What do you think? Can anyone know what is really right?

Is it possible to know right from wrong or is it a simple matter of opinion?  Is  right and wrong a relative thing or are there things that are simply wrong?  What do you base your opinion on?

How does this issue affect the way we live as a culture?

ON what you are willing to do

When we see people do things that seem so stupid and so self destructive we invariably ask, “Why?’  But there is another question, just as important, and one that tells us more about the hold that  behavior has on them.  “What are you willing to do to keep on doing this?”

When the answer to that question is “almost anything”  that will be a behavior very hard, if not impossible, to change.

Consider the following story:

I used to work in a program as a therapist for adolescent sexual perpetrators.  I had a kid I worked with who was about 14 years old.  In group one day he was talking about his offense.  He has forced a young boy (about 6) have oral sex with him multiple times.  He talked honestly without excuse about what he had done.  He then talked about how well he was doing in treatment.  He was trying hard to convince me that he would not relapse.  I think he had already convinced himself.  He asked me what I thought.

I asked him one question.  “If the little boy had screamed what would you have done?”  He didnt hesitate.  “I would have killed him.”

I shook my head and asked him, “I dont know how you stop doing something that you are willing to kill another person in order to keep doing it…..”  He didnt know what to say.  I didnt either.

But think about it.  All of us have self destructive habits or know someone who does.  What are you willing to do to keep them?  Are you willing to lie, to manipulate, to cheat, to hurt, to ignore, to ……whatever?  The more you are willing to do to protect your “habits” the less likely you are to change them, regardless of how much you say you “really” want to.

Something to think about.

Of a day

 

I dream of a day

when we are not God

and love is the most

realistic thing we do

and not simply words in a song

or the dreams of

someone who doesnt really

understand the way things are

I dream of a day

when we see past

the labels

attached to our chest

like children on an outing

who we dont know

unless we know what to

call them.

I dream of a day

where cruelty and meaness

are on the sci-fi channel

rather than woven

in the threads of the front pages

of  our heart and soul.

I dream of a day

where health is what we have

instead of what we fight for.

I dream of a day

where we know hearts

touch

and armor is not

part of everyday clothing.

I dream of a day

where we sleep

without worry

and wake without fear.

I dream of a day……

 

God Bless

What do you think? Is it all just noise?

Politics, he told me, was simply noise.  It has nothing to do with content.  The only thing that matters is who can yell the loudest, call the most names, point the most fingers and then look you right in the eye and tell you that it does it simply because he cares.  Its like the song he said, “If everybody is wrong, then nobody is right.”

I told a Tennessee state legislator once, “The problem is not that some people think you listen and some people dont.  The problem is that more and more people dont believe that it matters if they tell you?’

Is the idea of politics with integrity a psychotic delusion?

Second Look: a slow fade

Many of the tragedies of our life start in innocence or blindness (just not looking or not caring to look). The song starts about a “slow fade”– one more drink, one more hit, one more look, one more time….. one more. What could one more time hurt? It is not going to hurt anybody. I can stop whenever I want. I can choose not to.

I know it has been true for me. Most of the things I really regret started when I just closed my eyes for a moment. I became friend with “something” whose friendship was going to take me to places I didn’t want to go. Ever think back on those four or five minute slices of time that maybe changed your life forever, that took you on turn with no turn back. This is the beginning of the “slow fade.”

Listen to the song. It has a lot to say.

On the reality of evil

NOTE-  If you have issues with trauma in anyway you may not want to read this post.

Lamarcus Davidson was found guilty today.  2 years ago him and 4 friends carjacked a young couple in Knoxville.  Over a two day period they beat them, raped them and killed them.  The guy was anally raped several times, tied up like a trussed pig, and finally shot 3 times.  His body was then burned.  The girl was raped multiple times by multiple people.  She was savaged in ways hard to even talk about.  Finally she was put in a trash bag and placed live in a trash can where she suffocated to death.

