Angry at God

I was fascinated to hear a Christian say, « I don’t know I’m angry at God. ».

I said « Jesus was angry at God » 

« Jesus can’t be angry at God. »

‘What about Eli Eli Lema Sabachtani. ‘My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me?

Jesus taught « Do not be afraid »  Love and fear are opposites but anger is fear in ‘fight versus flight’ mode.  That’s the simplest division. The experience of abandonment is grief.

Jesus was angry at the money lenders. But when Jesus was on the cross, if he was suffering, he was ‘doing God’s will’.  Being obedient to God’s will doesn’t mean I’m ‘happy happy happy’. Jonah was angry.  Grief and suffering go hand in hand.

The ‘stages of grief described by Elizabeth Kuala Ross include ‘anger’.  Anger is a natural state.  Things can cause me to be angry but if I hold onto my anger then I can become resentful. The Bible is clear that we shouldn’t hold onto anger but it doesn’t deny anger is human. Holding onto anger or nurturing anger will turn one bitter.

 Jesus was ‘son of man’.  HE was all human. And all God. If he was just a God then he really wouldn’t have ‘suffered.  To be human is to have the full experience of humanity.  The whole issue of the nature of Jesus resulted in the Athanasian Creed and the Hypostatic Union of Jesus, perfectly divine and perfectly human, not a chimera and not a duality, but one.  One person of the trinity.

So I imagine if I’m a man of human nature on the cross doing the will of God but dying slowly in the most horrid pain, I’d feel ‘anger at God’ knowing that God’s perfect love but at that moment of sever pain feeling abandoned . I may know God will not reject me but I am human. Jesus was human even if there are those who would reduce him to an idol.

Today ‘Why have you forsaken me, “while it might remind us of an earlier psalm, might well be said in the vernacular of today, ‘fuck you God.  Indeed there is a movement by this name and a major controversy. People leave the church and no one question if they are angry. People are afraid of anger in themselves and others. 

In psychiatry, in ‘somatic depression’ or the ‘somatic sympton disorder,’ we think of pain as clothed in grelief and fear and anger. Abraham saw depression as ‘anger turned inward’.  Pain is by extension anger turned inward. Somatization and conversion disorder are pain or other physical symptom like fatigue as well, understood to be a mental disorder, not denying the ‘pain’ any more than one would deny the excruciating pain of ‘phantom limb pain’ but recognizing the materialistic error is in the brain, or the biopsycosocial error is in the ‘mind’.  It’s not simply  a ‘brain’ disease perse but a ‘mind disease’as well.

Anxiety is said to be the measure of one’s distance from God as well as a measure of one’s humanity.

It helps one see ‘suicidal thinking’ as ‘anger turned inward””’  more clearly and understand the ‘seriousiuslness of ‘emotional pain’.  Emotional pain can be deadly.

In ‘communication psychiatry’. Everything is sen as ‘communication’. Cancer is seen as ‘that which can be said in on other way ».

The idea therapeutically in psychosomatic medicine is to look for a new and different approach when conventional therapy fails.  If the door handle turned doesn’t open the door , turn the door handle in the other direction.  

Phillips wrote the sweet little classic, « your God is too small ».  

The God of Love is big enough to take all your anger and all your pain.  God doesn’t reject man.  The devil was said to have turned his back on God because he’d rather watch his shadow than look into God’s light.  

Aliénation and isolation are précurseurs for suicide .  Dehumanization and the feeling of being unloved, alone and rejected.  It’s fundamental to survivalhaving purpose as Man’s Search for Meaning showed.  We die most from ‘neglect’

Jesus was foul  mouthed and ill mannered with friends in low and high places. Inhis day and associated with the improper. Today the contemporary ‘cross’ might well be an ‘electrocution chair’, a ‘guillotine’ or a ‘noose.’ We have a Fondness for the symbolism of the museum Christianity and ‘cobweb Christianity’ as seen in the sentiment some view the ‘cross .’ But it can cause us to overlook the ideas of Jesus today.  Christ’s value is not as a ‘myth’ or ‘teaching story’ alone but as a ‘relationship today’.  If I get angry and my friend leaves me , Do I really have a friend in Jesus.  

All adolescents in their relationships with their parents go through this phase.  Today most Christians are unprepared for this adolescent phase of their spiritual relationship which is no surprise when the church seems unwilling to engage at the point of  ‘anger’, especially anger at God.  Rejection of God.  

Ultimately this is tied to suicide and addiction and pain. 

If it’s not the Cross then what is Glad Gethsemane. And why would Kierkegaard say Life is suffering unto death if was he not referring to pain and the burden of life, expulsion from Eden and loss of innoscence.

Good Morning God

Well, here we are another day, God.  I talk to you.  Formally in prayer. Lots of repetition and positive affirmation, mantra talk with mindfulness meditation and breathing and focus. I hope that hours upon hours of practice over half a century or more should help. But I could be doing it wrong and I can’t rest on my laurels.  But it’s not like I’ve just begun seeking this relationship.  My mother taught me about you and prayer as a little child. I know all about the Hound of Heaven. It’s like you’re a lover.

