Subject:  A God that Cuts People's Throat |
Author:
Eugene
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Date Posted: 10:38:09 01/25/03 Sat
In reply to:
Arnold
's message, "Re: one question" on 01:29:48 01/25/03 Sat
To me, Arnold's points are right on. I don't think I can add anything to it theologically.
Psychologically, here's an excerpt from Dr. M. Scott Peck's book, "The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth". He is not a Christian author, but rather a practicing psychiatrist....
".... Stewart, a successful industrial engineer, became severely depressed in his mid-fifties. Despite his success at work and the fact that he had been an exemplary husband and father, he felt worthless and evil. 'The world would be a better place if I were dead," he said. And meant it. Stewart had made two extremely serious suicide attempts. No amount of realistic reassurance could interrupt the unrealism of his worthless self-image. As well as the usual symptoms of a severe depression, such as insomnia and agitation, Stewart also suffered great difficulty in swallowing his food. 'It's not just that the food tastes bad,' he said, 'That too. But it's as if there's a blade of steel stuck straight in my throat and nothing but liquid can get by it.' Special X-rays and tests failed to reveal a physical cause for his difficulty. Stewart made no bones about his religion. 'I'm an atheist, plain and simple,' he stated. 'I'm a scientist. The only things I believe in are those things you can see and touch. Maybe I'd be better off if I had some kind of faith in a sweet and loving God, but, frankly, I can't stomach that kind of crap. I had enough of it when I was a child and I'm glad I've gotten away from it.' Stewart had grown up in a small Midwestern community, the son of a rigid fundamentalist preacher and his equally rigid and fundamentalist wife, and had left home and church at the first opportunity.
Several months after he entered treatment Stewart recounted the following brief dream: 'It was back in my childhood home in Minnesota. It was like I was still living there as a child, yet I also knew I was the same age as I am now. It was nighttime. A man had entered the house. He was going to cut our throats. I had never seen this man before, but strangely I knew who he was: the father of a girl I had dated a couple of times in high school. That was all. There was no conclusion. I just woke up fearful, knowing that this man wanted to cut our throats.'
I asked Stewart to tell me everything he could about this man in his dream. 'There's really nothing I can tell you,' he said, 'I never met the man. I only dated his daughter a couple of times -- not really dates, just walking her home to her door after church youth group meetings. I did steal a kiss from her in the dark behind some bushes on one of those walks.' Here Stewart gave a little nervous laugh and went on, 'In my dream I had the sense I'd never seen her father, although I knew who he was. Actually, in real life I did see him -- from a distance. He was the stationmaster for our town. Occasionally I would see him when I used to go to the station and watch the trains come in on summer afternoons.'
Something clicked in my mind. I too as a child had spent lazy summer afternoons watching the trains go by. The train station was where the action was. And the stationmaster was the Director of Action. He knew the distant places from which the great trains were coming to touch our little town and the faraway places to which they were going. He knew which trains would stop and which would roar through, shaking the earth as they went. He worked the switches, the signals. He received the mail and sent it off. And when he was not doing these wonderful things he sat in his office doing something more wonderful: tapping on a magical little key in a mysterious rhythmical language, sending messages out to the whole world.
'Stewart,' I said, 'you have told me that you're an atheist, and I believe you. There is a part of your mind that believes there is no God. But I am beginning to suspect that there is another part of your mind that does believe in God -- a dangerous, cutthroat God.'
Taken too much time typing -- I am a terrible typist. More on the story next time....
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