I am on this "kick" to extract from my journals some insights on some things that have gotten my attention, and recently I found a replacement copy of a book by Charles Colson I had many years ago entitled A Dance With Deception (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1993). To give you a little of Chuck Colson's story, he was a former Nixon aide who was caught up in the Watergate scandals of the early 1970's, and as a result he had to do some time in prison. While in prison, he became a born-again Christian and began what would later evolve into a very effective ministry organization called Prison Fellowship International. Prison Fellowship has impacted a number of inmates, and one of my old school friends from years ago works with a ministry in Orlando affilliated with them today. Up until his passing a few years back, Colson wrote a lot of good material, and this book I have at hand that I will be basing a lot of my own insights on is for me one of his best - it is not an extensive reference work, as it consists of transcripts of his commentaries on the radio over a period of several years, but it is packed with rich information. Colson also represents a strain of Evangelicalism you rarely see anymore - he was one of a great company of committed, conservative Evangelical leaders who stood for traditional values and truth, people like Jerry Falwell, the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, Bill Bright, Francis Schaeffer, and others. Almost all of these great men of principle have now passed on into their eternal rewards, and their successors often don't have the same fire and passion these great leaders had, and the past 15 or so years of what has happened in America is evidence of that issue. At any rate, there is a section beginning on page 203 of A Dance with Deception that got my attention years ago, and it is one of the main reasons I got this book again to begin with. Let us just launch into it and see where it goes.
The section I am talking about is entitled "The Difference It Makes," and it is a transcript of a radio commentary broadcast by Colson on December 22, 1991. The commentary recounts the story of the Humaita Penitentiary in Brazil, which is privately administered by Christian volunteers who worked with Prison Fellowship at that time. As a prison, it was a little different in that there were no guards, and once an inmate was brought in, the shackles came off and a rather radical system of actual rehabilitation that works with the inmates in stages to recover their freedom - at its center though is a Christocentric focus that integrates faith into the rehabilitation process, something the yapping mutts at the ACLU would never let happen here. I am also sort of struck by how much this program resembles St. John Bosco's educational philosophy in that it emphasizes that the purpose of correction is not necessarily punishment, but rather rehabilitation, aiding the offenders to regain their place in civilized society by educating and disciplining them. There is a huge contrast in the system at the Humaita Penitentiary in Brazil and the penal system we see in the states - I have also been reading over another book entitled The Kennel by Kent Hovind (under the pseudonym "Elijah Green"), and the fictional account of Hovind's own unfortunate incarceration exposes a corrupt, corporate-run prison system that markets incarceration as a commodity. In the marketing of incarceration, prisons in the US these days don't necessarily have as their objective rehabilitation, but rather they encourage bad behavior to boost business - this usually is marked by ungodly sentences for fairly minor offenses that don't even give a corresponding punishment to the offense. Anyone who keeps up with what has been happening, in particular the past 20 or so years, understands that something is not working well in the American justice system, and essentially what that is has to do with corruption in government as well as the sharklike behavior of "Big Business," as Soros, Trump, and all the other movers and shakers are pressing an agenda with a bunch of pansy-keistered politicians aiding and abetting them. Contrasting the model of Humaita with the current penal system in the US has made me come to the conclusion that maybe the "under-developed" Third World may have more common sense on things than our supposedly "sophisticated and enlightened" Western culture does. Take a look at even the churches over there - they are fairly traditional (with the exception of some pockets of "Liberation Theology" sectarians, who are often egged on by apostate Theology professors in the West anyway), vibrant, and once many of them do embrace Christianity, they do so with a conviction and devotion that should shame us here; a lot of times, that decision could even cost them their lives! So, why is it then that the "Third World" is poor but vibrant, while the "First World" is rich and in moral decay? Good question, isn't it? It begs another question as well - are we really as "enlightened" as we think we are in the US and elsewhere? That is where the question of "worldview" now comes into the focus of this discussion.
