You all need to see this video. Wow! Quite eye opening.

Russ

He struck me as unusually clean-shaven and well-kept to be sitting week after week in our Monday food pantry. Upon introducing myself, I met a friendly, educated, and articulate young man probably in his late thirties or early forties. Not only does he speak well and appear to be responsible, Russ* is also white -- which made me all the more curious as to why he sat in this food pantry which typically attracts the uneducated and the disenfranchised minority peoples who are unable to thrive in our racist society.

Russ, it turns out, has a story. As we all do. He was abandoned as a baby and brought up in a state institution for most of his childhood. In his early teens, he found some foster parents who took him in and cared for him, but "we didn't always see eye to eye," Russ adds. Immediately after finishing high school, Russ found a decent job and eventually became the co-manager of his organization. But then Russ found Vicodin.

Vicodin was for Russ more appealing and addictive than any substance he'd ever come across before (and he had tried many). He told me, "I don't know why, but Vicodin just makes me feel happy. Alcohol never really did that for me like it does for some people, but Vicodin does. When I started to get sad and depressed, I would just take some and then I'd be okay. It became my best friend." Perhaps because of his feelings of abandonment having grown up as an orphan or perhaps because he just wanted to escape his depression, Russ started buying Vicodin off of the street for $3-a-pop. Eventually his habit grew completely out of control and he was taking up to 25 or more each day.

At first, it wasn't a problem. Russ could balance his work with his addiction and could manage well in both worlds. "It isn't like alcohol," he said, "you can smell it on the breath of someone who is drunk, but the one who's high on pills appears completely normal." But then the economy went south and his business folded. His one and only friend -- the other co-manager of his business -- became very depressed and blew off his head with a shotgun one night after they'd had a pleasant dinner together.

Russ turned to his old friend again for comfort. Without an income, soon he had to take out a second mortgage on his house, sell his big screen TV and his new car, and cut back on groceries in order to maintain his pill habit. But a year after this, Russ found himself evicted from his home and penniless. Desperate to find shelter, he came upon a group of Latinos who took him in and let him stay in one of their closets. Russ doesn't know Spanish and none of his housemates know English, but they've managed to work out a suitable arrangement: the Latinos let Russ sleep in their closet and, in return, Russ gives them all of his food stamps every month.

Which is why Russ comes to our food pantry. Without us, he would have nothing to eat.

I asked him, "So what do you do all day?" and he laughed, "I dunno. Watch TV. I give plasma twice a week and get 25 bucks each time. But I don't really do anything else." "And you're satisfied with that?" "I guess so. There ain't any jobs in this neighborhood and I ain't got a car. Besides, even if I got a job, I'd just spend all my money on Vicodin."

"So once you lost your job and your house, you had to cut back on your drug habit, right? What was that like?"

"Oh it was awful. I don't even want to talk about it. I just curled up on the floor for days all by myself, sweating from head to toe, passing out and going into seizures. I can't believe I'm still alive."

"Why didn't you call an ambulance and go to the hospital?"

"Well, I don't have any insurance and I don't have any money. I didn't want to go into debt for a trip to the ER."

"Do you still take Vicodin?"

"Yes. Whenever I get the money to, I buy some. Somedays I don't get to get any... like today (which is why I'm fidgety and scratching myself all the time). But usually I like to try to get at least three Vicodin a day to make myself feel better."

"Why do you take these things? I mean, they have ruined your life."

"Yep. They are my worst enemy, but they're also my best friend. When I have them, they make me happy and they are my best friend. When I run out, they turn on me and make me miserable. I guess they are a demon dressed up like a friend."

"So if you realize that, don't you want to get off of them?"

"No. Not really. I like them. I don't want to quit. They're the only things that make me happy and make me want to keep living."

"Have you ever thought of going into rehab?"

"My adoptive parents want me to do that, but I don't want to. You can't force someone to do rehab that doesn't want to go."

"Right. But are you happy living in a closet and giving away your food stamps and living like this?"

"No, but I can't get out of it. I'm stuck. So I guess I should just make the best of it and deal with it. I mean, I know I can't quit the Vicodin so why try, ya know?"

I sat there in silence for a long time, not sure what to say. I wanted to tell him that I could help him to get well, but here was a man who didn't want to get well. I thought of Jesus words in John chapter 5 to the invalid at the pool: "Do you want to be made well?" Here's a man who would look Jesus in the eye and say, "No. Go away." So what does Jesus do in that case?

