I suppose Joe Carter thinks this finding is a positive attribute about American evangelicalism, but a 2ker can always spot the forest. USA Today indicates that white evangelicals are the most patriotic (since this excludes African-American evangelicals, correlating evangelicalism and U.S. nationalism is a question in search of an answer):
When it comes to God and country, white evangelicals report the most intense patriotic feelings in a new poll, with more than two-thirds (68 percent) saying they are extremely proud to be an American.
That figure was markedly higher than for white mainline Protestants (56 percent), minority Christians (49 percent), Catholics (48 percent) and religiously unaffiliated Americans (39 percent), according to the study, conducted by the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service.
White evangelicals are also more likely than any other religious group surveyed to believe that God has granted the U.S. a special role in history (84 percent) and to say they will likely attend a public July 4th celebration (62 percent).
On the other end of the spectrum, relatively few religiously unaffiliated Americans believe in a God-given American exceptionalism, (40 percent) or plan to attend a public Independence Day celebration (48 percent).
Eric Metaxas, the popular Christian author and speaker, said evangelicals “are not patriotic and pro-American in a tribalistic, nationalistic, or jingoistic sense.
“But they do tend to be pro-America because they believe that the ideas of the Founders — religious liberty at the head of them — have been a huge blessing to those on our shores — and to those beyond them.”
I have often wondered why the evangelical laity and evangelical academics are so keen to insist on a Christian basis for the United States. One theory is that evangelicals, without the help of confessional Protestantism and its teaching about general revelation (something the neo-Cals have not helped with in their insistence that special revelation must interpret general revelation), have no middle category. Something is either good or it is bad. Evangelicals lack the category of common. Better, they lack the notion of good in contrast to holy and profane. As I have said before, the logic of the Lord’s Day is that common activities, like plumbing, are profane if performed on the Sabbath (without the warrant of an emergency). So plumbing is neither sacred, nor profane. It is simply good (because of the goodness of creation).
Another way of trying to account for evangelical beliefs about American greatness is the analogy of marriage. Christians are not supposed to marry unbelievers. Fine. But what happens with love for a country that is unbelieving? Evangelicals can’t love it. That would be a mixed patriotism. So evangelicals need to have a Christian United States in order to justify their love of country.(This may also be related to the language of “Great” as opposed to “Pretty Good” Awakenings.)
I am still learning about romantic nationalism from learned colleagues and fellow elders, but American greatness seems to hang on the notion that the United States is greatest nation on God’s green earth — sort of like the blond-bomb shell who wins Miss America, has a Masters in financial planning, and cooks a mean meatloaf. The perfect wife and the great nation can have no flaws. Any wife knows better than this (both about wives and husbands).
So why can’t evangelicals follow the heeding of Scripture, put no hope in princes (or republics), and simply love their country the way they love the old drunk uncle who shows up uncomfortably at July 4th picnics and makes the youngsters have to whisper questions to their parents?
Old Life 
USA Today indicates that white evangelicals are the most patriotic (since this excludes African-American evangelicals, correlating evangelicalism and U.S. nationalism is a question in search of an answer)
Pretty easy to see why. Black evangelicals certainly have reason for ambivalence about America, but white evangelicals are [properly] grateful. The rest are ingrates.
and of course
You got that right, GWash. Bad indeed.
Happy Independence Day, 2K.
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Tom, which author of the universe? Jahweh? Allah? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? (Washington could have followed Strunk and White if he ever just said “God.”)
You’re sounding more and more like David Barton. In case you haven’t heard, mainstream historians with good degrees are not happy with Barton.
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D. G. Hart
Posted July 4, 2013 at 3:14 pm | Permalink
Tom, which author of the universe? Jahweh? Allah? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
Oh, you’re going to play that one? I know the drill. Banal, but whatever floats your boat.
Samuel Adams, the one you skipped over, was quite the uberCalvinist, of course. As for Barton, been there done that at my home blog, chapter and verse ad nauseum. I do not use him as a source. Guilt by association is another illicit tactic, Darryl, and I’m not even associated with him.
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Tom, banally aggressive.