But I do feel I suggest going for Pizza and you wanted me to pick Sushi. You don’t make it clear sometimes and other times I simply don’t want what you want and I don’t like or feel the consequences are fair.
It’s like you’re a date and I’m trying to seek your approval but you’re like a mother who approves of me whatever. So then I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if I was a serial killer and joined ISIS.
 I call you Jesus, Messiah and really like the story.  The main story. The central story of our time.  Crucifixion. Religion is supposed to address the question of why bad things happen to good people. I want divine retribution I guess. I”ve been pretty good. And I know to those who have most are expected more from but even then I look at my life compared to most and I’ve been mostly caring productive, creative, building, cooperative. I’m certainly not perfect in the eyes of others. I just wonder if instead of being a doctor I should have been Che.  I’ve done all I could to maintain order and contribute to progress. I’ve not torn down and destroyed things in general.

But I’ve wondered if I was doing enough or if I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Like sins of omission. Would it be better if I were to become a missionary or a monk. I looked into the monastery idea and found that little would differ in my life. This being a doctor bit would remain. Most others, other than my government, admire education and training and experience and doctors.  My own government and it’s doctors hates us and has reduced our numbers by half and taken the resources for doctors and given them to their chatter box cronies.  They like committees and talk and self congratulations. 

Yet I’m second guessing myself all the time now. I’m doing the best I can, doing as I was taught, making diagnosis which are respected in the broadest and highest levels. I’m doing therapeutics consistent with the latest research. I’m trained beyond the beyond, not only at the highest levels initially with this gift of an IQ and crazy workaholism and the most incredible teachers but ever since I’ve been incredibly studious.  But the goal posts have been moved.

I was taught to help people stay alive. The idea was good work as a doctor was judged against ‘quantity’, length of life. If a baby could live and I negligently caused a death, I was wrong.

Yet today our government, the leading authorities, those that license doctors celebrate MAID.  Euthanasia , death , is okay.  So if a person dies on my watch, someone suicides for instance, it’s not my fault and probably good. I”m supposed to look sad and go throug the politically correct emotions but so what.  I reduced the suicide attempts on the chronic suicide ward from 30 a year to 10 and the deaths from 3 or 4 a year to O but wasn’t even thanked. The individuals didn’t know because these traditionally critical stats of ‘quality care’ are not ‘overt’ but ‘hidden’.

I tell the story of the great research project so common. A Surgical unit discharged patient to 2 wards. In one ward the death rate was high.  In the other ward pretty well all the patients lived.  The surgeons were concerned because they wanted the best results from their work. So they investigated this.  The first ward had a head nurse everyone loved.  In psychiatry we call her a ‘good tit’.  Melanie Klein one of the first and leading psychiatrists said children see the world as a ‘good breast’ or ‘bad breast’.  If you are giving and positive happy happy you’re a ‘good tit’.  By contrast if you are not giving milk you’re a ‘bad tit’.
 On the second ward the head nurse was one of the ‘battle axe type matron’s, like Florence Nightingale and Sister Theresa.  High standards, demanding, critical and conscientious.  The key to survival after surgery is movement.  Patients in the ‘good tit’ ward were dying mostly because of blood clots. While on the ‘bad tit’ ward the patients were being made to walk according to the doctors protocols. The nurses were following the doctors orders and the patients were following the nurses orders and they were living and complaining about what bad ass or rather bad tits the nurses were because they were only happy if the patients were eating and walking and sleeping and generally being good patients and doing as they were supposed to to. On the other ward it was permissive, kind of like public schools, and everyone was happy except for the dying and dead and of course the surgeons who were accountable.

So while administration was very upset with the unpopular ‘bad tit’ nurse the surgeons loved that head nurse but her staff didn’t get a whole lot of chocolates or flowers. The living on the other ward however did give those nurses flowers and chocolates and having seen so many other patients dying during their stay thought the nurses who were being so kind and understanding were making all the difference. The fact was that these lucky ones would have probably lived with or without the ‘good tit’ nurses since they had other qualities of survival and genetics that may well have a ccounted for their survival.

The key here is that the dead didn’t get a vote.

The dead don’t vote.

This is the story of Communism of course.  The communists ‘stole from the rich and gave to the poor’.  Lenin, Malotov and Stalin before even Lenin murdered the Czar and the others killed the democratically elected leadership in Russia, were robbing banks and assassinating people.  This was a murderous gangster lot much like Mao in China.  Every communist socialist country to this day has had high death rates and poverty. The riches are made from taking them from the previous government.  It’s what Liberal governments are doing today but they’re stealing money from the children with creations of debt. It’s what Pierre Trudeau did in Canada and his son is doing now.  It’s a tried and proven rape and pillage tactic that began tens of thousands of yearss ago.  Warriors road across the tracks and stole the neighbours women’s and food.  

The famous statement ‘hide your potatoes’ came from Ireland because the English came across the water and stole everything so the Irish died of starvation en mass.

If someone is going to take what you make then you might as well not work.  So communist socialists countries run down simply because everyone sees there’s no reward. In capitalism the person who works more gets more.

However if you can’t get rewarded positively for good work then you learn to ‘hide your potatoes’.  This is the ‘black market’.