Davidson was the 3rd of the gang to be charged and reportedly the leader.  His attorneys tried to put the victims on trial and ended up suggesting that his client only had consensual sex with the young lady who was brutalized. 

I hope Davidson dies.

One of the things we have done in our psychology happy, diagnosis happy world is to diagnose away the existence of evil.  As a matter of fact one of the most horrible things done to those with real mental health issues is to speak of them in the same breath and as belonging in the same category as those who do horrendous and evil things.  A friend jokingly told me one day,  “I ‘m too busy worrying about the mean people….. I dont have time to worry about the crazy ones…. (he had bipolar disorder by the way)”

A flood of thoughts and stories are going through my mind tonight.  I am trying to explain in a convincing way what to me seems so obvious.  There is evil, real evil, in this world that is not reducible to some kind of psychological category.  There are evil people, people who are dangerous and mean and who like hurting other people.  Not very “therapeutic” I know, but I passionately believe that. 

• I read a book months ago called, “Holocaust by bullets.”  It was the story of  how the Nazis killed people on the Eastern Front without the aid of concentration camps.  The author interviewed two ladies in their 70’s.  When they were 14 or 15 years old they were “pressers.”  When the Germans lined the Jews up in front of big pits to shoot them these girls jobs were to walk into the pits over the bodies to “press” them down to make room for more people.  As you listened to the women explain what had happened you knew that for  them that day had never ended.
• I used to be a therapist in a program for adolescent sexual perpetrators.  One kid really stands out.  He was 17 or 18 years old, probably about 225 pounds.  He had anally raped his 6 month old brother and almost killed him.  He had left him permanently physically disabled.  He told me how he planned and waited for the opportunity in a calm matter of fact voice.  All I could to think to ask him was “Why?…….”  He looked me right in the eye.  “I guess I just wanted to see what it felt like….”
• I have a friend about my age.  A couple of months ago he told me his story.  His wife knows.  I think I am the only other person.  When he was 13 years old he was sexually abused by his pediatrician.  The abuse went on every week for about 6 months.  He never told his parents.  He never told anyone.  It marked everything he did, everything he felt, and everything he tried to become.  He hid it from everyone. The night he told me he just cried.  He told me that he had been a prisoner for so long he didnt even know what it felt like to be free anymore.

These are only some of the many stories running through my head tonight.  Some of what I think doesnt really feel very “politically correct” to me.  I dont think I have really proven anything and I really wished I had.  We have so impoverished our life by trying to reduce everything unpleasent, every bad, everything nasty to a psychogical condition or diagnosis.  I really wonder if it has not helped to render helpless to identify, understand and deal with evil.

I dont know if it is right to wish Lemarcus Davidson death.  I dont know if it really helps.  I just know it is what I wish.

But there are more mean people.  There are more people who will hurt others just because they like it and we cant kill them all.

I wish we did a better job fighting meaness.  For too many people I know life is about bruises, and pain, and attack.  I do think meaness is more likely to thrive in a vacum.  If we are not actively trying to create a climate of care for each other we make it easier for the monsters to flourish.

I think the biggest cause of evil is that we are not God and seem determined to act as if we are.  I dont know if that makes sense.  I hope it does.

And there is something you can do tonight.  The victims of Lemarcus Davidson were two young people named Shannon and Chris.  Pray for their families tonight.  Pray for the family of Lemarcus  Davidson too.

And pray for me.  I still want Lemarcus Davidson to die.

Second look: Living with a vision

Two stories.  Both true.

Several years ago I tried to outrun a blizzard.  I lost.