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More bad theology:
“Puritanism was not merely a religious doctrine, but it corresponded in many points with the most absolute democratic and republican theories. It was this tendency which had aroused its most dangerous adversaries. Persecuted by the government of the mother country, and disgusted by the habits of a society which the rigor of their own principles condemned, the Puritans went forth to seek some rude and unfrequented part of the world, where they could live according to their own opinions, and worship God in freedom.”
—Tocqueville
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2012/08/puritans-the-original-republicans/
The answer to your question, BTW, is Jehovah. ;-P
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Tom, earnestly passive.
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There was scarcely a man alive then who didn’t see the American Founding as a miracle, the direct hand of Divine Providence. From our comfortable armchairs in the 21st century, that seems to many to be superstitious, arrogant, or merely “bad theology,” but for Calvinists in particular, escaping the filth of Europe and the twin pincers of Catholicism and Anglicanism to a bountiful and free land was seen as nothing short of miraculous.
And that sir, is the answer to your question
But if it’s any consolation, I do love you like that uncle.
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So if my 87 year old fundy dad were only a Sabbatarian, he would stop watching Fox news? I don’t think so.
Of course, he’s old style fundy, which means he likes that Fox News is not professing “Christian”. A wounded veteran, he would never justify the second w-v war as “Christian”. He would say that the killing the “bad guys” was neither evil nor Christian but only “common sense”. My dad likes the westerns in which those in white hats are clearly identified.
(I agree that many fundies,before and after Carl McIntire, have operated with an explicitly Constantinian ideology.)
Perhaps your question about marrying a “professing Christian” gives us the answer for the change.
Fundies used to be serious separatists, and part of this was a suspicion about other people’s profession. I was taught as a boy that most people who claimed to be Christians were not indeed Christians but liberals. (You will find this same kind of suspicion in the antithesis sections of the Synod of Dordt.) They didn’t think ML King and Jimmy Carter were “real” Christians, but that suspicion seem to go away with Reagan and W…..
To be a practical Constantinian, one has to change the standard to avoid finding yourself in the minority. The older fundies would not do this (see Less Than Conquerers, Douglas Franks). But now the fundies are evangelicals, and they think that everybody who professes to be against abortion is some kind of “Christian”. And only recently, they worry that they may not be a majority anymore…
I still don’t agree that evangelicals are not taught about “general revelation”. Instead, being a “biblicist” often means a strict avoidance of “good and necessary” inferences, therefore anything you can’t find a Bible verse for goes into the category of “practical common sense”.
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But, Tom, what is providential isn’t miraculous. Water into wine, walking on water, healing the sick, and raising the dead is miraculous history. The American founding was simply history. What plenty of Calvinists and evangelicals do is hagiography. Unless you’re using miraculous figuratively and mean the American founding was exceptional history, then ok. But Reformed theology must take exception to the idea that it was miraculous strictly speaking.
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Zrim
Posted July 4, 2013 at 5:35 pm | Permalink
But, Tom, what is providential isn’t miraculous. Water into wine, walking on water, healing the sick, and raising the dead is miraculous history. The American founding was simply history. What plenty of Calvinists and evangelicals do is hagiography. Unless you’re using miraculous figuratively and mean the American founding was exceptional history, then ok. But Reformed theology must take exception to the idea that it was miraculous strictly speaking.
Mr. Z, I accept the distinction but the new fashion is to humbug the whole thing.
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Tom,
I’m thankful for the U.S. and the freedom that we enjoy (especially freedom of religion). The question of what God was doing or not doing in the founding of the U.S. is hard (impossible?) to answer. Take the question of slavery. If the U.S. was not founded would there have been a huge new market for African slaves in the American South? I would imagine African Americans might have a different take on what God’s hand may or may not have been in the founding.
I think we can appreciate what we have as Americans, realize it is unique and fragile, but still look at ourselves, and our founding, critically. Like most questions in a sinful world the answers aren’t crystal clear.
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Erik Charter
Posted July 4, 2013 at 6:11 pm | Permalink
Tom,
I’m thankful for the U.S. and the freedom that we enjoy (especially freedom of religion). The question of what God was doing or not doing in the founding of the U.S. is hard (impossible?) to answer. Take the question of slavery. If the U.S. was not founded would there have been a huge new market for African slaves in the American South? I would imagine African Americans might have a different take on what God’s hand may or may not have been in the founding.
