I Hate Doctors!

 

I HATE DOCTORS!!!

by very patient David L Lewis

Have you ever noticed you feel bad when any of those medical-type persons are around? It’s their fault! How many times does a fellow have to explain how good he was feeling just before a couple of strangers scooped him up and dumped him off at one of those doctor places? Then they ask you what is wrong. How would we know? Do doctors ever think it might just have been a bumpy ambulance ride, or those noisy sirens that caused all this?

One of the many things my father taught me is that if a man has earned the right to be called “doctor’ he has earned the right to be called ‘doctor”. [Yeah, okay, dad died never having met a woman doctor.] I’ve always attempted to treat doctors with the respect my father taught. However, I have been unceremoniously detained no less than fifty times in various hospitals. seen by so many medical-types even God has lost track, and now see doctors younger than my grandson. After a while an old man has made some observations worth sharing, with grievances justly elaborated on...

Did you know that doctors don’t even know everything? Imagine that! Remember when we were kids and our parents assured us doctors would know what was wrong and what to do? Maybe that was true in olden days. In the world we actually live-in there is more new stuff coming out every day than existed when I was young. My father died in 1966 of problems quickly and almost routinely dealt with in my lifetime. There’s just too much to know about the human body, too many variables as to what some drug, test, procedure which worked on others will work on this patient. Really liked it better when they knew everything – or we at least had parents who told us that.

They think we know what they’re talking about when they tell us what they know, as of now, about why we got there. Hey, a lot of us are just not all that bright. In writing it is called ‘the curse of knowledge’. That is, forgetting the hearer does not know what you know. Hate when any medical-type assumes we patients know what they know, more often than not we do not.

They always ask what do you “want” to do? I don’t want any of this stuff! As I used to tell clients, “If you knew what to do you wouldn’t be here.” Finding out what to do is why we trust you, doctor. Just tell me what you recommend and why. I’ll pretend to understand what you’re talking about and do it. And, if you ain’t worried, neither am I.

Doctors never remember every detail of what we’ve gone through. Remembering all that individual stuff we have to do ourselves. And, sometimes the doctor whom we see changes, and the new guy don’t know nothing about the trouble we’ve seen. Best they can do is to be familiar enough with our case to know we’ve gone though a lot of stuff. [BTW: Beware of doctor you’ve never seen before who hasn’t read your file. If he walks in the door not even knowing I was a heart patient, as has happened, we are both in trouble.]

All we are allowed to even ask of doctors is to believe they care what happens to me. Care enough to be familiar with our history, care enough to make us believe you care about the outcome. When they do those two things we will talk about what great doctors they are, and how much we love them. Come to think about it, that’s the kind of doctors I’ve [mostly] had. As Gilda Radner used to say on SNL, “Never mind”.

Happy Easter thingee

 

Happy Easter thingee!

As explained to me by Philip H Lewis, Easter always comes on

"The first Sunday after the first full moon after the sun crosses the equator”

SPOILER ALERT! Easter Bunny ain’t real. Easter comes to this generation via verbal traditions from ancient worship related to coming of springtime. Colored eggs and candy are conspiracies to sell stuff to kids and their sugar addicted parents -- who probably once were kids. Also, Easter is not a holiday, just the indispensable Holy Day of the religion known as Christianity.

The only true constant about Easter is that the date varies each year. The month and day of Easter Sunday varies because it comes right after the Jewish celebration of Passover, meaning month and day is based on Lunar Cycles. Thus Easter comes “the first Sunday after the first full moon after the sun crosses the equator” (also known as first day of Spring). Everything else about the day – including eggs, candy, and bunny -- is a matter of what the previous generation brought down to your own.

Because traditions of Easter have been handed down by word of mouth, multiple observances of the day have arisen in families and cultures wherever Christianity has gone. And, as it is with most families, ours had its own traditions...

Easter Sunday was a very special day in the home in which my sister Diane, brother Terry, and I were reared. Of course there was a basket of candy and decorated eggs as long as we lived at home. Our mother, the wisest woman to ever walk the earth, “allowed” us the treat of actually eating an Easter egg for breakfast – candy had to wait until after church. Don’t remember hearing much about the Easter bunny growing up, though. If memory serves, and it rarely does, the bunny thingee probably didn’t get much play after, say, starting Kindergarten.

The highlight of Easter in the Lewis home was going to church. Easter Sunday service was always good for some kind of treat being handed out by the deacons. Most importantly, every Easter Sunday involved preaching of the death, burial and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. According to overarching, traditional, historical, conservative interpretation of Scriptures, Jesus was raised from death the Sunday after Passover. This, we came to understand, was the reason for observing the day as Resurrection Sunday! That bunny thingee just happened to come on the same weekend.

