Reclaiming the Lost Life: Overcoming Emptiness and Self-Defeating Lifestyles: Becoming Integrated Through Christ

Copyright © 2014 James A. Dauer.

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None of the characters mentioned in this book are actual historical people except for the first individual identified as Fred in chapter 1. Any similarities between real people and the characters mentioned in this book is coincidental.

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-3643-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-3644-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014908183

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/14/2014

Contents

Chapter 1: Half-Breeds: Living in Two Worlds

Chapter 2: The Empty Cup: Birth of the false-self

Chapter 3: The Original Romeo and Juliet: Adam Attempts Suicide!

Chapter 4: Religious Enema

Chapter 5: Holy Cockalorum: It’s Religious Man!

Chapter 6: Rated M For Mature: Suffering and the Angry Christian

Chapter 7: People and the Relationship Mess: #Ilikewhatyoulike, #Lonelyandwantattention, #DowhatIsay, #Itakeyougive

Chapter 8: The F Word: Taking the Jesus Prayer to Heart

Chapter 9: Making Friends With Emptiness: Dethroning Religious Man

Endnotes

It may sound surprising when I say, on the basis of my own clinical practice as well as that of my psychological and psychiatric colleagues, that the chief problem of people in the middle decade of the twentieth century is emptiness. By that I mean not only many people do not know what they want; they often do not have any clear idea of what they feel.

When they talk about their lack of autonomy, or lament their inability to make decisions—difficulties which are present in all decades—it soon becomes evident that their underlying problem is that they have no definite experience of their own desires or wants… Thus they feel swayed this way and that, with painful feelings of powerlessness, because they feel vacuous, empty.¹

CHAPTER 1

Half-Breeds: Living in Two Worlds

Fifteen years ago I preached my first sermon and directed my first worship service while training for the ministry. After I had finished with the announcement portion of the service, I asked the congregation if there were any other announcements that needed to be mentioned. A brief pause ensued and then an older gentleman, Fred, stood up, balancing himself with his cane in one hand while holding on to the pew with the other. I remember to this day nearly everything he said.

Fred remarked, I’m grateful to be alive. I should be dead. If I wasn’t taken to the emergency room by my girlfriend sitting next to me, I assure you I’d be dead. You see, my wife is driving me crazy! She’s the reason I drank so much and almost died of alcohol poisoning! He continued to offer commentary on his wife and was quite expressive to say the least. After Fred finished speaking and sat down, there was a curious silence—it was my turn to speak. I applauded the lifesaving efforts of his girlfriend and expressed thankfulness that he was still alive. My inside voice was asking lots of questions, however.

The Fred types are the target audience of this book. Lots of Christians are living lives that are spinning out of control. Every Sunday, believers attend worship services and celebrate Christ, but for many, there is a part of them that is entirely left untouched by the conversion process. That the deepest, most hurting, and actively destructive part of one’s life remains injured speaks volumes. But volumes of what?

The hypothesis of this book is that all people experience emptiness,² a condition which overlaps with loneliness, agitation, irritation, void, hopeless-confusion, or apathy. As emptiness increases so does one’s desire to disconnect from it. People disconnect from emptiness by engaging in a variety of compulsive high risk intense behaviors and/or engage in dehumanizing relationships which all serve a purpose: to distract from the ugliness of their internal pain. The solution for humanity’s internal wound is to come under the containing presence of Christ, which is not a shore to sail to and arrive at, but a star to affix our eyes on, giving us direction throughout our journey.

Our Internal Drive

What do you think when you hear about the pastor of a megachurch arrested for having sexual relations with a minor from his youth group? Or the teenager that cuts on herself when she’s not starving, binge eating, or purging herself? Why do we eat when we’re not hungry and drink in excess when Jesus is everything we need? Domestic violence and dehumanizing marriages are in all our churches, and with believers that clearly know the Lord. Why is this?

Many people will explain away the tension within us by resorting to a type of default: we’re all sinners and no one is perfect. That answers sounds humble and even a little paulish, but such a view suggests that we have to lower our expectations and settle. Is the greatest story ever told irrelevant to where we’re most estranged and damaged? Is it just a story then? Are people too much of a mess for even God to restore? I have met many people that sincerely believe they are beyond help, but nothing more could be further from the truth.

The hurtful behaviors that people engage in, as described above, are driven by the need to disconnect from an internal condition of pain and wretchedness, and this happens with little regard to consequences. There are two writers on Christian spirituality that, separated by 300 years, offer commentary on how we look to anything and everything to fill the void that God Himself wants to fill. Blaise Pascal describes emptiness as the infinite abyss and the futility of trying to find happiness with food, sex, violence, or anything else besides God. He writes:

"What is it…that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present?

But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken him, it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature which has not been serviceable in taking His place; the stars, the heavens, earth, the elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest.³

The infinite abyss is our appetite for meaning, purpose, and connection. It’s a psychological-spiritual space where we lack integration—we’re all emotionally and spiritually out of balance, seeking relief where we have an appetite for the Divine. Seeking relief for our emptiness.