I think we can appreciate what we have as Americans, realize it is unique and fragile, but still look at ourselves, and our founding, critically. Like most questions in a sinful world the answers aren’t crystal clear.
The new fashion is to humbug the whole thing, if you’ve followed this conversation, such as it is.
Your objection per slavery is the same as against the roman church–if it were the work of God, how come it’s not perfect? But that’s a BS premise, a “proof” available nowhere. Further, I’m arguing that if America is indeed a gift from God, Winthrop’s City on a Hill sermon is certainly aware of our power to waste it.
Actually, I ran across the Tocqueville quote today and found it interesting, a link between Calvinism and the American scheme of government.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2012/08/puritans-the-original-republicans/
You’ll recognize Tommy Kidd, of course. He’s just like David Barton except he isn’t easy pickins. You have to cowboy up if you want to try to get the better of him. And even then I don’t favor your odds.
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Tom,
From a purely epistemological standpoint isn’t it highly problematic to say what God is doing or not doing unless you are willing (like a Calvinist) to say that whatever happens is what God is doing?
For instance, you could say that when you get a promotion at work that is God’s doing, but that when you get cancer it is not. On what grounds do you conclude this, however?
There is a mindblowing Q&A in the Heidelberg that puts these questions in perspective:
Question 26. What believest thou when thou sayest, “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”?
Answer: That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (who of nothing made heaven and earth, with all that is in them; who likewise upholds and governs the same by his eternal counsel and providence) is for the sake of Christ his Son, my God and my Father; on whom I rely so entirely, that I have no doubt, but he will provide me with all things necessary for soul and body and further, that he will make whatever evils he sends upon me, in this valley of tears turn out to my advantage; for he is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing, being a faithful Father.
Now one could respond to this with fatalism, but the Catechism goes on to say that we should still pray to God, making our requests known, because prayer is the chief way that we show thanks to God. Part of becoming mature is learning to rely on God and not becoming bitter even when the things he gives us are not the things we would choose. He uses even those seemingly bad things for our good.
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Tom, sloppily passive.
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Tom, atheistically aggressive.
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Tom – Your objection per slavery is the same as against the roman church–if it were the work of God, how come it’s not perfect?
Erik – What criteria would you use to determine:
(A) When a nation-state is a work of God
(B) When a nation-state is not a work of God
(C) When a church is a work of God
(D) When a church is not a work of God
Additionally, what do you think of a Roman Catholic assertion that it is the one, holy, apostolic Christian church from which no Christian should separate himself?
And, if you agree with this assertion, what recourse should Christian people have when that church (or its leaders) sin?
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Tom, hiding-behind-mom’s-skirt aggressive.
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TVD, “humbug”? Did Doug lend you his thesaurus?
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“…the old drunk uncle who shows up uncomfortably at July 4th picnics and makes the youngsters have to whisper questions to their parents.”
Hey there. That hits a bit too close to home, except that I skilled any July 4th festivities and went on a 75-mile bike ride across the northern Illinois countryside. Then, I came home and drank half a bottle of bottle of a 1997 pinot noir, which was exquisite.
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Erik Charter
Posted July 4, 2013 at 7:26 pm | Permalink
Tom,
From a purely epistemological standpoint isn’t it highly problematic to say what God is doing or not doing unless you are willing (like a Calvinist) to say that whatever happens is what God is doing?
For instance, you could say that when you get a promotion at work that is God’s doing, but that when you get cancer it is not. On what grounds do you conclude this, however?
There is a mindblowing Q&A in the Heidelberg that puts these questions in perspective:
Question 26. What believest thou when thou sayest, “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”?
Answer: That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (who of nothing made heaven and earth, with all that is in them; who likewise upholds and governs the same by his eternal counsel and providence) is for the sake of Christ his Son, my God and my Father; on whom I rely so entirely, that I have no doubt, but he will provide me with all things necessary for soul and body and further, that he will make whatever evils he sends upon me, in this valley of tears turn out to my advantage; for he is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing, being a faithful Father.
Now one could respond to this with fatalism, but the Catechism goes on to say that we should still pray to God, making our requests known, because prayer is the chief way that we show thanks to God. Part of becoming mature is learning to rely on God and not becoming bitter even when the things he gives us are not the things we would choose. He uses even those seemingly bad things for our good.
