowed an occasional beer or glass of wine if we were out having dinner and so my annual consumption of alcohol dropped to about what it’d previously been in one night.  I didn’t really miss it. What I had done was transfer my dependency on alcohol to my wife.  

    I thank God for giving me a wife who kicked my butt and who was ultimately tougher than demon rum. However, I had become classically codependent. I was addicted to my wife, and I expected her to be the balm for my raging anxiety and provide the euphoria for my depressed moods as alcohol had done. A person had become the solution for all of my many emotional woundings, chronic sadness and myriad bad habits. But of course my “solution” was not a sound choice. It wasn’t for me and it isn’t for most codependents because of what happens when the relationship ends–usually one’s world falls completely apart. However, that really wasn’t my case. When she finally decided to leave I was relieved. However, over the nine years we spent together I had ceased to grow. I had so totally lived her life that I wasn’t very sure of who I was. BTW, her addiction was horses. Though we were barely able to afford one we had as many as seven at one time.

    Codependents often employ nefarious strategies to control their partner and keep them in the relationship. The classic one is that the codependent will allow themselves to be physically or emotionally abused. The trade-off is: “I will allow you to abuse me so long as you never leave me.” This is because the other person has become their life. The codependent usually senses that the addict must remain addicted to their “drug”, and thus codependent on them as well, and so they become conscious or unconscious enablers. Consequently, codependents are often not as innocent as they appear. I said yes to my wife’s horse addiction far too many times and as a result we had many financial problems. Her addiction was as much to money as it was to horses but I suppose as addictions go its less destructive than crack cocaine, heroin or alcohol. You just end up broke, not dead or physically wasted.

    A Celebrate Recovery brochure lists 20 characteristics of a codependent. Basically, this is my summation of the important ones: (1) has low self-worth; self-esteem based on the worth of their partner & does not feel in themselves worthy of being loved,  (2)feels guilty about having needs & puts other’s needs before their own, (3) fears rejection, is overly sensitive to rejection & sees rejection as catastrophic, (4) mirrors the feelings, needs & values of others, (5) worries obsessively about other’s opinions of them, (6) are doggedly loyal and remain in losing situations far too long.

    The CR brochure also points out that many of the codependent’s behaviors are similar to Christian values. We are to consider others before ourselves. We should be hopeful about others and persevering in prayer. We are called to be humble, and often it’s difficult to discern low-self esteem from humility. At times it’s as difficult as discerning the Holy Spirit’s conviction vs. Satan pissing in our ear. I frame that as anything which leads to repentance as the work of the Holy Spirit, but sometimes I think the Lord uses Satan in His perfect economy. What some intend for evil the Lord uses for good (Gen. 50:20).

   Today, I express my codependency by collecting people as opposed to just one person. Lacking a wife or serious girlfriend, I have collected over the past twenty years a variety of extremely interesting and loving people–they’re called friends.

    He said he was happy to be home. I asked if he took morning walks at his daughter’s. He said that he did, but that it wasn’t the same–not as beautiful as our woodsy neighborhood. I’ve written about Angelo before. He loves life and is interested in everything: the weather, nature, history, politics, sports, etc.  His memory for events both recent and remote is astounding. One of the characteristics of getting too old is that recent events are not well imprinted. That’s certainly not the case with Angelo; he can recall our last conversation in detail. Running into him is a pleasure and I value our conversations. No need to watch the History Channel when you can experience living history with Angelo. 

    Since I last wrote about him he told me about going deer hunting every year after Thanksgiving. He lived in the Bronx then, and after T-day dinner he and a couple of his buds would drive a few hours up into the Adirondacks and spend the rest of the weekend  at a cabin. I think he enjoyed the fellowship, being in the quiet, snowy mountains and coping with the elements more than the actual hunt. In many places and cultures deer hunting is a male-bonding event. He related a story about a buddy serendipitously bagging a huge 12-point buck. I would imagine he shot some too but he didn’t talk about his exploits. He’s a very sensitive guy and I’m almost surprised that he would even go hunting. He wears a big wooden cross around his neck and openly talks about his faith. One reminiscence he shared with me recently had to do with WWII. He was a ball turret gunner on a B-24 Liberator in the 8th Air Force. He mentioned that when returning from missions they would start to disassemble their guns over the Channel. They had to remove and clean them between missions. The ever resourceful Germans apparently figured this out and while nearing the English coast a Ju-88 slipped into their formation and started shooting. They had no way to shoot back with their guns taken apart. He talked about how upsetting it was to have to help remove the dead and wounded after they landed. He got teary-eyed while recalling this memory. And so it’s hard for me to imagine him shooting a deer.

   God’s speed into 2012, Angelo!

        ”Son of God” they shouted, “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?” . . .The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” 

    I find it interesting that the demons acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God. That goes along with Satan challenging Jesus as to who He is in the wilderness temptations (Luke 4:3)–Satan, of course, knew perfectly well who He was. And isn’t it interesting that evil supernatural beings acknowledge Jesus when there are billions of humans who can view the Creator thru His creation and still steadfastly refuse to see God.     

     Also, does ”torture” mean that they thought Jesus was going to judge them early and cast them into the lake of fire before the end of the age? It seems to suggest that they know their “appointed time” is coming and perhaps even approximately when.

