By the modern day standards by which individuals of questionable sanity are deemed to be proper candidates for institutionalization or, at least, to be highly psychotropically medicated, Jesus clearly fits the bill to receive the benefits of either intervention. In fact, given the definition of what constitutes a mental disorder in the DSM-IV-TR, the bible of psychological diagnoses, there is likely no known person in the history of mankind who would have qualified for systemic, institutionalized psychiatric treatment more than Christ.(1) And when the DSM-IV-TR’s definition of “mental disorder” is taken in conjunction with the criteria for involuntary committal as delineated in North Carolina state law, the latter stating that a “client” may be “involuntarily committed” if “[there] is, without the benefit of the specific treatment measure, a significant possibility that the client will harm self or others before improvement of the client's condition is realized”, there is no doubt that, whether against his will or not, Jesus, of all people, should have been promptly and indefinitely committed. (2)
For at least as far as the New Testament witness in concerned, Jesus’ speech and behavior most certainly show that he posed a consummate threat to himself.(3) For example, he intentionally gave up what could have been a stable income in carpentry, leading perhaps to marriage, children, and a comfortable domestic situation, in order to wander around as a homeless, single, poverty-stricken nomad. Further still, the people with whom he ended up spending most of his time were typically those of deeply suspect personal histories, many of whom had long public records of socially deviant behavior, and the likes of which included hookers, scam artists, and zealous infidels of high volatility. Similarly, he showed no regard for his own personal safety when it came to the risks involving his physical health, exposing himself to the leprous and variously and violently demonized with a reckless and unrepentant regularity. The way that Jesus spoke and the paranoid language he so often used certainly warranted his immediate hospitalization, as well, endlessly speaking, as he did, of dark and apocalyptic nightmares that he so delusively believed would come true. His ability to rightly and safely judge the character of others was also clearly shown to be impaired, given his willingness to befriend and maintain close associations with Judas Iscariot, a man whom he knew would eventually hand him over to be tortured and sadistically killed. In fact, Jesus evinced the ultimate symptom warranting his hospitalization by his intentionally choosing to travel to Jerusalem at Passover, knowing full well that such would culminate in the prolonged brutality that was his crucifixion.
But as if the harm Jesus posed to himself were not enough, it is equally clear that Jesus represented a serious threat to the well-being of others, as well. For not only did he convince the twelve disciples to give up their jobs and financial security as he had done, but he also explicitly called upon and convinced them to de-prioritize their respective families and loved ones in order to follow him. He likewise thoughtlessly endangered them by negligently bringing the twelve into his own psychotic web of social irresponsibility, exposing them to the same group of miscreants, diseases, and lifestyle of poverty that he had chosen for himself. And, to top it off, he knowingly brainwashed them to adopt a manner of life and practice whereby each would be killed as was he, intentionally grooming each disciple for the grisly and senseless demise that is martyrdom. He even went so far as to set up an organization formed in his name (i.e., the Church) which he consciously intended to be an ongoing recruitment program for the promotion of the same maladjusted and disordered lifestyle he had chosen for himself and his twelve disciples! Certainly, apart from merely being a harm to himself, Jesus presented (and still yet presents!) an unprecedented danger to countless scores of others.
Thus, in light of the above, there can be no doubt whatsoever that Jesus was stark, raving mad, posing a significant risk of injury both to himself and those surrounding him, clearly requiring the corrective aid that comes from institutionalization and high doses of psychotropic medicine (and all this is to say nothing of the need to have involuntarily committed other biblical figures like the camel-suit-wearing, locust-eating, desert-dwelling, ranting, apocalyptic preacher, John the Baptist, or the split-personality, megalomaniac, and glutton for punishment that was St. Paul).
Sadly, none of the enlightened individuals who encountered him sufficiently loved Christ or were responsible enough to have him indefinitely committed for redemptive psychiatric treatment. And, as a result, it seems we have little room not to seriously question their basic morality or any claim they might have made about being altruistically concerned about the needs of the mentally ill. For, clearly, if they did not perceive or did not act upon the fact that Jesus, the recruiter of martyrs and willingly crucified, was certifiably crazy and in need of the state’s intervention to protect himself and others from the danger that he plainly was, then obviously the bible from which they mistakenly discerned what constitutes “disorder” and/or the means by which such should be treated was something embarrassingly frail or irrelevant in comparison with the infallible canon of the American Psychiatric Association that is the DSM-IV-TR or North Carolina state law. Indeed, it seems we have significant reason to ponder why they were so cruelly and irresponsibly unwilling to help Jesus when he so obviously needed it, or why it was they allowed for the prolonging of his undeniable suffering. For, given what I’ve outlined above, if Jesus isn’t the quintessential poster child of the mentally deranged or psychologically sick, desperately in need of institutionalized medical assistance, then I cannot imagine who is. If only the truly wise around him had loved Jesus or been responsible enough to properly intervene on his behalf, perhaps he could have been rescued from himself and the inevitable fate that would result from his psychosis! What a wonderful thing that would have been! What a tragedy that it did not occur.
