Brains In A Blender

Note: the server’s security settings blocked me from blogging till late yesterday. Donald reset things so I should be allowed to post ok from now on. - jwc.

Now let me see if I’ve got this straight???

Abe married Bo.

Abe and Cat work together in the same office.

Abe and Bo have two kids: a son, Xerxes, and a daughter, Yolanda.

Cat is married to somebody or another (but she’s not satisfied with him) and has one daughter, Zelda.

Abe, Bo, Cat and Cat’s unsatisfactory husband are all four college professors. Real brainy people. Intellects. Smart. Cultured. Refined.

Have you already heard this story?

No?

But you can guess where it goes, can’t you?

Cat sets her eye on Able. They stay late at the office. They fall in love. Start an affair.

Cat leaves what’s-his-name. He’s been dallying with a grad student.

Abe leaves Bo. He never learns that she’s been having an affair with a clergyman.

Cat marries Abe.

After three years, Cat’s daughter Zelda suffers a breakdown and is admitted to a mental hospital. Therapy there uncovers that she has been molested by Abe. They tell Cat that her daughter has been molested.

Cat confronts Abe.

Abe says there’s nothing wrong as it’s all in the family.

Cat leaves Abe… but she gets to thinking, “If he did this with Zelda, then I wonder if he did it with Bo’s children before I ever met him”.

Cat calls Bo. They talk. Bo asks Xerxes and Yolanda about their father.

Sure enough, it comes out that he molested them too. Both of them grew up, earned PHDs, started careers, lost jobs, turned alcoholic, live with their mother. And Zelda has been in and out of mental hospitals and drug rehab for years.

Abe escaped prosecution by having a convenient heart attack and dying.

Cat has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

The other victims also survive — if you can call it that.

These were all smart people. Brains. Intellects. Cream of the crop. Educated.

But life takes more than brains.

And it looks to me as though these folks put their brains in a blender and hit the puree button.

From personal experience, I know how that feels.

The only fiction I’ve made up in the above story are the alphabetical names.

Yesterday a friend I’ve known for years revealed how all this had happened in her life. I bumped into her at the hardware store; both buying hurricane supplies. We stood in the parking lot beside our cars talking for an hour.

Catching up on family news..

Yes, I’ve known her for 20+ years but she’d never told me about all this before. She’s been carrying it all alone. She felt too ashamed of her role in the matter, and her own illicit affairs, to ever talk about it before.

Is her tale unusual?

Not hardly. With variations as to details, I’ve heard it many times before from many different people. In fact, in some chapters of such a sordid tale, I have played my own staring role.

At some time in our lives virtually all of us have been victims, perpetrators, or instigators in such a tale. Sometimes we play all three roles in the drama.

Is it any wonder that we all need a Savior?

Desperately.

Well, “The Father sent the Son to be the savior of the world”. That’s what the Bible says.

But how would the Savior of the World handle such a can of worms as the typical slice of life story I’ve just told?

Jesus never once said, “What you should have done is…”
Never once.

He never told anyone that!

What He did say — often — was, “Thy sins are forgiven thee. Thy faith has made thee whole. Go and sin no more”.

The Scripture calls Jesus “The Deliverer” and what does a delivery man do?

He takes things from where they are to where they ought to be.

Jesus takes us from where we are right this minute, not from where we should be ideally, but from where we really are. It’s from that point that He begins to move us toward a specific happy destination.

The Christian life is not a story about our destination; it’s the story of the process.

We have to fight God tooth and claw to avoid being delivered.

And we do do that. We do just that.

Our weapons?

Apathy and indifference more often than overt hostility..

But God doesn’t rape anybody.

He respects the choices His creatures make — to go where He would take us, or to make our own way to where our own way leads.

The ball’s in our court now.