Looking back on it, I can now identify that I had my first panic attack when I was a Senior in high school but I didn't have a second one until several years later. The causes, triggers, and symptoms of panic attacks can vary dramatically for different people. Check this site for several good resources to learn more.
For me, the strangest part of the experience is knowing intellectually that there is nothing wrong at all but feeling in imminent danger. I knew it was not real...but it seemed so real. I tell people that if I had not experienced this myself I would think it was entirely in a sufferer's head. Pretend. Make believe. There is a real physical reaction to the trigger, neurons start firing, and, at least in my experience, no matter how sure you are that everything is fine your body just doesn't believe it.
The most helpful thing for me was to know that my wife Tracy believed me when I said it was real. It didn't make the attacks stop, but it helped me know that I wasn't losing my mind. Having a supportive spouse made a huge difference. If you know someone who has panic attacks, please start to help by simply believing it's real.
The second most helpful thing for me was medicine. It doesn't work for everyone, but for me a very low does of an anxiety medicine has done the trick. It has been years since I've had a signficant attack.
Finally, it's important to be able to talk about it. Panic attacks can be very debilitating. I'm really fortunate that even at their worst my panic attacks were better than what many others have experienced. Regardless of the severity, panic attacks are like any other medical condition. They can be treated and in many cases cured or completely managed. They are also more common than most people know and absolutely not something that should have a stigma associated with them. Hopefully my sharing will help you or someone you know feel a little less "anxious" about anxiety issues like panic attacks.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Thursday, January 31, 2013
They Know If You've Been Naughty...
Generally when pastors make the news it's not a good thing. That was the case this week when Pastor Alois Bell from St. Louis made the news for stiffing a waitress at Applebee's. Pastor Bell says it was a lapse in judgment, that her privacy was violated, and reportedly asked for the waitress to be fired.
Some lessons for all of us:
1. If you say something stupid you should assume everyone is going to hear about it. The waitress should not have posted a picture of the receipt, but she also shouldn't have been stiffed by a pastor. It shouldn't surprise Pastor Bell that the picture was posted and it shouldn't surprise the waitress that she was fired. This is all really pretty predictable stuff in the era of social media and camera phones.
2. Pastor Bell is correct when she says, "I've brought embarrassment to my church and ministry." It's pretty tough to preach about Jesus loving "the least of these" when you won't even give a waitress a tip that's well within societal norms. I would say she's embarrased Christians everywhere. In his book They Like Jesus but Not the Church, Dan Kimball shares his conversation with a waitress who says she hates working on Sunday mornings because when all the Christians get out of church and come to the coffee shop and are rude and don't tip well. So this latest experience is really just one of many being experienced across the country. I'm embarrased for our faith. Not that I'm any better. I've had plenty to apologize for in my life (and apparently Pastor Bell has at least sorta-kinda apologized). We all mess up. But,
3. We need to remember that when we mess up people are watching. They're watching when we don't mess up too, but they're more likely to notice when we mess up. Once upon a time "practice what you preach" was a nice phrase to use in a sermon as a reminder to the congregation to behave. Now "practice what you preach" is a necessity in ministry. If we don't practice it, people don't believe us. I'm not saying this to pastors only, but to all Christians. If we don't practice love why should people believe God is love? If we don't practice compassion why should people believe that God is compassionate? If we don't practice forgiveness (like forgiving Pastor Bell for messing up this one time?) then why should people believe in a God who forgives?
I feel sorry for Alois Bell. Hopefully she's learned an important lesson. Hopefully all of us have.
Some lessons for all of us:
1. If you say something stupid you should assume everyone is going to hear about it. The waitress should not have posted a picture of the receipt, but she also shouldn't have been stiffed by a pastor. It shouldn't surprise Pastor Bell that the picture was posted and it shouldn't surprise the waitress that she was fired. This is all really pretty predictable stuff in the era of social media and camera phones.
