Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 10:47 am
Johnny that's so sweet of you to thank me so warmly - you've made my day! 
I really do think I understand you. I may seem as jolly as Old King Cole but - well I might as well tell you my dark secret... When I was young and a fundamentalist I started to suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy- not the falling type, nor the one where you go absent for a bit, but the one where your head scrambles suddenly, you can't get your words out, and you start seeing visions and getting flooded with emotions out of nowhere. Because of the 'spiritual warfare' milieu I was moving in, this was interpreted to me - and I in turn interpreted it to myself - as 'Satan' getting at me. And so I kept it to myself for a couple of years, got into plenty of trouble at school for not concentrating (and failed most of my O levels), and generally went round in a right old pickle of anxiety. I think my parents just thought I was a disturbed adolescent and worried a lot about me. In the end I did have the epilepsy diagnosed and started taking the medication and my life became bearable; and exit stage left from fundamentalism for me. I needed the peace and quiet of Quaker meetings to recover after too much high octane religion - and felt very angry and bitter, not just with fundamentalists but with evangelicals for a long time (I've changed now). The temporal lobe is the part of the brain that processes emotion and as the fits left me I developed cyclothymia - that's the mildest form of bi-polar disorder, but it still can be quite debilitating. Again this went undiagnosed for a long time and I think I wrongly interpreted the depressions as spirituals despair and the manic bits - when my brain became overly fertile and thoughts started rushing together - as me coming together again. Now I take medication and have learnt to live with these cycles as my 'thorn in the flesh' - as it were; (but do let me know if I ever start talking gibberish on this site - it could mean that I've gone too far up in the sky:lol: I think all of this has taught me much (I hope so).
You should take on board suffering from anxiety too, and learn to live with it rather than despair at it (well that's my advice)
Regarding the quotation from Romans - do look at my earlier post on St Paul the Greek Jew, Hamartia and Law (it gives a differnet perspective on this passage). You quote him thus
Note that Paul's emphasis is in the climatic sentence - and not at the point that you emphasise. It's not him who is the problem, it's the 'sin living in me' , something he is confident that Christ our Victor will liberate him from - thus he asks to be rescued from this 'body of death' not this 'body of sin'. And we note that for Paul body - 'sarx' – does not mean our living flesh. It means dead flesh (rotting and covered with flies perhaps). It is his metaphor for our total being alienated from God (therefore it is possible opt sin with the intellect and the emotions as well as with our living flesh).
Dear old Polly - yes she died last year having said some lovely and positive things about life and about being grateful for her life and not despairing of humanity when she was in her last days. There was an outpouring of affection for her over the internet. And my other favourite New Wave girl - witty sassy Kirsty MacCool - also died young and died a hero pushing her child out of the way of a speed boat. The only one left is Lora Logic. The Ramones - sorry about the body count there. I liked ‘Sheena is a Punk Rocker’ and ‘Blitzkrieg Bob’ a lot.
Rich blessings on you old chum. There was an Eastern mystic who said 'Keep your mind in hell and despair not' And I'd go along with that. Let’s both go along with that.
All the best
Dick
I really do think I understand you. I may seem as jolly as Old King Cole but - well I might as well tell you my dark secret... When I was young and a fundamentalist I started to suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy- not the falling type, nor the one where you go absent for a bit, but the one where your head scrambles suddenly, you can't get your words out, and you start seeing visions and getting flooded with emotions out of nowhere. Because of the 'spiritual warfare' milieu I was moving in, this was interpreted to me - and I in turn interpreted it to myself - as 'Satan' getting at me. And so I kept it to myself for a couple of years, got into plenty of trouble at school for not concentrating (and failed most of my O levels), and generally went round in a right old pickle of anxiety. I think my parents just thought I was a disturbed adolescent and worried a lot about me. In the end I did have the epilepsy diagnosed and started taking the medication and my life became bearable; and exit stage left from fundamentalism for me. I needed the peace and quiet of Quaker meetings to recover after too much high octane religion - and felt very angry and bitter, not just with fundamentalists but with evangelicals for a long time (I've changed now). The temporal lobe is the part of the brain that processes emotion and as the fits left me I developed cyclothymia - that's the mildest form of bi-polar disorder, but it still can be quite debilitating. Again this went undiagnosed for a long time and I think I wrongly interpreted the depressions as spirituals despair and the manic bits - when my brain became overly fertile and thoughts started rushing together - as me coming together again. Now I take medication and have learnt to live with these cycles as my 'thorn in the flesh' - as it were; (but do let me know if I ever start talking gibberish on this site - it could mean that I've gone too far up in the sky:lol: I think all of this has taught me much (I hope so).
You should take on board suffering from anxiety too, and learn to live with it rather than despair at it (well that's my advice)
Regarding the quotation from Romans - do look at my earlier post on St Paul the Greek Jew, Hamartia and Law (it gives a differnet perspective on this passage). You quote him thus
johnnyparker wrote:Perhaps the scripture which resonates the most with me on this subject is Paul in Romans 7 (my emphases):
"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it."
Note that Paul's emphasis is in the climatic sentence - and not at the point that you emphasise. It's not him who is the problem, it's the 'sin living in me' , something he is confident that Christ our Victor will liberate him from - thus he asks to be rescued from this 'body of death' not this 'body of sin'. And we note that for Paul body - 'sarx' – does not mean our living flesh. It means dead flesh (rotting and covered with flies perhaps). It is his metaphor for our total being alienated from God (therefore it is possible opt sin with the intellect and the emotions as well as with our living flesh).
Dear old Polly - yes she died last year having said some lovely and positive things about life and about being grateful for her life and not despairing of humanity when she was in her last days. There was an outpouring of affection for her over the internet. And my other favourite New Wave girl - witty sassy Kirsty MacCool - also died young and died a hero pushing her child out of the way of a speed boat. The only one left is Lora Logic. The Ramones - sorry about the body count there. I liked ‘Sheena is a Punk Rocker’ and ‘Blitzkrieg Bob’ a lot.
Rich blessings on you old chum. There was an Eastern mystic who said 'Keep your mind in hell and despair not' And I'd go along with that. Let’s both go along with that.
All the best
Dick