Reader Email: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

By Selwyn Duke

My last two pieces, the one on Obama and the one on psychology, have evoked quite a response.  And the emails run the gamut; some are literate and uplifting, others are just complimentary (always welcome!), while others still are indicative of extreme dislocation from reality.  Here are a few, and after each one I have included a response.

D wrote:

I read Ur piece on Obama -- a link from S Quayle's site -- and I can't disagree more. U distorted Wright's quote on 9/11 (quoting an Islamic leader)* and probably lie about the exact nature of the Illinois law Obama opposed; after all he voted FOR the Senate version...

To me, looking at his voting record in the Senate: Obama is WAY right of CENTER. Ure right: he is lying,  his assertion to be a moderate  is a lie; he is almost as rightwing as Hilary, whose husband implemented severe welfare cuts while increasing welfare for the wealthy and the corporations, + the Pentagon budjet.

Perhaps the current Fuhrer is to Ur liking: ruining America, $ freefall, kicking 3 million homeowners out this year, quadrupling the cost of oil since fall of 02 (before the illegal war), real inflation at 20%...Are U related to D Duke? U sound like him. As for 911 I believe Alex Jones (not a fan of Obama).

Folks, I've only posted this email so all and sundry can bear witness to the fruits of the modern government-school system and understand why I wrote the piece "Why Most Voters Shouldn't Vote."  As for you, D, for the most part, I won't address your delusional rant, for it would be fruitless.  As Ben Franklin said, "You cannot reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into."   The only thing I'll say is that Obama is statistically the most left-wing member of our esteemed Senate (this is based on actual voting records).

Anyway, I'll leave you with some helpful advice.  Get rid of the body piercings, tattoos, baggy pants and rap music.  And stay off those drugs; a mind is a terrible thing to waste (even yours).

Oh, and no one with two brain cells to rub together takes a person who writes "you" as "u" seriously.  If you're not 15, it's not even nearly excusable; if you are 15, we'll pat you on the head and say you're cute.

J wrote:

And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.Mark 10:17

I am a clinical psychologist, and I agree with very much of what you have said.  For the most part, in graduate school, the professors looked down on religion as a biproduct of being uneducated.  I felt I had to keep my belief in God to myself because I would be viewed as significantly less intelligent and capable than I was viewed.  I may have been incorrect in this thought, but I believed it to be quite possible that I would be expelled from the program had I expressed my beliefs.  As it was, my major professor viewed me as the most intelligent and hardest working student he had in 20 years of teaching.  I feel certain his opinion would have been different had I spoken of my religious beliefs. 

Let there be no doubt, that the most impressive positive treatment effects I have seen, have been with believers in Christ.  I truly believe that God helps me in my practice, and without that core anchor, there would be no reason for me to practice psychology.  Without a belief in God, what would be a person's motivation for studying psychology and attempting to help people?  I wouldn't do it if I didn't believe that this is what God wants me to do.  Is this perspective exceedingly rare?  You bet it is.  If you don't have God as your guide as a psychologist, your practice is meaningless. 

I accept some of Freud's work, and reject other parts.  He was certainly anti-religious, and his views on religion are worthless to me.  That came from his worldview, and likely his own psychological conflicts.  There are often unconscious reason's for a person's rejection of belief in God, and this is always a focus of attention when I encounter it.  I view my work as promoting the American dream of freedom and removing the emotional blocks that prevent people from exercising their freedoms.  Biblically, all people are inherently bad and immoral, and I attempt to help resolve some of the psychological reasons that this occurs.  But in the end, it is only Christ who is good, and his sacrifice is the reason for salvation.  In very large part, the emotional difficulties that people experience are a result of psychological immaturity that may be largely the result of past psychological conflicts or distortions in thinking.  I start philosophically with the idea that all people are bad, and examine the factors that increase this badness and interfere with their faith and freedom.  The most mature individual has a strong belief in God, and their emotional functioning does not interfere with their freedom to exercise the American dream (life, liberty, and the pursuit of hapiness). 

I start with the viewpoint reflected by the Bible verse quoted above, "There is none good but God."  So for me, the split between good and bad is "God is good, man is bad."  Even with the best treatment, there is none of my patients who will become "good."   That place is reserved for God.  The best I can hope for is that the psychological blocks that prevent belief in God are addressed and the emotional difficulties that interfere with freedom are resolved.  They are still not "good" people, but if they have faith in the grace of God and sacrifice of Jesus, and their freedom is not impinged on by emotional conflict, they are as mature and highly functioning as is possible with a human being.  My job is done.

There are many people out there who suffer emotional problems because of past sins that other people comitted against them.  In my opinion, they need help from people who are mature (believe in the grace of God and salvation through Christ) along with knowledge of psychology that can be utilized to promote freedom and allow them to choose whether to believe in God without distortions that come from sins they committed or were committed against them.