Sure, the “Serenity Prayer.” But you yourself acknowledge the other side of that coin, fatalism, and the objection to taking that to the extreme—“radical” Two-Kingdoms theory—is that it’s always the good men who do nothing.
And though we’ve all heard that sometimes God’s answer to a prayer is “no,” it doesn’t mean you pray for a pony instead of doing what it takes to buy one. This looks interesting.
http://hans.wyrdweb.eu/about-calvinistic-work-ethic/
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Epistemology always makes me think of Kip’s rebuke of Napoleon:
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Bobby – the 4th of July Metric starting at Plainfield, by chance? Nice day for it though a bit too much on the humid side for my likes.
And as far as that delicious sounding pinot noir is concerned, you should’ve finished the bottle. Day’s not over yet, ya know…
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The Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
–Reinhold Niebuhr
I didn’t know that Reinhold Niebuhr came up with that,
I don’t think “R2K” is linked to fatalism. Since “R2K” adherents and Neocalvinists both hold to the same Reformed Confessions and because the only article they seem to be arguing about are the ones that deal with the Civil Magistrate I don’t know that you can link “R2K” to fatalism. The dispute is over the role of the church (as the church) and the means by which the church should be carrying out it’s mission (and what that mission is).
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Bobby, are you a fan of Sideways?
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Either Miles or Jack is based on Bobby. Great (mildly disturbing) movie.
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I’ve yet to recover from Miles retrieving Jack’s wallet.
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Here is vintage Tom from his own blog:
He is pro-Christian founding, pro-Christian nation, but not a Christian nationist. He even thinks grace is synonymous with providence.
Just go to American Creation and look for his posts. It will help you understand that Tom is his own theologian, historian, philosopher, and (squishy) man.
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Erik, since “Kip” was an old avatar of yours he IS my mental image of you. How far off can it be? If patriotism is proportional to private deployment of fireworks (and “One Nation Under God” church signs and FB statuses) then my Appalachian valley won the prize last night. Enough ordinance was expended to subdue most smaller European states. Oh, wait, Sweden just surrendered by e-mail. Gotta go.
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We do dissonance of course. American and Confederate flags often fly on the same pole. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is sung in most country churches. Southerners, of all Americans, ought to get the “love your country like your drunk uncle” analogy.
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CW,
I adopted Kip as my avatar when Randy Martin Snyder & Darrell Todd Maurina took to chiding me for my youth. Apparently they failed to realize I was north of 40.
Like Kip, I would tow you into town behind my bike if you need me to.
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DTM couldn’t fathom that any Reformed person of advanced years hadn’t heard of him and his past exploits.
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Should we be concerned that Erik is talking to CW about his choice of avatar?
“Wild West of blogdom” indeed.
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Erik, DTM = Uncle Rico?
MM – Freedom, baby!
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CW,
Actually DTM looks a lot like Kip.
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M&M, I was more concerned about the thawing relations between Erik and TVD.
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David Brooks quoting Adam Garfinkle of The American Interest on political Islamists:
“there is no need for causality, since that would imply a diminution of God’s power.” This sort of person “does not accept the existence of an objective fact separate from how he feels about it.”
DGH on Evangelicans and American greatness:
“evangelicals, without the help of confessional Protestantism and its teaching about general revelation (something the neo-Cals have not helped with in their insistence that special revelation must interpret general revelation), have no middle category. Something is either good or it is bad. Evangelicals lack the category of common. Better, they lack the notion of good in contrast to holy and profane.”
Hmmm. Antithesis much?
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D. G. Hart
Posted July 5, 2013 at 6:50 am | Permalink
Here is vintage Tom from his own blog:
“Me, I’m pretty sympathetic to the role of “religion” in the public square. But I agree with Adams’ analysis of the election of 1800: Faced with the choice for president between a Jehovah’s Witness or Thomas S. Monson, the new “president and prophet” of the Mormon Church, or Pat Robertson, or even Pope Benedictus XVI, I meself might go with a suspected atheist, as long as I, you know, didn’t know for sure.”
He is pro-Christian founding, pro-Christian nation, but not a Christian nationist. He even thinks grace is synonymous with providence.
