My Theology of Chronic Clinical Depression

Part 1 - I've a Confession to Make
Part 2 - Not Your Everyday Depression

_____


How do they fit?

How can a person who claims to be a Christ-follower also claim to have chronic clinical depression?

Isn't the one supposed to cancel out the other?  Isn't faith in Christ supposed to be the all-encompassing happy stuff that cures whatever ails you?  Or, alternatively, shouldn't chronic clinical depression corrupt enough of your soul with despair to convince you that God isn't so loving after all?

Or am I simply pursuing some vain hope that a belief in Christ can be a panacea for my problems?  Is my faith merely a crutch to help me deal with chronic clinical depression?

I'll be straight-up honest with you about this, so you won't go reading any further, expecting me reach a conclusion of profound insight that nobody else in the history of humankind has ever had.  No, I don't have a lot of answers for you.  Especially if you're not already convinced that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that He died on the cross to take away the guilt of your sins.  Neither am I at complete peace simply accepting that God allows stuff to happen to us purely for His glory and our good, which the Bible teaches are the two basic reasons why anything happens to any of us.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not a mighty Christian.  Hey - I'm a red-blooded, self-indulgent, 21st Century American.  Which means I'm spoiled.  I'm also skeptical, iconoclastic, and cynical, which means I've looked high and low for the easy exits, and discovered there aren't any.  There are no magic beans, and there is no tantric bliss.

However, there is the Holy Spirit, and He has assured me of eternal life in Heaven with God through Christ.  I trust in God because the Holy Spirit enables me to, just as He enables me to endure, day by day - and often, hour by hour - whatever troubles, anxiety, pleasures, and accomplishments He allows.  For His glory, and my good.

If you think this makes me a dim-witted humanoid weakling who needs to hope in a Deity to make some sense out of life, then you'll probably not find anything helpful in my perspective of how my faith and my depression fit into my body and brain.  I invite you to read on, of course, perhaps only as an experiment in having an open mind.  However, if you yourself have been convinced by the Holy Spirit that God exists, and that He loves you, and you've invited Christ to be the Lord of your life, then hopefully my rough-hewn theology of clinical depression can be helpful to you.

Because I do think there is a theology of clinical depression, and I think God is teaching me about it and Himself through this experience.

Spiritual, Physical, Emotional

Admittedly, I don't know as much about the different types of serious problems other people face.

However, my theology of clinical depression probably follows along the same lines as most other perspectives of suffering, sickness, and pain that take place in the life of every born-again follower of Christ.  God never promises anybody a life of ease and carefree, pain-free idyll.  If your life seems like one big festival for you, then the cynic in me would wonder if your faith is as genuine as you think it is.  Why?  Because the Devil, our enemy, is real, and one of his vile tasks involves trying to corrupt your faith to the point where you're willing to deny your Savior because you can't make sense of what He's allowing to happen to you.

The book of Job in the Old Testament is one massive parable about how Satan went to God and proposed that he could destroy Job's faith.  God allowed Satan to try, but even after Satan caused everything that Job had to be taken from him, with the exception of an unhelpful wife and unhelpful friends, Job remained faithful to God.  Today, some Christians think that the problems they face are cataclysmic meteors direct from Satan, like Job's were.  Or they wonder if maybe God is secretly testing them, to see how genuine their faith is.

I don't necessarily hold myself in such high regard to presume that either God or Satan have chosen me to be some pawn or allegory.  Satan may have devised my chronic clinical depression to see if my faith will collapse, which is his singular modus operandi, but I'm pretty sure God is letting this happen to me to build my faith.  And part of building my faith is trusting in God's sovereignty.  My personal sin nature did not directly cause my depression, although it certainly plays a role in how I deal with it.  If medical science is correct, and my allocation of the neurotransmitter serotonin is wonky, then I was likely born with a predisposition to clinical depression, and it won't be my fault if I have it the rest of my life.  My parents and I, as we've worked backward from my diagnosis, now suspect that some of my oddities as a child and a teen stemmed from clinical depression, only back then, hardly anybody knew what clinical depression was.  The diagnosis, after all, is relatively recent.  Nevertheless, suffice it to say, whether this is a direct test, from God or Satan, it's something that God has allowed, and something that I may overcome with His help here in this life.  And if not in this life, then most assuredly in the one to come.

Maybe that sounds like fatalism to you.  To me, it's more like hope.

Two Views for Treatment

Unfortunately, for those of us in the Christian community, even everything I've just written is not enthusiastically embraced by Christ-followers who try to treat people like me.  You see, there are two general schools of thought within evangelicalism regarding treatment methods for chronic clinical depression.  The conventional method is the one in which I've been treated, and am still being treated.  It involves traditional Christian counseling that looks similar to secular psychotherapy, except it's conducted by therapists trained in Bible-based approaches to emotional disorders.  It can include a liberal reliance on psychiatric theory and medicine, as a mixture of science and spirituality.

However, a newer school of thought has developed as a reaction to the conventional Christian counseling model, and its practitioners call themselves Nouthetic, or “Biblical,” counselors.  This isn't entirely helpful for a couple of reasons, the first and most obvious one being that by calling themselves "Biblical" counselors, advocates of this school of thought are insinuating that their approach is theologically superior, and that traditional counseling methods, by contrast, are not Biblical.

This is no mistake on the part of Nouthetic practitioners, because many of them dismiss traditional counseling, no matter the clinician's evangelical devoutness, as too corrupted by worldly science and fuzzy psychiatry.  Nouthetic counselors tend to emphasize theological discipline to the exclusion of medical considerations.  They theorize that their patient's sin is the dominant problem, and believe that helping their patients confront their sin is more effective than considering biological contributing factors to clinical depression.

Understandably, conventional Christian counselors caution that Nouthetic/Biblical counseling risks being too simplistic, aggressive, and medically dangerous.  For their part, Nouthetic/Biblical advocates contend that Christian counseling flirts too much with secular theory, and it's too generous to the patient when sin issues comprise only one of several aspects to be addressed by Christian counselors - whereas Nouthetic counselors focus mostly on their patient's sin.  In other words, if I allowed myself to be treated by a Nouthetic counselor, I would likely be directed to simply confront my fears, lack of trust, selfishness, and pride - all components of my chronic clinical depression, I admit; and all sins.  And I would likely be strongly discouraged from continuing my medication regimen.

Perhaps for people who are merely wallowing in self-pity over something, such an approach is appropriate.

Meanwhile, I don't see why considering certain biological factors and medical treatments - such as prescription drugs - for clinical depression is being unBiblical.  I'm willing to explore aspects of my sin nature that likely contribute to my problems, but is science so wrong that it should be excluded from a treatment plan?  From what I've read about the Nouthetic approach, most of its advocates have never been to medical school, and seem annoyed that traditional counselors put as much faith in science as they do, as if science in general - and psychiatry in particular - is utterly unGodly.

Much of this discrepancy likely stems from continuing confusion over what "depression" really is, and the degrees of severity it can involve.  Personally, I suspect that too few Nouthetic advocates have actually ever had chronic clinical depression, and they have no idea what their patients are going through.  I had several therapists who admitted to being recovered depression patients themselves, and I could tell that they had a good handle on what I was experiencing.

Sin

Having said all of that, I am grateful to have had (with the exception of my first psychiatrist) born-again evangelical therapists to help counsel me, and they incorporated both science and scripture.  If you or somebody you know is in psychotherapy for chronic clinical depression, and your therapist is not discussing your sin patterns with you, then you need to get a new therapist.  It's possible that Nouthetic counselors have deemed some traditional Christian therapists to be inadequately incorporating difficult discussions about their patients' sin patterns in the treatment mix.  In my opinion, if you're wanting help, everything needs to be on the table.