Psychology as the product solely of man is "bad," it cannot be otherwise because of the nature of man.  But with God working in the practice of a psychologist and the life of an individual seeking treatment, truly good things can happen.  I know my viewpoints fall in the 33% range or probably even less than that, but please consider that there are those who truly need help and there are those in the helping field with philosophies and beliefs who differ from the mainstream.

I tell people not to hesitate to ask about their therapist or psychologist's religious beliefs, because there is nothing more important than the beliefs of the person from whom you are seeking counsel.  If I did not feel that God had chosen me for this profession, I would absolutely be doing something different.  There are a lot easier ways to make money.  It is extremely difficult work and the miseries that interfere with freedom are many.  However, God gifted me with qualities to help people resolve these interferences, and there is nothing I would rather do.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and do not forget that you are a "bad" person like the rest of humanity.  You sin on a daily basis, if not in action, then in thought.  Just like me, and my patients.  Without the salvation of Christ, we would all be lost for that reason.

Dear J,

You're not the only Ph.D. psychologist who sent me a positive response, and this was a pleasant surprise.  Obviously, men such as you are a credit to your field and certainly not part of the problem.  If only you were the norm.

I  will add just a little nuance to what you said, however.  I was well aware of the Jesus quotation you provided above, and theologically speaking it is correct; no one is good in the sense of being without sin (the word God is derived from "good"). 

But it's a different matter when we speak practically.  We have to communicate in ways that people will understand, in clear ways that don't smack of equivocation.  Thus, we may say that Ahmadinejad is a bad man, or Joe is a good one.  Or, as I have written recently, that Barack Obama is a bad man.  And he is.   

Sumner Koch Wrote:

My Friend,

Just think what if Hitler's mother had aborted Hitler, six million Jews would not have been aborted murdered.

What do you think Iraq is other than legal abortion, sanctioned, by the Government that we elected, and the war we started or preempted, war is evil and no one benefits on either side but all looses.

We do not need a war type person for a leader, I would much rather have a peaceful type person myself to try to unite and not divide Unity is the name of the game, we should all come to the unity we find in the Christ, (Messiah) of "EL" God.....

Dear Mr. Koch,

You've been sending in emails for at least a couple of years now (yes, they have not gone unnoticed and have been read).  I must commend you for your consistency; you've managed to maintain a theme of grand delusion, convoluted logic rendered with aplomb, unique inanity, and schizoid religiosity over the course of years of correspondence.  That cannot be easy. 

Your argument is very interesting.  In your defense of Obama (S was responding to the Obama piece), you imply that abortion isn't a bad thing because, by gum, if Hitler had been aborted, millions of lives would have been saved (S is a man, by the way, who has applied the title of "The Fallacy Detective" to himself).  In response, I could mention that, if you're going to think along those lines, you might also wonder if a person who would have supplanted Hitler or assassinated him was aborted.  I could also expound upon how legitimizing abortion intensifies the culture of death, thereby increasing the chances that we will breed homicidal individuals.

But there is a simpler point to be made.  Let's apply your reasoning to something else.  It's also true that those millions of lives would have been saved if someone had killed Hitler when he was 10 or 15 years old; thus, murder must be fine and dandy!  Hey, let's legalize it.  And I'm sure your friend Barack would be amenable to this, as he seems to blink nary an eye at infanticide.

Mr. Koch, you claim to be some kind of a Christian, but you are nothing of the sort if you lack the discernment to see a de facto socialist for what he is. 

I hope you get better.

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Comments

[republican]

The first email is sad and a little frightening. It truly depresses me that someone who believes Obama and Hillary are "way right of center" and spells "budget" with a 'j' is allowed to operate a computer, let alone vote for the next leader of the free world...

[Soviet Amerika]

Our so-called educational system has been "brainwashing" and "dumbing-down" our children for the past three decades. D, the first emailer, is a prime example of their handiwork. This has been their goal, to have a society of "Ds" who will believe and accept anything the Globalist-Goverment-Media-Complex tells them.
As I always say: Everyday's a new day in Soviet Amerika.

[Sumner Morrill Koch]

So Im have maintained a sense of delusion grand as you call it, So-Mote-It-be" I think after this summer your mind may think a little differently, then we will wonder who all have trully been deluded, by the fabricated news media sound bits, and many of the college Professor sound bites, they use in their classes. whjich range fro 50 to 200 to 300 in a class which is a joke in the teaching process, very few if any can learn in classes that large, It has beome something like an assembly line of a factory, and the Us Factories have become obsolute, and the so-called college students are becoming the same, and some cannot even add or subtract after 12 to 16 years in our educational factories. Is this the future you would like for your child professor? Americas has been being dumbed down for the past 40 years of educvational wilderness, so friend it is time to bring it to an end. illiterate Chaos or educational order, which will it be?
and this is my delusion says Einstein meaning "one stone-Rock"
Koch 70 years of age and many years of so-called education in our so-called Universities...
Be that as it may!

and So-it-goes!