If you seriously take the time to sit down and ponder about how worldviews change, and how these views impact even those professing Christianity, it immediately raises some concerns. One thing Colson points elsewhere in his book is something that has become more evident in the 25 or so years since he originally authored this stuff, and what it addresses is how we as Christians have allowed blatantly non-Christian influences to impact theology and philosophy. For instance, let me go back to my alma mater, where I had originally planned on doing my graduate work. After only a few weeks there, I came to realize that something very odd was happening in the Religious Studies Department at this particular university, and as I noted this odd "something," I also began to feel very disturbed in my spirit about some issues. Many of the professors in that particular Religion department were quite fond of quoting people such as Martin Heidegger, which in itself is disturbing, and to explain why let's first talk about Heidegger a little, shall we? In the early part of the 20th century, Heidegger was a German philosopher who openly supported and endorsed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and it is something he had never relented of even at the day of his death. Heidegger unfortunately had a seriously negative impact on theologians too, in particular Jurgen Moltmann, a theologian who exerts an unhealthy influence himself over this recent and odd new generation of Pentecostal and Evangelical academics out there. Even much of the exegetical/hermeneutical technique these younger academics use and are teaching on Christian college campuses has at its root Heidegger's influence, as well as that of the theistic evolutionist/transhumanist and apostate priest Teilhard de Chardin. Both of these figures have wreaked havoc on Christendom to such a degree that it has radically redefined what Christianity is on many Christian college campuses. Of course, we all know that Satan has no originality - the same crap he fed Eve in the Garden of Eden is the lie he feeds people today, and humanity is too blinded to even see it. Satan is shrewd enough to know not to tamper with an effective system, so he just repackages the same old deceptions in more "relevant" language of the day and it still deceives a lot of people, including the "smart ones" among us. Many so-called "Christian" academics have fallen prey to what G.K. Chesterton called "the cult of scientism," and what he means by that is that often scientism, with all its picking apart, over-analytical prattling, and its worship of facts and figures has robbed the world of its wonder, and has dulled the natural sense of wonder God endowed us with (Thomas Peters, The Christian Imagination - G.K. Chesterton on the Arts. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000. p. 56). In other words, many Religion Departments at professing Christian colleges actually do more to destroy the faith of a student rather than helping them grow in faith, and as such I would not be adverse to doing away with Religion Departments in some universities - there are, however, bright exceptions to that and I am proud to say that Franciscan University of Steubenville, where I am working on my Masters currently, is one of those shining examples. There is a reason why this is the case - at Franciscan (unlike some other - ahem! - schools I could name!) the faculty are faithful to the Fidei Depositum of the Church, and they know it is their job to help their students spiritually grow as well as intellectually develop. So, in doing that, many of my professors at Franciscan have actually rekindled a sense of wonder that Chesterton extolled so much in his writings within me. However, the lies of Heidegger, Moltmann, and others who have apostatized and are leading other academic elites to do so are being repackaged today in what sociologist Christian Smith calls "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," or its more simplified name, "Christian humanitarianism." I am about to make some enemies with what I am going to say next, but so be it - it wouldn't be the first time honestly!
I am about to give some background on some disturbing things I saw on a certain Evangelical university campus, as it will show that my concerns are not merely speculative or alarmist, but they can be proven by just walking on that campus and sitting in the classroom of one of the Religion faculty there. One professor in particular there taught a graduate-level Hermeneutics course I took at the time, and he is a prime culprit for what I am about to share. For some years, I had been keeping up with some of the faddish ridiculousness going on in Evangelicalism, as I was no longer part of it but still wanted to keep up with things. With the rise of people like Rick Warren (who, ironically, is now considered "conservative" compared to what came after!) and the later "Emergent Church" movement, there came a general postmodernist shift away from what used to be fairly sound doctrine from an Evangelical perspective. Therefore, when I first came back to the campus of this particular university almost four years ago, I sort of expected some change, but I was really not prepared for what I actually did witness. Now, this particular professor I am discussing now is, as a person, a genuinely nice guy - he has a decent personality, a quiet demeanor, and he's approachable and easy to engage in conversation with. But, as with anything, looks can be deceiving. It didn't take long at all to see what really made this guy tick, and almost from cracking the very first textbook in that class a well-informed and seriously-discerning observer could know that something was not right in Dodge. This particular professor relied heavily in his hermeneutical lectures on a couple of books that frankly had very little to do with the subject of Biblical interpretation. One of these books was by a post-modernist "Christian" philosopher by the name of Merrold Westphal, and was entitled Which Community, Whose Interpretation? The second was a book by an "Emergent Church" proponent by the name of Scot McKnight entitled The Blue Parakeet, which essentially raises doubts about the Bible's authority in the reader's mind rather than affirming it, as Aquinas taught, as a book of divine authorship that in its dictates is to be taken as true (for a more in-depth analysis of the errors of McKnight's book, I would recommend Baptist apologist James White's review of it found here - http://www.equip.org/article/the-hidden-agenda-of-the-blue-parakeet/). Now, some of the other texts utilized in this class, including Kevin VanHooser's mammoth reference book published by Baker Academic, are good material; I still use VanHooser's reference book today for projects. And, even in this professor's own books - one of which was a textbook used in the class - there are some good nuggets of things I utilize today. It is important to understand that good scholarship does attempt to find something useful in the most disagreeable of texts, and this professor's own text was analoguous to a fatty piece of bacon - there were some good bits of lean meat in it, but also a lot of pungent, disagreeable fat as well. In contrast, there are books by my profs at Franciscan - notably those of Drs. Regis Martin, Mark Miravalle, and Scott Hahn - which are like feasting on a good porterhouse steak; there may be minimal fat around the edges, but you walk away from the plate satisfied and well-nourished. Still others - McKnight's book, as well as Westphal's come to mind - are like cheap salt pork - there may be a tiny morsel worth salvaging here and there, but you have to render a lot of disagreeable, unhealthy fat to find them. So, let's talk a little about this Westphal guy now, shall we?