You see, sin does not cause chronic clinical depression, but it can exacerbate it, prolong it, and even deny a patient their recovery from it.  With an illness as individualized as chronic clinical depression, even if medical science ultimately confirms that serotonin plays a causal factor in the brain, nobody can assert that sin isn't lurking somewhere deep in the soul.  No matter how physical chronic clinical depression may be proven to be, there is still an emotional component to it, and to varying degrees, I believe that our emotions can be brought under the Lordship of Christ.  Not completely, of course - even people who do not suffer from depression have imperfect emotions.  But anxiety is a form of fear, and God commands us dozens of times in His Word not to fear.  If He commands us to do something, or not to do something, shouldn't that imply that He provides us a way to do it - even if it's solely through our imperfect reliance on the Holy Spirit?

As I've struggled with my depression, I've actually been able to identify some fears that I can indeed place in His hands, and from which I can walk away.  I doubt that there's a born-again, evangelical Christian therapist out there who believes that not one fear a patient of theirs may have can be brought under the Lordship of Christ.  Any good Christian therapist's job involves helping their patients trust in God, instead of being fearful.  Even if progress in that trust is incremental.

So, why am I not cured?  I've had this diagnosis for 21 years.  Shouldn't that be long enough?

Actually, thanks to the Lord's working in my life, plus the medication I'm on, I've been able to plateau at a point that is considerably higher than where I was when my treatments began, way back in New York City.  So I count that as progress, even though it's not what anybody would call "normal."  Part of this experience is learning what I can do, what I shouldn't do, and what I can't do.  Most of all, however, the Lord has given me an all-new appreciation for the Fruit of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Some therapists have their patients do breathing exercises when they feel panic attacks coming on.  One of the best ways I've found to short-circuit a panic attack is to slowly recite the Fruit of the Spirit.  And speaking of panic attacks, I'm thankful to God that I can't recall the last one I had!

This is my version of the theology of chronic clinical depression.  I can't say it's cured me of my problem, but then again, no theology can, can it?  God is the sovereign Creator and Healer; not any scientific or religious theory, no matter how accurate they may be.

So, how can a Christ-follower like me also have chronic clinical depression?  Through God's sovereignty, and with the relief of His sustaining grace.

I told you it wouldn't be a fancy answer, but at least I can testify to it now, and thank Him that it's true.

Not Your Everyday Depression

Nobody wants to hear they have it.  A lot of people don't even believe it exists.

"Chronic clinical depression."

Technically, the "chronic" part means it's recurring.  "Clinical" means that it's been identified as something that exists.  And we all know what "depression" means - or, at least, we think we do.  The folks who say we're talking about simply having a bad day are the ones who think the whole idea is bogus.

But is it?  I'm one of those people who's been diagnosed with chronic clinical depression, and I've come to understand that the more we understand how these three words represent the problem they're trying to name, then the whole concept of medically treating long-term depression becomes less abstract.

Why?  Well, for starters, I don't just have the blues.  When I was diagnosed, I wasn't upset over the loss of something, like a relationship, a job, or my health.  At the time, I wasn't facing imminent financial peril, although I certainly am now.  Everybody has stressors in their life, and everybody responds to them in different ways, and in various intensities.  We grieve, we fret, we hate, we complain, we worry, we become sad, we become ambivalent.  Sometimes we panic.  Yet "normal" people rarely become crippled by these emotions for long periods of time.  "Normal" people don't dwell on the idea of killing themselves as a way out of these persistent emotions.  These are the differences between having a bad day - or a bad year - and having chronic clinical depression.

When two different evangelical psychiatrists here in the Dallas area both independently confirmed over a several-year period that I indeed have chronic clinical depression, they based their diagnoses on a broader set of quantifiable emotional disorders.  These disorders exhibit deviations from what could be expected from ordinary reactions to ordinary stressors.  For example, these doctors evaluated my history of crippling panic attacks, my pervasive fear of being physically alone, the fact that I used to be on a suicide watch, and several other personal factors which I still want to keep private.  Frankly, I've been such a reluctant patient over the years, I don't recall everything they did to render their diagnoses, but I do remember being satisfied with their explanations, even if I didn't particularly welcome the idea of having chemical problems inside my brain.

Chronic clinical depression, after all, is widely believed to be a medical problem.  Not just an emotional one.  Studies suggest that it involves levels of a chemical called serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps send messages throughout our brain.  Unfortunately, the fact that science has yet to discover irrefutable proof of this causal factor simply lends more credence to skeptics who deny the reality of chronic clinical depression.

My fears of being physically alone, ironically, coexist with my preference for solitude, and although I've had periods in my life where I'm more socially active than at other times, I have to force myself to work harder at my people skills than is normal.

Which brings us to another problem with having this diagnosis.  What is "normal" for you might not be normal for me, and vice-versa.  To an astonishing degree, we are all unique individuals, and "normalcy" is a state of being that is shaped not only by biology and DNA, but also culture, and social expectations.  Skeptics could claim that people like me are simply being too hard on ourselves - or, not hard enough.  Conformity is one thing, but celebrating our individuality shouldn't be punitive.  Just snap out of it and get on with life!

But if that were as easy as it sounds, wouldn't most of us with this diagnosis already be doing that?  You think this is fun, or rewarding?

Believe me, this isn't a good way to get my ego stroked, or my fretful half-baked brain cosseted with attention.  I may have to work hard at interpersonal relationships, but I seriously doubt that paying a therapist or a psychiatrist to listen to your problems serves as a suitable substitute to having people befriend you without being paid to do so.  I can't remember how many years I spent in therapy, but those were not happy hours that I spent struggling to come to terms with my problems in front of somebody watching the clock.  In fact, finally, my last therapist, an earnest fellow who plied me with scripture during every session, literally threw up his hands and told me I could answer all his questions, and even come up with applicable scripture for my problems as well as he could.  Therapy wasn't helping me, he admitted, and I needed to spend my rapidly-dwindling financial resources on medications we knew worked.  And most of all - we needed to trust God for His sustaining - and hopefully, healing - grace.

I haven't been back to therapy since.

That's another problem with having this diagnosis.  It doesn't have the immediate impact like "you have cancer" can.  With a cancer diagnosis, you may want a second opinion, but not only is there usually no social stigma with it, you can ask all of your friends to pray for you.  You don't need to hide it.  And even if you get a second opinion, you need to act quickly, and decisively, to get the cancer treated.  With clinical depression, things can go on for years - and that's why they call my form of it "chronic."

Yet another problem is that a diagnosis of chronic clinical depression isn't nearly as objective as "you have a broken arm."  With a broken arm, there are x-rays and other obvious diagnostic tests to help confirm why your doctor is saying your arm is broken.  So you have an operation, or your arm gets put in a cast, and as it heals, you can watch its progress.  With clinical depression, unless you have the money to pay for expensive brain scans and high-priced specialists, very little of one's problem is ever visible.

Currently, my prescriptions are being monitored by the family practice doctor I've had since I was a teenager.  He monitors my vital signs through regular check-ups, and he's willing to give me the benefit of the doubt as I trust in my "Higher Power" for help.  So far, this arrangement has established a plateau of sorts that, while not optimal for the sort of productive "normalcy" I'd like to have, has lifted me above what I used to endure.  After all, sometimes progress has to be measured not in what you've done, but what you haven't done.  Like suicide.  Some days I struggle with it more than others, but as time has gone on, I believe God has taught me more about trusting in Him, rather than in my emotions.

Suicide is one of those elephants in the depression room that none of us likes to talk about.  And I'm not going to get too personal here, either, except to give you a little background about how it plays into my diagnosis.  Suffice it to say that I began suffering from bleak, life-ending desires after some particularly troubling emotions were triggered by an unstable domestic situation while I lived in New York City.  I'd never entertained such thoughts before, but they were pervasive, and almost tangible.  I'd stand in the street, a foot or so away from the sidewalk, and marvel at how closely - and how fast! - those lumbering city buses would shoot past the tip of my nose.  Just one more step...!