2. Pastor Bell is correct when she says, "I've brought embarrassment to my church and ministry." It's pretty tough to preach about Jesus loving "the least of these" when you won't even give a waitress a tip that's well within societal norms. I would say she's embarrased Christians everywhere. In his book They Like Jesus but Not the Church, Dan Kimball shares his conversation with a waitress who says she hates working on Sunday mornings because when all the Christians get out of church and come to the coffee shop and are rude and don't tip well. So this latest experience is really just one of many being experienced across the country. I'm embarrased for our faith. Not that I'm any better. I've had plenty to apologize for in my life (and apparently Pastor Bell has at least sorta-kinda apologized). We all mess up. But,
3. We need to remember that when we mess up people are watching. They're watching when we don't mess up too, but they're more likely to notice when we mess up. Once upon a time "practice what you preach" was a nice phrase to use in a sermon as a reminder to the congregation to behave. Now "practice what you preach" is a necessity in ministry. If we don't practice it, people don't believe us. I'm not saying this to pastors only, but to all Christians. If we don't practice love why should people believe God is love? If we don't practice compassion why should people believe that God is compassionate? If we don't practice forgiveness (like forgiving Pastor Bell for messing up this one time?) then why should people believe in a God who forgives?
I feel sorry for Alois Bell. Hopefully she's learned an important lesson. Hopefully all of us have.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Scripture as Timeless Truth
This post is a supplement for my sermon on January 27th, Timeless Truth vs. Changing Times. You should be able to access the sermon here. If you were there you heard me say that the passage from 2 Timothy used so often to prove the inerrancy of Scripture (Every scripture is inspired by God [or God-breathed] and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.[CEB]) is actually misused to make that point. Here's some of the reasons why:
1. When 2 Timothy references "scripture" it isn't talking about what you and I know as scripture. The Bible as we know it wasn't canonized (made "official" scripture) until the 4th century. Between the time of Jesus and then a strong consensus emerged about what writings should be considered sacred, but they would not have been called scripture. Instead, for the author of 2 Timothy scripture referred to what we call the Old Testament (more or less - that's a whole other story). So at most we're now talking about only the Old Testament being infallible.
2. We have only translations from copies of original manuscripts. Most people today who say all of scripture is inerrant will say that it is infallible in the original manuscripts. This shows an understanding that there is always something lost in translation (i.e. from Greek to English or Hebrew to English) and that even the documents we have in the original language read differently. A good example is the Gospel of Mark, where some manuscripts have a short ending, some have a long ending, and others have both the short and long ending. Which one is the God inspired one? The original one - whichever that one was. The problem is we don't know which one that was. It doesn't help us to know that the original manuscript was inerrant if we don't know exactly what the original manuscript was.
3. 2 Timothy doesn't actually say that even the Old Testament is inerrant. To say "inspired by God" or "God-breathed" is close to the same thing as inerrant, but not quite. More importantly, note what the next part of the passage says. Scripture is "useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character..." It is inspired by God for these purposes. It is not inspired by God for teaching biology, astronomy, or history. Those topics that sometimes we want the Bible to be most authoritative about are topics that 2 Timothy says are not what it is really about.
With all that said, I truly believe in the Bible. If you heard the message on the 27th I hope that was clear. We just need to be honest about what it means to say we believe in the Bible.
1. When 2 Timothy references "scripture" it isn't talking about what you and I know as scripture. The Bible as we know it wasn't canonized (made "official" scripture) until the 4th century. Between the time of Jesus and then a strong consensus emerged about what writings should be considered sacred, but they would not have been called scripture. Instead, for the author of 2 Timothy scripture referred to what we call the Old Testament (more or less - that's a whole other story). So at most we're now talking about only the Old Testament being infallible.