Merrold Westphal is by all intentions a philosopher - he is a committed postmodernist, and why his material is even considered for a Bible course is beyond me, because it really is not suited for it. Looking at his CV (accessed at http://faculty.fordham.edu/westphal/vitamw.pdf) he is an alumni of Wheaton (1962) and got his Ph.D. from Yale in 1966. He looks to have been influenced a lot by people like Heidegger as well as Kierkegaard (enough said there!) and he attempts to even "Christianize" atheism in many of his writings and speeches. He also tends to idealize people like Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, none of whom can be said to be friends of traditional Christian doctrine. Even as a philosopher though, Westphal is actually quite sloppy - while it is definitely possible for philosophy and theology to be compatible (as demonstrated by Aquinas, St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Romano Guardini, and so many others) Westphal doesn't complement either well. In a similarly-themed text by Lutheran theologian Jaroslav Pelikan entitled Fools for Christ's Sake, although I would disagree with a lot of that too at least Pelikan has the discernment to distinguish between a fundamental Thomistic principle of being vs. nature, which Westphal neglects in order to press his own agenda. His heavy reliance on Jurgen Moltmann's "Theology of Hope" also warrants concern too, as Moltmann was essentially a panentheist who failed to distinguish between Creator and creation, and all the while claiming to promote "gospel values." Although Moltmann claimed a "conversion" as a German POW in an American camp in WWII, his theology doesn't reflect a sound conversion experience, unlike that of his supposed mentor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom I believe was a true martyr for Christ. Moltmann is essentially inclusionist, panentheistic, and well, just liberal! When one reads good theology, such as that of de Lubac, Guardini, von Balthasar, or orthodox Reformed Protestants like Francis Schaeffer, you see a abysmic difference between the faithful theology they wrote about in contrast to the bereft theologically-themed philosophical babble of Westphal. A true theologian doesn't seek to alter doctrine, but to affirm it, and a true philosopher doesn't try to redefine morality and natural law, but affirms it as well. Westphal fails miserably in both areas. That leads to one final note before we wrap up about Westphal's idea of "prophetic revelation."
Westphal tends to assume God can use anything or anyone to be a "prophetic voice," and for Westphal his idols Marx and Nietzsche are "prophetic voices," which he says very clearly in his own book. On the outset, Westphal appears Thomistic - after all, Aquinas taught that all of us by virtue of being (being qua being) are essentially good, right? If Westphal would have affirmed just that, he may have been on the right track. However, it is evident that Westphal would fail to see what Aquinas really meant by that affirmation - Aquinas taught that man in his being was created good by God, but in nature man was corrupted by the Fall, which is orthodox theology. Westphal avoids that altogether and basically just baptizes these guys as "God's prophets" and that is where he went horribly wrong. A true prophetic voice is one that is yielded to God - Nietzsche and Marx rejected God, and therefore would have forfeited being willfully used by someone they hate. When I made a point of this in a reading reflection in that particular class, the professor commented "Well, God used a jackass in Numbers 6, so why couldn't he use an atheist too?" First, to answer that we rely on Aquinas - God could use a jackass because of the Law of Non-Contradiction; God authored the "Book of Nature," and therefore Creation was subject to Him and could be used. God used a talking jackass to actually perfect Nature. In the case of people, we have a little thing called "free will" which - and, I will discuss the theological aspects of this elsewhere later - in which God allows us to make the choice; this is why we pray "Thy Will Be Done" in the Lord's Prayer, for heaven's sake! Nature is not subject to the same responsibility or privelege of free will as humanity is, which is why God used the jackass in Numbers 6 instead of Balaam - think about it, guys! That therefore is a moot argument by virtue of the evidence alone. Summarily, Westphal's reasoning is based more on his own subjectivism rather than being grounded in the Fidei Depositum, and his reasoning is sloppy, faulty, and anemic. This was not a discussion per se of Westphal, but he is an example of the postmodernist nonsense floating around out there, often in the name of "Christianity," and it presents a conflict in worldview for the true Christian as well. More to say on something else next time.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Friday, March 4, 2016
Pondered Thoughts - A Series: Part 1 - How Adversity Shapes Us
As I have been doing Sunday School lesson series on my Sacramental Present Truths page, I wanted to maybe begin a series of introspection on various aspects of my own worldview as analyzed and honestly stated, something I have had some trouble doing over the years as expressing one's honest thoughts is not an easy task. A number of things inspired this over the past several weeks, including having to sit for long periods (three to four hours) after my workday was over in the company cafeteria waiting for my wife to pick me up on her way home from her job. Sitting there, I was able to spend a lot of time writing, and it more or less motivated me to talk about some things I normally would not address, but was able to lucidly write about extensively in my personal journal. I figured that experience was as good of a place to start regarding these reflections, so we'll go with it.
