Understanding

As expected, my doctor doubled the dosage when Monday’s blood work showed only small decreases in blood counts after three weeks on the drug.  So far, no major problems have developed from the increased dosage, although some existing side-effects have intensified to various degrees.  However, it is still too early to tell because it is possible to develop a serious side-effect even after three months on the drug.  By forcing myself to eat, I was able to maintain my weight between the last two doctor appointments.  Regarding the wound, the enzyme is gradually eating away the dead tissue to expose underlying viable tissue.  Now, about half the wound area is showing a good color, pink/red.  Once the dead tissue is mostly gone, the next step is to find some way to promote the growth of the good tissue.

Suffering— A rude wakeup call:

Previously, we discussed that the original sin committed by Adam and Eve was an act of disobedience that chose self over God.  One of the consequences was the creation of a new kind of human being, one that had sinned itself into existence.  To break the curse and restore our relationship with God and between one another, we have to consciously act out our role – as doers of God’s will.

Obedience is difficult because our self-will is inflated with years of usurpation and inflamed with the illusion of self-sufficiency.  Furthermore, we were born into and are part of a system that constantly ignores God’s will. We are rebels who must lay down our arms.  To compound the problem, we are so deep into our rebellious lifestyle that we do not even suspect the existence of our rebellion.

Suffering, though evil, is helpful in making us see our rebellious self-will in a couple of ways.  C. S. Lewis called pain as God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Not until we see the rebellious self-will inside us will we begin to do something about it. We can ignore our wickedness and remain comfortably in our sins and stupidity as long as everything seems to be fine. In fact, the more wicked we are, the less aware we are of our own wickedness. Suffering, on the other hand, is an evil impossible to ignore and demands immediate attention.  When God utilizes suffering, it forces us to see the true condition of our heart and our life as God alone sees it. Of course, there is also the possibility that suffering could drive us further into rebellion.

We ignore God’s will partially because we live within this illusion of self-sufficiency, thinking that what we have is enough and hard-earned, belonging to us. The honest, hardworking and upright who make a modest or decent living are more in danger of having this illusion than those who are not because it is less likely for a thief or a prostitute to be content with his/her life. God is like an emergency room doctor to us; He is there for emergencies but we hope we will never need Him. We want God to leave us alone and, we regard Him as an interruption. If the things we like to do happen to be the things God wants us to do, we count the coincidence as an act of obedience. Otherwise, we rationalize and do it anyway.  Suffering underlines the absolute dominance of God and shatters our illusion of self-sufficiency.  There is no place to hide and nothing much that anybody can do about it. It hurts so much that it may make one condemn one’s rebellious self-will and force a creature to return to the creator to surrender his/her will.

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health.

While no major side-effects have surfaced yet, I have begun to experience more of the less serious ones such as hoarseness. Nausea and bloating have also become more frequent, although their intensity has not increased much.  On Monday, I will see my oncologist who will then decide if the dosage can be increased.  The enzyme ointment has gradually eaten away the dead tissue to expose viable tissue in my wound.  Upon seeing the progress, the surgeon was happy enough to put the surgery aside for now unless a systematic, life-threatening infection develops from the wound.

God’s tough love:

God made us so that He can love us. (John 17:23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.  Rev 4:11 … for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.) While HE loves in spite of all of our weakness and impurities and forgives all, HE can’t be satisfied with us as we are because of who HE is.  HIS love can never be reconciled to our sin, which repels HIM and impedes HIS love. God wants us to become truly loveable so that HE can love us without hindrance, a cleft that even God’s omnipotence is unable to bridge at times.  God can only love us without hindrance when we are without any weakness and impurities.  For example, we can’t enjoy true fellowship with God if we still practice idolatry, and we can’t truly enjoy the love in the church, i.e., Christ’s body if we are still self-seeking and bully each other. God’s ultimate plan and purpose for us is to make us so loveable that HE can love us without any impediment. HIS love demands our perfection and the removal of our weakness and impurities. (Ephesians 5:27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.)

God loves us in spite of our weakness and impurities; not because of them. HE will take us in so long as we confess and believe in HIM.  However, once we are in HIS house, it is absurd to ask God to tolerate our unwholesome behaviors. In fact, God labors to make us perfect out of HIS love.

Sometimes, HE gently nudges us.  Other times, HE is like a dentist who continues to drill until all the decay is removed. Still other times, HE works on us like a smith forging a sword, shaping and strengthening it little by little, blow by blow.  HE is not always gentle about it.  HE utilizes suffering and pain for the purpose. More often than not, HE seems  so tyrannical that the consent of HIS object seems irrelevant.  HE is like a potter who will not leave his clay alone until it becomes a masterpiece (Jeremiah 18:4), like a shepherd who will gather his lambs with his arm (Isaiah 40:11), like a father who will continue to discipline his son until he becomes a real man (Proverbs 3:12 because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.), and like a groom who will relentlessly call his adulterous bride until she returns (Hosea 3).

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health.

I have been on the new chemo at half-dosage for 12 days. So far, there have been no serious side-effects except worrisome weight loss, and on Friday, my blood counts were virtually normal. Additionally, the edema in my left leg and foot has improved significantly. If this continues for another 10 days, the dosage will be increased. I am trying to eat as much as I can to halt the weight loss. Because of my reluctance to go through another surgery to make my hard-to-heal wound even larger, an enzyme ointment is being used to liquefy the dead tissues in the wound. The hope is that it will work so well that the surgery may become unnecessary.