When I eventually caved, and admitted I needed some sort of help, it was my first therapist - at the time, the only born-again psychotherapist in the entire city of New York - who put me on suicide watch.  I had to call her message service and check-in every morning and every evening for about two weeks.  That was when she told me she would either contact my parents in Texas, saying she was absolving herself of my personal safety, or I would have to go on Prozac.

I'd been fighting her on the Prozac thing - until her ultimatum.  At the time, I thought taking Prozac was akin to admitting I was a heathen unbeliever, because I didn't trust God to deliver me from the sin of panicked fear.  For my prescription, my therapist sent me to a secular psychiatrist on Central Park West, who officed out of the swanky lobby of the building where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver used to own an apartment.  Like most expensive Manhattan apartment buildings, its exterior was drab and unimpressive, while its exclusivity was best conferred to those granted access inside.  In this buildings' case, its lobby reeked of affluence, with spacious hallways lined by glossy brass paneling - I kid you not.  Walking among those panels almost made up for the doormen who looked me up and down whenever I entered and left, knowing looks plastered on their faces:  yeah, that's one of those nut jobs going to see the quack at the other end of the lobby.

I don't know, maybe that doctor was a quack.  He was Jewish, and a self-professing Freud scholar, who kept asking me if I was sexually frustrated, gay, or mourning some unrequited love.  New York City, after all, can wreak havoc on a young person's love life.  Especially if I was gay, he kept hinting?

I'd relay my conversations with this high-dollar shrink to my Christian therapist, back down in her rickety Greenwich Village walk-up, and she'd roll her eyes and apologize - he was the only doctor she could find in the city who was willing to give Bible-based psychotherapy any sort of chance.  Oh well.  I enjoyed those floor-to-ceiling walls of brass panels.  I have to say that I sure felt important entering and exiting that luxury building across from Central Park, even if it was only tourists on the sidewalks along the park who thought I might be somebody!

These days, I understand that Manhattan is oozing with Christian psychiatrists and psychotherapists, thanks in no small part to Tim Keller's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and the emphasis they've placed on servicing the legions of Millennials and Gen-X'ers who've flocked to Gotham.  That's likely one of the reasons skeptics of clinical depression are skeptical:  it seems as though a cottage industry has sprung up over the past twenty years to treat what appears to be an offshoot of "affluenza," as more and more urban young people want to talk out their fears and frustrations, instead of grinning and bearing them like their forefathers and foremothers had to do.  After all, is clinical depression suddenly some new disease?  Why does it seem like Baby Boomers discovered it, and their kids are the ones suffering the most from it?  Maybe we're all too spoiled rotten for our own good by all of our First-World problems.  It's just the ones who need to blame something - or somebody - else for their personality issues who are trying to validate clinical depression as something genuine.

Believe me - I've had all of those doubts, and more.  Regular readers of mine know that I can be excruciatingly cynical.  How do I know for sure that the Devil isn't just trying to make me some lazy, dithering, good-for-nothing spoiled brat who'd rather worry about his problems than find a good-paying job and working so much that he doesn't have time to worry?

Because I have to admit:  chronic clinical depression is surprisingly debilitating.  And a lot of people - church-goers in particular - think I'm just being lazy.  They peg me as one of those man-boys we're hearing so much about these days, who doesn't want to leave his Mommy and Daddy's comfortable home, and have to try and make his own way in this big, bad world.  I need a swift kick in the seat of my pants so I don't end up as a drain on society.  I say I'm a man of faith?  Well, put your big-boy pants on and just trust in God.  I say I got sick when I lived in New York City?  Well, there's your problem!  You can't make it there!  No big deal; Texas should be right up your sniveling little alley! 

Right?

Since I know all the things people are likely saying about me and people like me, where's my incentive to actually prove them right?  I have my pride; otherwise, why would I be concerned about what other people think?  If I couldn't care less if other people think I'm simply lazy, would I care that something seems to be malfunctioning somewhere inside of me that makes people think I'm lazy?  Since I say I'm a born-again follower of Christ, who believes that God loves me and invites me to trust Him implicitly for everything, why don't I just do it, like the Nike commercial says?

That's probably the biggest reason why I don't like having chronic clinical depression.  Nobody can really answer all of those questions.  There is no 12-step recovery process.  There is no magic pill.  Moving away from the big, bad city doesn't cure it.  In fact, living in a place like New York, I could find plenty of compelling diversions to help dull the pain in my brain, and those diversions don't exist in suburbia.  New York City wasn't my main problem.  Something in my brain was - and is.

You can tell me I'm not sick, and I could tell a cancer patient they're not sick, but how does that change anything?

Like they say, some things you simply have to experience for yourself.  Only I hope you won't have to.
_____

Part 3 - My Theology of Chronic Clinical Depression

I've a Confession to Make

 
...I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.  Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth.  But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.  So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.  But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.  For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

- 2 Corinthians 12:5-10


Things like what I'm about to do are never easy.  Yet sometimes, we find ourselves compelled to do them anyway.  As I meditated on this scripture from 2 Corinthians this morning, I thought I heard the Lord telling me to tell you what I'm about to tell you.  But here I am, closing in on the end of this Friday afternoon, and I still haven't done it.

Because I don't want to.

But here I go anyway:  My name is Tim, and I have chronic clinical depression.

I've had it for years.  Two highly-regarded evangelical psychiatrists have separately confirmed the diagnosis, and I'm on two prescription medications for it.  I think I've had five or six other therapists over the years, but frankly, I've lost count.  It's been at least a decade since my last visit to one.

Okay, so... I'm not gay - which is what some of you were probably expecting me to admit.  And no, I've not been engaged in some adulterous affair.  I'm not a left-wing Communist, either, although some of my right-wing acquaintances will probably never be convinced of that.  I suffer from chronic clinical depression, and while by itself, that's not a crime or something I should be intrinsically ashamed of, I constantly feel like it is, and that I should be.

Particularly as a self-professing, evangelical Christ-follower.

None of our lives are perfect, although a lot of us pretend really hard that they're close to it.  But few diagnoses carry with them such punitive baggage in society - and especially in the Christian church - than having some sort of emotional or mental disorder.  For years, I've only whispered my condition to select people within the churches I've attended, exclusively on some need-to-know basis, because I'm aware of the stigma attached to it, and how most churched folk treat people like me.

A couple of close friends have asked me why I don't write more about my depression, and my answer to them has always been the same:  I have few friends as it is.  Letting this type of information circulate in the public domain isn't going to help me find more of them.  Especially not in church!  Sympathy?  Perhaps onlookers think that's what I secretly want, but they'd be completely wrong.  A flurry of self-help motivational information by people who think they're being supportive?  No thanks, because all you're doing is presuming that conditions like mine are "all in the head" - only metaphorically.  Not physically, which is what clinical depression really is.  It's a physical problem involving chemicals in my brain.

One does not simply "snap out of it."

Meanwhile, all of the other evangelicals who remain closet sufferers of depression are agreeing with me right now, knowing their own private pain, and their gnawing fear about what would happen if it were widely known.

As I read this passage this morning, which was part of the scripture from this past Sunday's sermon at church, and that subtle little thought sprung up through my brain's morning haze, I fought it.  I fought it for the same reason I always fight it, because I've been thinking of doing this for some time, but I've never had the courage to actually do it.  Part of me wonders if things really won't be so bad if I go ahead and admit it, even if it's here in an amateur blog that only a few people read regularly.  But most of me has seen and heard how my fellow church-goers treat other people who admit they're clinically depressed.  And I don't want to be their victim, too.

Yet, neither do I want to be a victim of fear.  And fear has become the all-consuming manifestation of my clinical depression.  From those excruciating days, 21 years ago, right before my parents in Texas convinced me to go see my singles pastor at my church in New York City for help... when I'd be literally curled up in that fetal position you always hear about deranged people crawling into... fear has reigned in my brain.  And probably my heart, too, if I wasn't so scared to open it up and look around inside of it.