2. We have only translations from copies of original manuscripts. Most people today who say all of scripture is inerrant will say that it is infallible in the original manuscripts. This shows an understanding that there is always something lost in translation (i.e. from Greek to English or Hebrew to English) and that even the documents we have in the original language read differently. A good example is the Gospel of Mark, where some manuscripts have a short ending, some have a long ending, and others have both the short and long ending. Which one is the God inspired one? The original one - whichever that one was. The problem is we don't know which one that was. It doesn't help us to know that the original manuscript was inerrant if we don't know exactly what the original manuscript was.
3. 2 Timothy doesn't actually say that even the Old Testament is inerrant. To say "inspired by God" or "God-breathed" is close to the same thing as inerrant, but not quite. More importantly, note what the next part of the passage says. Scripture is "useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character..." It is inspired by God for these purposes. It is not inspired by God for teaching biology, astronomy, or history. Those topics that sometimes we want the Bible to be most authoritative about are topics that 2 Timothy says are not what it is really about.
With all that said, I truly believe in the Bible. If you heard the message on the 27th I hope that was clear. We just need to be honest about what it means to say we believe in the Bible.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Kansas and United Methodist Politics
“I anticipated we were going to have a grueling debate..., but it’s been far worse than I even thought it could have been. I think it truly has poisoned the ability...to deal with other major issues on the table.”
Could be a quote from General Conference, couldn't it? Instead it was from Kansas House Minority Leader Paul Davis from Lawrence. He was talking about the debate in the Kansas Legislature over redistricting, the process where new voting boundaries are drawn. After a 99 day session (that was only supposed to be 90 days long) the Senate and House never agreed to a plan and now the courts will decide the boundaries. This was such a mess it made the budget process (which included sending two budget bills to the Governor's desk including one widely expected to result in a deficit in the billions by 2018) reasonable.
Such is the state of Kansas politics, where "conservative" Republicans and "moderate" Republicans fight for dominance and Democrats are mostly irrelevant. If you're not from Kansas you may not know that this traditional Republican stronghold has not historically been run by what we think of as today's Republican party. Kansans get along. Kansans believe in reasonably conservative fiscal constraint and somewhat libertarian social norms. Kansas has been on the right side of history in a large number of movements. It's a great place that now is being torn apart by extremes that have now "poisoned the ability" to deal with the real issues of governance.
Sound familiar? The "think and let think" state is no longer acting like itself. Just like the "think and let think" denomination that I'm pretty sure is the largest protestant group in the state. As I said in my last post, the United Methodist Church has indeed given in to the culture. We have become just as combative, polarized, and intolerant of different beliefs as the Kansas State Legislature.
Could be a quote from General Conference, couldn't it? Instead it was from Kansas House Minority Leader Paul Davis from Lawrence. He was talking about the debate in the Kansas Legislature over redistricting, the process where new voting boundaries are drawn. After a 99 day session (that was only supposed to be 90 days long) the Senate and House never agreed to a plan and now the courts will decide the boundaries. This was such a mess it made the budget process (which included sending two budget bills to the Governor's desk including one widely expected to result in a deficit in the billions by 2018) reasonable.
Such is the state of Kansas politics, where "conservative" Republicans and "moderate" Republicans fight for dominance and Democrats are mostly irrelevant. If you're not from Kansas you may not know that this traditional Republican stronghold has not historically been run by what we think of as today's Republican party. Kansans get along. Kansans believe in reasonably conservative fiscal constraint and somewhat libertarian social norms. Kansas has been on the right side of history in a large number of movements. It's a great place that now is being torn apart by extremes that have now "poisoned the ability" to deal with the real issues of governance.
Sound familiar? The "think and let think" state is no longer acting like itself. Just like the "think and let think" denomination that I'm pretty sure is the largest protestant group in the state. As I said in my last post, the United Methodist Church has indeed given in to the culture. We have become just as combative, polarized, and intolerant of different beliefs as the Kansas State Legislature.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Giving In
In the debate on homosexuality at General Conference, one delegate commented that altering our denomination's position would be caving in to society. The Church should not accept society's standards, but stand with God even when opposed to societal norms. It's a common argument. I absolutely agree with the premise (that we should always stand with God) and I absolutely agree that we have violated the premise. I disagree with the way in which we have gone astray.
