Here we go again

I haven’t posted a James Dobson rant lately, so…….HERE YOU GO.
The program this week was a two part show about a family in the midwest that had adopted a few so-called unadoptable kids with serious issues. I was enjoying it. Touching. Nice folks to do such a thing. Then Dobson has to say how great it is that this family lives on a ranch out in the middle of know where so that these kids are being raised "uncorrupted by the culture."
This is exactly the attitude of the christian right that perpetuates the image that christians are narrow, uneducated and afraid of anything or anyone who doesn’t think or believe what they do. It has serious cultic overtones…and, by golly, its just plain weird. And the root of it is fear.

If christian kids do not learn how to engage and answer the culture, we will end up with yet another uneffective generation of christians who are laughed and not taken very seriously. One of the reasons why I was an athiest for so long was because when I encountered a christian, I encountered a self righteous, out of touch person without a clue as to what life is like in the world and no one could give me an answer as to why I should believe in Christ other than I would go to hellif I didn’t. There was nothing compelling to me about it, just a lot of rules and regulations. I was having more fun and living more life than a lot of the christians I met. I suppose that is why God took it upon himself to introduce himslef in such a dramatic way. There wasn’t anyone who could answer my questions in a valid manner.

I feel blue

There are times that I feel the dreaded possibility that people cannot change. Can they? Do they? And for good? Once and for all? My entire life has been driven by this desire to change, to grow and to exceed where I now live in my mind. Sometimes it is so overwhelming that I can literally feel the weight of my self. It isn’t a good place to be. Like Frodo and the ring, it becomes the focus of all my attention, all my thoughts.

I have found myself struggling again and again with the same issues, the same patterns again when I thought I had made progress, when I thought I had grown. And it has led me to wonder if I can change or if the programming of my early years are permanently ingrained in my being until I cross over. I wonder if they patterns, these ways of thinking and living are in my DNA like the number of hairs on my head. At one time I believed I could change and I experienced that change, but it didn’t last.

For those of you who seem to breeze through life with good, healthy and whole person (few and far between), this might be hard to understand, but for those of us who suffer with depression, anxiety and the myriad of other manifestations of a stunted soul it is real. I have never been able to brush feelings off, to stuff them or to deny them. It somehow feels false and untrue to do so. So this last week has been a tiresome revisit of the same old familiar friend. Although it doesn’t visit as often and I have had longer and longer absences of the depression, when my old, tired visitor comes I am at the beginning again, starting over.

I don’t know that we ever get full release from these things. I don’t know that we ever are finished in this broken and fallen state of life. We can improve and learn new ways of coping and handling and living with these thorns, but our lack of complete freedom and release is a reminder that we do not belong here with our scarred and broken selves, but are made for a greater purpose and for a more brilliant existance in another place. But here, in this life we constantly battle ourselves and our inate will to be destructive, to be in control……..