It’s estimated now in Canada that 50 to 75% of the economy is ‘underground’ because of the theft of government.  Government wants to redistribute wealth from the workers to those who are their friends.

In Canada in the health care system, which began as a ‘Medicare system’ paying for doctors, nurses and hospitals and equipment, has become a bloated cancerous burocacy with a whole bunch of half wit cousins of the Liberal party in positions of power with longer and longer waitlists and fewer and fewer people actually seeing patients and doing what was supposed to be ‘medical care’.  They ‘change’ the name of things.  This is what political correctness does.  

So in the DTES millions of dollars are voted for medical care and health care but instead we get ‘free crack pipes’

In the military medical care of veterans is given to murderers of policewomen. 

It’s so insane that psychiatrists like me said that the bars were on the windows of asylums to keep the world out.  We’re too sensitive for this lying cheating deceitful shit.  British Columbia after Quebec is the most criminal province in the world. It’s world renown for it’s 85 billion dollar pot industry and billions a year pass the border from China in fentanyl and heroin.  It’s a regular Los Vegas.  The Casinos are money laundering havens and the housing costs are so high normal people can’t afford to live here because international criminals, especially the gangsters and their families from Communist China have bought speculation property housing.

The Middle East is a gangster religion with the Tribal groups like aboriginals having economies based on jihad military and slave sales and any business goes with crime and corruption so bad that whole states are no go zones.  The persecution of Christians is rampant and gang rape is the normal. There is no peace except for the wealthy and the wealthy have got wealthy paying fortunes for protection.

The US is the most sought after nation , the ‘promised land’ where people from all over the world run to. They don’t run to Saudi or China or South Africa. They come to Capitalist countries because if you are an inventor and work, if you are a businessman and work and if you are a doctor and work you will be rewarded .  Taxes are low.  Costs are low.  People are rewarded for working. Those who work can have good lives and their children can have better. In Saudi Arabia and especially in communist countries there is little upward mobility.  Most of the world functions on who your father and mother were and which caste or tribe you belong to.  Education is reserved for the rich.  If you are a successful singer an agent will fund you and take all your income.  Here there is a chance for a successful singer to keep enough potatoes not only to thrive but to have their families thrive. 50% of millionaires in the states are self made in their own life times. That’s why it’s called the ‘land of opportunity’.  

There is a war now between the communists and capitalists, between the Liberals and Conservatives, between the ISIS and the Christians.  

The best song of our times for this was Leonard Cohen’s There is a war between the rich and the poor, a war between the man and the woman.

A friend just bought a house. I learned she never bought anything new. My brother never bought anything not on sale.  These are good people. They are discerning steady eddies. My present lack of a space ship isn’t because I’m ‘oppressed’ by the rich but because I’ve preferred spending my money on chocolate and television. I’ve wasted a whole lot of resources while the richest man I knew , the owner the mercantile bank of London, singleminded worked from childhood to amass wealth and own a London bank. He was ‘single minded’.  These guys are like General Patton. My grandfather, a Reece and Rancher wasn’t anything like the Kardasians. He lived and breathed cattle. I’ve spent my life doing medicine and psychiatry.  I’ve specialized.  Specialization depends on having potatoes.  I need protection and reward to do my job but don’t feel I have that here.  

God guide me today.     You know I’m ready to die.  I go to bed ready to die and wake up here. And here is great. I’m grateful for my dog and the cat who are alive and remind me I have to feed them and work to feed them.  I have to continue to build for the future. If I wake up tomorrow I’ll need food. I exercised some today. I meditated .I’m going to get out of the house which is very frightening. It’s very hard to leave this house and go out in the world where there’s kamikaze cars on the commute and all the angry entitled people and all the social justice warriors. Every woman looks at men like the English looked at the Irish. We’re peasants and oppressed by their sexuality and their sexual claims.

Is it 50% or more now that women claim sexual abuse/harrassment/rape. -it’s never clear what this is. Even the courts have a moving target. And daily ‘thou shalt not bear false witness’ is accepted by women in the workplace. I am today wondering if I could get a job in a male jail because it might be more safe but maybe some woman in my junior high school thought I sexually harrassed her and with a slick lawyer will come for my potatoes. I don’t know if I can keep anything because liars and criminals are so much more rewarded in CAnada than the workers and the actual soldiers who fought for this country and were wounded are being thrown under the bus by this government which doesn’t like doctors, and hates the educated, well what hope is their for me. I’m a bad tit.  But you woke me up today God and I’ll get going with my day.  It’s like invasion of the body snatchers out there. I’m truly terrified.  It’s so hard to get out of the room. But you woke. Me.  I’ll have a shower. i like hot showers and I’ll put on fresh clothes and I like my car so I’ll get in my car. I preferred trains but didn’t like being pick pocketed or looking down and seeing a knife at my ribs in public transit knowing that the government doesn’t protect me from criminals.  I’m afraid of all the violent dangerous gangs of men from other cultures who lie together and I’m getting old and can’t defend myself with running like I could as a kid and getting old in Canada is terrifying.