Just go to American Creation and look for his posts. It will help you understand that Tom is his own theologian, historian, philosopher, and (squishy) man.
I’m flattered, Darryl. That’s some great stuff there–we all should read more of me.
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Tom, aggressively egotistical.
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More like a Rorschach test. Rock on.
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I’ve not watched Sideways in a while. Maybe I should this weekend.
I do have an affinity for pinot noir, although I’ve been on a Barolo kick recently. I do not drink merlot, however. So, I have that in common with the guy in Sideways.
I did not ride near Plainfield, however. I just picked some random farm roads in western Kane County. I love climbing hills, so that’s the downside of having moved back to the Prairie State. But the Illinois countryside has a lot fewer rednecks than the Old Dominion. Ironically, a few weeks ago, I guy driving a pickup truck in rural northern Virginia threw an empty beer can at me while riding. On his back bumper he had two bumper stickers: “God Bless America” and “God Copilot”. At first, I couldn’t tell whether the driver was an Edwardsian or a theonomist. But he didn’t expose himself to me (as is common among theonomists), so he must have been a revivalist.
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DGH says: “So why can’t evangelicals follow the heeding of Scripture, put no hope in princes (or republics), and simply love their country the way they love the old drunk uncle who shows up uncomfortably at July 4th picnics and makes the youngsters have to whisper questions to their parents?”
A good image to remember and throw at the evangelicals. They will probably scratch their heads in bewilderment over where you are coming from. There is a huge disconnect over many issues in Christendom these days.
Drunks seem to have a knack for knowing if you are standing on equal ground with them when you “love” them. Condescending love does not seem to connect with the ungodly. I don’t know how anyone can read the book of Job and think that God does not deal with fallen humanity like all of us are drunkards. Even those with great “uprightness” and “moral integrity.” That makes me scratch my head in bewilderment. I can’t really relate to Job- he was almost Christ-like in his righteousness and yet in the end, after making his defenses for himself, was severely rebuked by God and had to repent in dust and ashes.
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JohnnY, good to hear from you.
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Thank you Darryl- you made my day. I appreciate that. I thought I was losing grace and favor with those at oldlife. So, I decided maybe it would be better if I took a break from the dialog for a while. Plus I found myself spending way too much time here and not keeping up with stuff that I thought I should be doing.
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JohnnY, everything in moderation.
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Kip Charter, see Bishop Hart’s preceding comment.
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John Yeazel
Posted July 5, 2013 at 8:43 pm | Permalink
DGH says: “So why can’t evangelicals follow the heeding of Scripture, put no hope in princes (or republics)
Where does it say “republics?”
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CW,
Moderation is for Mainliners.
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Erik, pretty good point.
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Moderation in moderation, I say. Then sleep late.
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DGH says: “JohnnY, everything in moderation.”
I thought this site was all about Jesus and the Gospel, not about Calvinistic self-control and moderation, i.e.. all about you. If there is room in the kingdom of God for introverts, why not struggling addicts? I am now in the category of a have not, and am being influenced by Anabaptist social thought and Marxists. Was not “The Wire” all about class struggle and the new Greek-type tragedy that is developing among those who have to continually deal with very ineffective government programs and the questionable judicial system? Plus I have an arminian evangelical brother/ ex-baby boomer Viet Nam protestor narcissist who has his foot on my throat 24/7. I can’t cope and I can’t get out from under it. What’s someone like me who was not born into the Reformed faith and reformation theology to do? Die in the wilderness I guess. That is what most Calvinists would tell me.
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JY, I’m not tracking. Good to see you.
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Notwithstanding my earlier efforts at levity, this post makes an insightful point. I believe that it’s at least consistent with a comment I made in another thread.
In waging the Culture Wars, evangelicals have generally redefined “orthodoxy” to require one to have an idealist epistemology, at least on questions of ethics. This is a fairly radical shift. Old Princeton, including Machen, rejected such an approach to ethics. Their ethics was solidly grounded in a realist epistemology. So, under today’s version of evangelical orthodoxy, Machen, Warfield, and Hodge would have no place at the table. The Baylys and their sycophants would have written these men off as degenerates. Theonomists would have done the same.
