Saturday, May 21, 2016

My Mental Illness is Better Than Yours


To all my blog readers.... it will take a special friend to get to the end of this one.



But take heart! The Lord has impressed pretty hard on me this morning... time to move on to another topic... apologetics has a way of turning off and tuning out......


I have a specific prayer regarding the purpose of my recent rants.....

Hank Williams Jr used to sing,

'Cause you see I'm a dinosaur
I should've died a long time before
Have pity on a dinosaur 
hand me my hat
Excuse me man 
but where's the door?

And that is how I feel a lot of the time... I'm into old things.... I'm into the old time religion... hymns, classical literature, and 18th century theologians......

Just that intro right there likely cost me many readers.........

But there is something I love about the old dead guys...... they were smart, they were confident, and they were full of optimism and hope.

Every time I read the Old Princetonians for example.... I love how they reason in an upward fashion ... you have to read them to discover what I mean. These men were full of love and joy, content in what they did, and satisfied with their slow but steady progress.

Any time I finish with B.B. Warfield, Archibald Alexander, John Witherspoon, or James McCosh- I am inspired to love God more and I have a deep awe of the Holy Scriptures which shine through them!

These men have been categorized under the term "Scottish Common Sense Realism"- but I see it more like 'Powerful Gospel Hope for Real Life".. it is the ecstatic declaration of the great truths of salvation poured out in oceans of grace.

These men were free...and in their freedom, they didn't seek leisure.... no, they became voracious workers and breathlessly exegeted every article of Scripture. And it never feels like labor to me. These men worked out of an abundance of love.

Today's intellectual arguments have more of a downward spiral- shouting, personal attacks... the enlightenment has a legacy of skepticism.......

My Princeton heroes have such hope and love..... try 'em...you may like 'em.

Now.... let's reason together for a little bit.......

How is it, that 2 men, can look at the same set of facts and stubbornly stand on two radically different opinions?

It happens everyday and almost in every way.

What is happening?

My premise is this- It isn't what is happening... it is more about what is NOT happening.

Let's add a few ingredients to this and see if I can find a half-baked conclusion.

THE PROBLEM OF PRIDE

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. (1 Corinthians 8:1-3 ESV)
I have to be careful here to not throw this whole verse out of context- 

I always fear for super-smart people...... in some ways, the verses of warnings regarding 'those with great wealth' could almost be doubled down with application to 'those with great knowledge'.

We have to be SO CAREFUL HERE... especially to those (like me) who love to hear (or write about) themselves and what they think......

Paul is not condemning knowledge in this verse.... He is making a universal truth application to a very controversial topic.... knowledge can inflate our egos in such a way that we lose our way in the end.....

Indeed...the entire foundational theme of I Corinthians is Paul spending a full 4 chapters deflating human ego built on prideful, pseudo-superior, and foolish human thinking.... 

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? (1 Corinthians 1:20 ESV)

And the result of this endless human debate and pride? CONFLICT- It is the motivation for the letter to the Corinthians....


I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. (1 Corinthians 1:10-11 ESV)
Wait a minute! Go back a re-read what he is appealing for us to do?

BE UNITED IN THE SAME MIND AND JUDGEMENT? Are you kidding me?  We can't agree on anything!

Let me add another ingredient in this secret sauce......

THE PROBLEM OF HOMOGENOUS PEER APPROVAL

This is even trickier..... have to be super,super careful here.......

As we acquire knowledge, we want to share it.... and as we share it... we want to find like minded approval and support....

and if we aren't careful, we will sometimes judge whether something is TRUE based on the NUMBER of those who agree with us.

But this creates a very dangerous situation... I hope you see it..... as each side rallies it's supporters... the winners are in the numbers.... SO the VALIDATION of truth now becomes just the popular mindset of the moment... it is what we hold to inwardly, supported by numbers of those who think like we do.... and there is no real outside objectivity....

Isn't the old snarky parent reply.... 'Well, if everybody said it was good to jump off a bridge, would you join them?' so appropriate here? But so true? Popular wisdom may not be wise.....

One more dash... please hang with me.....

THE LOSS OF INTEGRITY

How important are the 10 commandments?! I'm telling you.... these are foundational truths that are REQUIREMENTS of sustainable life and civilization! 'You shall not bear false witness" is one of these! And I GRIEVE over how rampant lying is in my generation... in some professions..it is an expectation!

Dishonesty comes in many dangerous forms.... the man unwilling to keep his promise, the withholding of very important information for personal gain, passing along an unfounded rumor, fudging numbers, the 'so called' 'white-lie' (such a horrible term).... or just plain MAKING STUFF UP....

"The bearing of false witness' is a serious sin in our society. And rampant dishonesty brings all artifacts of evidence into doubt.

In today's world,  opinions and presuppositions shape facts..... and it should be the other way around. It has gotten SO BAD that facts are made up to prop up our immovable views on matters of eternal significance.

IS IT SOUP YET?

Personal pride, peer support, and problematic evidence can convince you to walk straight into a chasm of death with no fear or trepidation.

IS THERE A ROUTE OUT?