I don't judge Russ. I mean, if I had no family and no friends and was raised as an orphan in an institution, I might be just the same. I might be willing to trade in my life for a few moments of happiness... a few hours of feeling like there's nothing wrong with the world. Like Russ told me: "For about 5 or 6 hours after popping some Vicodin nothing bothers you anymore. People can say mean things to you that would normally hurt, but they don't hurt. You just don't feel anything bad at all. You're just happy for a little while. Then it all crashes down later."

So I'll see Russ next Monday. Nothing will have changed. He'll still be sleeping in a closet and paying his rent with his food stamps. I'll still be a pastor trying to help people out of hell. And I'll sit down and ask Russ how his week was and he'll say the same thing he says every time I see him: "It's a tough world out there."

You're right, Russ. It is a tough world out there.

*Russ is not his real name, but I'm ashamed to admit that for a long time I thought his name was Russ until he corrected me a few weeks ago. God forgive me.

Podcasting

Just a short note to say that I'm now posting my sermons as podcasts. You can see them on the right column of this blog or go to the original source at http://gregcoates.podOmatic.com/.

Melancholy

What do I do with my melancholy? Do I embrace it? Do I turn it into a poem? Should I feel guilty for experiencing it so regularly? Is it compatible with my faith?

For so many years I heard the testimonies in church: "My friend asked me, 'Why are you always so happy?' and I told him, 'It's because I have Jesus in my life and he fills me with such joy and peace. You can know him too if you'd like.' And then he prayed to accept Jesus." I knew I should rejoice upon hearing such a testimony, but instead I felt punched in the stomach. Tormented by guilt I asked myself, "What is wrong with you, Greg? Why can't you be that way? Why do you live life with such seriousness and such gravity? Why are you so melancholy? Is it because you yourself are not saved?"

Even as a young child, I can recall people asking me frequently, "What are you upset about, Greg?" and "Why so serious?" It annoyed me that they would ask me this. And then I would get annoyed at myself for getting annoyed. "Why am I angry?" I would think, "Because you think I'm angry when I'm not."

Here I am -- a 28 year old man, just as melancholy as ever. More than anything, I want to make my Daddy in heaven proud of me. I want to do something good for Him since He did so much for me. But do I have to be chipper every morning? Do I have to walk around with a plastic smile on my face each day? Do I have to tell everyone in my church that I'm okay when I'm not? Do I have to write facebook status updates like "Greg Coates is just so incredibly in love with Jesus today" even on the many days that I don't feel like it? And even if I could somehow magically change my personality so that I was funny and gregarious and bubbly and gleeful, would I still be Greg Coates? Would that make my Daddy in heaven happy?

I don't know. Maybe God made me melancholy and wills for me to be so. Maybe the naturally serious, dour look on my face is as natural as my pectus excavatum. Maybe it's a flaw or maybe God wouldn't want me any other way. But either way, I want to learn to be comfortable with who I am and I'm certainly not there yet.

The Letterman "Apology"

I'm not much one for celebrity gossip, but when I heard that David Letterman was making headlines on the front pages of newspapers across America, I checked out what was going on. Turns out that the Indianapolis native had had an affair with an intern several years before and that someone was attempting to blackmail him for $2 million with this insider information. So Letterman called the attorney general, wrote the man a fake check, and the blackmailer was caught, but Letterman still had to confess to his "sin." I watched a clip of Letterman's "apology" with great interest, wondering how this late night icon of television would present himself. I shouldn't have been surprised by what I saw, but I was. Here's the clip:

What a wonderful illustration of so many aspects of our culture. Notice the following:

1) There is no apology here. This story is just played off for humor.

2) Sex outside of wedlock is not considered "immoral" or "sinful" in any way.

3) Letterman expresses not even the slightest concern for his wife or child or others he may have hurt.

4) He communicates to all of America that sex outside of wedlock is funny.

5) The audience actually applauds his behavior.

This is all truly remarkable. America has not only rejected the old-fashioned notion of monogamy as normative, we have gone beyond this and come to applaud the failures and sins of one another. We do this because it assuages our own guilt. When we hear Letterman say, "I have had sex with women on this show," we do not expect a tearful penitence; we laugh. C. S. Lewis says that evil reaches its pinnacle when we not only accept it within ourselves, but delight in it when we see it in others in order to make ourselves feel less evil. I think he has pegged our nation perfectly.