A WORD TO THE WISE: mental illness

Friday, October 21, 2016

NAME THE DEMON

On the far side of the sea of Galilee, someone (or something) was waiting for Jesus.

The man ran around naked. He slept outside in the graveyard. They had arrested him, but he snapped the cuffs and escaped. He’d been institutionalized, but he broke out. Day and night he ran through the village and the countryside screaming unintelligibly. No one could contain him, and everyone was afraid of him.

In the Middle East of the first century, there was no Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The entire Biblical vocabulary for mental illness is versions of mad, lunatic, demoniac, and possessed. Using the terminology of the day, Mark observed that the man who greeted Jesus was clearly afflicted “with an unclean spirit” (Mark 5:3), which was the 1^st century version of “That dude is crazy.”

This was neither the first nor the last demon-possessed person Jesus encountered (Mark 1:34, Mark 1:39, Mark 7:26, Mark 16:9, etc.). But, in this case, Jesus did something unusual.

Initially, Jesus simply commanded the demon to come out of the man, but the unclean spirit protested. The Lord responded by asking the demon for information about itself.

Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

And the possessed man answered, saying, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” (Mark 5:9)

Jesus then sent the demon out of the man and into a nearby herd of pigs.

Jesus demonstrated that generic techniques don’t work in every case. Sometimes, to fix the crazy, you have to name the demon.

I know married couples who spent years in vicious conflict over insignificant household issues. Neither understood why the other couldn’t understand how insane their position is. The angry call and response of their marital strife seemed directed toward divorce until somebody named the demon.

What actually WAS wrong? Why WAS this such a big deal? What anxiety, neurosis, or memory did this trigger; and what was behind that? Once the couple knew the cause and how it operated, they were able to confront and exorcise craziness that was tearing apart their home.

As my friend Tony Ares says, “Hurt people hurt people,” and sometimes they can’t stop because they haven’t told the people around them the truth about who damaged them and how. They can’t heal until they name their demon.

People with addictions and mental illnesses get worse until they get treatment, and generic treatments for “people with problems” won’t help folks with serious conditions. Somebody has to assess each client and give an accurate diagnosis. Somebody has to engage and find out every demon’s name.

Communities plagued by generations of crime, disintegrating families, and impotent church culture display the collective symptoms of a special kind of crazy. Arrests don’t fix it. Imprisonment doesn’t deter it. It screams through the streets. It cries out in the night. People destroy others and themselves. They can’t tame it, and everyone is afraid. The downward spiral will continue and accelerate until each community correctly identifies the problem. I mean problems.

“My name is Legion; for we are many.”

There might be multiple related and independent traumas. A person may have co-occurring conditions. A distressed community must confront multiple systemic sources of oppression and degradation. They, you, and ya’ll are probably many different kinds of crazy at the same time.

Name it.

However ugly it was, name it.

However guilty you feel about it, name it.

Even if it’s partly what you did to yourselves, name it.

And accept the help God makes available to deal with it.

The man infested by a Legion of problem didn’t wait until he was having a good day to run to Jesus. He didn’t wait for a properly trained advocate or a democratically representative to make an appointment on his behalf. Don’t wait for a right time or the right moment. Run to help now.

---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

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Friday, September 18, 2015

ALL I NEED IS A SCREWDRIVER AND A PRAYER

Dr. Who and his Sonic Screwdriver

Last week my laptop crashed.

I don’t think you understand.

MY LAPTOP------ crashed!

Imagine that you came home and a room in your house had burned down. Not the whole house, just one room. But that room contained all of the work you’d done for the last 6 years: your resume, your references, transcripts, certificates, all your sermons, all your blogs, all 3 versions of that book manuscript, chapter sketches and drafts for the other 30 incomplete manuscripts, the poems, the curriculum outlines, church reports, agency files for two different non-profits, the presentations, the…. AHH LAWD, MY LAPTOP DIED!

But O.K. I can handle this. I was a computer science major for two semesters. I’ll figure it out.

I pulled out my and phone and started following the threads on tech forums. I watched the youtube videos. I learned how to throw my computer into start-up mode, access the bios, and check boot priority settings. I spent a week studying LAN, WAN, HDD, and PXE-ROM troubleshooting.

Psshhh. That stuff didn’t work.

AHH LAWD! MY LAPTOP!

The only technique that worked was when I texted my wife and asked her to pray for my laptop. LOL. I’m not joking.

When Sheila prayed, my computer loaded and worked just fine. The only reason I’m not curled fetally in the cold corner of a mental hospital is that I used those windows of functionality to back up my files.

So, the first thing I learned from this ordeal is that God likes my wife more than He likes me. (1 Peter 3:7)

Ultimately I had to admit incompetence and take my computer to Best Buy. “David” at the Geek Squad kiosk looked intently at the repeating error message on the DOS screen and declared, “Let’s open it up and see what we got.”

Now I expected David to scan my hard drive, perhaps compare circuit connection to a schematic on his ipad, perform a remote diagnostic, recite a bunch of acronyms and physics terms, and then ship my laptop off to Seattle for Bill Gates's nephew to reprogram.

But what David said was, “Oh, I see the problem. The screws on your hard drive are loose.”

Silence. Eyes squint. Head cocks slightly. Lean over the counter to look at the upturned piece of technology that’s essential to my working life.

Yep. Those are screws. Yep. They’re clearly loose.

20 seconds later my hard drive is whirring and the Windows 10 icon appears out of the blackness.

A week of self-taught computer tech training and the problem was fixed ---- with a screwdriver.

Two points:

1^st Point. The problem you’ve been crying out to God for may have a very simple solution, but you can’t find it until you confess your inability to fix it yourself and open up to the right person.

Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. (James 5: 16)

Scripture tells us to confess our troubles to righteous (spiritually mature and trustworthy) Christians. But not for forgiveness. Forgiveness comes from God. You “confess your trespasses to one another”so you can “pray for one another” and God can show you the solution (healing).

I was praying over my laptop before I called my wife, but when the Board was meeting in a couple of hours, and the reports were behind that blank screen; I had to admit that the preacher’s prayers weren’t hitting hard enough. I needed prayer support.

There’s a problem you’re facing, and your prayers aren’t hitting hard enough. Find a righteous (spiritually mature and trustworthy) man or woman and open up so you can pray for one another.

Also, do you remember the story of the first Christian evangelist to the region west of the Sea of Galilee?

Jesus said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you.” And he departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him; and all marveled. (Mark 5: 19, 20)

Maybe you’ll remember the story by another name. He was the man possessed by a “Legion” of demons (Mark 5: 1-20).

Jesus hadn’t come looking for him. He went and found Jesus. He cried out to Jesus while he was in the midst of a thousand different kind of crazy, and Jesus healed him. Once he was in his right mind, he sat at Jesus’ feet learning the gospel (verse 15). And then, only then, he was in a condition to talk to the Lord about his calling (verse 18).

Final Point. Whether you’re a computer or a choir director, a preacher or a parent; no matter how smart, popular, or anointed you are, your stuff’s not gonna work right if you’ve got a few screws loose.

Get some help.