CARING FOR THE FILED AND FORGOTTEN

Caring about the Filed and Forgotten

My father’s 47 year confinement with mental illness related in FOR PETE’S SAKE, http://www.mentalhealthforpetessake.com augmented by mental health issues that we found in our everyday family story, was a turning point in my life that caused me to think seriously about those in life who were troubled. When I made my application to Taylor University in 1947, I was asked the question of why I wanted to advance in education. My simple and unsophisticated answer then and now remains, ”I wanted to help people.”

Much more thought has gone into that question since but it was enough then to lead me on into the ministry. At that point I certainly had no idea what helping people involved except to bring them to Christ. Then I would have used the language of my little country church and responded that caring was about bringing salvation to others, meaning assisting them to receive Jesus as Lord. All those years of Dad’s (Pete’s) confinement I cared about the mentally ill because it had come home to our family. From that experience I began to think more about helping people find Christ, not that I had been wrong, just short on understanding.

Bishop Michael Coyner, resident bishop of the new Indiana Conference wrote today, October 13, 2009, through our Hoosier communications, eHUM, of the missing word in all the discussion about health care. It is salvation, he writes. He says it better than I. Let's quote a brief section from his article because his comment brings the article above about Dad together with article two about me, and article three about receiving personal health care that comes later in another blog. We need to understand something of caring before we get to caring or other help that could well be called “salvation” as does Bishop Coyner.

The Bishop writes: “Salvation” in the Bible is not just about being saved from sin for eternal life. That is the ultimate sense of “salvation” of course, but the Bible and the teachings of Jesus focus upon “salvation” in terms of wholeness of mind, body, and spirit. Our wholeness is not just a medical issue, it is an issue about the totality of our life. Salvation is about bodily health, spiritual wellness, and mental balance. Salvation is about more than just our individual wellness, it is about the health and well-being of the human family and about living in community with one another and with God.” The Filed and Forgotten need this sense of community from another caring human being.

While on my years of disability my concept of caring was broadened, not just regarding my Dad, but for all those with any form of mental disorder. After writing the book and becoming enabled physically to promote it, there were book signings, seminars, the website, and over 5 years of having a booth at the ten day Covered Bridge Festival each October at Bridgeton, in Parke County Indiana. I have mentioned this before but a repetition is necessary as we begin to see a broader picture of caring for those sick either in body, mind, or spirit. The people no matter their problem stopped by for a chat, but especially those who were mentally ill or had loved ones with some disorder. That experience over the years broadened my concept of caring about those who were broken in body, mind, or spirit.

As was said, more will come about experiences that people endure from medical personnel who don’t practice the meaning of the word “caring” and certainly would have trouble understanding the broader concept of “salvation”of which Bishop Coyner spoke. It was during the writing of Dad’s book, thinking of mental health issues from searching for our ancestry to the lessons of Dad's legacy, and experiencing my own disability that the idea of persons set aside for whatever reason from the mainstream, “Filed and Forgotten” became a theme I could not escape. Not only from a historical point of my experiences, but the whole idea of caring and the salvation of body, mind, and spirit struck a note that surely fits into some melody of hope and recovery for those outside and inside our usual church circles and other organizational circles. Blogging became an idea that maybe would attract people to reach out in a caring fashion to all those needing a lift of some sort.

Those needing an outstretched hand that I refer to in my blogs are not the masses attended so well by our Global Ministries, but individuals who are in our churches, a neighbor down the street, someone who is within our local environs or you know about who suffer some form of disability that takes on a number of expressions and implications. We will be writing more about who these people are later on and hinting at how we can help. The hinting begins with caring about those who need Coyner’s description of salvation. A task for ordinary Christians and caring, helpful people.

What is caring? It is about as difficult to analyze or describe as love. First of all, it certainly is a word misused just as much and can be interpreted to mean a great variety of experiences, moods, or actions. ”Caring” has great selling attributes. Merchants care about you. Hospitals care about you. Car dealers care about you. Anyone who wants to sell you something uses the word so freely, meaning they care for a sale, not necessarily you personally. We have the debate of the century about health care. Care can be using the latest technology to determine a diagnosis. Educational institutions care to admit certain kind of students, or in some cases any student.

Some of the above is hard to quibble about. However, to move on to another organization that flashes the qualification to treat your ailment does raise our eyebrows, or it should. That is the church. Obviously the tone of these blogs indicates this writer thinks while we do a great ministry, we have a way to go to live up to the caring spirit of Jesus. Let’s take our motto, for instance. Open what? Minds, hearts, and doors? Sounds nice, but when we don’t honestly care then the doors are not open to some people, some are not welcome. We have chosen to build new churches and to help the poor. Are the new churches for the poor?

Back to my position, we have people in our churches that are ill for weeks and see no one from the church. It is too often the same with other organizations. We have elderly members who have given their life for the church and when incapacitated either at home or in a nursing home receive no ministry except a request for money. Is that caring? What about our veterans? They lie on their beds and wonder what happened to their friends. Such people, and there is a much longer list, wonders about the support of their used to be friends. We are not a caring example to the nonchurched. We can double our attendance with ministry to those who are next door.

What does caring involve? By not demonstrating our caring from the heart instilled by our Master, we are saying that the person is no longer important or useful. Many losing jobs or those placed on disability certainly entertain those thoughts since our culture places value on what we get done. The church’s silence and inaction in these and other cases say to that precious child of God that they don’t count anymore. When we say, “Well, I don’t care about this or that,” we devalue the object of our conversation, whether the poor, the person in the nursing home, the person who isn’t showing up church, the drug addict, or whomever has been marginalized. Someone close by in your neighborhood needs your caring heart and hands.
With so much unsaid, some of which can be found in earlier blogs or those yet to come, we conclude this one by these closing comments. Genuine caring about others may be an instinct or learned, but a challenge and saving act for self and for others; a necessary ingredient in a sane society, and the last word in faithful ministry abroad or next door.