But I trust in you God.  PLease Lord be with me in all my endeavours , protect me and guide me and help me safely through this day.  Help me help others and protect me from those who want to kill doctors and nurses and hide their true intentions with smiles.  Help me not suicide today Lord. I know the government makes money off euthanasia and it wants me to kill myself . It’s minions have indicated as much. They want us old men , especially the old white men to die. They convinced the women to abort the babies. Now they want us to die.  Help me to live today. You woke me up.

Bless me like Joaz . Expand my territory.  Help me to Laugh like Borther Lawerence and be Like St. Patrick and see like St. John and take heart like St. George.  God be with me, in me, above me around me and help me to hear and see you always today. God is good all of the time.  

Positive Memory and a Broken Mind

I have to be active to retrieve positive memories.  My mind’s broken.  Left to it’s own devices it will tend to replay past trauma, old wars, resentments, failures.  It’s not surprising because those were by their nature times of threat and times that my mind had to focus most. In danger we are most alert. After danger passes my mind will tend to be scanning for future threats and reminding me of past dangers. I’ll also sometimes play scenarios again in search of whatever I might think I did that had I done differently would have resulted in a more positive outcome.
Meanwhile most of my life has been exceedingly positive. Every day I’m alive my life is 51% positive.  Yet trauma and failure have tendencies to blast aside the good days and the good experiences.
I had a Corolla. Amazing car. It was something I so enjoyed for it’s workmanship and maneuvering.  I loved the sound system. It was the days I played Steely Dan on the radio. Barbara Fromm was on CBC. Life was good. That little car had magnificent studded snow tires and for a year it carried me in summer and winter to and from my first country general practice.  It was a sweet car.  Yet a dangerous , horrible, incompetent, psychopathic driver hit that car passing in a lane, semi truck barreling towards us, I was doing the correct speed, the other fellow was speeding. The road conditions were black ice. He lost control of his car, hit the front end of mine causing me to barrel and burrow right into the ditch. The car flipped 360 degrees landing upright then rolling sideways 360 degrees and landing upright again.  The seat strap kept me in the car but because of the height of the car, made for Asian market I presumed, it didn’t keep me in my seat but allowed me to be crushed into the ceiling with my head tilted.  I had a cervical spine injury.  I gave the case to a friend to help him, a new lawyer, and he didn’t do so well, so that in the end, a year later, weeks of lost work and a life time of chronic pain and disability, I was severely punished by a psychopath speeding incompetent driver, a friend who was young like me, a tough insurance system. I got the replacement value of the brand new car and immediately bought a Ford Mustang which I truly loved.  But my life flashed before my eyes, It was a near death experience.  I was appalled at the price of the insurance and that in the end there was only punishment in the system for the victim. It changed my outlook on life and was a root cause in my changing my career, my marriage and might well have been an early root cause of the subsequent addiction year that really changed my life further a decade later.
So I don’t think of that car with the joy I can actively seek to remember.  With a little conscious probing I can remember the joy I had driving it. It would also be decades before I bought an Asian made car again.  I’m driving a Mini now, British,but with my head touching the ceiling. It’s got that same attention to detail the Toyota Corolla had. Marvelous workmanship.  But I could well have been driving it when the animal hit the front of my car and the criminal system didn’t castrate him there and then to insure his genetic strain was removed from the genome.
Being a civilized man I actually got out of my brutalized car which the insurance company subsequently insisted was just fine, no reason to be replaced,  never to be trustworthy in my mind again, a source of terror, a centre for ptsd images of life flashing before my eyes, but no , it drove so I should take it home as if nothing happened.  Assholes.  I’d love the ‘new car’ smell of that Corolla. I’d loved the faith I’d put in it. It was my first ‘new car’ as before that I’d only had second hand beaters.  So there was this insurance company insisting all was well and me remember every day for life that as I bounced off the ceiling of the car I thought that I knew no one who had survived a 360 forward turn and then when i rolled again over the ceiling my neck straining again, I thought I’ll never be the same because I don’t know people who survive such a crash.  It was a miracle. Everything about it was a miracle. But at the time I was surrounded by faithless friends who were caught up completely in their own life stories and were annoyed a bit by my ‘drama’.  “You crashed your car, what of it.” And some friend would then talk about a minor fender bender and the conversation would steer into a lot of oohing and aching about stuff people knew about , parking lot crashes and city bumps.  But even today I see that semi and feel that head over heels of the first smash on the roof the world coming round like a roller coaster and then the side ways rolling and the excruciating crunch of my body weight bent up against the ceiling, sustaining me because the strap didn’t hold me in the seat.
The other car was some young guys and girls , party animals in a big beater of an old boat , an Oldsmobile or something indestructible and it had just plowed me into the ditch and continued flat out across the prairie snow drifts.  Both cars would be a trial for tow trucks to get out. The deep snow cushioned the impact.
