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Sunday, May 20, 2012 11:28pm

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On My Book Shelf

  • Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus — Spangler & Taverberg
  • The Misunderstood Jew
    — Amy-Jill Levine
  • More than Conquerors
    — William Hendriksen
  • Where Is God When It Hurts
    — Philip Yancy
  • The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot
    — Herbert Krosney
  • The Gospel of Judas
    — Kasser, Meyer, and Wurst
  • A New Kind of Christian
    — Brian McLaren
  • The Parables of Jesus
    — Joachim Jeremias
  • God Was Here and I was Out to Lunch — James Moore
  • The Way for all Seasons
    — William Tuck
  • The Romance of the Word
    — Robert Capon
  • A Philosopher's Way
    — Elton Trueblood
  • Some Folks Feel the Rain Others Just Get wet — James Moore
  • Night
    — Elie Wiesel
  • To See a World in a Grain of Sand — Caesar Johnson
  • Who Moved My Cheese?
    — Spencer Johnson, MD
  • The Language of God
    — Francis Collins
  • Fingerprints of God
    — Barbara Hagerty
  • Only A Theory
    — Kenneth Miller
  • Founding Brothers
    — Joseph Ellis
  • Six Thousand Years of Bread
    — H. E. Jacob
  • 1421 The Year China Discovered America — Gavin Menzies
  • Cold Friday
    — Whittaker Chambers
  • Die Broke
    — Pollan & Levine
  • One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko — Mike Royko
  • The Constitution of the United States — James Mussatti
  • April 1865
    — Jay Wink
  • Children of Alcoholism
    — Seixas & Youcha
  • Why New Orleans Matters
    — Tom Piazza
  • Connections
    — James Burke
  • The Civil War
    — Ward, Burns & Burns
  • The Great Inventions
    — Ralph Stein
  • All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
    — Robert Fulghum
  • Cheap — the High Cost of Discount Culture
    — Ellen Shell
  • Indian Givers
    — Jack Weatherford






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"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."
Albert Schweitzer


"Love is a symbol of eternity.  It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end."
Author Unknown


"A bell is no bell
'til you ring it,
A song is no song
'til you sing it,
And love in your heart
Wasnít put there to stay –
Love isn't love
'Til you give it away."
Oscar Hammerstein
Sound of Music


"Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. "
Kahlil Gibran


"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."
Eric Fromm


"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."
Victor Hugo





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Inclusion Body Myositis  –  Where Is God When It Hurts

Responding to a rare disease

I have a rare autoimmune disease called Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM) which is very slowly destroying the muscles of my body. As a result I become weaker with each passing day. Diabetes also is taking its toll.

It would be easy to rant and ask "Why me," but I came to the conclusion many years ago that if I ask "Why me," the question that may really be on my mind is, "Why not someone else." For it is fairly certain I would not be much concerned if someone else other than a close friend or relative developed IBM. So the question I ask is, "Why not me?" Some have told me that this is unselfish or magnanimous on my part. Believe me, I am neither. It is for one very simple reason: it's the only question I can live with. If someone else can become disabled, why not me? I don't ever remember getting angry about someone else becoming disabled, so I do not see how it would serve any useful purpose for me to get angry about my own disability. Anger is self destructive and keeps one from seeing a proper course of action in dealing with any given situation. By not becoming angry I have one less problem to deal with.

To ask why is to insinuate that someone or something is to blame. One person asked me why I thought God had done this to me, implying, I guess, that I had done something "wrong." I find the very idea repugnant. To suggest that God inflicts pain and suffering on some and not others is to imply that God is capricious and tyrannical. As St. Augustine suggests, we may not know what God is, but we certainly can know what God is not. And if I know anything for certain, he is neither of these. To my way of thinking, anyone who thinks they know the mind of God is arrogant in the extreme.

Is living with a disability difficult? Absolutely. It can be the one of most frustrating things anyone can deal with. It has been very frustrating for me. Things I could do just last month I can no longer do. I have found the best course of action for me is to accept the fact that I have an untreatable and incurable disease and make the best of what remaining years that will be afforded me.

Nothing I say here should be taken as to my suggesting that research should not be done to find a cause or cure for this disease. I wish there was an unlimited supply of money to study IBM and all diseases for that matter. But, alas, this is not the case. Money is a finite commodity and in short supply for research. If you are so inclined you can contribute to The Myositis Association to help researchers find an answer. Please forgive my shameless begging.

Many Wrong Answers

So, how do we understand disease and suffering on the philosophical level? How do we go about finding answers to our search for truth? Do we throw up our hands and say we can't know and therefore further study is useless? Or are there answers we can live with. I don't think we will ever know the "why" of this search, but we can come to a better understanding of the process of disease or at least how should we respond to it.

I'm sorry to say, but some of the most distressing answers I've heard and read have come from other Christians. From, "Your not praying hard enough," to, "God did this to you for your own good." How unfortunate. Instead of getting care and understanding, many sufferers receive blame and condemnation. While there may not be any one universally right way to approach people who are in the midst of pain or suffering, there are certainly many wrong ones.

Philip Yancy's Answer

There are many books on this subject, but the best one by far that I've found is by Philip Yancy entitled "Where is God When It Hurts?" With marvelous story telling and exceptional insight, Yancy replaces the maudlin Jesus of so many Sunday School lessons with the the authentic Christ. He describes in detail who he was, why he came, and what he offers to us today.

Yancy makes a most interesting observation in his book regarding cards designed for sick people. They are called "get well" cards, indicating how most people think about sickness: sick people are invalids. He points out that the word insinuates that the person is "not valid." Yancy is one of the few people who gives validation to sick and disabled people.

If you suffer from chronic pain, know some who does, or want to know how to respond to those who are suffering, then I would highly recommend this book to you. I think that covers just about everyone.

To give you an insight into this remarkable and well written book, following are some selected quotes.

"If I spend my life searching for happiness through drugs, comfort and luxury, it will elude me. Happiness recedes from those who pursue her. Happiness will come upon me unexpectedly as a by product, a surprising bonus for something I have invested myself in. And, most likely, that investment will include pain. It is hard to imagine pleasure without it.

"Paul had learned the lesson of the Beatitudes: poverty, affliction, sorrow, and weakness can actually be means of grace if we turn to God with a humble, dependent spirit. For when I am weak, then I am strong, Paul concluded. The weaker we feel, the harder we may lean.

"At the instant of pain, it may seem impossible to imagine that good can come from tragedy. (It must have seemed so to Christ at Gethsemane.) We never know in advance exactly how suffering can be transformed into a cause for celebration. But that is what we are asked to believe. Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

"I have mentioned that no one offers the name of a philosopher when I asked the question, "Who helped you most?" Most often they answer by describing a quiet, unassuming person. Someone who was there whenever needed, who listened more than talked, who didn't keep glancing down at a watch, who hugged and touched, and cried, someone who was available, and came on the sufferer's terms not their own."

An observation. Yancy's book is intended primarily for Christians. If you are looking for a book that "proves" the existence of God or of his Christ you may want to look elsewhere. It is not intended to be a theological proof for nonbelievers, although I do feel it could be useful to those who are seeking.



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