A recent survey by the Barna folks shows that from 2003 to 2013, self-identified “evangelicals” actually became more resistant to gay rights and same-sex marriage. In 2003, 10% of evangelicals believed that same-sex couples should be able to obtain civil marriage licenses. In 2013, only 7% did. For every other religious group, the trend has moved in the opposite direction.
In reality, I doubt that evangelicals as a group have become less tolerant of gay rights. Rather, I suspect that those who disagree with evangelicalism’s prevailing stance on the issue have merely stopped identifying themselves as evangelicals. In a similar vein, a story in Saturday’s WSJ identifies mainline Protestantism’s erstwhile advocacy of Prohibition as a key contributor to its cultural decline in the 1940s and 50s.
The 2K position doesn’t suggest that Christians should stay out of politics. Rather, it commands that no political position should be enshrined as an ideal. Christ alone is our ideal. We should sort out cultural issues are to be sorted out from the ground up, relying on the light of God’s general revelation and reasoning inductively from what it reveals. This keeps the church from being identified with any political cause, and allows the church to continue her work when the culture elects to resolve a political question differently from how many Christians may have preferred.
The mainline failed in large measure because its leadership hitched itself to a left-wing ideology that was eviscerated by two World Wars and the Great Depression. Conservative Protestantism seems to be at a similar juncture today. Same-sex marriage is here to stay. Further, its arrival will have almost no effect on how most people go about their lives. This also signals the decline of evangelicalism. Many evangelicals went all-in on this issue. Now that the culture is ready to move on, they have no chips left to play. They will be cast aside in the same way that Baby Boomers cast aside the Protestant mainline. When the laity disagree with church leadership on a particular question, they generally take the path of least resistance and find somewhere else to go on Sunday morning (or something else to do altogether).
I see an opening here for 2K-focused churches. There will surely be those who are ready to go down with the evangelical ship, and who will become ever more shrill in favor of certain lost causes. And they will call out as heretics all who don’t join them for their appointment in Samarra. See, e.g., Baylyblog. But I see an opening for a revival of the Presbyterianism of Old Princeton.
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Thanks Sean,
This is the video that got me thinking. You “Wire” fans will probably enjoy listening to it:
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A revival of antirevivalists…love the irony! I completely agree that is where the future of conservative Protestantism is.
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JohnnY, any good churches where you are. If so, maybe you lose your brother when you gather with the saints. Or he repents of pinching your jugular.
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JohnnY, on the
videoaudio, can you boil it down to a paragraph? 100 minutes is a long time. I might have to wait for a trip.LikeLike
John,
If I was in your shoes I would find the best P&R church I could and attend as many activities as possible. When I wasn’t there I would stay as focused and busy as possible on positive things (work being one). Try to find some Christian friends who will encourage you. Take life a day at a time. Old Life is optional. The (healthy) conflict stimulates me, but may not be good for someone who is struggling.
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The best advice I have gotten so far, thanks DGH and Erik. I have been attending the Independent Presbyterian Church here in Savannah, Georgia. However, I only brought about 3 outfits that I would be comfortable wearing to the church and I had to put them in plastic garbage bags and store them in some bushes that nobody will snoop around in. That along with a lot of my other belongings wrapped in a heavy duty tarp. A story which most of you would not believe anyways so I will not go into it here. My point being is that I have not gone for the last two weeks due to lack of appropriate attire. I do go to AA meetings but I have problems with steps 2, 3, 6, 7 and 10 so I am cannot really in good conscience be committed to the program. I used to argue with the people there but that does no good. There is no Gospel in AA. Now I just listen and get the good that I can from the meetings and the connections you make to help find jobs, etc., etc. My brother disciplined me from the family business about 4 years ago and holds out no hope for reconciliation after I left a rehab in New Jersey after 3 months which was run by Dallas Seminary graduate dispensationalists. It is in Whiting, New Jersey and called the Keswich program. Need I say more. I got on the wrong side of some of the ex-thug street addicts and was no longer comfortable there. I kept looking behind me when taking showers when no staff was around. I tried explaining that to my brother but he did not buy it. Rehabs can be unsafe places at times. Especially when you start challenging some of the street mentality of the more aggressive and willful ones. I have had a very bizarre life. The weird thing is that I am still alive and kicking and able to think clearly about it. I must be going through all this for some higher purpose. At least that hope is what keeps me going. It might be a self-fulfilling prophecy after being attracted to writers like Orwell who wrote books with titles like DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON. I used to think that was kind of neat and attractive. When you are actually there it is a different story but you do learn to adapt. I have gone on for too long. But your encouragement was helpful. Erik is right about the conflict not being good for me, however, I am kind of used to it now. My life has been one big conflict after another. Hope is starting to well up again so I better get some things done while motivated.