Over the years, I have had to be put in some odd positions, including long periods of waiting in offices, at bus stations, and in lobbies of hotels and restaurants due to divergent work schedules that Barbara and I have had to manage with one vehicle. Often I let her take the car, and what that sometimes means is either getting to my office way early or staying way late, long after my work shift is over. At other times, it meant waiting in restrooms, or sitting for hours on a bus in order to ride hours to get home on a bus, or it meant being at weird places at weird times. Often, while I am waiting around, I take the opportunity to write in my personal journal I have been keeping consistently for about 20 years, and despite the circumstance I am thrust into, I often get some of my best insights from those circumstances as I am sitting and writing, waiting and watching. You observe a lot, and at times working observations into my thoughts yields some interesting perspective. I want to share some of those moments here at this point, and there is an important lesson - Dolly Parton once said that when life hands you cow patties, you grow a garden. Well, a lot of rich, stinky manure produced bountiful fruit in my case, and looking back on it, there were valuable lessons to be learned in such situations. Now, mind you, I hate those types of situations, but again to use another analogy, I have learned to take the lemons and make a good lemonade out of them. Now, I want to serve you some of the lemonade! So, enjoy the bounty of my "garden of thought," and hopefully you will appreciate how much manure produced it!
I am currently looking at a fairly recent entry I penned on February 25th of this year, as some good insight began to be shared at this point. At that time I was pondering some stuff I was dealing with, and the one realization that hit me was that I needed to learn to take a more balanced approach to my own particular "story" - the good should be preserved as best as it can be, and the bad should be seen in lieu of the good. The resulting fruit of doing this would be to come away from a given situation of any sort with more self-awareness and a motivation to let the real me begin to blossom as God intended while at the same time thinking of how this experience would be used to benefit someone else. Negative things in one's past are a given, and they are inescapable. The issue is not if one has negative situations or adversity, but rather how one handles them. Take the manure analogy for instance - manure will not do much good except make you stink if you allow it to bury you, but if you can manage to make something useful of it by letting it nourish the soil of your imagination, it will bear abundant fruit. It is important to note here that "manure" is metaphorically speaking of life's adversities, and not the falsehoods and "Walter Mitty Syndromes" some people like to construct around themselves. A Pentecostal televangelist once said that "your present position doesn't determine your future potential," and he was right. It doesn't mean that you become blissfully unaware of it in some quasi-gnostic fashion, but rather taking the adversity and using it as a growth tool. At times it is hard to do in certain situations when you are in them, because it is so easy for any of us to focus on the present situation, but we need to grow beyond that. I want to now use a story from classic literature I am fond of to illustrate the point.
In 1855, the British writer William Makepeace Thackaray wrote an amusing little story called The Rose and the Ring which I became acquainted with when I was a kid myself. My mother had bought me, when I was just a baby, a set of story books compiled in 1925 by an educator named Olive Beaupre Miller entitled My Book House, and excerpts from Thackaray's book were included in one of the volumes. Although a humorous story, it had a great moral to it. The story centers around the lives of four young monarchs in two fictional kingdoms, and two of them - Princes Giglio and Bulbo - were given by their mothers an enchanted ring and rose respectively that rendered anyone who possessed them desireable to the opposite sex. However, Giglio, along with the Princess Rosalba, also received something else from an enigmatic personage called the Fairy Blackstick (who also gifted the two queen mothers with the rose and ring too) when at their christenings the Fairy called upon them and gave them the gift of "a little misfortune." As it ended up, Giglio's and Rosalba's fathers, who were both kings of their respective nations, were overthrown and the two youngsters were greatly diminished in their upbringing - Giglio's father was succeeded by his ambitious uncle, Valoroso XXIV, and Rosalba's father was overthrown by a rebellious vassal by the name of Padella, who was Bulbo's father. When Padella overthrew Rosalba's family, she was very young and ended up getting lost in the woods where some lions raised her, while Giglio ended up being totally neglected in the palace and almost disowned by his contemptous uncle. However, when it all came to a head and both of them ended up in trouble, the Fairy showed them what that "little misfortune" taught them, and in the end they became the rulers of their kingdoms as well as being married to each other. On page 113 of the story, when Giglio and Rosalba are reunited and the Fairy pays a visit to them, she said the following to them about the circumstance: "Bless you, my darling children! Now you are united and happy, and now you see what I said from the first, that a little misfortune has done you both good. You, Giglio, had you been bred in prosperity, would scarcely have learned to read or write - you would have been idle and extravagant, and could not have been a good king as you now will be. You, Rosalba, would have been so flattered, that your little head might have been like Angelica's, who thought herself too good for Giglio." (William Makepeace Thackaray, The Rose and the Ring. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1902. p. 113). When I read that, I think to myself, "what would I have turned out like, had circumstances been different - better or worse?" Many who know me and my story know I grew up very poor for most of my childhood from about age 9 onward, and it was not an easy way to grow up. I had to learn early about how to creatively deal with adversity - my application of an Appalachian trait of "makin' do" - and the way I did so was to educate myself. I read a lot when I was a kid, being in a small town in West Virginia where you have little money and not much else to do I found a lot of solace in reading a wide diversity of material at an early age. Some of my elementary school classmates I still keep in touch with have an amusing memory of my fifth-grade year when I read the whole set of World Book Encyclopedias through at least three times. Reading books was a sort of escape from the rather grim surroundings I had to grow up in, and a lot of what I read then actually inspired me, gave me a lot of clarity, and fueled an active imagination - I wanted to apply what I was reading in an active, practical way, and you would not believe some of the experiments I got into! I think too that is one reason why I have always liked that one movie Matilda that graced the cinema several years back - I watch that movie, and I see a female version of myself in that little girl (who was well-played by child actor Mara Wilson). If you recall the movie, Matilda faced a lot of adversity - she had two deadbeat parents (Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman played those roles well too), a school with a butchlike headmistress who despised children and only wanted to set up her own little despotic kingdom in order to satisfy her own insecurity, and on top of all that her dad was into illegal activity and was under surveillance by the authorities. But, young Matilda discovered the joy of reading, and it changed her life, and like the fictional Rosalba in The Rose and the Ring, a "little misfortune" cultivated character and motivation in little Matilda too. I was a lot like that when I was around the same age - I never got to know my father, and my mother was often so immature that her idea of life was to sit around passing gas, drinking beer, and listening to depressing honky-tonk records (we also didn't have a TV when I was a kid either - in a way that is not such a bad thing though!). So, I had to mature earlier than I probably should have then, as we went through a lot of diversity where we lived at the time and my only escape was in reading as well as in time listening to Henry Boggen play vintage big band records on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC. However, I also had some other help then too, although I didn't fully appreciate it at the time. My fifth and sixth-grade teacher was a large jar-headed man with the demeanor of a Marine drill sergeant by the name of Guy Dispanet Jr., and although initially I hated him, in time he brought my potential out of me and after three years with him in the classroom - he flunked my butt in the first year, so I had to repeat fifth grade, but it was good for me - I gained his respect, and in turn I came to really respect him as a teacher, as he ended up being one of the best I ever had. God used Dispanet to give me the swift kick in the keister I needed to begin to develop my potential, and it paid off richly in later years. Although much of this was there before I even encountered Guy Dispanet in that small classroom in Kirby, WV, in 1980, I credit him with guiding me to channel the assets I possessed in such a way that it made me shine like I was intended to. Although he passed away in 1993, I still have a special place for Dispanet in my thoughts, and I owe him a great deal for helping me to be formed and shaped in such a way that I could begin to reach the potential I had. Thank God for good teachers, which these days are a rare commodity. If you had them, and they are still with us, please reach out to them as they can use the encouragement of knowing they helped shape someone's life.
Adversity is never pleasant when you face it, but in the adverse circumstance there is a lesson to be learned that will make it count for something later. Do you remember, for instance, Genesis 3:17? Adam and Eve had really screwed up, but they refused to own it - people who read that account in Genesis 3 often focus on taking the bite out of the fruit as the mortal sin, but that really was not it - Adam's sin was self-justification, for instead of having the stamina to take ownership for what he did and petitioning God's mercy, Adam instead chose to attempt to explain his way out by "passing the buck" first on Eve, and later on God Himself (read this later on Sacramental Present Truths, as it is part of a recent Sunday School lesson). So, in verse 17, God handed down sentence to Adam, and part of that was that God cursed the ground for Adam's sake. Like the Fairy Blackstick in The Rose and the Ring, God "cursed" the ground for the purpose of building in Adam character through his adverse condition of all that backbreaking labor he was going to have to do just to survive, and ironically God was telling Adam this - if he does labor, then the fruit of the labor will be more satisfying, so instead of a "curse" work would actually be good for him! So, although adversity is unpleasant, it actually may be to our advantage to go through it when we do because it grows us, much like stinky manure grows beautiful roses and delicious tomatoes. The problem with adversity though is that often we don't see how it is good when we are experiencing it, and often it is only in hindsight that we can say "aha!" to the whole situation. But, that's fine too - at least we got the message, albeit late! But, it doesn't have to be totally that way, because in adversity it is important to stay focused on the bigger picture, and if you can do that, then you will be surprised at what will result from it.
There is much more - oh so much more, as I had three hours to write journal entries on this subject! - that could be said, but the bottom line is actually quite simple. Adversity builds character in that it challenges us to use a negative circumstance to a positive advantage, and in doing so we see for ourselves what we are made of. If everything were all "lollypops and rainbows," we would never be challenged to stretch ourselves, and thus a lot of things we could do would never even be thought of. As a concluding thought, I think also of Jacobo Timerman, the Russian-born Argentine journalist who was imprisoned by the Peronist regime in the late 1970's for speaking out against atrocities. Timerman wrote a great book about his experiences called Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, that was originally published in 1980. I first became familiar with the book when I was ten years old, during one of those long, poverty-stricken summers in Kirby, WV, where mostly all I had to do then at times was read many times over several past issues of various magazines that people gave us, and one of those was an issue of Reader's Digest that had an excerpt from this book of Timerman's in it. As I eventually got the book and read it more thoroughly, something struck me about what he said on page 36 - "Memory is the chief enemy of the solitary tortured man - nothing is more dangerous at such moments. But, I managed to develop certain passivity-inducing devices for withstanding torture and anti-memory devices for those long hours in the solitary cell." (Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. p. 36). Timerman was an agnostic unfortunately, and unlike others who were unjustly imprisoned such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he unfortunately didn't know how to use adversity to his advantage in this case - far from being the enemy of the "solitary tortured man," the memory at times may be the very thing that maintains sanity in adversity. Our memories, both good and bad, can be a great classroom for us if we allow them to be so, and having the time to reflect on them can help one make some sense out of a situation and instill a resolve to overcome it. Growing up as I did - and unfortunately I don't have the liberty to share that entire story for a variety of reasons at this time - I valued memory and imagination, and it was something I believe God used to develop what He gave me personally. As G.K. Chesterton remarked in his various writings, humans were created by God as both creatures and creators, and as such it is the poetic, or imaginative, view of existence that keeps a person sane (Thomas Peters, The Christian Imagination - G.K. Chesterton on the Arts. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000. p. 44). If it hadn't been for an insatiable desire to read and learn, I would have been just another Appalachian statistic rather than being able to rise above circumstance and go after what I felt God called me to do. Timerman fails to admit it, but in reality something drove him to maintain sanity in that dank Argentine prison, and thankfully for his sake it did!