I lived in Middle Tennessee and that year we had that once in a lifetime snow storm.  I was doing some work in East Tennessee.  I heard the weather report.  It said the snow was right behind me and headed toward Middle Tennessee.  I took off and could literally see the snow in my rear view mirror.  I made it a couple of hundred miles, but finally had to stop about 25 miles from home.  The snow has somehow gotten in front of me and the roads were impassable.  It was coming so hard the windshield wipers didn’t help.  I couldn’t tell where I was on the road.  I couldn’t tell where I was going.  I was literally blind.  I stopped and waited.  That night it got down to 5 degrees.  I wondered if this was what it felt like to freeze to death as I prayed for the morning and hopefully new light.

I read a article many years ago in a book.  Two Chinese girls – one 19 and the other 21- had been arrested by the government because of their church activity.  They had been sentenced to death.  They had been given the opportunity to renounce their faith to live and had refused.  Their pastor has also been arrested.  He was told if he would pull the trigger to execute the girls he would be spared.  He agreed.  Right before he shot them they turned to him and thanked him for introducing them to Jesus Christ.  Shortly afterword the government also executed the pastor.

Obviously the two incidents differ widely in importance, but one idea connects them.  Vision. 

Knowing where you are going in life makes it possible to deal with the most difficult of traveling.  It is vision that gives the difficulties of life purpose.  Things that we would have never thought it possible to do we find ourselves doing when we have good reason and hope.  Even death.

Without vision you are like me in the snow storm.  The world becomes a scary place and the next move carries the threat of disaster.  The focus of your life becomes “what’s next.”  You move your feet, but in your heart know you are going nowhere.  You grab hold of distraction and tell yourself that anything that helps you to avoid feeling bad is the same as making things better. 

Manyof us spend much of our lives blind and calling it sight.  We have no where worth going and spend our lives racing about thinking that speed and hurry means we have to be going somewhere.  We hope the car of our life is the biggest, fanciest and fastest.  But with no where to go all cars eventually wear out and break down.

Our culture tells us that it doesn’t really matter where we go as long as we have a nice car to travel in.  It says, “All that really matters is what works for you.”  But what if what works for you really doesn’t work.  I am reminded of a young 16 year old boy I worked with.  He was a gang-banger and proud of it.  He had committed several armed robberies and knew if he had to he could kill in a moment.  He had 3 different children by 3 different girls and thought a fourth might be on the way from a different girl.  He was a rap song brought to life and proud of it.  He knew that prison was in his future, but didn’t really care.  If anything he thought it made him more cool and more tough.

We talked a lot.  I don’t know it ever did a lot of good.  He asked me once what  I thought his biggest problem was.  I said, “I hope you find out one day that fancy traveling is not the same thing as a good trip.”

Second look; “Figuring out how well you love”

Almost everybody will tell you that they and everyone else need to be more loving people.  It is hard to look at the mess of the world and not conclude that to be true.  To much of life seems to be in the grip of cruelty and meaness.  It is so present that we don’t even notice it until those rare moments when it is not there.  When we experience love we know how much it is missed.

Prescriptions to love though tend to end up as exhortations to be nice and try harder.  Often the problem with love we tell ourselves is that other people don’t have enough.  Why else would things be so hard on me?

How can you tell how well you love and how much you need to do better or different?  Psychologist Gary Chapman has come up with some ideas that make sense.

Being loving he defines as by the presence of these 7 traits.  As you read ask yourself on a scale of 1-10 where you would rate yourself.  When are you more likely to display these traits?  When are you less likely?  How would others rate you?  What would they say?

1. Kindness-  a kind person finds joy in treating others well.  He likes treating people like they mean something and amount to something.  It is not because of any external rule or payoff.  It is not because of the threat of what he may lose.  He likes to treat people well.
2. Patience- a patient person is accepting of the imperfections of others.  He accepts people as they are.  He tries to love people, not force or coerce them to be better or different.
3. Forgiveness- a forgiving person gets angry, but anger doesn’t get him.  Even when wronged he has the ability to choose to give us the right to retribution that so many of us hold tight to in our daily lives.
4. Courtesy-   a courteous person treats others as friends.  He is glad to see them.  He pays attention and when he is with them is with them.
5. Humility- a humble person is able to live life without everything being about him.  It is not that he thinks less of himself.  He just thinks of himself less often.
6. Generosity-  a generous person gives to help others.  He gives his time, ability, and resources as he can to help others.
7. Honesty-  a loving person speaks the truth in love.  Other people know even when his words are difficult they are given with a good heart and giving spirit.