And I'm under no delusion that this little essay will really help me feel better.  Besides, I'm not telling you my secret so I can feel better.  I'm telling you my secret because I don't think I'm honoring God with everything I've got by keeping this a secret.  I've got chronic clinical depression, and the "chronic" part means I've had it a long time, and I'll probably have it for a long time to come.  God has allowed this to be part of the life He's given me.  I didn't earn it through my personal sinfulness, having it is not a crime, and the Lord is revealing some eternal truths to me as He leads me through it.

Most of all, however, He has continued to sustain me through near-daily thoughts of suicide, and teach me why He created life in the first place:  for His glory.

Theoretically, at least, I'm learning that my life isn't about me.  And your life isn't about you.  Not ultimately, anyway.  For me, however, chronic clinical depression has been a significant part of life.  Even though some people with this condition can - and do -  earn a lot of money, I can't handle the stress required for most high-income jobs.  Chronic clinical depression has factored into why I don't have a spouse or children of my own, although lots of people with this condition do.  Yes, I've come to realize how much of my time I spend being resentful, and jealous, as well as fearful.  But then again, a lot of people who don't have chronic clinical depression are also quite resentful, jealous, and fearful.  These are things to work through, right?  Not ignore.

So, what's your problem?  'Cause we've all got 'em.

My name is Tim, and I've got chronic clinical depression.  And I've got God, Who knows what I've got, allows me to have it, and is guiding me through it.  And that's the truth.

So - help me, God!
____

Part 2 - Not Your Everyday Depression
Part 3 - My Theology of Chronic Clinical Depression

Social Disconnect from NYC to Silicon Valley

Fifty years ago this morning, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed, robbed, raped, and murdered near her apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens.

At first, in a metropolis roiling from the rising crime and social turbulence being visited upon many cities in the 1960's, the attack on Genovese received scant attention.  It wasn't until two weeks later, when her story was casually recounted by the city's police commissioner to an editor at the New York Times, that the public learned about Genovese, and what had happened to her five decades ago this morning.

The Times ultimately figured there was a story in this brutal crime because, according to initial police accounts relayed by the commissioner, over thirty of Genovese's neighbors overheard her screaming and calling for help, yet apparently did nothing.  At the newspaper's prodding, after learning what was believed to have happened, New Yorkers quickly examined themselves in an uncharacteristic display of guilt and shame:  is this what the world's greatest city had come to?  Dozens of otherwise normal, middle-class New Yorkers had turned a deaf ear to a woman's final moments, either out of ambivalence, or an assumption that somebody else would do something about it.

Social scientists had a field day with the Genovese case, and when I was majoring in sociology in the late 1980's, we were still studying it as a prime example of the bystander effect, and "anomie," a phrase coined by Emile Durkheim to express the breakdown of social norms and morality, and the resulting disconnectedness from what society has traditionally expected from them.  In the bystander effect, people individually refuse to take a personal initiative in resolving a problem, which means that collectively, nothing positive gets done about that problem.  Between these two related social phenomena, humanity itself can devolve into a collection of autonomous actors living for their own selfish goals.

Recently, as the Times, other reporters, and social scientists have re-investigated the Genovese attack, it's been learned that over the course of its 30-minute duration, over 30 people may have heard something of it, but only one or two of the people initially interviewed by either the police or the Times ever actually said they didn't want to be bothered to help her.  Most of the residents of the mixed-use apartment and restaurant complex who heard the ruckus Genovese created assumed it was the result of inebriated patrons of an on-site bar, fighting or protesting last call; sounds to which they'd become somewhat accustomed.  Nobody actually saw the attack, or the victim, or her attacker.  One neighbor did yell out of his window for the attacker to leave her alone, but that neighbor did not have a direct line of sight to what was taking place.  And eventually, another neighbor, a female, did come outside to find Genovese dying on the sidewalk outside her door.

It's also been established that Genovese was a lesbian, and living with her lover at the time, an arrangement that some of her neighbors may not have entirely embraced, especially in the mid-1960's.  New York City has always been a socially liberal city, but in its whiter, more middle-class districts, particularly during the upheaval of white flight in the 1960's, same-sex attraction was hardly celebrated.  Nobody has been able to prove that discrimination against Genovese because she was gay played any role in her calls for help going unheeded, until it was too late.  But maybe that's because nobody wants to consider it.

With our penchant for nostalgia, we don't tend to associate the America of fifty years ago with social disconnects, or alien-sounding French terminology like anomie, or even alternative sexuality.  And to a certain extent, the Genovese case is more representative of New York City than it is of America as a whole.  Especially then, but even today.  But I found it curious that as I recalled my college studies of Genovese's death this week, I stumbled across another article that at first seemed completely unrelated, but now makes me wonder how far along we Americans have come, in terms of our jaded engagement with social constructs.

In a compelling article by technology grad student Yiren Lu for the Times, which she titled "Silicon Valley's Youth Problem," what struck me wasn't just the age polarization within America's high-tech industry, but the apparent disinterest on the part of young techies in traditional marriage.  Or even traditional dating.

Lu writes of one smartphone app that became popular only because it helped college students find somebody quickly to have sex with that night.  She almost complains that although women shouldn't have any problems scoring dates and husbands in male-saturated Silicon Valley, they're finding that all the eligible men are more interested in creating the next big app, instead of investing in romantic interpersonal relationships - let alone finding a wife, and settling down for the conventional family life.

I doubt she meant to reveal so much social dysfunction within her chosen profession, but Lu wistfully recalls the upbringing she had as a daughter of a Silicon Valley pioneer, and even selects two current entrepreneurs of a successful Silicon Valley tech family to profile in her piece, perhaps unwittingly connecting the stability from which these two children benefited with the family life they don't appear eager to have for themselves, now that they're the age at which many twentysomethings used to get married.

From reading her blog, I don't get the impression that Lu herself is interested in marriage and family as much as she is interested in simply finding a man who can look up from his computer screen for more than a minute at a time.  But the social immaturity she chronicles - even as an aside to her overall description of differences between seasoned tech workers and college grads entering the field - sounds like some sort of anomie, or disconnectedness.  Doesn't it?

Even as they're pulling down six-figure salaries - many even without a college degree - it seems as though technology may be for these guys the disconnect factor New Yorkers feared urban life was for them after the Genovese murder made headlines.

Is that too much of a stretch?  Lu's isn't the first article to remark about how technology appears to be enabling young men towards social immaturity.  But as much as they may seem to prefer women more for sexual gratification than personal enrichment - as ironically Neanderthallish as that sounds for men who make a living with computer code, they seem to be able to strike up a suitable camaraderie among their fellow male peers.  They're not completely antisocial.  And it's not like the declining marriage rate in other sectors within American society isn't making these choices by tech-centric males unique.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers may be the cold, off-putting drones they anecdotally appear to be to outsiders, but from personal experience, I know that they can make some of the deepest friends a person can have, once they get to know you, and you get to know them.

Plus, isn't it telling that there hasn't been a case along the scale of Kitty Genovese's murder since 1964, although New York has not been lacking in impersonal drama?

With the techno-wizard man-boys, however, for whom commitment means new apps for their phone, instead of developing relationships with people to actually call on that phone, anomie and disconnectedness may be the price they're willing to pay to play in Silicon Valley.

Ironic how an interpersonal communication device has become the object of such individualistic fervor.

Lincoln's Legacy Hardly Black and White

"President Lincoln and Family," an engraving by A.B Walter in 1865
and published by John Dainty, Philadelphia;
from my family's private collection of vintage Americana

 

On this day in 1809, in a tiny Kentucky village, the 16th president of the United States was born.

For all of his modest beginnings, however, Abraham Lincoln would become one of the most pivotal figures in American history.  And after his assassination in 1865, his life would develop a legendary status of almost mythical proportions.  At least among Northerners and minorities, anyway.

For many white Southerners, Lincoln was and has remained a man of tyranny at worst, or duplicity at best.

It has been said that a war's victors get to write its history, and that has indeed been true of America's brutal Civil War.  Although Southern whites have long protested the saintly virtue and stoic resolve that has been inscribed into Lincoln's epitaph, such protestations have been met with derision by a country eager for heroes and anxious to move on from those awful, bloody war years.