So, as I now conclude this discourse, my advice to anyone facing adversity is to do several things. First, utilize the adverse situation as a learning experience, and if you are a God-fearing person, you need to ask Him "what is it I am supposed to come out of this with?" An applicable verse in that instance is Romans 8:28 - God orders all things for our good, in essence. Second, it is important to maintain focus on the greater picture - if you have a job or a hobby, school, or anything else, don't let the adversity derail you, but rather focus more on the task and excel. You may actually surprise yourself if you do! Third, adversity is a good condition to begin writing - write down anything that comes to mind in a journal preferably, and as you do so, it helps sort a lot out that may be going on in your mind due to the situation you are facing. If you take those three steps, you will not only learn about yourself, but you will also discover that you may have more strength than you give yourself credit for. It is also important to remember that adversity is not a question of if but rather of when - no one is immune from life's crapstorms, and at some point one will inevitably blow through your life. Rather than letting it blow you away though, it is important to root yourself, and I cannot think of any better way than prayer and a consistant religious faith to do so - and, don't do it alone; pray with your husband or wife too, because adversity may be something you are facing together and you need each other too. If you do that, not only will you be strengthened, but also your religious conviction, your marriage, and even your knowledge will be strengthened as well. Hopefully this insight will help someone, and I have more to share on another subject next time.
Over the years, I have had to be put in some odd positions, including long periods of waiting in offices, at bus stations, and in lobbies of hotels and restaurants due to divergent work schedules that Barbara and I have had to manage with one vehicle. Often I let her take the car, and what that sometimes means is either getting to my office way early or staying way late, long after my work shift is over. At other times, it meant waiting in restrooms, or sitting for hours on a bus in order to ride hours to get home on a bus, or it meant being at weird places at weird times. Often, while I am waiting around, I take the opportunity to write in my personal journal I have been keeping consistently for about 20 years, and despite the circumstance I am thrust into, I often get some of my best insights from those circumstances as I am sitting and writing, waiting and watching. You observe a lot, and at times working observations into my thoughts yields some interesting perspective. I want to share some of those moments here at this point, and there is an important lesson - Dolly Parton once said that when life hands you cow patties, you grow a garden. Well, a lot of rich, stinky manure produced bountiful fruit in my case, and looking back on it, there were valuable lessons to be learned in such situations. Now, mind you, I hate those types of situations, but again to use another analogy, I have learned to take the lemons and make a good lemonade out of them. Now, I want to serve you some of the lemonade! So, enjoy the bounty of my "garden of thought," and hopefully you will appreciate how much manure produced it!
I am currently looking at a fairly recent entry I penned on February 25th of this year, as some good insight began to be shared at this point. At that time I was pondering some stuff I was dealing with, and the one realization that hit me was that I needed to learn to take a more balanced approach to my own particular "story" - the good should be preserved as best as it can be, and the bad should be seen in lieu of the good. The resulting fruit of doing this would be to come away from a given situation of any sort with more self-awareness and a motivation to let the real me begin to blossom as God intended while at the same time thinking of how this experience would be used to benefit someone else. Negative things in one's past are a given, and they are inescapable. The issue is not if one has negative situations or adversity, but rather how one handles them. Take the manure analogy for instance - manure will not do much good except make you stink if you allow it to bury you, but if you can manage to make something useful of it by letting it nourish the soil of your imagination, it will bear abundant fruit. It is important to note here that "manure" is metaphorically speaking of life's adversities, and not the falsehoods and "Walter Mitty Syndromes" some people like to construct around themselves. A Pentecostal televangelist once said that "your present position doesn't determine your future potential," and he was right. It doesn't mean that you become blissfully unaware of it in some quasi-gnostic fashion, but rather taking the adversity and using it as a growth tool. At times it is hard to do in certain situations when you are in them, because it is so easy for any of us to focus on the present situation, but we need to grow beyond that. I want to now use a story from classic literature I am fond of to illustrate the point.