While following General Conference on twitter I made the mistake of engaging someone with whom I disagreed. He said we had different religions. I said we may have different opinions, but we are still all Christians. He responded "'Christian' is a term in the hist of religions designating a particular one. Too many differences to be the 'same.'" Really? Not only can we not share the same denomination, but we can't even share the same religion? This is from someone who describes himself includes "writer, speaker, and church consultant, ... draws upon 30 years of professional experience as a Methodist minister..."
Then there's Mark Tooley, president of IRD. What I love about Mr. Tooley is that you never have to guess where he stands. He writes "United Methodist liberals always assumed their church would follow American culture on sexual permissiveness, just as the church had followed on so much else across the 20th century, starting with divorce and contraception. They always consoled themselves, "If not this time, then next time!" Sounding like deterministic Marxist Hegelians, they believed history sided with sexual inclusion." Really? Marxist Hegelians? I would hope he could at least call on a deterministic theologian instead of two atheists.
Yes, we have given in to societal norms. We are as brutal to each other, as argumentative, as unfair and unforgiving, as any political race. We must "win" each point for our "side" no matter what the means are. We have so given in to the polarization that we face in society that we could only narrowly pass a petition that included a scriptural reference to God's irresistible love. Really? What happened to "in essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty and in all things charity"? What happened to "if your heart is as my heart take my hand"? Are we really so divided that we have to resort to ad hominem attacks and name-calling?
Our problem as a denomination is not with our stance on homosexuality. Our problem is that we value our position over our relationship. I tell couples in premarital counseling that sometimes it's more important to stay in relationship than to be right. Disagreements have to be talked out, but the relationship has to take priority over whether you "win" the argument. Otherwise it doesn't really matter if you win the argument or not. I'm hopeful that the #dreamumc effort some younger adults are beginning may be part of the solution. I'm hopeful that we can find ways to engage each other, learn from each other, and grow with each other instead of just hurting each other. If we can't our relationship may not be salvageable. But don't get me started on our issues with divorce...
While following General Conference on twitter I made the mistake of engaging someone with whom I disagreed. He said we had different religions. I said we may have different opinions, but we are still all Christians. He responded "'Christian' is a term in the hist of religions designating a particular one. Too many differences to be the 'same.'" Really? Not only can we not share the same denomination, but we can't even share the same religion? This is from someone who describes himself includes "writer, speaker, and church consultant, ... draws upon 30 years of professional experience as a Methodist minister..."
Then there's Mark Tooley, president of IRD. What I love about Mr. Tooley is that you never have to guess where he stands. He writes "United Methodist liberals always assumed their church would follow American culture on sexual permissiveness, just as the church had followed on so much else across the 20th century, starting with divorce and contraception. They always consoled themselves, "If not this time, then next time!" Sounding like deterministic Marxist Hegelians, they believed history sided with sexual inclusion." Really? Marxist Hegelians? I would hope he could at least call on a deterministic theologian instead of two atheists.
Yes, we have given in to societal norms. We are as brutal to each other, as argumentative, as unfair and unforgiving, as any political race. We must "win" each point for our "side" no matter what the means are. We have so given in to the polarization that we face in society that we could only narrowly pass a petition that included a scriptural reference to God's irresistible love. Really? What happened to "in essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty and in all things charity"? What happened to "if your heart is as my heart take my hand"? Are we really so divided that we have to resort to ad hominem attacks and name-calling?