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JohnnY, I am sad to learn of your circumstances. For what it’s worth, I am friendly with the pastors at Independent Pres. and would like to think the deacons could help you out. If Bubbles could do it, maybe you can.
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Darryl,
The video/audio should be listened to in its entirety I think. The guy does think it is one of the best programs that has ever been produced. He quotes David Simon frequently and gives a synopsis of each of the five seasons of the show. He shows a couple scenes (which you cannot see obviously) and comments on them. One of them is the f__k scene where 2 of the main cop actors go on for about 3-4 minutes when at a murder scene and say f__k and derivatives of f__k continually. This was done purposefully because that word is a no no anywhere but on HBO. Not really that great of a point but one that caught a lot of attention. The second scene was when the two drug lords got together for their final scene when both knew they were going to betray each other and the realism that was portrayed in the scene. There was mixed reviews of this scene from various critics but this critic thought it was one of the more poignant scenes in the whole series.
This guy does not buy into what a lot of critics thought the series was about and he quotes Simon to prove his point that the series was more about class conflict and disappearance of the blue collar worker and what has happened as a result in a particular community in Baltimore. What is unique about the series is that they show how a whole community gets effected by the forces that they cannot control and the solutions they try to come up with. The guy also thought the visions of “utopia” that appear in the various seasons were also highly significant for understanding the series and what the writer was trying to get across. There is a huge amount of people who have been cut off from the American Dream and the series depicts how a community tried to cope with the situation and how it effected everyone involved.
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Thanks, JohnnY. I’ll try to download it or something.
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Darryl,
I do plan on continuing going to the church when I can get settled into another place here in Savannah. There are numerous shelters one can live at here but it takes going through some red tape to get into them. I have actually found a comfortable place I can stay in the meantime but it is a pain in the rear to get to your belongings. And you can find 3 meals a day, 7 days a week in Savannah for free. The problem is you have to wait in line a long time and it wastes a lot of time at the better food places.
I like Tim Foster, one of the pastors of the church. I have going to his Sunday morning bible study before the main church service. We have been studying the book of Job and it has been very worthwhile. They have a lot of events going on this summer. I definitely do want to get more involved there. There also have monthly mens reading group and are going over Calvin’s Institutes. About 75 pages worth each month. I love that kind of stuff. For their Sunday afternoon service they meet at a campground type facility where you get a chance to get to know some of the members of the church better. So, there is a lot of opportunity to get more involved. It does take time for that to happen.
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John,
Addiction sucks. Keep fighting.
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If I were in your shoes I think I would find a simple, non-stressful job to keep myself occupied (maybe working at a carwash or something like that), go to meetings, go to church, and try to stay away from places I know I shouldn’t be in the remaining hours. I would try to get into a cheap apartment and off of the streets. I think routine is very important to those with addictions. It’s tough staying with the routine, but that’s what you have to shoot for.
A really interesting show dealing with addiction is “Nurse Jackie”. In season 4 she starts to turn things around and it’s inspiring to watch.
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I should add some more to the ‘”Wire” audio. I wrote what I did before finishing listening to it myself. The last half hour sums up this guys critic of the series. He finds fault in the ambiguity of the ending. He thinks fighting to keep the system from collapsing does more harm than good. Letting it collapse should be the proper conclusion. It is only in letting the system collapse where something better can be begun. It weeds out the corruption in the system that is controlling it.
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Erik,
I don’t think “fighting” it is the proper way to go about it. Believing that it has been put to death by another seems to work best for me. It is when I start fighting it that I want to give into it more. It is a strange phenomenon. AA says selfless service to others is how to beat it. The side effect then seems to be a holier than thou attitude which begins to ingrain itself in your psyche. I still am trying to work out whether our willing ourselves to obedience and service can effect our inner desires and attractions. Perhaps there is some truth to that.
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