As told to me by one with more study and understanding than most, the message of Resurrection Sunday is the indispensable belief separating Christianity from all other religious truth-claims. Christianity stands or falls on the belief in Christ’s resurrection from death and return to heaven:

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.  More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.  If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (I Corinthians 15.12-15 NIV)

As it is with children of devout parents, a child’s worldview encompasses what is taught by those parents and sources the parents trust. Understanding this common childhood experience is important to someone in their 80^th year. Important because truth is important. It was therefore imperative for this observer to look to traditional, historical, conservative interpretation of Scriptures as they have come down to us. As was said of the Bereans so it should be said of those who would celebrate Easter:

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. (Acts 17.11 NIV)

So, children of this generation, what’s important to you about that Easter thingee? Is Easter the celebration of a new springtime? Or, is Easter the message of resurrection to new life? Just asking for some future generation.

Happy Easter thingee!

theDaddy!

DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY

 

DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY

the sojourn of David L Lewis

He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death.

(from Red Badge of Courage)

There is an ancient fable of a slave sent to the marketplace by his master. While at the market the slave is startled when he sees the Angel of Death. The slave fears Death is looking for him. He runs back to his master begging to be sent to Madagascar to escape Death. The master agrees, and then goes down to the market to directly confront Death. “Why did you scare my slave?” the master demands. “I’m sorry,” Death replies, “it is just that I was surprised to see him here in the market. I have an appointment with him tonight in Madagascar.”

It was 1961. I was eighteen. Had myself a brand-new, fresh off the showroom floor Buick convertible with V-8 engine. It had an indescribably beautiful green-blueish color never seen again. In those days the speed limit was 70-mph. I was doing at least that. Suddenly I knew, knew without doubt, that Death was in the back seat. All I had to do was look back, even into the mirror, and he would take me. It was real. So real that I moved my foot from the gas to the brake pedal. As I did ‘we’ reached the top of a hill. Just over that hill was an old black pickup truck without lights stalled on the highway. Having started to slow down, I was prepared to and able to stop. From that moment to this I have always believed for those few seconds Death took a Holiday -- or maybe missed an appointment.

Death Takes A Holiday comes from a story of Angel of Death taking human form to find out why humans fear him so. The story has been used in several movies and its plot appears in various venues. In version I remember when Death takes his holiday there is no death anywhere on earth for his holiday period. Not sure how that would work. As my mother once said, ‘nothing lives if nothing dies.’

If you’ve lived long enough, and have an honest perspective on the life you lived, most likely there have been one or more times when death took a holiday regarding you; or at least missed an appointment, for the moment. Know there were a few times in my long life when appointments were missed unawares. John Lennon was only half right, both death and life "is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans". As my sister Diane says, “Death is not the scary part. It is the steps we take that scare us, not death itself.”

Death may take a holiday, or we may have simply missed an appointment. But, the overwhelming weight of statistical evidence leads inevitably to incontrovertible conclusion all that lives must die.

Death does have a reasonable question to ask, though: If death is inevitable, why, throughout the history of man on earth, have people always feared death? More to the point, why do Christians, who profess to long for and expect eternal award, fear death? Why do ardent Christians not readily identify with what the apostle Paul wrote: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21)?

There is a debate in Theology/Philosophy as to whether death is Predestined or Random? Is the day you will die “written’ and certain? Or, is it really just random, an appointment which can be changed as circumstances change? Don’t have final answer to the question, but do think the great fear is not the certainty of death. The great fear is that death comes to man at such random, unpredictable intervals. When all is said and done, everyone knows they must certainly die, but nobody really believes it.

And so, being of a certain age, and having missed my share of appointments, find myself wondering what people might say of this life I’ve lived. A life which must inevitably end on some date either certain or yet to be appointed. Won’t be there to find out what tales may be told, but these are the things I would want said:

Faithful to his one wife without waver

Cared more for his children than himself

Did what he honestly believed God gave him to do

Sojourned on this earth as it is appointed to mankind

WAITING FOR GOD

 

Waiting for God

by David L Lewis

Original blog on Brazil Times website posted 2013,  updated March 2023

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee,      and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” (John 21.18, ASV)

.

“Waiting for God” was a British sitcom seen on PBS from 1990 to 1994. The show portrayed two 70’s something residents of a retirement home who spent their time running rings around their families and the home's oppressive management. Now that I’m nearing the big 8-0 “Waiting for God” is probably excellent preparation for last step in life known euphemistically as ‘good as it gets’

As it comes to all loved and loving children, our kids are plotting these days to send us to one of those ‘retirement’ homes! After our most recent go-arounds with heart, health, and happiness, said kids may well have good reason in conspiring to consign me and Kay to “waiting for God” status.