It's not that racism didn't - and doesn't - exist in America's North, or that all Southerners were - or are - racists.  The factors that contributed to our Civil War, and its legacy, are far more complex than racism.  There were - and are - raw economic factors, and Constitutional questions, and plain old desperate politicking.  Warring amongst ourselves for four years proved to be the most bitter scourge we've inflicted upon our country to date, and every year, it seems, Lincoln's birthday, or some commemoration of his presidency, increasingly rubs salt into those wounds.

You see, the Lincoln that was wasn't the Lincoln many Americans want him to be.

Ever since I moved to Texas as a teenager, I've heard that the Civil War wasn't about slavery.  It was about states' rights.  Federal officials from the president on down had no right to dictate to states the manner in which they should modernize their economy, which in the South, according to conservative Southerners, was a topic that included slavery only in the context of a labor force.

When I was in college, I heard that the Civil War wasn't about states rights, but about economic prosperity.  The South, thanks to cheap labor from slaves, had become mired in an agrarian economy, while the North was rapidly expanding, thanks to the Industrial Revolution.  The bit about slavery was, more or less, the straw that broke the camel's back.

Yet when I was a small boy, growing up in rural New York State, in a region near Syracuse that was, during the Civil War, a hotbed of Abolitionist fervor, Abraham Lincoln was practically deity.  He won freedom for the slaves because he valued their humanity.  And throughout almost all of my life, I've held to that notion, even if states rights and economics were valid components of the Civil War.  More than anything, I'd been taught that Lincoln was the great emancipator, and I assumed people who claimed otherwise were simply poor losers, or blatant racists.  I never idolized Lincoln, or worshiped his legacy, but since most of the grumblings against him were coming from Southerners who seemed preoccupied by the Civil War, it was easy for me to assume that Lincoln provided them a better scapegoat than their venerated general, Robert E. Lee.

Perhaps, however, it's inevitable that tides turn, even in political history.  Because recently, it seems that more and more questions are being raised publicly about how we should view Lincoln and his role in civil rights.  In 2009, which was the 200th anniversary of his birth, several controversial books about the president were published, and one of them seemed to sum up what many of them were saying.  It was entitled Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race, by George M. Fredrickson, and it dared to revive a debate between historians about the level of Lincoln's own personal racism.

Wait, you say - somebody's saying Lincoln was a racist?

Well, actually, it's simple deduction, based on Lincoln's own speeches and writings.  When he was running for the United States Senate in 1858, he mentioned more than once that he did not believe blacks and whites should be socially or politically equal.  He once scoffed at the notion of "negro equality," claiming that only fools believed such a thing.  Even after delivering his Emancipation Proclamation, he was trying to negotiate with some Central American countries to deport America's blacks.  In fact, if he wasn't assassinated so soon after the end of the Civil War in 1865, who knows if Lincoln would have succeeded in his clandestine deportation efforts?  Like John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated before he had the chance to irreparably damage his own reputation, Lincoln died at a sort of zenith of his presidency, before his true beliefs about blacks could have been codified into whatever post-slavery laws he might have pursued during Reconstruction.

To be sure, Lincoln opposed the institution of slavery, but not because it involved the commoditization of human beings.  Lincoln opposed slavery because it provided the South an unfair economic advantage in the eyes of Northern industrialists, who had to hire their employees.  Lincoln also desired to preserve the Union, believing that both the North and the South created a far more formidable nation together than they could as separate entities.  But in terms of black people having the same intrinsic rights, qualities, and humanity that whites have?  No, Lincoln's writings and speeches prove that he did not believe that at all.

So where does this leave us today, as we've come to equate emancipation with civil rights?  The same civil rights that Lincoln, were he alive today, would likely want to deny non-whites?

Some people give Lincoln the benefit of the doubt, rationalizing something about him "being a product of his day," where, for example, it was practically inconceivable even in the North for a black person to marry a white person.  Lincoln's viewpoint, supposedly, contrasts with the progress we've made as a society, where today, racists may frown on interracial marriage, but that doesn't keep it from successfully happening.

Is that enough?  Is taking what's left - Lincoln's practical opposition to slavery on economic grounds - a sufficient redemption of his legacy?  Or might it simply help to explain why many Southerners seem to still be fighting the Civil War, with their continuous refusal - that is often mocked - to embrace the leader who proved militarily superior?  Remember, since them ol' Yankees were the ones who wrote the war's "official" history, it was in their best interests to let their hero's faults slide into the dustbin of inconvenient memories.

For better or worse, a politician like Lincoln likely wouldn't have survived very long in today's world anyway.  Not with our sound-bite news organizations, insatiable social media, and on-demand information technology.  When people now ask where all of our great leaders are, perhaps it's more accurate to wonder how great our past leaders would have been had they been forced to endure the same deep scrutiny our leaders today endure.  Then again, perhaps Lincoln really was a visionary for his day, and the progress he made towards equality - even though he didn't believe in it personally - was as good as could have been made in 1860's American society.  If he were alive today, Lincoln might have navigated our current political waters with the same duplicity many other modern politicians do.  He said what he said back then to win elections.  That's all politicians do today.

What we can learn from all of this is that national leaders can't necessarily be extracted from the day and age in which they lived, and examined by a different era's standards.  This is particularly true in a democratic republic, where a society, as they say, elects the leadership it deserves.  It's one of the reasons why I bristle when right-wingers try to romanticize America's past, and put our Founding Fathers on pedestals.  It's easier to fashion our own nostalgia than it is to wrestle with facts for which we may have to dig.  Or facts which cause us to relinquish long-held beliefs and assumptions.

We're learning that Lincoln wasn't the saint many of us were taught he was, and that he might have even been more of the villain many Southerners have been grousing for generations that he was.  Is that enough to revoke his tenure as one of America's greatest statesmen?

Probably not.  Despite his disappointing shortcomings, he was still a pivotal president, upon whom hinged the direction of a country that hadn't even reached it's centennial when he was assassinated.  He was a racist, but he sought the survival of the union of a country that has come to identify his faults for what they are.  That counts as progress, doesn't it?

Our modern leaders can only hope to approximate such an imperfect legacy.

Four Buildings, One Impressive Roof

Dallas Cowboys Stadium (a.k.a. AT&T Stadium) in Arlington, Texas

 

Sure, it's an impressive stadium.

And yeah, it looks pretty unique.  So unique, in fact, that a local architecture critic here in Dallas was surprised to see its design so brazenly copied for one of the Sochi Olympic venues.

Back in 2009, the Dallas Cowboys football team left their storied home in Irving, a pile of steel and concrete whose only distinguishing characteristic was a hole in its roof, so, as was said, "God could watch His favorite NFL team play."  They moved over to within a couple of miles of my home, in the bustling city of Arlington, Texas, and set up shop in a dazzling, commanding, and sleek palace that holds a unique place within the National Football League.

In a sport known as much for blue-collar bravado as it is for its gridiron gladiators, the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium - which was recently officially rechristened "AT&T Stadium" - and its owner, Jerry Jones, have created a paradox.  Sure, it's where American football is played, as well as soccer, and rock concerts, college football, and a host of other sweaty, pop-culture events.  Yet all of that loud, raucous activity takes place in a drop-dead-gorgeous building that itself is its own world-class attraction.

Jones tasked his wife, Gene, to commission millions of dollars in custom artwork for his trophy property, a trophy property he paid HKS Architects of Dallas to design with meticulous attention to detail.  Slick curtain walls of silver glass sheathe the sides of his stadium, and most importantly, triumphant steel arches soar across the length of the playing field, supporting a retractable canopy.  Massive plate-glass doors at both ends of the stadium let natural light inside, and also glow with dazzling effect when night games are being played inside.