How did you come out?  I know my deficits are painfully obvious.  What can you do?

The answer is simple but hard.  Practice.

People all other things being equal do what they are used to doing.  In particular they tend to do what they “automatically” do.  Practice makes things more the rule and less the exception.  You train to become loving.  It is hard, I think for most of us impossible, to simply decide to try harder to be better people.

Practice.  Make it easier for you to be loving and I think in time you will be.  If we support each other maybe we all can be.  Seems kind of old fashioned I guess, but then I really don’t really care so much for “new fashion.”  Jesus talked often about reaping what you sow.  For me, I am ready to sow something different.

A second look: in the boat

We are all in the boat.

That’s one of the messages of the movie “Titanic.” The movie tells a story of people who spend most of their time trying to show they are better than someone else. They have their idea about what really counts in life and devote their energy to keeping score and making sure others know how well they are doing. They believe it is their score that puts them in the boat and the low scores of others that keep them out. They define the quality of their boat by the low scores of those who don’t qualify to get on board.

In the end though their differences don’t really make a difference. When the boat sinks everyone goes in the water. No matter how much energy we put into talking about the things that seperate us, how much emphasis we put on who’s got more and who’s got less, no matter how much time we devote to the boundaries that seperate us one thing is abundantly clear– if we don’t take care of what unites us then we will all find ourselves all a passenger on the Titanic. We are all in the boat and we fool ourselves if we think otherwise.

This site will look at the health of the boat.

So often we live as if the purpose of life was to get what we want and keep what we have. In the pursuit of that life we seem to never lack in the ability to find justification in choices and decisions that violate our most basic moral standards and leave us later wondering what we could have ever been thinking. As someone once said, “Nobody ever went broke betting on the ability of people to find justification for things that have no justification.”

As author John Ortberg wrote, “Everybody is normal until you get to know them.”

A second look. “What is your testimony?”

I listened to a great song the other night about life. The line that really stuck with me was, “I will testify to love…” I realized thinking about it that wittingly or unwittingly all of our lives are testimony to something. I began trying to take a very honest look at what my life actually testified to and what I hoped it testified to. Not suprisingly they were not always the same thing.

Everybody testifies to something. I know people whose life has been a testimony to money, a testimony to power, a testimony to sex, a testimony to fear, a testimony to God, and yes a testimony to love. I also started to realize how many people would be startled at the difference between what they testify to in fact and what they hope their life testifies to. It is a really sobering thought. If a perfect stranger looked at a videotape of your life what would he say you are testifying to?

I realized the things that get in the way of my testimony. Fear is a big one. It is so easy to let your life be defined by the things you try hard to avoid or escape. My wife, Linda, has been very sick over the last few years in particular, and sometimes the stress has been bigger than what I can do. At times my life was little more than trying to get out of feeling bad. The things that were most important to me were not treated as most important and I look back with regret on the times when the testimony of my life was so short of what I wanted it to be.

I have known very good loving people whose testimony has been derailed by some lingering resentments or anger that just seems to always seep into their daily living despite their best efforts. I had a friend who described it in a very unique way. He said that just because we know what is important doesn’t mean we believe it. He was saying the proof of the talk was in the walk. I think maybe he is right.

I think our heart is ultimately revealed in our testimony. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is in Proverbs 4:23- “Guard your heart for it is the wellspring of all life.”

I sincerely hope when all is said and done and you look back that you are pleased with the testimony of your life. Maybe it is our most important gift we can give our children.

This is an earlier post on www.intheboat.wordpress.com