Prince Giglio meets the Fairy Blackstick on a coach, from "The Rose and the Ring"
In 1855, the British writer William Makepeace Thackaray wrote an amusing little story called The Rose and the Ring which I became acquainted with when I was a kid myself. My mother had bought me, when I was just a baby, a set of story books compiled in 1925 by an educator named Olive Beaupre Miller entitled My Book House, and excerpts from Thackaray's book were included in one of the volumes. Although a humorous story, it had a great moral to it. The story centers around the lives of four young monarchs in two fictional kingdoms, and two of them - Princes Giglio and Bulbo - were given by their mothers an enchanted ring and rose respectively that rendered anyone who possessed them desireable to the opposite sex. However, Giglio, along with the Princess Rosalba, also received something else from an enigmatic personage called the Fairy Blackstick (who also gifted the two queen mothers with the rose and ring too) when at their christenings the Fairy called upon them and gave them the gift of "a little misfortune." As it ended up, Giglio's and Rosalba's fathers, who were both kings of their respective nations, were overthrown and the two youngsters were greatly diminished in their upbringing - Giglio's father was succeeded by his ambitious uncle, Valoroso XXIV, and Rosalba's father was overthrown by a rebellious vassal by the name of Padella, who was Bulbo's father. When Padella overthrew Rosalba's family, she was very young and ended up getting lost in the woods where some lions raised her, while Giglio ended up being totally neglected in the palace and almost disowned by his contemptous uncle. However, when it all came to a head and both of them ended up in trouble, the Fairy showed them what that "little misfortune" taught them, and in the end they became the rulers of their kingdoms as well as being married to each other. On page 113 of the story, when Giglio and Rosalba are reunited and the Fairy pays a visit to them, she said the following to them about the circumstance: "Bless you, my darling children! Now you are united and happy, and now you see what I said from the first, that a little misfortune has done you both good. You, Giglio, had you been bred in prosperity, would scarcely have learned to read or write - you would have been idle and extravagant, and could not have been a good king as you now will be. You, Rosalba, would have been so flattered, that your little head might have been like Angelica's, who thought herself too good for Giglio." (William Makepeace Thackaray, The Rose and the Ring. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1902. p. 113). When I read that, I think to myself, "what would I have turned out like, had circumstances been different - better or worse?" Many who know me and my story know I grew up very poor for most of my childhood from about age 9 onward, and it was not an easy way to grow up. I had to learn early about how to creatively deal with adversity - my application of an Appalachian trait of "makin' do" - and the way I did so was to educate myself. I read a lot when I was a kid, being in a small town in West Virginia where you have little money and not much else to do I found a lot of solace in reading a wide diversity of material at an early age. Some of my elementary school classmates I still keep in touch with have an amusing memory of my fifth-grade year when I read the whole set of World Book Encyclopedias through at least three times. Reading books was a sort of escape from the rather grim surroundings I had to grow up in, and a lot of what I read then actually inspired me, gave me a lot of clarity, and fueled an active imagination - I wanted to apply what I was reading in an active, practical way, and you would not believe some of the experiments I got into! I think too that is one reason why I have always liked that one movie Matilda that graced the cinema several years back - I watch that movie, and I see a female version of myself in that little girl (who was well-played by child actor Mara Wilson). If you recall the movie, Matilda faced a lot of adversity - she had two deadbeat parents (Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman played those roles well too), a school with a butchlike headmistress who despised children and only wanted to set up her own little despotic kingdom in order to satisfy her own insecurity, and on top of all that her dad was into illegal activity and was under surveillance by the authorities. But, young Matilda discovered the joy of reading, and it changed her life, and like the fictional Rosalba in The Rose and the Ring, a "little misfortune" cultivated character and motivation in little Matilda too. I was a lot like that when I was around the same age - I never got to know my father, and my mother was often so immature that her idea of life was to sit around passing gas, drinking beer, and listening to depressing honky-tonk records (we also didn't have a TV when I was a kid either - in a way that is not such a bad thing though!). So, I had to mature earlier than I probably should have then, as we went through a lot of diversity where we lived at the time and my only escape was in reading as well as in time listening to Henry Boggen play vintage big band records on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC. However, I also had some other help then too, although I didn't fully appreciate it at the time. My fifth and sixth-grade teacher was a large jar-headed man with the demeanor of a Marine drill sergeant by the name of Guy Dispanet Jr., and although initially I hated him, in time he brought my potential out of me and after three years with him in the classroom - he flunked my butt in the first year, so I had to repeat fifth grade, but it was good for me - I gained his respect, and in turn I came to really respect him as a teacher, as he ended up being one of the best I ever had. God used Dispanet to give me the swift kick in the keister I needed to begin to develop my potential, and it paid off richly in later years. Although much of this was there before I even encountered Guy Dispanet in that small classroom in Kirby, WV, in 1980, I credit him with guiding me to channel the assets I possessed in such a way that it made me shine like I was intended to. Although he passed away in 1993, I still have a special place for Dispanet in my thoughts, and I owe him a great deal for helping me to be formed and shaped in such a way that I could begin to reach the potential I had. Thank God for good teachers, which these days are a rare commodity. If you had them, and they are still with us, please reach out to them as they can use the encouragement of knowing they helped shape someone's life.
