September 28

Just Sayin’

Note to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA):

Hillary Clinton’s support is not something you should advertise. I received her email from your server. I have unsubscribed from your emails. So long as you represent the business-as-usual Democratic Party, I won’t vote for you. “We’re not Trump” is not a valid platform. Please take a lesson from the campaign of would-be state delegate Brent Finnegan and offer something more than what gave us Trump in the first place.

Category: Politics | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 26

ACA – When Politics Kills

For eight years I’ve heard ACA– Obamacare– trumpeted as the Democrats’ crowning achievement in healthcare. In my former rural community peopled with farmers and self-employed people, it wasn’t very popular because it screwed people. But it seemed to be working in urban areas.

Now I live in a small urban area, and it doesn’t seem to be working any better.

Here’s a case in point.

My friend Sue is married and has three children. Her husband was fired for allegedly speaking disrespectfully to a supervisor subcontracted in from a job service. He’s fighting his termination, but since his employment was at-will, I don;t see that he has much chance of winning. After all, they don’t need a reason t terminate someone. In any case, his health insurance plan was terminated as of the date he was fired.

ACA guarantees COBRA to employees who have lost their jobs. They get the same health plan they had before, if they pay 102% of the cost out of pocket. So Sue’s family, whose major breadwinner isn’t earning right now, has to come up with almost $1,800 for the first two months of coverage. They have 45 days to do so.

They don’t tell you that COBRA won’t actually pay for anything until they’ve paid the premium. That’s fine for doctors, who can bill retroactively. But it’s not so good for pharmacies and medical suppliers who demand payment when goods are provided.

Sue has Type 1 diabetes. Like 3 million other Americans, she has to monitor her glucose levels closely. Her levels fluctuate wildly, so she uses a constant glucose monitor to keep her from going into a coma and dying. That’s not an exaggeration.

Sue is now out of supplies. Her glucose monitor is out of service. She doesn’t even have test strips to test the old fashioned way. She spent four hours on the phone yesterday and was able to find a way for the supplies to be shipped–in a week or two.

So let’s recap: We live in a country in which a person who just lost their job has to spend a month’s pay for health insurance coverage. And where until that money is paid, a diabetic can’t check her glucose levels.

I’m afraid for Sue. She may die this week. And the only reason is that our politicians can’t get their act together on health care.

In the industrialized world, that makes us the dysfunctional family member. Every other industrialized nation has universal healthcare. Even some poor nations like Sri Lanka have universal healthcare! And yes, they all complain about it. But have you noticed that when Brits or Canadians need major medical attention, they get on a plane home?

But not us. We still think keeping people alive should be a profit-making enterprise. And it’s killing people.

Category: Politics | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 23

Why I Hate Theology

“In the most radical and existential uniqueness which he is, man has to reckon with the fact that this mystery of evil is not only a possibility in him, but that it also becomes a reality, and indeed not insofar as a mysterious, impersonal power breaks into his life as a destructive fate.” (Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1996, 102-103.)

I encountered the following sentence as an undergraduate. It is a pivotal thought on evil in one of the most important books by Karl Rahner, the most influential Catholic theologian of the 20th century. But what does it mean?

Diagramming the sentence suggests that it is self-contradictory. So what is Rahner trying to say? I’ve puzzled over it for ten years, and I still don’t know. His “pivotal” thought makes no sense. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a translation error, though my understanding is that Rahner was no more intelligible in his native German. His brother, when told that Rahner’s work was posthumously being translated into English, is said to have quipped, “That’s wonderful. I hope someday they translate him into German!”

Obviously precision is important when postulating a systematic statement of the nature of God, his Creation, and our relationship to both. Many theologians, like Rahner, go to great lengths to express complex thoughts in precise terms.

Unfortunately, the result is unreadable for even many university-level readers.

This level of theology creates an ivory tower, a bastion of particular intellect that develops its thought in enforced isolation from the world by virtue of its unintelligible diction. (How’s that for a wordy sentence?)

In other words, Christians and theology live in separate worlds that can never (or at least only rarely) meet.

Can you imagine if Jesus spoke like that? How many followers would he have gained? Instead, he spoke in simple concepts. “The Kingdom has come.” “Feed the poor.” “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We take Jesus’ simple concepts and discuss whether they are prophetic or apocalyptic, pre-millennial or post-millennial, and the veracity of dispensationalism.

Perhaps these are valuable intellectual exercises. Surely some people enjoy such parsing. And I have to admit, Rahner challenged my horizons when I studied him as an undergraduate. Yet I can’t help but wonder how much this level of thought contributes to the Kingdom of God.

This semester, we’re reading Charles Scobie. He’s much more readable than Rahner, but just as wordy, dissecting and analyzing (not always effectively) the main points of Christianity. The 1,000+ page book contains five (5!) chapters about Jesus. He’s written more about Jesus than the Gospels themselves!