I'm not a fan of the NFL, or of Jerry Jones, whose tenure as owner of America's Team has been anything but stellar.  But I'm a big fan of this stadium, even though taxpayers here in Arlington have picked up part of the tab for building it.  It's the most iconic building in the State of Texas, I believe.  It's more spectacular than our grand state capitol building in Austin, and far more recognizable than the original Kimbel Art Museum by Louis Khan in Fort Worth, arguably the most architecturally significant building in Texas.

Fisht Stadium

Fisht Stadium in Sochi, Russia

So with all of that going for it, Mark Lamster, the architecture critic for the Dallas Morning News, sounds appropriately puzzled that officials with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, would agree to build a stadium that so closely mimics it.  You'll see it tonight, if you watch the opening ceremonies for these winter games, and at the closing ceremonies, and you'll likely marvel at the arching trusses that support its roof, a key element of its design.

Key elements that have been boldly copied, and not entirely successfully.

It's called Fisht Stadium, in honor of a nearby mountain of the same name, and we're told its roofline is meant to suggest snowy mountain peaks, which sounds appropriate, considering this is the Winter Olympics.  However, the Fisht's roofline also suggests either a low-budget job to begin with, or too much corruption eating away at its pricetag to complete it as it was intended.  As Lamster points out, most of the design execution below the roof and those impressive trusses looks cheap and sloppy; but this is Russia, after all.  As we've already learned from many reporters already posting tweets and blog entries from Sochi, Russian planning for these Olympics seems to have been long on first-glance wow-factors and woefully sort on everything else.

That cheapness, however, might also explain Russia's willingness to accept what is virtually a miniature version of the Cowboys Stadium concept.  Fisht Stadium has some extra girth around its belly to try and disguise its uncanny resemblance to Cowboys Stadium, and its bubble-wrap skin lacks sleekness, just as a pillow-stitched down coat does.  But maybe this too is supposed to evoke a Russian motif?  Perhaps we could call the Fisht Russia's "Babushka" version of the Cowboys prototype?

Just don't presume that Cowboys Stadium really is an original prototype.  For all of the accolades HKS has garnered with its design for the NFL's largest venue, they're not making much of an effort to educate their fans on their own inspirations for their project.  Because, for all of its glamor and intrigue, Cowboys Stadium is not the first of its kind.

It may not even be the second.

Ōita Stadium

To explain what I mean, we need to travel over to Japan, where a couple of lesser municipal venues have been languishing in the shadows of Cowboys Stadium.

Ōita Stadium in Ōita, Japan

First, let's consider the remarkable similarities Ōita Stadium, opened in 2001, shares with the HKS concept for Cowboys Stadium.  Designed by Kisho Kurokawa, Ōita Stadium is a multi-purpose building in the Japanese city of the same name, and it utilizes the elegant sliced-dome aesthetic to the same powerful affect as Cowboys Stadium.

A significant difference exists between the two buildings, however, and it comes in regard to Ōita Stadium's saucer-shaped roof.  It employs lateral trusses, attached to a central longitudinal truss, whereas Cowboys Stadium goes all-out with just two mammoth longitudinal trusses, onto which the rest of the building's roof structure is attached.

Still, at least visually, the resemblance is uncanny, isn't it?

Fujisawa Municipal Gymnasium

Fujisawa Municipal Gymnasium in Fujisawa, Japan

Even if you don't want to concede that Ōita Stadium is a legitimate precursor to Cowboys Stadium, you have to give serious consideration to an even earlier building, the Fujisawa Municipal Gymnasium, again in the Japanese city of the same name. 

It was designed by the celebrated architect Fumihiko Maki and constructed in 1984, replete with steel arched trusses to support the roof, and broad flanks fanning out from those trusses exactly like the roof atop Cowboys Stadium.  

Okay, so the Fujisawa roof isn't retractable, but in terms of aesthetics, aren't the similarities between it and Cowboys Stadium too obvious to ignore?  So why ignore them?  Isn't seeing believing?  With Cowboys Stadium, its dominant feature is its roof design, a design that could almost have been copied from Fujisawa Gymnasium.  Just look at more photos of it, if you need further convincing.

Not that the HKS interpretation of what is obviously an inspiration from Maki's gym design is a bad one.  And if the designers at HKS literally had no idea that Maki's Japanese gym even existed, it speaks to the universal triumph of the roofing conceptualization they share, and the drama the two-arched-truss system affords rooflines covering broad, uninterrupted rooms.  After all, one of the reasons why so many sports fields are open to the elements is that the conventional method for supporting a roof involves pillars or columns, and those can seriously interfere with playing most sports!  It could be that with, first, the Maki design, and now, its application by HKS on a much grander scale, we'll be seeing more and more of these stadium roofing solutions around the world.

Indeed, Russia's Fisht Stadium is proof of that.  Even if it looks like an inferior knock-off of its far-better-executed progenitors.  And should we be surprised?  Russians have a reputation of copying Western technology and design with impunity, and masquerading them as comparable to their originals.  Again, perhaps with their Fisht, it's all in pursuit of a Russian motif.

As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

So, as an Arlington taxpayer who helped pay for the new home of the Dallas Cowboys, to Russia I say "Спасибо!" (pronounced SPAH-see-bah)

Which is "Thank you" in Russian.

Proof Theory in Creation Debate

 
Proof.

It's what we all want.

We want proof that God exists.  We want proof that Mr. X did or did not kill Mr. Y.  We want proof that I'm not lying.  We want proof that Barak Obama is a born-again Christian.  We want proof that life begins at conception.  We want proof that our tax dollars are not being wasted.  We want proof that somebody we secretly admire admires us back.

Of all the topics for which we want proof of something, how the world began is one of the biggest.  A lot of people would love to have proof about the science and/or the theology of our origins.  Recently, apparently, there was a televised debate between two experts named Ken Ham and Bill Nye in a showdown to advance arguments for and against Creationism.  I say "apparently," because this age-old discussion really doesn't interest me much at all, so I didn't know about this particular debate until after the fact.  Kinda like our origins, right?

Now, in terms of ordinary human curiosity, and being a moderately literate resident of the planet, exploring whatever differences and similarities may or may not exist between creationism and evolution represents a pursuit of basic relevance for all of us.  From where did we come?  It's one of those universal questions, isn't it?  For many people, the scientific and theological fields necessary to seriously study all conventional aspects of our origins forces those of us with other tasks to perform in life to mostly watch these debates from the sidelines.  However, that doesn't mean that some of us become deeply absorbed in proving or disproving their theories and beliefs on the subject.

But I'm not one of those people.  For one thing, I'm not ashamed to admit that most of the required science - and some of the theology - in which I'd have to develop considerable expertise is simply over my head.  And for another thing, I believe there are far more important arguments to address in our world.

Not that how our world came to be isn't important.  And not that I'm shying away from the debate simply because I'm not smart enough to sound intelligent about it, even though I'll readily admit that no, I'm not smart enough.  But I shy away from debating the origins of our world because it seems that such an activity rarely accomplishes anything productive.

And the reason why is simple:  After thousands of years of human existence, I'm not convinced any side in this debate has been able to secure the proofs to settle all debate.

Even the best scientists can only advance theories, despite being able to quantify a lot of facts about a lot of aspects of our natural environment.  And theologians - including the ones that try to stitch plausible parts of each side together - still need to rely on aspects of theology that atheistic pragmatists show no interest in accepting as fact.

Personally, I have some problems with the intellectual evangelicals who like the stitched-together approach to our world's origins.  For one, I question the problems they seem to have with taking God at His Word, and giving Him the benefit of the doubt if He says He created everything in six days.  Calendar days.  Literal, 24-hour increments of time.

You're trusting Christ for your eternal salvation, but not how God tells us He created us in the first place?