But when I see crashes on tv and watch the cars rolling, I rarely see something as intense as my own. It’s why I liked the Diesel XXX movies and Fast and Furious. The stunt men really owned their keep.  But I’m not a stunt driver. I was dressed in a suit and survived because the Toyota was such a strongly built car and the seat belt held me. If I was 2 inches shorter I’d not have crunched my neck.  But I survived.  I lived .
My mind is like that.  I was married a few times.  I sometimes have whisps of memories of those glorious days of love and roses, the ultimate romances, the extraorinary, love and lust, the close talks at dusk and dawn, the hours of fun together, the years of best friend relationships, the pride of having a partner so extraordinary in so many ways, beautiful, accomplished, brilliant, confident, successful, admired, and to have them with you, to be able to trust them, to do things together and be so intimate.  Years of that connection. The separation and divorces in my cases seemed to happen over the last year. The negative outweighed the positives. We part and then the courts and the lawyers and the government and friends and counselors and society just makes it all so much uglier.  And the loss is like an explosion dropped into the memory bank. It wipes out the whole amazing love story of two people who felt no other was the ‘one’, who felt they’d found their ‘soul mate’ and lived with love and carefree for years, amazingly, only to find that the indestructible thing of perfection wasn’t up to the task.
Now passively the wounds come back.  I can see the one judge who was as disgusting pig of a man studying my ex’s exposed cleavage and black lace hooker stockings that day of the divorce when her own lawyer looked more like a whore with her buttons undone and cleavage exposed.  I remember that and how later when I talked to other lawyers they told me she would have jockeyed for just that judge because he was such a perverted pig and a real disgusting womanizer in his personal life, a mommy’s boy, with a little dick and a need to win women and a history of consecutively finding against men in all divorce and custody cases because he’s such a loser.  Backstabbing psychopath.  That little weasel jumps right into my passive memory.  Especially learning about him from the lawyers and learning that there’s still a pedophile judge missing and me thinking it’s got to be him because he was such a type, but really, was he.  Yes, he was a 13 year old boy who had a big position and abused it and feared men and treated women as whores but.....and here’s the but...I’ve been divorced three times, 23 years of marriage, two decades of loving the enemy, providing and protecting for all that time and 90% of it was really good for ‘us’ but I left.  I walked out on two while she walked out on one. But the important thing was there three judges and only one was a smegma. The other two were saints. Amazing considerate gentlemen with genius and wisdom and love and care who ended the marriages with the least fan fare. True I was never one to ask for anything except my life back so I walked out without anything essentially, dividing the assets of one house and giving another away but the key is that I don’t dwell on these ‘gentlemen’.  They didn’t look at the women like they were meat and they didn’t talk to me like I was a fool. They were mensch.  They were Skookum men.
My mind passively drifts to the ugly little piece of stinky dog tourd. There is if I am ‘active’ about my memory these two great men who made a bad situation less bad. These two great men did their tough job with kindness and care.
I used to have a resentment against my mother for a thing she did when I was a teen. It wasn’t anything really but I was pimple faced and awkward and tended to be ‘sensitive’ in adolescence. I expect I’m the only such teen of that kind. I had attitude and Mom wasn’t always ‘tolerant’ and ‘enlightened’ about how she should talk to an asshole kid. So we had words and I held this resentment against her.  My mom is a saint. I can go on and on about the accomplishments of my parents which include not killing me but my mind used to go to that argument instead of to the times she held me as a child when I came to her afraid. I remember that now. The adolescent ‘bomb’ memory concealed the feeling of her taking me in her arms and holding me when I was hurt child. I can feel that today.  It was the work of therapy and doing a 12th step that brought home the insanity of the mind and how ‘selective bias’ worked in the brain.
My mind is broken.  I can fix it by remember that it’s going to lie to me about my life and the relationships I had and the people I knew.  I’m blessed and I have to actively remember the truth about my life.  The Toyota Corolla is an awesome car.  I’ve driven more than a half century on on kinds of roads with all kinds of other drivers around, in cars, trucks and on motorcycles.  I drive a lot. I’ve driven desserts and freeways, and across tundra and off road and on road.  So 99.9% of the time the other drivers are incredible. I’ve had a few accidents but statistically I drive about 10x as much as every one I know and I’ve driven in worse conditions and in different countries with a whole lot of my own and rental equipment.  So statistically, and in reality, other drivers are by and large amazing, and the very vast majority actually do have the intelligence to have figured out how to use the ‘turn’ signal for changing lanes.
But I have a broken mind and most people would know my descriptors of the one driver in the morning commute whose causing the traffic jam that day, one driver out of thousands.
Just saying.
I have to be ‘active’ and make my memory remember ‘truly’ and avoid the ‘emotional memory’ of ‘selective bias’ that suffers from such inaccuracy and causes me to have a skewed view of reality.  My life is blessed. I’m really thankful for all the people I’ve known and all the machines I’ve driven.
Thank you.