     This story suggests that short of human possession, demons might be fairly comfortable inhabiting animals, even swine–an animal reviled by Jews.  I’ve known a few dogs and cats that seemed possessed by evil spirits. It’s apparent that demons have to have a home. Then we have the question of the tidy but vacant soul: Recall Luke 11:24-26: “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.”  This parable can be interpreted both as a metaphor for the effect of empty ”home improvements” on the state of one’s soul–or it can be interpreted literally. In a higher sense, it’s not enough to rid oneself of the bad but one has to actively seek the good–you don’t just stop sinning but you have to fill yourself with the good, noble, pure, etc.–fruits of the spirit lest evil will return more truculent than before.

    However, in a literal sense, perhaps not inhabiting some person or animal was dereliction of demonic duty. Maybe they would get in trouble with the arch-demon–be written up and get sent to the Sahara or the Antarctic. At the very least it suggests that demonic spirits, like vampires, need hosts–empty minds, like fresh blood to feed on.

        “He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw Him, they pleaded with Him to leave their region.” 

    Does it not seem odd that after Jesus had performed what was in a sense a community service that the whole town, like some angry lynch mob, came to out to beg him to leave? It would suggest maybe that they liked being the way they were–that they didn’t want to be rid of familiar demons. Or perhaps they were worried that Jesus had a power that could send them rushing headlong into a type of suicide–the death of their egos. There is a type of sin that is so habitual that it becomes comfortable–my personal favorite: judging & condemning others. Perhaps it was reassuring to have tormented souls around who they could feel superior to in comparison: “I may be a sinner, but look at old so-and-so. He’s downright crazy, and evil to boot.”

    Sometimes I think I have people who fill that role in my life–all the sinful, lowlife jerks I compare myself to. I wouldn’t like to think so but I probably do. If I stay focused on the mote in my brother’s eye, I don’t notice the plank in mine. In any event, I have my own personal familiar, comfortable demons. They don’t possess me, but they’re there, hovering around in the ether, disembodied voices in my thoughts telling me what’s wrong with me, my life, how I can’t do anything about it and how everything will always be the same–hopeless. But I’ve learned where they originate and I’ve learned to ignore them. When I’m really sharp I answer them with Scripture or by praising the Lord. This is what the devil and his demons least want to hear.

    What are the familiar demons with which you’ve become comfortable?

    Another subtle addiction is to adrenalin. It’s why some folks take crazy risks racing motorcycles or climbing the highest peaks in the Himalayas. There are also addictions to emotional states like anger or infatuation. I was married to a women who got high on anger. Her anger was a frightening thing to behold. When launched into a tirade all of her endorphins and neurotransmitters ran amok. Not only did she get high but she almost always got her way.

    There are the addictions slightly more adaptive, like to work or compulsive exercising. But most addictions are not a bit adaptive. They are based in fear and/or emotional hunger and are destructive to varying degrees. They ultimately lead to a skewed, out-of-control life centered around their problem.

     However, I tend to believe that the most subtle and destructive addiction is to power and control. We all come by it naturally. When we are kids we figure out strategies to control the big people in our lives. It all has to do with wanting to live in a predictable environment. We learn to manipulate to get our needs met when we are little and powerless. But as we get older we learn that we have power over those smaller and younger than us. We learn that we don’t have to manipulate so much; we can just be brutes if it suites our needs. Who hasn’t faced a bully at one time or another–or perhaps been one.

    We all like to feel safe, and part of feeling safe is feeling in control. We learn when we are kids that being in control of our own behavior is safer and more adaptive. But then we start to think we can enhance that safety by controlling those around us. Generally speaking, other people’s behavior is the most dicey thing in our lives. Our unconscious, with a little help from the enemy, tells us that we will be “safe” if we can just control everybody else.

    A few years back my eyes were opened to the power/control paradigm and now I see it everywhere. I see it in history and in politics. I see it in my clients and my associates. I even see it in addiction to substances. Part of the allure of alcohol or drugs is that they give the illusion of control.

    I see people hanging on with every fiber of their being–telling themselves the satanic lie that everything will be okay if only everyone in their life will do just as they want them to do. Every time they get their way in exerting control over another there’s a neural event as sure as a hit of nicotine releasing dopamine that reinforces that behavior. Some of the biggest abusers of power/control are narcissists–but not all. Sadly, I see this misuse of control in some of the most “Christian” people I know. They may try to convince themselves that they are doing the controlling out of love, but it’s much more likely  they’re doing out of fear. They don’t trust God, but they will likely use His scriptures to try to exert their control. Consciously, or unconsciously, they feel like God has anointed them to help Him run His universe

    But what did Jesus do? Didn’t he use His supernatural power to control those around Him? Didn’t he order Mary to anoint his feet with oil, and didn’t He have the disciples wait on Him hand and foot at the meal the night when He was betrayed? Didn’t He order people to love Him? No, not so much. But he did say, “Follow me.” I think that meant do as I do. What He did was love people, serve people and teach people.

    Matthew points out at the end of the Sermon On the Mount that Jesus taught with “authority”–but it was the authority of God-breathed truth not the authority of a controlling earthly personality with selfish needs. In John 5:19 Jesus makes the point that he is only doing the Father’s will and that He’s doing it out of love. Presumably, when God gave us all free will it was an act of love. We would do well to give others that same grace.

    Shameless commercial: I write a lot more on the misuse of power/control, the temptation of safety and trusting God in my recent book Jesus v. satan: The Message of the Wilderness Temptations. Available from Amazon.com and at the Northland bookstore.