Ignominious Disease

#462


I was just a child, probably 10, when my father and mother had business in Raleigh and decided to go by and see my father's Aunt Lizzy (Elizabeth Lucas, sister of my father's mother). Aunt Lizzy was a patient at the Dorothea Dix Asylum for the Insane in Raleigh. A huge institution, now valuable land which the state and city are fighting over for various purposes. It was near Pullen Park and we had gone there to eat lunch which my mother had prepared. I will never forget Aunt Lizzy as this was the only time I can remember ever seeing her. A tall, gaunt, thin woman with hurt and burden in her eyes which I will never forget. Women looked so old, so young at that time in history that I do not know her age. Anyway, she was one of the ten children of my great-grandfather (Elder P.T. Lucas), one of the great preachers and land owners of eastern North Carolina. Aunt Lizzie had never married and my great-grandfather, in dividing up his land, had left each child a nice farm but had left Aunt Lizzie a particularly large farm because he wanted to make sure that, since she would never marry, she would be well cared for throughout her life. This is where the ignominious disease of covetousness comes in. Even though all her brothers and sisters had their homes, their lands, their families, THEY WANTED AUNT LIZZY'S LAND. My great-grandfather's brother, a well known lawyer and one of the founders of a well known eastern North Carolina bank, was trustee. Her brothers and sisters persuaded him that Aunt Lizzy, because she had become eccentric and spent most of her time crocheting nice gifts for all her extended family, was crazy and should be admitted to the Hospital for the Insane. And there she was, pitiful, lonely, bearing the burden of the screams and degradation of the hundreds of inmates in that institution who really should have been there. A friend of mine, a doctor who worked there,said he could not understand life in that place before tranquilizers. I remember she told my father that he was the first relative who had been to see her in five years (my mother had brought her some nice food). I'm sure that in the past she had been a beautiful, marvelous personality...I understand played the piano beautifully...cared for her mother and father until their deaths. I truly believe that each of her brothers and sisters suffered immeasurable problems because of this treatment of their sister. I was too young to know most of them but I do know that several of her siblings had children who were mentally deficient. For children who are reared in a Christian home, where is the discipline, the charity?


As duty officer at an Army hospital, one slow night, the other duty officer and myself were talking about our lives. This young man knew of my Christian commitment, my devotion to the church. About the same age, he was a cradle Catholic, he wanted to explain to me why he had left the church. 10% of all unbelievers were at one time in the church. We had been talking about his five children, at his very young age, and he had explained his total devotion with his family. He said, “I left the church because I could not believe in a church that would tolerate my father.” His father was a prominent doctor in a southern city. His father and mother's second child, a daughter, was born with Down syndrome. Her name was Susan and she totally monopolized the mother's life. She simply would not accept the condition, spent all her days dealing with this child, down on the floor teaching her anything the child could comprehend while totally neglecting her husband. My friend was old enough that he learned to deal with the situation on through high school and even college. His father took up with a mistress but his mother refused to give his father a divorce. In the town, the doctor, husband of a wife with a Down Syndrome child, could not risk the publicity of pursuing the matter. My friend was disappointed with his father, with whom now he had no contact at all, because the father continued to take communion at the Catholic church while having a relationship with two women. Of course he just supported the wife (the daughter had since died) but his time and affections were given to the woman to whom he was not married. My friend felt that the Catholic church should have excommunicated him rather than continue the sacraments of the church. How often does this go on in every denomination? It is believed that only 5% of the members, connected in any way with any church, are real in their faith. It is believed that only 20% of members of any denomination actually practice their faith. We know that in Catholicism, and Catholics control 70% of the American vote, 54% voted for the Democrat Obama which, in effect, voted for the extended culture of death. How can any Catholic, how can anyone who bears the name of Christ, vote for a Democrat for president who intends to double the tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood for abortions? This young Army medical officer was a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology. He was totally devoted to his wife and five children. He said, “Even if I had never been exposed to Christianity, the Catholic church, I cannot comprehend any doctor destroying the most innocent of human life.” The insidious, ignominious disease promoting the culture of death is beyond the comprehension of the human mind. I have heard the same attitude involving other denominations, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist and, God help us, Baptist, who believe in gay marriage and gay preachers.

In Portugal, I witnessed the self flagellation of the body by religious people attempting to satisfy God through their self punishment. A Michigan congressman questioned me extensively about this religious practice. Their bloody body, whipped and suffering, not required by God to satisfy an ignominious disease.

This week, a 51 count indictment against a well known lawyer, puppet of a two term governor (the governor and his wife steeped in corruption), was handed down by court officials. There will be other indictments, just as some of the corrupt officials of NC are already in prison. The ignominious disease of just coveting more money, more power, has overtaken the power brokers (locally, statewide, and nationally). What possible enjoyment does a corrupt political figure get from driving a 100,000 car to his $10 million home...knowing that he has thousands of dollars in securities in banks...knowing that he is the owner of much real estate...all gained from illegal acts? Most political figures, bureaucrats, even men and women with nominal educations, can make enough money legally to live well. You can only sleep in one bed, you only need a limited amount of clothing, you probably eat more food than you should. Why is it that celebrities who eat off gold plates, who eat the best food a chef can cook, feels that he must have this type excess largess when thousands of innocent children and elderly are hungry every minute of their lives (1,440 minutes in each day)? 245,000 people die each day; 320,000 babies, who escape the abortionist, are born each day. We all have the same number of minutes, in our day, to do good or evil. The “Big I, Little You” mentality has always existed since pride, the beginning of every sin, infected man. Many think they are too big to fail. Many companies think they are “too large to fail”. It is the little foxes that spoil the vines (Sgs 2:15). For the power hungry individuals, for political control patriarchs, for even the fathers who sin, or the brothers and sisters who covet, sometime, look in the microscope and see the small microbiology of the world. Any little bacteria, virus, ignominious cancer cell can bring you down to the reality of living.