YES.... but it's complicated... it is trying to convince an insane person that everything he is seeing is a lie......

Remember the movie, A Beautiful Mind? The 2001 film by Ron Howard is based on the life of John Nash of Princeton. Though some details had to changed or left out for the sake of storytelling, the basic premise was correct.

Here was a BRILLIANT man..... a mathematician, a Nobel prize winner... understood and developed theories in economics, differential geometry, computing, artificial intelligence...and on and on... but he had a mental illness... later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. "According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, a person suffering from the disorder is typically dominated by relatively stable, often paranoid, fixed beliefs that are either false, over-imaginative or unrealistic, and usually accompanied by experiences of seemingly real perception of something not actually present."


Read that again... a brilliant man....

DOMINATED..... by relatively stable (they hold together in analysis and experience)- often paranoid (hyper internal and personal) FIXED BELIEFS (almost impossible to shake) that are:
FALSE
OVER-IMAGINATIVE/UNREALISTIC

usually ACCOMPANIED by EXPERIENCES of SEEMINGLY REAL PERCEPTION of something that is not actually there!

So how would you ever convince this man that he is in error? It is almost an impossibility.

Reason with him? He knows he is smarter than you
Show him? How? His perceptions are twisted

In the movie, Nash finally begin to see inconsistencies in the hallucinations and found a way to ignore them.....

OK OK OK- stop telling me about the problem.... is there a solution?

YES- and it is all counter to what our natural tendencies are to do......

STEP ONE: HUMBLE YOURSELF.... As long as you are the most important person in the room...what no one else says has any value to you. Instead of walking around and wanting to dazzle people with your brilliance... why don't you elevate others around you and desperately drink in what they think, feel, and believe.

STEP TWO: BREAK OUT OF YOUR COMMON THINK TANK... Seek out those who see the world in quite a different way and find common ground... know them well enough to know where you are different and how the thinking goes in an opposite direction. By the way, if you find yourself disliking a person because they are different... you aren't doing as well as you think in STEP ONE.

STEP THREE: NEVER STOP LEARNING...but use learning to help others, not for your own personal dominance.

CONCLUSION- What if I am the crazy one?

You read me enough to know that I have planted my flag in the hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I believe God exists, I believe, because of that, the Bible is true and the truth and testimony of Jesus validates it enough for me to cast my lot with Him.

But the teachings of Jesus should help me do what I am supposed to do...stay humble, live out the gospel, serve, be patient with those who oppose me, love all people, give answers to questions, stay reverent and gentle, and not be anxious or comfortable...this world is not my home... I am to just be obedient.

And if I am the crazy one.... it doesn't matter because the perspective I have gained allows me to successfully navigate a sad and dark place.

If you are the crazy one..... well... I trust in a good God to sort it all out....

In my worldview- it is comforting to leave the big stuff up to God.

Without my worldview- a man is left to be God himself... and that terrifies me...

Friedrich Nietzsche, (himself a brilliant crazy man,) understood this almost better than anyone. He personified it in his famous parable of The Madman.... but he also commented on it as he reflected on the philosophy of German, liberal theologian David Strauss....
Strauss has his full share of the temerity to which every successful hero assumes the right: all flowers grow only for him—the conqueror; and he praises the sun because it shines in at his window just at the right time. He does not even spare the venerable old universe in his eulogies—as though it were only now and henceforward sufficiently sanctified by praise to revolve around the central monad David Strauss. The universe, he is happy to inform us, is, it is true, a machine with jagged iron wheels, stamping and hammering ponderously, but: "We do not only find the revolution of pitiless wheels in our world-machine, but also the shedding of soothing oil"

My friend- (you have to be if you are still reading this with ANY interest)... I am an old dinosaur.... maybe too outdated for your fancy.... but you are going to have to choose... what is reality and what is hallucination?

We both have the same problems- we are prideful in our intelligence, we surround ourselves with people who think and talk just like us, and we have accumulated enough artifacts to support our strained grip on our truth....

I guess my last effort and plea to have you bend your knee to King Jesus is to take the temperature and measure the light.

Without God- this universe in now just a big enormous drive of an uncaring machine with our vain aspirations a mere speck of dust in a causeless cosmos... the wind is cold and the end is so dark that life becomes too cheap to save... including our own.

But the Bible is FULL of soothing oil- without it, the world will grow cold and dark and grind itself to oblivion..

But Jesus offers grace, hope, love of others, patience, understanding, humility...

In Jesus's kingdom, it is OK to laugh at our foolish human failures and get up and try again tomorrow.

Without HIS WAY (and all other religions are mere cogs of effort and product)- we are too important to be wrong. But as we gather our troops of truth, we must crush any opposition that stands as a symbol of our possibility of being wrong.

The way of Jesus gives us a chance to wait on God to rightfully judge......

The wisdom of man says it is too late to debate, now let the killing begin...

I have made my choice... I think it is pretty easy to make (though, impossible to live, thank God for grace)....

What about you?

Take your time.... but here's a start... just start reading the Bible again...it will be the most soothing experience you have had in years.

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