Cancer Journal # 57 Nov 11

 I promised more on Ross Douthat.  I'll start from an odd point.  When I first got saved, I had the very definite idea that I must not sit off to the side and watch what was going on.  I had to be sure to be doing what was going on.  Since, at the time, we were full flower Charismatic at our church, that meant that I did some pretty bizarre stuff.  Praying quite loudly, singing spontaneous melodies in tongues meaning that I sang words I had not formed in my mind through any natural process and whose meaning I did not know. I would go forward whenever there was some kind of prayer request.  Other stuff too.  My natural tendency would have been to sit back and make a critical assessment.  I was caused to know that if I were to do that, I would be drinking poison.  I would have gone outsider when what I needed to do was be inside.  I always had been sort of an outsider anyway and I really was with these folks.  I was a professional, an Administrative Law Judge and these people were a bunch of holy rollers that I had about nothing in common with.  Nonetheless, I put myself right in the middle of things.

Ross Douthat's parents became Charismatic Christians while he was growing up*.  He was there by their choice, not his.  I think he admitted as much but it might be my simply deducing that he watched what was going on and did not put himself in the middle of it.  I can hardly blame him.  An adolescent kid in church with the grown-ups doing some very strange things.  What kid is going to want to get in the middle of that?  But, at least from my point of view, it wasn't good.  He assessed.  He did not do.  There's a big difference between sitting by the side of the pool watching all the splashing frolic and actually being in the pool, all wet, doing the splashing.  However much you enjoy watching all the fun going on in the pool, the place to be is in the pool, not outside, dry and looking on.

Over the years, I have read Douthat make very astute evaluations about Christianity.  I think he has positive feelings about the Charismatic church he was raised in.  But those feelings were those of an evaluator, a wise assessor.  He should have been doing.  I say all this to say that the terrible time he has has with Lyme Disease may well have served a spiritual purpose.  I listened to a podcast with Andrew Sullivan and Douthat talking about the ordeal with the disease.  In it, Sullivan asked him about his prayers during this time.  His answer was that they were very frequent and that all they were were "Help!".   Shame on me for doing an evaluation but that sounds like someone who has made it into the pool and is splashing around.  You might say it takes a very harsh god to put someone through such a terrible time just so that they will get in the pool.  I say that if you weigh into your evaluation, the eternal consequence, it's trivial.  The Apostle Paul spoke of "this light affliction" as it related to "the eternal weight of glory".  I see that as simply the right, right way of looking at any terrible time we might go through.  

This didn't have much to do with alternate versus standard medicine but I wanted to get it said.

*If you were to google "First Things" and "Grace" you will get an article that Douthat's mother (her name is Patricia Snow) wrote about the ministering lady that got them involved in Charismatic church.  It's a really good article that I encourage you to read.  First Things magazine threatens a paywall that did not stop me from finishing the article I read.  I believe there were more articles about this Grace written by his mother.  At some point, the paywall will stop you from reading them, I suppose.  Don't know where that point is.  The problem can be solved by subscribing, of course.  Years ago, I did subscribe to First Things.  I stopped when I found them too overtly Christian Right political.  You might say that they had abandoned the  First Things.  Perhaps that is not fair.