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(1) “In DSM-IV, each of the mental disorders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom.” American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, Text Revision. (Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2000), xxxi.
(2) Quoted from North Carolina state law122C-57.e.2. Cf. http://www.psychlaws.org/legalresources/StateLaws/NorthCarolinastatute.htm
(3) Each of the specific claims regarding Jesus and his ministry can be supported by textual evidence from the four canonical Gospels. The reader is encouraged to read through those texts for herself, should verification be desired.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Why Jesus Should Have Been Institutionalized
Friday, April 17, 2009
Reporting as Advertising
Today CNN.com has an article about a woman who kicked a crack cocaine habit. What strikes me about the article is that it is mostly an advertisement for Mothers Making a Change, a 12-step program developed by AA. It is certainly wonderful that the folks at AA have the insight to design programs that can address the problem and, at least often, succeed. But from a journalistic standpoint, it's sort of an odd piece. The article bears more generic resemblance to an info-mercial than anything else.
What else should it be, you ask? I suppose there is nothing wrong with info-mercials on news sites. On the other hand, it might be nice to see some reporting on how successful the program is or what other programs there are like it and how successful they are. It's also interesting to me that there is never any mention of a significant relationship during her drug use (after her husband's suicide) besides that of mother and child. There appears to be no one there giving her hope or urging her to walk away from the drugs.
So, I might have asked the journalist to provide a little more detail into her world besides just "Wow, she was screwed up! But look she clawed her way out with the help of this 12-step program". The article is for the most part creating a spectacle. I see people rather too often who probably aren't too far from her condition. Most of them are now homeless, and almost never for the same reason (unless you want to reduce it ultimately to drugs, but I think that is a useless reduction). These people don't self-destruct in a vacuum. There is a whole society bustling around them. So, why do we write about these things as if it bears no connection with our daily lives?
As a friend of ours put it, one of the main problems is that these folks "ain't got no people."
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Eastertide Commitment
After spending seven days in the ER, C was transferred to the regional psychiatric hospital yesterday morning.
Sent to the loonie bin - that's the bad news. The good news is that now we can visit him. So Lisa and I went up last night after supper.
The facility is brand new, replacing the older one in that same town. This probably helped to relieve a bit of the awkward nervousness I felt approaching my first mental health ward. They lead us through a series of four electrically locking doors. The hallways were white and sterile but bigger than your average hospital types. This would have been comforting, but medical hospitals are usually bustling with doctors, nurses and patients, carts and machinery here and there. Here there was nothing. No other people, bare, slightly curving, medium-light corridors smelling of antiseptic soap.
They led us into an austere little room with two chairs, a table and a bench. "Shut the door behind you," the nurse said. She then opened the other door into the common area of C's wing. "Mr. G____?!" she yelled.
C walked in, staring at the floor. He was dressed in his normal street clothes, which had clearly had a recent run through the wash. He looked good.
We all sat down and C started talking. He said that he had just been transferred there today and that they hadn't given him any drugs yet. He said he didn't know what had set "that lady they call my sister" to commit him at that time. He ran through various things that had happened in the few days before the police nabbed him, and wasn't sure what it had been. "They just kept telling me that it was because I'm not showering...but that doesn't seem right." To that charge was later added, he said, that he was a danger to himself and others. The former might, by an almost infinite stretch of the imagination, in the state's definition, be entailed in long periods without a shower (which, by the way, is itself highly questionable). The latter is simply laughable.
C talked a lot about how his present predicament is caused by the state's inability to put up with or even comprehend his chosen way of life. "They got all their people out on this one...police, FBI, CIA, Army, Navy, Marines, ROTC. They are killing each other all day trying to kill me because I love God. But they really are destroying themselves...they say they are helping me but I know that they gotta do this to function a profit [benefit] for the rest of the world. So they' really just blessin' themselves."
As always, though, he takes this with patience and understanding and never blames anyone personally. Quite in the New Testament sense, he blames "the world." "I talk to folks all day who are trying to help me, and I'm trying to help them, cause I know they're not even intending to do what they are doin'. But whatever I say they just make me look stupid."
He refuses even to speak badly of his sister, who had him committed and whom he has not seen or heard from through this whole process. Responding to something I said hinting of a negative vibe toward his sister he said, "People are gonna think I should make war against her, but I'm not gonna do that."
Lisa and I told him that the Guys were worried about him and that JR and Adam would be up to visit soon. I said that we've been able to talk to his social worker and doctors and that hopefully our testimonies of our normal life with him, along with Adam's ability to speak intelligently about things psychiatric would convince them that the facilities' over-crowed beds need not be taken up by Crete. He looked intently and hopefully when I told him we'd do everything we can.
Probably the biggest obstacle to his release right now is the way he talks. His speach sounds strange, incomprehensible and, well, crazy - to someone who doesn't know him. But it is eminently intelligible and rational - it is simply a different idiom, laden with metaphors and rather apocalyptic in tone, spoken from the underbelly of the world. The problem is that psychiatrists don't know him or live with him, so when he says that he's "gettin' hit" or that "the world is trying to kill him" or that he's "not getting any women" he can only be classed as delusional, paranoid, or perverted.