I also tend to doubt those evangelicals who seem to need science to help them affirm a longer timeframe than the six-day scenario.  Most of the stitched-together folks who tinker with literal creationist belief follow some version of what's called "old Earth creationism," or "theistic evolution," or "intelligent design."  Now, proponents of each of these three views would likely bristle at being lumped together so closely, but hey - they're the ones trying to assuage their thirst for proofs by being dissatisfied with the literalist folks.  And the reason I lump them all in together is because, as I understand it, there is a certain amount of death, degradation, and atrophy that is implied in their versions of how the physical world got put together.  By contrast, my understanding of death, under which heading things like degradation and atrophy would fall, is that it first appeared after Adam and original sin in the Garden of Eden.  Which, um, puts us beyond all of this creation/evolution stuff, right?

Then there's Hebrews 11:3, which teaches "that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."  Which, to my non-scientific brain, sounds as though God pretty much started with zero raw materials when He created the world, and I'm not sure how not having raw materials supports the logistics for the folks intrigued by old Earth creationism, theistic evolution, or intelligent design.

But then again, like I said, I'm no scientist, so maybe death wasn't needed for things to die before original sin corrupted life.  And maybe it depends on what your definition of "raw materials" is.

Anyway, in my feeble brain, all of this is secondary to the main reason for why people argue about the origins of our world.  And what is that main reason?  I have a theory about that!  It's because, deep down, we want proof, isn't it?  And if we can't get definitive proof, we want the closest thing we can get to it.  Hard-core evolutionists scoff at creationism and literalists because they think faith is only for intellectual weaklings, yet for all of our evangelical gusto about faith being the substance of things hoped for, might we also subconsciously think evolutionists have a point?  Might we lack confidence in something as wacky-sounding as "And God Said, Let There Be Light."

It's too simplistic.  It sounds too uneducated.  It defies all that we've come to know and understand about the complexities within our world.  We denigrate the nobility of science by not trying to at least stitch together its plausible theories into some sort of rational framework for explaining to skeptics about how God didn't just command things into existence.

Are we ashamed of what God might be challenging us to believe?

Perhaps this scientific dialog many evangelicals pursue over our physical origins is somehow helpful in fulfilling our overall mandate of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.  But it isn't obvious to me.  There are even evangelicals who debate the use of the word "day" in the Bible, which risks opening up a Pandora's Box of insecurity regarding whether we can trust each individual word that we read in what we say is God's holy Gospel.

Besides, at the end of the day - regardless of how long your day happens to be - aren't we still left with the whole proof issue?  Not whether proof exists, but our very need for proof in the first place?  We're looking for signs, indicators, studies, tests, educated guesses, anything - so we don't have to take by faith that God made Creation in a total of 144 literal, Timex-tested hours.

Not that I'm a rock-solid six-day creationist myself, mind you.  If God did indeed deploy a strategy in which His Creation was created during a longer timespan than six literal days, that's His business, right?  I don't know why there would be the discrepancy between His timeline and the account He provides for us in Genesis 1.  But because I trust in Him, I don't have to understand everything He's done, is doing, and will do.  I don't really understand how or why He came up with the whole process of original sin, the lineage of Christ, and why He uses people like you and me to glorify Him here within the spheres of influence we inhabit on His Earth.  I have some ideas about why He chose the plans He chose, and have learned some theories from different pastors and theologians over the years, but again, at the end of the day, it's all faith, isn't it?

In fact, sometimes I think it takes more faith to believe in origin theories that involve anything longer than a literal six days, because in that scenario, you have to really be careful about whose theory you choose to support.

Not that wanting proofs, or wanting to prove something, is a wrong or bad desire, in and of itself.  But needing to prove something when God says we don't need to just might be.  Why?  Because needing to prove something might betray our own desire to know more than God intends for us to know.

Obviously, God is not threatened by all of this debate over how His universe began.  Yet it seems as though some humans are.

Fanfare for the Common Grampa

 
Today, my Grampa would be 100 years old.

He was my Mom's father; a tall, spindly man with lanky arms and legs, and practically no body fat.  A manual laborer all his life, he rarely kept more than an ounce of fat on his skin and bones.

That is one trait I definitely did not inherit from him!

He died in 1980, in Maine, the same state in which he was born, and where he lived most of his life, with the exception of stints in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.  When I was growing up in Upstate New York, he and my grandmother would drive west from Maine to visit us, and I believe that was about the furthest he wanted to get from the Pine Tree State.

Like many native Mainers, he was born into poverty, worked most of his life just to keep his family fed, and never acquired much in the way of material possessions.  He and my grandmother, whom we called "Grammie," didn't get a television until long after we'd gotten ours - and we got ours after I came home from Kindergarten asking my parents who Mr. Rogers was!  My Grammie never learned how to drive - a lot of married women didn't back then in rural Maine - so it was just Grampa who drove their one car.  And those cars were always used; as in, several previous owners.  The first car of theirs that I remember was an old beige-colored Ford Falcon two-door, and then a newer taupe-colored Falcon, and then a four-door Dodge.  The Dodge was fairly big, bright blue with a black hardtop, and it was almost too fancy for Grammie, even though it didn't have power anything.

That's how many native Maine folks used to be.  Simple.  Reserved.  Quiet.  Hard-working.  Nothing flashy.  All the expensive cars on the roadways of Maine, especially along the coast, where my grandparents lived, belonged to vacationing summer people "from away."

The closest Mom's parents got to fancy was on Sundays.  He may have been a manual laborer, but Grampa would dress up for church every week.  He had an elegant gray suit, and socks with little diamond patterns on them.  He'd polish up his black Sunday-best shoes - long, narrow, heavy things those were.  Tie up his tie, slip on his tie clip, stick a crisply-folded white handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit, and I'd never have pegged him as a guy who dug ditches or drove snowplows.

Almost all of my memories of him have him wearing a broad smile.  His cheeks would be a ruddy red, along with the tip of his nose, because most of my memories of him were made when we visited them in frozen Maine on Thanksgivings.  Even when Grampa and Grammie would come to Upstate New York, however, he'd work outside with Dad around our century-old farmhouse, fixing things or cutting firewood.  He always smelled of sawdust, or soot, or sand, or whatever that stuff was that he put on his hair to try and keep it neat.  Usually, however, his hair was the neatest at the breakfast table, right after he'd combed it.  After that, there was work to be done, and depending on the job at hand, the appropriate hat to be worn.

A few years before his death, somebody had sold him on the cheap an old, rusted-out International Harvester pickup truck with only wood boards where the pickup bed used to be.  It was a faded green color, with worn-out seats and battered chrome, but it was a work truck, so Grampa didn't care what it looked like.  Oddly enough, though, he never parked it in the driveway near the house, next to his blue Dodge sedan with the black vinyl hardtop.  Their property extended to a gravel drive on the other side of a brook that ran past their house, and he'd always park that truck over there, up under some overhanging limbs.  "To keep it out of the way," I think is how he explained to me.

All of his hard work eventually combined with some health problems that stemmed from his poor diet while he was growing up, um, poor.  His heart began to fail him, and he had bypass surgery that prolonged his life for only a few years, but back in the late 1970's, that was considered progress.  In his last winter alive, he was so weak, he couldn't chop wood for their stove, so the community up there in rural coastal Maine got together and cut several cords of wood to keep their stove going throughout the frigid season.  They cut so much wood, in fact, it made headlines in the local newspaper.  Over the years, my Grampa had done so much for so many other people on their sparsely-populated peninsula, cutting some wood for him was the least they could do in return.

A lot of people may take an hour out of their day to attend a funeral.  But how many will spend all Saturday chopping wood for you?

He died the next summer, on a splendid June day; the type of day I've come to say is one of those perfect summer days in Maine.  And a perfect summer day in Maine is truly a perfect day.  Not too hot, but with sunshine so buttery and abundant, it seems to be oozing out of the sun itself.  Clear air, more sparkling than glass.  Just the hint of a breeze, and the wind in the breeze is just the right temperature.  The grass on the lawns and the leaves in the trees become almost a translucent green, and the blue sky appears to go on forever through space.  My grandparents had a lovely patch of lawn to the eastern side of their little house, opposite the kitchen, and the view from that yard went across the road, under some magnificent tall trees, down a steep meadow, to a body of salt water called a "reach," which is a stretch of the ocean between the mainland and an island.