Caribou Road Fellowship Church

It’s been hard with summer to get to church, especially to drive downtown Vancouver when I’m feeling the strain of weekly commuting as it is.  I’m more of a winter church goer anyways.
But this weekend Laura and I decided to go to the Caribou Road Fellowship Church a few blocks away. We missed the god kids and left Gilbert to guard the home.  The church itself was really welcoming. I’ve seen in passing that there were always a whole lot of cars in their large parking area.
Inside they had a Third Day type rock band with music that moved Laura and me.  I loved that they played the hit song with the memorable line, “there may be pain in the night but joy comes in the morning’.
The pastor with what sounded like a New Zealand accent had chosen to address “Suffering’ using the old testament book, Job, as the basis of his sermon.  I whispered to Laura that “Job is the least taught book in the church”.   Working as a physician it’s been my bread and butter and frankly I’ve liked a collage of Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer and Emmett Fox's ideas.  I even studied the topic of Suffering at Regent college where the academic presentation was fairly thin soup.   However the discussion was redemptive.  In attendance there’d been an ICU Nurse, a  military OR nurse, and a couple of psychiatrists.  Our after class discussions as ‘front line’ Christians made up for the ‘academic’ presentation.
Job is from the Jewish Bible, writing thousands of years old.  The pastor today did a marvellous job of selecting New Testament Christian passages to help with the understanding of this most troubling subject.  It was really very intriguing and insightful.  I was uplifted by an otherwise difficult discussion.  Mostly I was impressed with his willingness and the congregations appreciation of a sermon that actually tackled Job and addressed the essence of the Christian message as it built on the most profound of Jewish theology.
I was also impressed that they had a Friday evening service for Recovery.   I like churches that embrace recovery and see addiction in terms of spiritual bankruptcy.  
More music followed.  Invitations for coffee were proffered.  They have a lovely facility and it’s had a recent extension.  We had Gilbert and sunshine outdoors waiting so headed home.
It was a lovely church experience and we'd gladly return.
 

Changi Museum and Chapel - Singapore

I've been honoured to meet WWII soldiers who fought the Japanese in Asia.  I have even been honoured to have personally met those who were interred in this infamous Changi Prison. In my work with Veterans Affairs Canada I heard the stories of several vets, one who  had been tortured horribly tortured in Changi.   King Rat, the James Clavell novel, was written about Changi Prison.
The British garrison at Singapore was made up of Australians, English, East Indians and local Malay.  Some Canadians were there too.  The Japanese were particularly brutal to the Chinese.  The museum was well organized and set up.  Both disturbing and uplifting I couldn't help but remember the man who I'd seen who said he'd found Jesus as a prisoner of the Japanese.  There were pictures of the camps and the POWs, with notes and even the makings of an illegal radio used to hear the BBC.  Women were incarcerated there too and quilted. The quilts were a way for them to get their names out so someone knew they were still alive.  Only a few of the quilts remain today.  
I had the audio tour machine which was keyed by number to different exhibits. Listening, I heard the actual recordings of those who'd survived, as I looked at evidence of the horros they'd lived through.  These were amazing men and women told their own story in their own words.  Tears flowed down my cheeks as I looked and listened.  All manner of things were made in the prison, tin boxes, crosses, shoes, etc.  People just got by.  All were starving.
The chapels was especially inspiring. A man dying of malaria had painted the story of Christ's birth and resurrection.  One painting done for the chapel wall by this fellow, who miraculously survived, showed Jesus on the cross with the words , Forgive them for they know not what they do.

I prayed alone there for all the men and women who survived and died.
I was particularly disturbed though by a Japanese exhibit of paper foldings for a girl with leukaemia there in the chapel.  It had supposedly been donated to the Changi Prison exhibit for 'peace'.   These gaudy loud paper strings were all over the altar and the chapel.  I couldn't help but think it was evidence of the  Japanese becoming again violent and intrusive with no respect for others.
I thought of the Japanese shrine at Suicide Cliff in Saipan. The Japanese had killed themselves rather than be captured, believing that allies would treat their prisoners as they'd treated theirs.  I wondered how they'd feel if put up a Daffy Duck there, so   one could rub his belly  for luck.  I wonder what the Jews would think if the Germans put up signs in Auschwitz celebrating German superstitions.  I'd just read Tom Clancy's, Debt of Honor ,about the Japanese again attacking their neighbours, while claiming they were victims.  Well here they were in Changi Chapel bullying their way into the limelight just as Clancy had feared.
I couldn't think any of the survivors, no matter how tolerant they are, the Chinese especially, or the gentle East Indians, the Christian Brits and the camaraderie Aussies,  would be if they recognized the political arrogance made in this supposedly innocent 'gesture'.  The rewriting of history is diabolical and insidious.  I understand seeing this Japanese affront to the memories of the dead, the message of Remembrance Day "lest we forget".  It won't be long before the Nazis and Japanese Imperialists have everyone believing that they were the victims. No surprise nations do as humans do.  We like to whitewash those places in history where we misbehaved badly.   I just  wish people would someday learn not to shit where they eat.
I love that the world is getting along and we're all forgiving each other. Peace is wonderful. I was part of an organization of doctors who got the Nobel Prize for our work on peace and against nuclear war.  I just think that Heavy Metal bands don't belong in the Library and that silly Japanese sentimentalism has no place in the chapel of soldiers who died or survived the most brutal of torture.
I loved most the picture of "Two Malarias and a Cholera". It's Australian POW Ray Parker that painted this after begging the Japanese to let him help the worst men back from the work camp. Finally the commandant agreed to allow the sick to help the sick.  2 men with malaria tried carrying their worse off mate with cholera back to the camp. The three of them fell over until eventually a stretcher party brought back the cholera victim.
The Japanese policy was to let the soldiers have 2 weeks of "fun" when they took over a town.  The killings, rape, and bedlam terrorized the survivors. Then they'd restore strict order. The women were violated repeatedly. One exhibit was of the girls who, all virgins, had been put to work as prostitutes for the Japanese army.
The happiest saddest picture was of a British soldier and his wife who had been interred in separate camps but survived and were reunited.  So many people died of the cruelty.
The paintings done in the chapel had been painted over and found when someone noticed the colour when this overlay of paint chipped away. A search then began for the painter who was eventually found. He was involved in the restoration though died during this process.
Even now I have tears thinking of those people who rise above the terrors and sorrow. Victor Frankl, psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, spoke to this.  I struggle some days with my own little burdens but these men and women have raised the bar and show us what is possible. I want to love and endure as they have, with faith and perseverance.
I"m so thankful for the opportunity to have known some of those.  I'm so  grateful to have been able to come to this wonderful chapel and museum.
The staff were so helpful. I loved the gift shop to with books there of the history of Changi.  There was  artwork too of those who turned to art to deal with the pain and suffering.  It was amazing to see what those who survived had  accomplished after this horror.  All things are possible in God's world.
(They didn't allow photographing in the museum. I took a picture of the cross that was made