The ER psychiatrist told us the other day that three weeks is along stay at the Regional Psychiatric Hospital. Lets pray its shorter than that.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Faithfulness and the New Man
Delivered at Church of the Holy Family
Wednesday of Easter Week, 2009
Propers: Luke 24:13-35, Acts 3:1-10
At the gate of the temple lay a beggar, lame from birth, now in his fortieth year. He is laid there daily. His routine is well known. Luke even notes that the people of Jerusalem recognize him as the beggar at the Beautiful Gate. For this man the routine may have become a source of despair – a lifetime of begging, no longer even looking up at the almsgivers as they pass by.
So, we must imagine that Peter and John have seen this man before, probably many times. Yet this time when the beggar asks Peter and John for alms, Luke tells us that Peter looked at him intently, as did John.
The story continues, almost without missing a beat. It would be easy to pass over this detail. Still, Luke tells us that Peter did not just glance down at the beggar, but that he looked at him intently.
Just what went through Peter’s mind at that moment – Peter, who had been at Jesus’ side through his ministry?
Did Peter perhaps see Lazarus lying at the gate of the rich man’s house? As the beggar asked for alms, did Peter hear Lazarus hungry and pleading for the falling crumbs?
So much has happened since Jesus told that parable: the Passion, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection. It is a new time.
Then perhaps Peter looked up for a moment through the gate toward the temple and saw now the temple as the house of the rich man, and Peter the servant of that rich man, nourished at the sumptuous table of the Lord of that house in the breaking of bread - Peter who has nothing of his own because the church holds all things in common, says with honesty, “I have no silver or gold,” and then with gentleness, “but what I have I give you” – and what crumbs from the table of the Lord can he possibly offer to this beggar at the gate? Nothing less than,
“In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”
Then Peter took the beggar by the right hand and, Luke says, “raised him up” – for this is a story about healing, certainly, but only to point to the Resurrection; Peter “raised him up”. As Paul writes, Christ “will transform the body of our humiliation (the body of a lame beggar lying outside God’s house) that it may be conformed to the body of his glory (the healed man running and jumping into the temple, a figure of the new man in Christ) by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself (instantly this man believed and praised God).” Phil 3:21
Peter lives in a community of faithful obedience to ordinary practices, devoted to the prayers, and to the breaking of bread. It is in devotion to these ordinary things that Peter’s eyes are opened to the beggar at the gate – much as Cleopas’ eyes are opened to Jesus in the breaking of bread - and it is through faithfulness to holding all things in common that we find Peter with no silver and gold.
Let us not miss the irony: Through faithfulness Peter’s eyes are opened to notice the beggar, but through faithfulness he also has no silver or gold to give. From the beggar’s vantage it’s a bit of a Catch 22!
But it is a new time - a time not of defeat, nor of despair, but of victory. For, Christ is risen!
Thus in Peter’s faithfulness to the risen Christ, we find that having nothing he yet possesses everything, being poor he yet makes this man rich, and this beggar, whom everyone recognized but no one knew, is yet well-known as he is raised up with Christ.
Peter’s faithfulness turns an ordinary, and potentially awkward, encounter into a mirror of the Resurrection.
We must be faithful in small things, if we are to participate in the glory of God that is the resurrection of his Son. Let us go therefore and devote ourselves to Christ in every small act. Let our daily routines be set by the worship of God. Let our eyes be opened in the breaking of bread.
And may every mundane encounter be transformed by the resurrection of our Lord.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
36 Hours In
Relatively little has changed.
JR has talked to the hospital several times and they have confirmed that he is still at the ER. Yesterday there were no rooms available at Regional Psychiatric Hospital, so they may be waiting for one to open up.
The last we heard he was being uncooperative. C did a stint at the regional facility a few years ago, and he still bears the scars. I'm sure he is terrified of going back, but he also won't put on a show for anybody, no matter what the cost.
On this day we remember the Institution of the Eucharist, our Lord's sharing of his very body with us. Let us remember also Concrete today, who has taught us Christ not just in his poverty, but by sharing everything he ever had.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
C Has Been Committed
Yesterday, during Evening Prayer, R poked his head in and waved me to come to the door. I didn't, thinking that the ciggs or supper that he wanted could wait until after we were done.
After prayer I walked out to the parking lot to find out that, while we were saying the Office, the police had come by, put C into the back of the squad car and taken him away. He was involuntarily committed for psychiatric treatment to a local ER and remains there for evaluation and prognosis.
We have called and visited the ER several times, but he is allowed no visitors. We have been successful in communicating to his nurse that we think he is not a danger to himself or others (though, under state law, homelessness qualifies as such). He will likely stay at the ER for a couple more days and then either be released or transfered to a regional mental hospital.
We are hoping and praying for his quick release, and doing whatever we can to that end.
There is more to come on this front, but I thought I should post the basics.
Please join us in praying for him.