Unless you die in your sleep, a person can't ask for a better setting to be ushered from Earth into Eternity.  And my tired, thin, aging grandfather was lovingly blessed by our Heavenly Father with just such a transition.  It was after lunch, and Grampa was settling down in one of the two hand-made, wood Adirondack chairs that he'd painted a baby blue, perched over on the grassy lawn beyond the kitchen window.  Grammie was inside at the kitchen sink, washing up the lunch dishes, getting ready to join her husband and relax in the calm afternoon.  Briefly, she looked away while handling some plates.  When her gaze returned to the window, and to my Grampa, she saw that his head had slumped down.  His eyes closed.  Sitting in one of the baby blue Adirondack chairs, facing the water.  Under the deep sky, beyond which, angels were welcoming him into Glory.

Grammie didn't rush out to Grampa in a panic.  She knew instantly what had happened.

She dried her hands, went out to the Adirondack chairs, and softly bid him goodbye.

Does anybody have a pet name for you?  We don't know where he got it, but Grampa would call my brother and me "Sproggin."  As in, "how are my Sproggins today?"  Have you ever heard of that word?

He had some quirks, but he was also one of the millions of ordinary people who never were elected to public office, never held a high-paying job, never commanded troops in battle, never moved mountains... and never was upset that he hadn't.  Although, eventually, he did became a trustee in his village's historic little church.  I still have his well-worn Bible in a box in my closet; too fragile and delicate practically to look at, let alone use.  Sunday mornings, he'd be dressed in that gray suit, sitting at his little wood desk, reading that Bible to himself before the rest of us were done with breakfast.  I remember how he'd carefully turn its thin pages, his long, skinny fingers smoothing back the paper in a subconscious caress, up and down the crease in the binding, and clearing his throat repeatedly when he'd read aloud from it in that hardy Maine accent of his.

Grampa and Grammie are both buried in a humble little cemetery nestled up against a forest of pine trees, set apart from the road by blueberry fields and a white picket fence.  The church they used to attend is now closed, never used, like untold numbers of other formerly robust churches across New England.  The house where they last lived is currently owned by people from New York State and has been modernized beyond what my grandparents would probably neither recognize nor consider prudent.  Meanwhile, the two baby blue Adirondack chairs are here in Texas, in the garage, wrapped in plastic, on a shelf over my car.  A gold Honda Accord.

Too flashy, you think?

I'm not sure what Grampa would say about me owning a gold-colored Japanese car.  Or about his Adirondack chairs sitting on a shelf in a garage in Texas.  We don't know which is the one he died in, but it doesn't really matter.  Both of those chairs are a link to Grampa, just like his old Bible is.  A link not only to him, but to those perfect summer days in Maine.  And the even greater Perfection to which Grampa was called on one of those perfect days.

Some people get a lot of money from their grandparents when they die.  And that's all well and good.  Some grandparents leave both an abundance of money and wonderful memories, which probably is better still.  But some memories you just can't buy.  And you shouldn't want to.

Happy 100th birthday, Grampa - from one of your Sproggins.

King's Character Content Quotient

 
Putting words in his mouth.

Today is the day we honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Some people will mark the occasion by attending a civic parade, marching down a road that used to be called something else, but is now called "Martin Luther King Boulevard," because it runs through a predominantly black neighborhood.  Others will perhaps participate in some act of charity or public-spirited endeavor, like painting the outside of a house in a run-down part of town, that just happens to be owned by a widowed elderly black lady.

Some corporations will give their employees time to participate in these conventional racially-themed activities as a good-will gesture.  They'll make sure local television news cameras are on-hand to capture the scene as blacks and whites, who ordinarily labor harmoniously alongside each other in their rewarding white-collar jobs, are hard at work happily making life just a little bit better for somebody whom corporate America would otherwise ignore.

Like a lot of American holidays, Martin Luther King Day is a day for pretension, and lately, in addition to the parades and Habitat for Humanity PR stunts, people try to vocalize what Dr. King would say if he were alive today.  They imagine how he would view the civil rights struggle, fifty years after his assassination.  He would be 84 by now; about to turn 85 in April.  Granted, black men of his generation did not have a very robust life expectancy, even if they weren't the target of an assassin's bullet.

Whomever the assassin(s) was(were).

James Earl Ray was the man officials accused of pulling the trigger, and initially, Ray confessed.  But he quickly recanted, and spend the rest of his life claiming King's death was the result of a conspiracy.  In 1999, the King family officially lent credence to Ray's claims, although all the facts may never be known.

And speaking of life expectancy, the doctor who performed King's autopsy said the civil rights leader may have been 39 calendar years old when he died, but the ravages of his struggle had worn his heart down to a 60-year-old's.

Here in Dallas last week, one of the TV stations broadcast some video from an elementary school's assembly in honor of King, and one little girl trying to complete the sentence, "what would Dr. King say today?"  She perhaps gave the best answer that could be given when she stated simply, "I don't know."  No platitudes, no poetry; but she did add something else, to the effect that "whatever he'd say, he probably wouldn't be satisfied with where we are."

And that's true enough, don't you think?  Both the probability of his not being satisfied, but also our genuine lack of knowledge of how he himself might have been transformed personally, not just politically or socially.  If he'd never been killed, had never died from a prematurely-aged heart, and were alive today, perhaps he'd have run for office at some time during these intervening 50 years.  Or maybe one of his children would have run.  But it's hard to tell how much he could have accomplished as a legislator from Georgia, especially considering the Deep South's protracted acquiescence to civil rights - even in the wake of King's assassination.

Then too, it's hard to tell what life would have been like if society hadn't reacted so decisively to the death of such an iconic figure as King.  When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, some scholars have said that the shock of such an audacious attack on the leader of the free world - whether Democrat or Republican - actually galvanized both legislators and voters.  Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, was a bulldog of a politician, yet he may have had an even easier time hammering through the assassinated president's legacy legislation based as much on sympathy and political correctness in the face of patriotic fervor, as much as anything else.  Might King's legacy similarly be greater today because he was assassinated, instead of being left to live out his life?  After all, an early death has a way of granting history the chance to enshrine the memory of a life so publicly cut short.  Given the chance to live out that life naturally, there's always the chance a person could blow it.  For King, he had those widely rumored affairs with women not his wife, and the FBI was apparently convinced that he was a closet Communist.  With all due respect to King's memory, personal indiscretion and government-instigated slander have brought down mightier public personages.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what King would say today.  The fact is that while he was alive, King put his voice to a good many ideologies that, frankly, our Founding Fathers should have incorporated into our country's incorporation papers.  Don't forget that after the American Revolution, not only were slaves - and howevermany free blacks there were - not eligible to vote, women and men who didn't own land weren't, either.  Weird, huh?  If somebody today were to read some of King's greatest speeches without knowing who he was, much of what he encourages American society to be is, technically, little more than what we've idealized our Founding Fathers to have intended for our country.  For King to be calling for that idealized America still, over 175 years after the birth of our country, casts him in as positive a light as it casts the people who were supposed to be forming this "more perfect union" in a negative one.

"Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, 'Wait.'  But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim... when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.  There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair."  - from "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

And then there is King's dream that makes one wonder what what the Founding Fathers would have said, had they been alive to hear King proclaim it from the steps of the Lincoln memorial in 1963:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." - from "I Have a Dream" speech

Of course, being judged by the content of one's character is a two-way street, isn't it?  The very people whose personal characteristics include bigotry are the ones who could be judged as not being worthy of emulation or honor.  But they were the ones to whom King was appealing, and even today, to whom his legacy continues to call.  People not only with white skin, you understand, but blacks, Hispanics, Middle-Easterners, Jews, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, Asians, Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers...

If King were alive today, what might he say about the status of race relations in the United States?

How about something like this:  "well, unfortunately, Americans have progressed on race about as far as they've progressed on judging anybody else by the content of their character."