Spirituality and Sensuality

There is a fine line between living a spiritual and a sensual life. Clearly if God thought humanity was wholly awful the holy would not inhabit the profane as did Jesus. Further if the light were less than the darkness it would not be able to cast out light.
Jesus appears to have lived and loved being in this body despite the tendency of some to see only the 'suffering of the cross' rather than appreciate the childhood, work, friendships, weddings and suppers. Clearly most Christians 'believe' Jesus was 'celibate' but the fact remains 'erotica' and 'pornography' were not part of the 'tale'. The Essenes, the sect with which John the Baptist was thought to have been associated knew celibacy but the traditional Jewish wisdom said "a man without a woman is not a man'. It wasn't surprising to think that Jesus and Mary were 'romantically' attracted and perhaps were it not for the Romans the young carpenters son might have married and had children. However it would be wrong to think they had an illicit relationship as some have suggested. Jesus was truthful and would not have committed adultery and maintained the respect of his community. Indeed he said a person's 'thoughts' could be a sexual transgression in a day when only 'actions' were held to be accountable. Yet he did not talk about sex in detail.
His 'mission' in contrast to St. Paul's emphasized wholly different matters than the 'sexual'. St. Paul on the other hand and St. Peter actually argued over genital mutilation. The divisions in the 'church' were present from the earliest, not just with Judas. In the history of Christianity there have been those like the early church father Origen who castrated himself to avoid sexual thoughts. Women in contrast never were terribly discouraged from ribald thinking by the church. They were supposed to be fecund with their husbands but as to whether they physically enjoyed sex and sensuality was a different matter.
The church was full of gluttons. Fat ladies and fat old men were a part of all churches that I've ever been in and fat is the external expression of gluttony no diffent than bastards were an external expression of adultery. Yet this 'excess' of sensuality was tolerated as was 'avarice' .
Jesus spoke directly about the rich man not getting into heaven. Yet the church is full of wealthy people who don't see a need to give away their wealth yet might expect their gluttonous friend to forego a second helping. They certainly would frown on their neighbours mistress but would remain 'mum' if their wealth involved some 'shady' or 'clever' business practice. Jesus talked a lot more about material acquisition and fear than he did about sensuality.
Yet there was a long debate in the church whether Jesus was God, or half god half man, or whether his flesh was real flesh or sacred flesh. There's been those who rejected all 'pleasure' and 'scourged themselves' in the early Desert Father movements. Some spiritual people feel guilty about enjoying 'the taste of food'. They acknowledge they must eat but 'enjoying the taste' is unspiritual.
The same was true of sex, making babies was necessary and unavoidable but should one enjoy it. No doubt some of the quickness and lack of sensuality in the 'wham bang thank you ma'am' scenario came from this 'defecatory' approach to matters sensual. Spirituality is about matters of the sense but love appears distinguished from 'lust', enjoyment of a fine meal from hoarding food and stuffing twinkles in the wee hours of the night.
Addiction theories are principally concerned with what is 'healthy' and what is 'unhealthy' in behaviours where sensuality is so obsessively indulged as the spiritual is lost. C.S. Lewis cautioned us not to look for the Architect in the wall of the building. To this end a whole movement of Christian gentility and yuppies in the 30's to 90's felt the whole idea was 'balance' and 'moderation'. This 'middle road' approach was aimed at much as the hedonists and epicureans had countered the tenets of the stoics in their 'attitudes' to this 'world'. One was to be in the world but not of the world.
I listen to Christian shows and read Christian and spiritual writings and this is commonly at the centre of modern day discussion though often the participants seem unaware that such discussions predated Christ and were certainly a major concern in the church. The nature of Jesus is a whole area of study because clearly a half man, half god would make Jesus something akin to the Greek godmen half animal half human chimera creatures. Not at all what Jesus was, so what was he. And how can we become homo spiritus without losing 'homo sapiens' or are we indeed to leave the 'homo sapiens'behind. Why then would St. Francis refer to his body in old age affectionately as 'Brother Ass'.  There are those whose 'holiness' is a 'hot house' plant and they seem to have 'left this world' when I wonder what if God has given this world to us to live in as Adam and Eve but not to be lost in as the Tower of Babble story suggests. Certainly we don't want to be living as they did before Noah. But what was that?
 Redemption speaks to this as well. But the Spiritual and Sensual are not opposites as the some religionists would have us believe. In Celtic Christianity the world is "Gods Creation' as are we. But always in the background I see the beautiful picture by Rembrandt of the Prodigal Son. I wonder what picture Rembrandt would paint if there had been a Podigal Daughter story in the Bible.

