Thalidomide

Once I stood on a hotel balcony in city of Tiberius, just above the Sea of Galilee. This Sea, 17 miles wide, 39 miles long, can have a storm almost instantly. It was during one of these storms, that the disciples were on a ship, and they saw Christ walking towards them on the water (John 6:19). When the impetuous Peter walked on the water towards Jesus, he began to sink, not because he took his eyes off of Jesus, as is so often the claim, but because he looked at the pounding world, walls of water, around him. Those who try to understand life, understand God's Word, are trying to use their natural minds. All the fullness of the godhead in dwells us as believers, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. It is then that we are able to face the questions and quandaries of this present world.

I was still a medical officer on active duty in 1957 when the news of Thalidomide made the headlines. Probably 10,000 babies born with birth defects throughout the world, because of one drug given to pregnant mother to relieve nervousness and morning sickness. Think of it, over 2,000 babies born in England, 2,500 in Germany, and about 44 other countries in the world, because of one drug...babies without hands, feet, or legs, etc. Only because of Dr. Frances Kelsey, one of the FDA inspectors, had insisted on the holding-up of the drug in this country, that America was not splotched with such horrific debasement, even though the drug had been produced in this country by Richardson Merrill, USA “Big Pharma”. It is still sad to think that men and women will study medicine and pharmacology as long as they do, to become educated by representatives of drug companies who call on them at their offices. We have learned from too many deaths, that exotic new chemicals in drugs will kill as well as deform. It is so necessary that anyone investigates any medication, any pill before you put it in your body.

You know your body better than anyone else, and most of the time, you can handle yourself, most sicknesses with common sense methods. Remember, Jesus took all of our diseases and deformities to the cross, along with our sins. (Isaiah 53) When you go to the Lord's table, you take the bread for your healing, the wine for the remission of your sins. Within the power of almighty God, we have deliverance, redemption from disease as well as from sin.

One would think that with the progress made in healthcare, psychological understanding, we would not have the horrendous problems facing us today. But, we are bombarded with the conflicts, moral, physical, spiritual, which keep us dumbfounded about what will happen next.

Each day we squirm with news of the loss of human dignity: abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, ill treatment of the mentally ill, our total inability to get along with one another, it is not just the embarrassment, indignity, insensitivity of body searches at airports, but criminal activity, even in families.

I was on the edge of mental depression most of my life, because for too long I looked at life, living, healing, with a natural eye and natural mind. I would have bouts when I just wanted to get away from everyone, had very little to do with anyone, simply because I could not understand the complexities of the human mind and those around me. Most of all, my family and friends, who should know better.

Only after I assisted in the rehabilitation of a mentally ill young man, did I discover that God is capable of healing anything. Different with birth defects, innocent children entering this uncertain world minus providence from the sanctuary of the womb, most of these children died early, but those who did survive, are glad they have life. A minister asked my help, a young man was in the depths of manic depression, it was difficult to even think of such a snake pit home-life, that one could be born into such a horror story; today, authorities would have probably intervened, but even that is questionable.

He told me how his father would beat his mother in his presence, just about every piece of furniture in their home had been broken. She had lost all desire to live, totally mentally incapacitated, much of the time, little food in the house, mostly bread with lard to spread on it. When not at work, the father would sit around drunk watching television, cursing, despising everything and everyone. “I am sure he had killed and buried a sister older than me, he would warn my mother of the backyard, and what could happen to her there.“ His only refuge when not in school, visiting his mother's parents who, on a small farm, poverty-stricken, likewise were demented. His grandmother mostly sat around crying, and in prayer; but, his grandfather, seeking to escape the world, would take him on walks in the woods, telling him about animals, birds, trees.

It was only after the father had been hit and killed by another drunk, driving a car, and his mother had been arrested, stealing food and silverware from a neighbor's house, that the law, the minister and I became involved. Try to talk about the love of God with someone who has never seen anything but hatred, who has never seen anything but want and fear, who has never seen anything but mental depression and mental illness.

My only niece, a Salem College graduate, teaching her first year as a teacher. A black female child, totally hungry for love, coming to school each day, ill-kept, abused, beaten, one day never came again. My sister, a former teacher, said to me, “can you even imagine what happened to her?”

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. (Isaiah 55:8) The cure to one's depression comes in the reality of this scripture, as well as the words of the William Cowper hymn, “God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.” It was in my world travels, seeing how people in the word live amid every form of poverty and degradation, that I found solace and solution to my questions. The longest chapter in the Bible, the 119th Psalm is filled with the hope coming from God's abundance. One will never understand bioethics, man's inhumanity to man, sin's ruin and Christ's redemption until one realizes that parents give the body, but God creates the soul. Your body, abused and misused by the world, the flesh, the devil, will deteriorate, but your soul will live on forever, having been embossed and embraced by the short sojourn here on earth, as a stranger and alien, chosen by God, before the very foundation of the world, our citizenship is in heaven. (1 Peter 2:11)