Patch Adams

Because his father worked for the military, Hunter “Patch” Adams’s family was constantly moving to diverse places, helping him to learn to accept differences in others and to be able to quickly make friends. When Hunter started school, he goofed off all the time because he got so bored with the “simple” stuff. Soon after his father died in Germany, Adams moved with his family to Northern Virginia to live with his aunt and his uncle, a lawyer and independent thinker, for a few months before later moving to West Virginia. He became very close to his uncle, viewing him as a surrogate father. After moving to West Virginia, he met his first girlfriend, Donna, and dated until she broke up with him in his freshman year in college. Right around the same time, his uncle committed suicide. He became greatly depressed and suicidal, and dropped out of college just before Halloween in 1964. He checked himself into a mental hospital after a failed suicide attempt.

In the hospital, Adams made friends with many of the patients. He realized that his own problems faded away as he focused on helping others and soon discovered that the key to human happiness is to have loving and caring people in your life. He realized his passion: healing people with laughter. When he checked out of the hospital, he immediately applied to medical school without a college degree. He finally entered pre-med school in ’64 and three years later, entered med school at the Medical College of Virginia, as the oldest first year student. He loved to go and visit the hospital patients. He would make them laugh and perform funny antics around them. He believed in the necessity of personal interaction between patients and doctors and questioned the traditional impersonal approach to medical care. Adams eventually developed the idea for a medical clinic built around his philosophy of doctor-patient interaction.

For 12 years (1971-1983), he and his friends operated a pilot project. Four adults, including three physicians and their 16 children, moved into a large, six-bedroom house and called themselves a hospital. They were open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for all manner of medical problems ranging from birth to death. They saw 500-1000 people each month, with five to fifty overnight guests a night, totaling 15,000 people over those 12 years. They were never sued. At least three thousand of the patients suffered from mental illness, but they did not give psychiatric medicines. They referred out what they could not handle. It was truly ecstatic, fascinating, and stimulating. No one gave them a donation and they received little foundation grants, so their staff had to work part-time jobs to pay to practice medicine.

Through the success of the pilot program at the Arlington, Virginia location, a model health care facility is being planned on 310 acres purchased in Pocahontas County, WV. Its goal is to integrate a traditional hospital with alternative medicine–acupuncture, homeopathy, etc. Treatment will combine integrative medicine with performing arts, crafts, nature, agriculture, and recreation. The Institute will include a 40-bed hospital, a theater, arts and crafts shops, horticulture and vocational therapy. Over five years ago, Dr. Adams and staff temporarily stopped seeing patients so that they could coordinate plans for raising $5 Million needed for the Institute’s permanent and expanded home, a “model health care community.” Currently planned is an immediate phase of this dream, a $400,000 WV facility so that their medical service to patients can resume within the next two years.

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health.

Dear All,               

As soon as I was taken off the machine, the infection got the upper hand.  I am on antibiotics now and will need another minor surgery to clean the wound up. However, the pain has reduced significantly, and I can walk around without using Lamaze breathing :). I began taking the new chemo drug on Tuesday, so it is still too early to tell how I will respond in terms of effectiveness and side-effects.  So far, I have only experienced some nausea and bloating.

The Original Sin—Self-centeredness

Last time, I shared my thoughts about human wickedness. The original sin is the basis of all sin. Both the Old and New Testaments make reference to it.  For example, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5)  “12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. …18 Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. 19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. (Romans 5)”

The question, “Are we being unfairly punished for the sin of our remote ancestors?”, is a fairly common one. Shouldn’t people be judged by their actions and not be punished for simply being born into this world?  First of all, when the term, ‘original sin’, is used with regard to anybody other than Adam and Eve, it is referring to the fallen state he/she is in instead of actual acts of sin.  Therefore, a newborn baby can be in such a state while it has not committed any sin yet.

Self-awareness is an attribute of God which was given to us as a unique human endowment when God created us in His own image. It enables us to look at ourselves as if we were someone else and to identify and then separate ourselves from our own feelings (e.g., depressed, happy, angry, etc.), our own moods, or even our own thoughts.  When one becomes aware of both oneself and God, one faces a choice of choosing self or God as the center and to exist for self or for God.

The original sin committed by Adam and Eve that is recorded in Genesis was an act of disobedience that chose self over God.  The consequences were a broken relationship, God-bestowed curses, and deportation from paradise. Before the original sin, through their God-given grace and human spirit, Adam and Eve enjoyed the higher and spiritual life that transcends the biological and physical laws.  They also had control over all the other creatures by means of delegated power (Gen 1:26). By being disobedient, they lost the control because they ceased to be God’s delegate. Furthermore, the act corrupted their human spirit, making the higher and spiritual life no longer possible.  As a result, Adam and Eve fell under the control of biological and physical laws* — a new kind of man had been produced by this degenerative process (similar to the eye degeneration of deep sea fish which can no longer see light). A new race had sinned itself into existence. This race continues to propagate through the physical reproductive process.

Naturally, the original sin is the cause for all acts of sin: “a bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matthew 7:17, NIV).

*By disobeying the law God made for them, Adam and Eve found themselves governed by God’s lower laws, i.e., biological and physical laws. (Hooker’s Conception of Law).

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health.