Truth is that the hardest thing to do is waiting for God.

It turns out that with God most things are a matter of a lot of waiting. And, as we wait it often seems like His (and our) enemies are triumphing, while God seems to be taking His own sweet time in getting things done. Christians are left holding on to Romans 8.28: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.

If God has only me to deal with, that purpose can be worked out a bit more quickly. If, to fulfill His purposes, He really does want me to stop beating my wife with wet spaghetti, I’m pretty sure I can. Getting my life in line with His requirements is a bore, but very effective in finding His purposes.

The delay usually comes about because there are other people, circumstances, and conflicts to be considered. When others must first align with His purposes, solution to our problem takes a while.

As Americans, though, we’ve come to expect a certain level of instantaneous co-operation by the Almighty, saying: “By the way, Lord, I’m more interested in my purposes than in Yours, anyway.”

For those who learn to wait, it usually all works out well. Most Christians really do find “all things work together for good”. Problem is that it took some considerable amount of time to do so. When God was finally able to work it out with all those people, circumstances, and conflicts, the proffered prayers had long since been forgotten. Lost, too, is how bad it was. how fervently was prayed for His solution. By time we no longer need to wait for God, we’ve already gone on to next request.

We used to sing a chorus based on Isaiah 40.31 which went:

    They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength

    They shall mount up on wings as eagles
    They shall run and not be weary
    They shall walk and shall not faint
    Wait, wait I say, on the Lord

Must try to remember those lyrics as it gets as good as it gets
and I, too, begin waiting for God.

WARNINGS I MIGHT IMPART

 

WARNINGS I MIGHT IMPART

(as if any future generation might listen)

One prime warning readily applied to all generations comes from Judges 2.10, “And there grew up a new generation which knew not...”

Turns out humans don’t often know what they don’t know, and are most often adverse to leaning what they don’t want to learn from old folk. New generations seem always to require learning most of what they learn from their own mistakes. I know how they feel. Almost everything I learned in life was learned by mistake, and not from some novel willingness to listen to forefathers. Mostly my own mistakes, occasionally from observing mistakes of others. Mostly, though, warned of the consequences, I was young and “did it my way”.

Knowing few, if any, listen to lessons learned by old men, I herewith dare proclaim these warnings to any who would learn. Warnings I would give some future generation in forlorn hope they may learn from some old generation.

Beware the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’

In 1974 Billy Graham said words which have evidenced to be valid many times, in many circumstances, by many people: “Every problem we solve creates two problems which we would not have had if we had not solved the first problem. The result is that now the problems are so complex there is no solution.” To best of my knowledge ‘Law of Unintended Consequences” has not been appealed since.

Beware What Has Been “Carefully Taught”

You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught

This comes from 1950 Broadway musical South Pacific and was quite controversial when written. While ostensibly directed to what has been ‘carefully taught’ to us as children, it is my observation it applies to what we learn throughout life – by mistake perhaps – about religion, politics, and our place is the human experience. Beware what you know that had to be very carefully taught.

Beware the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Never heard of it? Not to worry, once you understand it you may well see it in a lot of folks. Not yourself, of course, but others. If you can’t understand the Effect, well, we need to talk.

Named after psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the Dunning-Kruger Effect is a view of life that causes some to overestimate their knowledge, level of skill, or ability – particularly in areas with which they have little to no experience. People with such a worldview can be recognized by:

• failure to accept others can do the task a lot better

• failure to realize or to admit they haven’t got a clue

• failure to learn from their own mistakes and failures

• failure to accept responsibility when all goes to hell

Sound like anyone you know? Just asking for a friend.

Bad news is that people demonstrating the Effect aren’t smart enough to know they aren’t smart enough to know they demonstrate it. So, as said above, if you still don’t understand the Effect, well, we need to talk.

Good news is that, like both pride and humility, once you know you demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger Effect, it’s gone.

Just warnings put forward in forlorn hopes some future generation may learn from this old generation.

theDaddy!

Where is God in This Mess

 

From my Brazil Times blog of September 24, 2014

Where is God in all this mess?

If you have not been watching the news lately, don’t.

About once a week there is a report about a forest fire which has broken out and caused massive damage. Then, almost incidentally, it might be noted that this fire is just one of 30 or so burning across the nation.

Turns out this fire phenomena is illustrative of what’s going on from one end of the earth to the other. The whole world seems to be burning, with no limit to the number of fires demanding attention, and no shortage of break-outs to report.

Someone has said that the world stands at the greatest moment of calamity in human history – even more dangerous than Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when thermonuclear war was at stake. In that crisis at least there was some one reasonable, logical person with whom to negotiate.