Our problem as a denomination is not with our stance on homosexuality. Our problem is that we value our position over our relationship. I tell couples in premarital counseling that sometimes it's more important to stay in relationship than to be right. Disagreements have to be talked out, but the relationship has to take priority over whether you "win" the argument. Otherwise it doesn't really matter if you win the argument or not. I'm hopeful that the #dreamumc effort some younger adults are beginning may be part of the solution. I'm hopeful that we can find ways to engage each other, learn from each other, and grow with each other instead of just hurting each other. If we can't our relationship may not be salvageable. But don't get me started on our issues with divorce...
Thursday, May 3, 2012
A Brief Reflection on General Conference
The United Methodist
Church's General Conference finishes their work in Tampa tomorrow. General
Conference gathers clergy and laity from around the world to set our
denominational direction for the next four years. I'm grateful for the
commitment the delegates have all made, but disappointed by many of the
decisions. First and foremost is the decision to retain our current lanuage that
hurts the LGBT community and those of us seeking full inclusion.
The most discussed
statement that the UMC makes is in paragraph 161.f. of the Social Principles,
which states "The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of
homosexuality and considers the practice incompatible with Christian teaching."
Roughly 60 percent of the delegates voted to retain this language. That means
that roughly 40 percent want to see change. We are not of one mind. As a
denomination, we have not yet found a way to include language acknowledging our
differences in theology and biblical interpretation.
This continues to be
frustrating and painful. I am grateful, though, that historically the Social
Principles have been a guide to conversation and not a binding document. As a
United Methodist Pastor I will uphold those parts of church law that I am
obligated to uphold. But in those areas, like the Social Principles, where the
words are not binding I will follow what I believe is God's will. Despite the
outcome of this vote, St. Paul's will continue to be a place where conversation
is welcome. We will also be a place that continues to live out our welcome
statement, "We welcome all
people, regardless of gender, race, age, cultural or religious heritage, ethnic
background, sexual orientation, economic circumstances family configuration or
difference of ability." You will always be included in our part of
the Body of Christ, whoever you are. You will always be loved and encouraged to
love. I hope you will join me in praying for the greater church and that St.
Paul's can be an agent of change not only in our community but in the worldwide
church.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Forsaken?
If you want to listen to the whole Bart Ehrman audio that I shared in today's sermon, here it is. It's about 15 minutes long. Ehrman is very articulate on the subject, but below is the question I would pose to him from the sermon:
So here’s my question: Why? He starts by saying that suffering is a problem. He is so sure that suffering is a problem that he makes fun of his students who don’t understand that it’s a problem. But I want to take the students’ side for a minute. Why is suffering a problem? If the history of the universe were compressed into 24 hours, the whole existence of humanity would be a fraction of a second. Our life spans would be impossibly small to even measure. So why does suffering really matter? Why do the images of 9/11 or Katrina or the earthquake in Haiti or the tornado in Joplin bother us? Why do they seem wrong? And as hard as it is for us to avoid suffering, why would he or any of us give ourselves the additional burden of only being happy if other people are happy too?
As Christians, we have a problem explaining suffering. I certainly can’t explain it all to you. I don’t understand it myself. We will all have a lot of questions for God some day. But there is an equally challenging question for those who don’t believe. They can’t explain why we should care.
When tragedy strikes we say, “this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.” That’s why suffering is a problem – because we know in the deepest places in our heart that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. But where did that knowledge come from? We struggle with why suffering exists, but for the atheist the question is why do we struggle with the question of suffering in the first place.
When tragedy strikes we say, “this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.” That’s why suffering is a problem – because we know in the deepest places in our heart that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. But where did that knowledge come from? We struggle with why suffering exists, but for the atheist the question is why do we struggle with the question of suffering in the first place.
Here's how Timothy Keller puts it in his book The Reason for God: "The nonbeliever in God doesn't have a good basis for being outraged at injustice, which...was the reason for objecting to God in the first place. If you are sure that this natural world is unjust and filled with evil, you are assuming the reality of some extra-natural (or supernatural) standard by which to make your judgment."
So what do you think? How would you answer the problem of suffering? What about the problem of why we can call something evil or unjust if there is no God?
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