Another writer on Christian spirituality but from modern times, Henri Nouwen, replaces ‘emptiness’ with the term ‘loneliness.’ He says:

"As long as we are trying to run away from our loneliness we are constantly looking for distractions with the inexhaustible need to be entertained and kept busy. We become the passive victims of a world asking for our idolizing attention. We become dependent on the shifting chain of events leading us into quick changes of mood, capricious behavior and, at times, revengeful violence.

Then our life becomes a spastic and often destructive sequence of actions and reactions pulling us away from our inner selves. It is not so difficult to see how reactionary we tend to be: that is, how often our lives become a series of nervous and often anxious reactions to the stimuli of our surroundings.⁴

It’s a problem when we respond to emptiness by directing ourselves away from God to any number of things, behaviors, or people. For many believers, Christianity is primarily about articles of belief and strategizing to escape eternal torment. They are heading to heaven but living in torment, split between what they believe about salvation and a faith response that doesn’t touch them at their most injured part of their life. The result: a faith that saves the sinner from hell, but does not remove hell from the sinner.

Living with internal pain such as emptiness, anxiety, worry, agitation, irritability, leads to a disturbed lifestyle where people made in the image of God end up living subhuman lives. Another problem with having such tremendous internal unrest, is that, it becomes impossible to think and reflect on how to be the people that God has called us to be. Crisis living breeds crisis thinking. When my toddlers cannot have a piece of candy, or they find out that just like yesterday, we are still not flying down to Disneyland today, they become overcome with agitation and self-absorption, and have little interest in being team players. They care about their feelings and surviving the horror of agitation and disappointment. Nothing more.

When we undergo a deeper conversion in Christ, and find a way to faithfully navigate the conditions of emptiness, we will begin to see the vision that God has for dehumanized, estranged, and lost humanity. In short, we will feel the urge to be the hands and feet of Christ, and not simply the mouthpiece of Christ, if that. To be a disciple requires the ability to reflect on the things of God and to participate in our new humanity as found in Christ. This point, is by way of analogy, captured beautifully by art historian Hendrik Willem Van Loon. He says,

"The brain that has been worrying for the last few weeks about the chances of keeping the family alive on a diet of potato flour and horse meat is not the sort of brain that will plan a new form of church architecture

Art needs reflection and you cannot do much reflecting while sailing a boat through a squall. But when the squall has subsided and the waters have returned to their usual tranquility, the experience may suddenly have opened your eyes to certain new forms of beauty you had never suspected before."⁵

But before we partner with Christ in ministry, we must first undergo our own restoration (tranquility) that includes taking on the personality, character, and attributes of Christ to the point they become our attributes. We must go beyond being saved. Did you know Christians have an obligation to be spiritually and emotionally healthy? Did you know that if you are miserable, depressed, agitated, unpleasant to be around, and so forth, that you are missing out on your own intended greatness,⁶ and working against the Spirit of Christ?

If you are without joy, it’s time to pivot and embrace your faith with greater rigor. Not everyone is always happy and full of joy, for we all go through periods or seasons of difficulty, for one reason or another. But these are seasons of difficulty, not permanent states of distress—there is a difference. One of the most influential preachers of the last 100-years, D. Martin Lloyd-Jones writes, It behoves (sic) therefore, not only for our own sakes, but also for the sake of the Kingdom of God and the glory of the Christ in Whom we believe, to represent Him and His cause, His message and His power in such a way that men and women, far from being antagonized, will be drawn and attracted as they observe us, whatever our circumstances or condition.⁷ So the reason we move forward is for our own sake, and because this is what it means to be a follower of Jesus, a Christian.

Saint/Sinner Vignettes

Below are brief moments of human experiences that capture the lives of individuals that are living with a partial conversion experience. Half-breeds (a term that describes every believer at one point or another) love the Lord, but have not yet experienced enough of the containing presence of Christ and are left to their own devices to fill the infinite abyss that can only be filled by God. Salvation is a two way street: what Christ gives us in Himself and our response to giving ourselves over to the containing presence of Christ. This includes learning to take ownership of our status as new creations in Christ Jesus. In this sense, we are all half-breeds seeking restoration in Christ. Our response to Christ is not for the purpose of making us saved, but takes place because we are saved.

Claire had to face criminal charges for embezzlement. She has stolen from her employer nearly $75,000 over a three year period. She got divorced just after she turned forty and had a very shallow pool of friends. She was lost, empty, and felt like she had no purpose after her children moved out and her husband left her. Initially, what Claire thought was her life-link turned out to be her worse enemy: the casino.

When her workday was over, her body craved the casino. When I was at the casino I felt alive and important. Even if all I had was $12.00 to play with that day. I would be at home and all of a sudden I would get this urge and I couldn’t resist. I knew I was choosing to go, but it really felt like someone else was choosing me. After Claire cashed out her share of her ex-husband’s retirement and her own retirement account, she needed more powder. When she was finally arrested, she cried tears of relief because I had come to despise everything I’d become and was petrified my children would find out what a complete failure I was, and now it’s over, thankfully. Claire is on a five year repayment plan and works over 60 hours a week to satisfy her plea deal.

She says her faith was always with her but made no difference in her life. She came to define her Christian faith in terms of "there are worse Christians in the world than me." Her basic knowledge of Christian themes such