None of the world’s fires now faced seem to have any reasonable, logical person with whom to negotiate.

Someone once told me that if a Christian wants to know where God is in all this mess they ought to have an understanding of what might be called a “Christian philosophy of history” of what He has been and is doing through history.

Now, any philosophy should not be thought of as a doctrine of the church. Rather, philosophy is best thought of as a search for truth; a search with which anyone is free to disagree, or misunderstand.

An overview of Christian thought over 2,000 years seems to indicate that Christianity says history goes in a straight line and can be summed up with: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last (Rev. 22.13, KJV). That is, all history began with: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Gen 1.1, KJV). And, that all human history will end with: In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (I Cor 15.51, KJV)

Christians generally have held that all human history from Alpha to Omega is in the hands of an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present loving heavenly Father who has a plan and is in control of the final outcome; that nothing happens to His children which does not first pass through His permissive will.

No one is obligated to accept that history teaches that we are going from point A to point B, nor to think that God is in control of it all, or even to take hope that He wins in the end.

But, if this Christian approach to reading history is not true we are in big trouble.

We are not going back to America as we imagined it being in the 1950’s. The world is getting darker and darker, fires are burning from one end of the earth to the other, and there is no reasonable person with whom to negotiate.

If a Beginning-to-End Christian philosophy of history is not correct, then don’t watch the news.

David L Lewis is an observer of and sometimes commentator on life who may be reached at thedaddy1776.gmail,com.

WHO IS A CHRISTIAN

 

WHO IS A CHRISTIAN?

Following is condensed from three blogs originally posted August 2010 on Brazil Times website. Years of observation led me to create my own ‘Types of Christian’. It must be noted that to the best of my knowledge this is original to me and presented as ‘open source’ for any other. My list is not known to be a teaching of any church or denomination; and I am not prepared or willing to defend it on any Biblical or theological basis. It’s simply the observation of one old man.

Level One: Politically Christian

There is an interesting phenomenon in our culture which allows anyone to be what I would term a “Political Christian”. That is, one can be a Christian because they are nothing else.

It is commonplace, and certainly a legal right, to be a “Christian” simply by being nothing else: Do not have an Islamic sounding name, must not be Muslim. Do not look like parents were from Asia, so not Buddhist or Hindu. No apparent Israel heritage, can’t be a Jew. Born and bred in America and doing right as seeing right to be in own eyes, so must be Christian.

In this opinion being “Politically Christian” requires no special knowledge of the Bible, no well defined belief system, cost nothing – not even membership in any particular church. It does allow, even demands, religious tolerance for anything and everything passing under the banner of faith. The “Politically Christian” blithely says, “You have your religion and I have mine.”

Level Two: Philosophically Christian

It is my observation it is possible to be what I would term “Philosophically Christian” – that is, because I somehow identify with a certain church that is what I am. My stepfather Bill Maddox put it this way, “I’m a trunk Baptist. Joined the Baptist Church when I was a kid and got a membership certificate. Put the darn thing in a trunk and have been a Baptist ever since.”

People identify with one church or another for a lot of reasons: They love the liturgy (every church has one, know it or not); or it’s where they grew up; or there’s a really nice preacher. All good reasons I suppose. To be a Christian because of with whom you identify is certainly an American right.

Any American church can embrace any teachings or traditions it wishes, which makes for a very interesting diversity. As long as you say, “these are our traditions, the way we choose to ‘do’ church”, you can get away with a lot of intriguing dichotomies. Only things that cannot be done in the name of Christ’s Church is what clearly contravenes civil law or the rights of another.

Level Three: Theologically Christian

To be “Theologically Christian” one must be willing to go beyond “this is what our church teaches”. Now you must enter into the sum total of the revelations of God, His history in dealing with mankind, and what direction He has given to scholarship for these 2,000 years. Now begins a search for something to die for; and, more the difficult, something to live by. This particular search is best thought a journey, not a destination.

The Guideposts on this journey are questions, rarely accompanied with easy answers.

• Where is God in all this mess, anyway?

• What think you of about Jesus of Nazareth, called The Christ? Who is He?

• Is the Bible – as it has come down to us through Judaeo-Christian history – what it claims? Is it what others claim for it?

• The overwhelming weight of statistical evidence indicates all that lives dies. What then?

• Most important of all, if we seek to be Theologically Christian, how shall we then live?

I am somewhere on this search to be a Theological Christian, not sure where. Worry about those certain of where they are in the journey. Worry more about them than about my own uncertainty in this regard. Where are you?

^“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (the Apostle Paul, Philippians 3.11-14, NIV)