A New Way To Be Mad . . . If Rape Were Legal

As I was reading Elliot’s article “A New Way to Be Mad”, what struck me was the depths of depravity of humanity. How far we have fallen! There seems to be no end to the lists of neuroses and philias, to the wide variety of ways man seeks to find fulfillment and happiness apart from God. This fact was also clear in Yalom’s recounting of his cancer patient.

Initially, Yalom’s patient Carlos tried to find fulfillment in sexual encounters (or fantasies thereof), then switched to doing good in his family and society by making himself a better man. There was no mention of turning to God from his sin, and therefore I fear that this man simply found a more fulfilling way to try to satisfy the longings of his soul apart from God.
Elliot specifically refers to this phenomenon of wanting to find completeness when recalling the reasons people gave him for wanting to become amputees. The commonality (revealed one way or another) was “I was incomplete” or some other complaint about not feeling themselves. Elliot’s conclusion: there is no definite causality for this desire.

On another note, I found his explanation of semantic contagion very insightful. The idea that conditions “spread” because there is some scientific categorization for the way a person feels or has felt in the past gives them an outlet for self-identification, and perhaps, even a sense of normalization (because there are others out there like them). This seems to be a plausible explanation for other “coming out of the closet” psychosocial issues like homosexuality also. While Ecclesiastes contends that there is nothing new under the sun, there are, perhaps, new ways to explain, and even celebrate (unfortunately) man’s depravity from age to age.

I think as counselors getting our hands dirty in today’s society, we need to understand the depths to which man has fallen- specifically the depths of sin to which we ourselves have fallen. I know in my heart the propensity for me would be to sit in judgment of those whose sin has not been largely subdued and defeated by the inner working of the Spirit of Christ. If that remains the case for me and others, we will miss the opportunities God gives us to demonstrate His forgiving love by walking alongside others who suffer from sin in ways that perhaps we, by the grace of God, do not. If so, I think we will have missed the point of ministry.