This reminds me of a quotation attributed to Rabbi Hillel, a pre-Christian Jewish reformer:

“That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow; this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary…”

In my congregation, there is a woman whose brain was damaged in an accident when she was a child. She reads at what I would describe as about a third-grade level. Yet she is one of the most loving, Christ-centered people I have ever met. If you want to know what the Kingdom looks like, meeting her is far more demonstrative than reading Rahner.

The truth is, I don’t really hate theology, but I do fund it tedious and often distracting. Often wonder which is the better use of my time: reading 1,000 pages of systematic theology, or going out and doing what Jesus told us to do.

Category: Bible, Religion | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 22

This Is the Day

This is the day that the Lord has made! (Psalm 118:24)

I’ve been thinking lately of my friend, Margarita Mike. We called him Margarita Mike because he got sober when he was in college, stayed sober five years, went out and drank one margarita, and came back. He stayed sober another five years.

Then Mike decided he could have another margarita. This time, things didn’t go as well. He couldn’t stop. He’d been drinking for eight months when I called him about a business situation for a mutual client. I asked him how he was doing.

“I’m not doing well at all,” he replied. “I can’t stop drinking. Would you have coffee with me sometime?”

I readily agreed. Helping people get sober as I got sober is one of the top priorities in my life. We agreed to meet the next afternoon at a local coffee shop.

That night, I got a phone call. Mike had wrapped his car around a telephone pole. My friend was gone.

I have always wondered whether things would have been different if I’d met him for coffee the day we spoke. Maybe they would have. Maybe they wouldn’t. The point is, I’ll never know–because I didn’t. I know from experience that alcoholism is a deadly disease. I almost died from it. I’ve been to more funerals than I can count on my fingers and toes.

No one expects that today is the last chance. Sometimes it is.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because of a couple of situations I’ve run into. One was a woman I rode the elevator with at the hospital. I didn’t know her and didn’t speak to her. Yet I could feel that she was toxic, so oppressed by darkness that it was rolling off of her. We got off the elevator and went our separate ways, and I said nothing. Surely she’ll realize her torment and seek help when she’s ready… right?

The other was someone I know fairly well and consider a friend, but not a close friend. As we were praying together, I felt a deep heaviness from this person. As I focused on it, I realized it was a curse. (Yes, curses exist. And Jesus died cursed so that our curses may be broken.) I brought up the subject of curses as an invitation, but my friend said nothing. We parted with no further discussion.

I have some knowledge of the ways of darkness. My family was tormented for five years. We experienced accidents, depression, psychosis, substance abuse, and illness, not to mention a ridiculous series of random setbacks in our lives. We became self-destructive. More than once, I was close to suicide. My wife nearly died twice from reactions to benign medications.

The torment of darkness can be fatal. And it’s surely miserable, especially compared with reconciliation to God. Moreover, if we believe what Christianity teaches us, the repercussions of what we do today can follow us beyond death. I’m not talking about merely accepting Jesus as Christ to avoid going to Hell. There’s far more to it than that. Sometimes, as any addict will attest, Hell follows us.

Yet most of us, including myself, don’t approach our religion with the urgency this suggests.

There are those who stand on street corners wielding a Bible and a hand-made sign proclaiming that you need to find Jesus today. I wonder if anyone listens to them. I hope so, but I never did.

There are those who go door-to-door and teach [their version of] what the Bible says. They are committed, loving people, and I think sometimes they do some good.

Most of us accept that other people are responsible for their own spiritual health. Yet when my own spiritual health was in jeopardy, I was unable to solve the problem myself. I needed help. This was as true last year when I sought deliverance as it was 32 years ago when I got sober. In both instances, I had no idea how to solve the problem. I needed someone who did.

Since Mike’s death, more than five years ago, I never put off meeting with an alcoholic or addict who asks for help. I also confront someone who appears to need help but not be willing to admit it. It often doesn’t help. Statistically, some 90% of alcoholics and addicts die from their disease. But I’m one of the 10%, and I want them to have every chance to be one, too. And never again do I want to be a day too late.

Why don’t I take the same approach with those who are suffering spiritually? I hate confrontation. I don’t have the confidence; after all, I’m new to this myself. Maybe I’m afraid of being labeled a religious nut. Maybe I’m afraid of damaging a friendship.

Would I damage a friendship to save someone’s life from addiction? Risk being labeled a nut? Step out on a limb and take a risk? You bet I would.

But religion is a private thing… right?

In a nation in which suicide rates are rising, violence against people unknown to the perpetrator is rising, drug overdose rates are rising, and antidepressant use is rising, I’m not so sure that’s true. We are a spiritually sick culture, and that sickness affects us all.

I’m tired of going to funerals of people who died too young, and seeing misery on the faces of people who are materially well off compared with much of the world. Not when there is an answer.

The challenge set before me, then, is to take the same attitude with those who suffer any kind of spiritual malady as I do toward those dying of addiction. I have been saved from misery, and it’s my responsibility to pass that on, today.

It’s a challenge I set before you, too.

 

 

Category: Addiction, Deliverance, mental health, Mental Health, Religion | LEAVE A COMMENT