Authority of God

"God is good, all of the time" is a fine gospel song. The Gospel mean 'good news'.  "Jesus saves".  "Trust in God".
Yet how come there is suffering?  There is much Christian apologia for 'suffering'.
- Various theories abound - eg - This is not the real world.  This is the material world. The spiritual world is the real world. When we awake we will look at the 'suffering' of this brief finite lifetime as nothing compared to 'infinite glory'.  Heaven makes right the hell of earth in this scenario.  I am a caterpillar now and when I die I enter a cocoon and become a butterfly.
But what about the suffereing?  How come there are earthquakes and tsunamis.
- Various theories abound.  The earth is a complex playground. Each soul has a purpose.  My purpose might be to not lie whereas another person's purpose might be to not steal.  Each person has a unique test. The eastern maya reincarnation theory says that we all are living according to karma and if I kill in this life I will return and be killed.  That's sort of satisfying. As I'm dying I can think the guy who killed me will get his.  These fixed cataclysmic events just are.
What about the person who dies as a young man versus the person who dies as an old man.  The young man doesn't have nearly as much opportunity to be bad as the old man who lives longer. The young can be trained and idealistic and die young and get rewarded by heaven. The good die young.  If God is good all the time then why wouldn't the old man get to die young and go to heaven rather than living long and screwing up on his 107th birthday cursing God.  Supposedly longer life means more time to atone for past sins.  Catholics have given this alot of thought and some old time nuns are quite explicit on these matters. Purgatory seems a solution.  This earthly place is just one of the 'cleansing' places where we can work out our sinfulness and be saved from heaven.  Purgatory may be below or above earth depending on perspective.
The real question is how to explain Ghaddafi?  Jesus said "Forgive them for they know not what they do."  Bad leaders in this sense were no different from earthquakes.
THe first thing is for me not to think that Bill Gates or Ghaddaffi or Obama or Sandra Bullock or Ralf Lauren has it 'better' than me.  I'm not supposed to compare myself to others because I don't know their insides or really their outsides.  Right now I think Mr. Rothschild or Mr. Buffet have it better than me.  That's because I don't know what  is the complexity of their lives.  When we actually get to know people in more depth we find out that the rich and famous and powerful have their own foibles, fears and obligations.  It looked like a good deal being a tyrant but tyrants have all these people trying to topple them.  I don't have to worry about having a food taster for instance.  Imagine being wealthy and powerful and not knowing who to trust.  I couldn't leave my cat and dog with a friend for fear they'd steal them.  My doctor might be bought. It looks good having the money and power but it's not free.  So my tendency is to think that others have it better than me and God creates this 'injustice'.  Yet as all artists know the bankers are generally incapable of experiencing true art because they lack the sensitivity.  Killers grow cold and can't love children or experience the love of children.  The movies show us a flick of the mafia without getting to the insides where the person 's emotional life is flat and depressed.  They have the gang bosses seeing psychiatrists but no psychiatrist can help the Hitler's of the world.
God is good all the time.  The Mishna says that God is responsible for good and evil. The story of Job is that there is no dualism.  God is greater than the devil.  There is only one Creator and the Creator creates all.  Those who have satanic force that's as powerful as Christ miss the message.
It's always easy to imagine the ruling forces as idiots and evil.  That's the angry child scenario.  Certainly there seems to be despots but does this perspective help me, personally. The media portrays this always.  It certainly sells books and magazines.  It's equally possible that the world is run by a benign dictatorship and that they're working for the best for everyone in the long run.  I have a lot of polly anna ideas but maybe civilization is just progressing with various strong men and strong women putting forward their best agenda for what's best.
God is said to have 'inspired' the Bible.  Similiarly my Christian friend believes that God 'inspires' the world leaders.  He would have thought overall that God was influences Hitler and Nero and today Ghaddaffi, reducing those tyrant's potential for violence.  Without God's albeit weak influence maybe Hitler would have killed 'all' the jews and 'all' the gays and 'all' the mentally ill.  Thanks to God his plot was vanguished.
There can be no appreciation of happiness without sadness.  Without pain there is a bland existence.  The convolutions of life give it's character.
The key seems to be 'trust' and 'faith' and 'love' rather than being in a state of 'fear'.  Certainly those who believe that we're really in 'good hands' and ultimately a good God is in charge do best in the long run. They seem to have better lives even if they are characterized at times as 'happy cabbages' and 'stupidly' 'spiritual'.
God is good, all of the time.  It's okay God's in charge.  Right.