Adversity is never pleasant when you face it, but in the adverse circumstance there is a lesson to be learned that will make it count for something later. Do you remember, for instance, Genesis 3:17? Adam and Eve had really screwed up, but they refused to own it - people who read that account in Genesis 3 often focus on taking the bite out of the fruit as the mortal sin, but that really was not it - Adam's sin was self-justification, for instead of having the stamina to take ownership for what he did and petitioning God's mercy, Adam instead chose to attempt to explain his way out by "passing the buck" first on Eve, and later on God Himself (read this later on Sacramental Present Truths, as it is part of a recent Sunday School lesson). So, in verse 17, God handed down sentence to Adam, and part of that was that God cursed the ground for Adam's sake. Like the Fairy Blackstick in The Rose and the Ring, God "cursed" the ground for the purpose of building in Adam character through his adverse condition of all that backbreaking labor he was going to have to do just to survive, and ironically God was telling Adam this - if he does labor, then the fruit of the labor will be more satisfying, so instead of a "curse" work would actually be good for him! So, although adversity is unpleasant, it actually may be to our advantage to go through it when we do because it grows us, much like stinky manure grows beautiful roses and delicious tomatoes. The problem with adversity though is that often we don't see how it is good when we are experiencing it, and often it is only in hindsight that we can say "aha!" to the whole situation. But, that's fine too - at least we got the message, albeit late! But, it doesn't have to be totally that way, because in adversity it is important to stay focused on the bigger picture, and if you can do that, then you will be surprised at what will result from it.
There is much more - oh so much more, as I had three hours to write journal entries on this subject! - that could be said, but the bottom line is actually quite simple. Adversity builds character in that it challenges us to use a negative circumstance to a positive advantage, and in doing so we see for ourselves what we are made of. If everything were all "lollypops and rainbows," we would never be challenged to stretch ourselves, and thus a lot of things we could do would never even be thought of. As a concluding thought, I think also of Jacobo Timerman, the Russian-born Argentine journalist who was imprisoned by the Peronist regime in the late 1970's for speaking out against atrocities. Timerman wrote a great book about his experiences called Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, that was originally published in 1980. I first became familiar with the book when I was ten years old, during one of those long, poverty-stricken summers in Kirby, WV, where mostly all I had to do then at times was read many times over several past issues of various magazines that people gave us, and one of those was an issue of Reader's Digest that had an excerpt from this book of Timerman's in it. As I eventually got the book and read it more thoroughly, something struck me about what he said on page 36 - "Memory is the chief enemy of the solitary tortured man - nothing is more dangerous at such moments. But, I managed to develop certain passivity-inducing devices for withstanding torture and anti-memory devices for those long hours in the solitary cell." (Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. p. 36). Timerman was an agnostic unfortunately, and unlike others who were unjustly imprisoned such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he unfortunately didn't know how to use adversity to his advantage in this case - far from being the enemy of the "solitary tortured man," the memory at times may be the very thing that maintains sanity in adversity. Our memories, both good and bad, can be a great classroom for us if we allow them to be so, and having the time to reflect on them can help one make some sense out of a situation and instill a resolve to overcome it. Growing up as I did - and unfortunately I don't have the liberty to share that entire story for a variety of reasons at this time - I valued memory and imagination, and it was something I believe God used to develop what He gave me personally. As G.K. Chesterton remarked in his various writings, humans were created by God as both creatures and creators, and as such it is the poetic, or imaginative, view of existence that keeps a person sane (Thomas Peters, The Christian Imagination - G.K. Chesterton on the Arts. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000. p. 44). If it hadn't been for an insatiable desire to read and learn, I would have been just another Appalachian statistic rather than being able to rise above circumstance and go after what I felt God called me to do. Timerman fails to admit it, but in reality something drove him to maintain sanity in that dank Argentine prison, and thankfully for his sake it did!
So, as I now conclude this discourse, my advice to anyone facing adversity is to do several things. First, utilize the adverse situation as a learning experience, and if you are a God-fearing person, you need to ask Him "what is it I am supposed to come out of this with?" An applicable verse in that instance is Romans 8:28 - God orders all things for our good, in essence. Second, it is important to maintain focus on the greater picture - if you have a job or a hobby, school, or anything else, don't let the adversity derail you, but rather focus more on the task and excel. You may actually surprise yourself if you do! Third, adversity is a good condition to begin writing - write down anything that comes to mind in a journal preferably, and as you do so, it helps sort a lot out that may be going on in your mind due to the situation you are facing. If you take those three steps, you will not only learn about yourself, but you will also discover that you may have more strength than you give yourself credit for. It is also important to remember that adversity is not a question of if but rather of when - no one is immune from life's crapstorms, and at some point one will inevitably blow through your life. Rather than letting it blow you away though, it is important to root yourself, and I cannot think of any better way than prayer and a consistant religious faith to do so - and, don't do it alone; pray with your husband or wife too, because adversity may be something you are facing together and you need each other too. If you do that, not only will you be strengthened, but also your religious conviction, your marriage, and even your knowledge will be strengthened as well. Hopefully this insight will help someone, and I have more to share on another subject next time.
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