College Mentors (5)
It Was Plain From Spain
As I moved into my junior year, most of my basic courses were behind me, and I was now able to concentrate on the things I really wanted to study in my college career. In those two years I was mentored by several different professors who left a lasting impression on me.
One of these was Dr. Carl Spain. Dr. Spain had served as the pulpit minister for a large congregation in Houston, Texas before coming to Abilene Christian, first as an instructor and eventually as full professor.
When I think of the spiritually minded people I have known, Carl Spain is always on my list. He wasn’t a dry academician. He was a man who gave you something for your heart. He regarded our relationship with Jesus as an intimate, life changing experience. His enthusiasm for God was contagious. The students who enrolled in his classes usually went away feeling inspired.
He was also quick witted. Once we had a snow storm, and one of the students brought a snow ball into class. The minute Dr. Spain walked into the classroom, the student let go of the snowball and caught him squarely in the head. Dr. Spain simply started down the row shaking hands with each class member. When he came to the guy with the cold hands, he said, “Now, stand up and tell this class you didn’t throw that snowball.” The student protested that it was a trick question.
My most memorable experience with him came during graduate school. I enrolled in his course in Christian Ethics. During that fall he prepared a presentation to be delivered at the next lectureship program. The title of the lecture was “Modern Challenges to Christian Morals.” His presentation was really a synopsis of what we heard in the classroom through the entire semester. He traced the philosophical currents that held sway in the academic community prior to that time, and demonstrated how they had been influenced by secularists who had no respect for God. They, in turn, had influenced Hitler and the Third Reich.
Then he switched to the racial issue, which was a hot potato at that time. At that moment in history Abilene Christian College was a segregated institution. A black minister working with one of the Churches of Christ in Abilene was denied the privilege of enrolling in the school to take Bible for credit. He went across town to McMurry, a Methodist school, and was accepted. In his presentation Dr. Spain pointed this out, and criticized the school for remaining segregated because of the fear that integration might result in loss of revenues from potential contributors. He lamented the fact that the school was being held captive by those who had been influenced by the same philosophy that enabled Hitler to rise. You can read the entire lecture at
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/race/haymes15.htmlThe next morning it was front page news in newspapers throughout Texas. Dr. Spain was threatened and insulted, and was challenged to debate the issue, but he stood his ground. The next Monday, he shared his feelings about all that with us. Within 2 years ACC was integrated. Within 15 years, the man, who had been denied the privilege of studying the Bible, was a featured speaker at the lectureship. I will never forget having a “ringside” seat for one of the most momentous events in Texas religious history.
The last time I saw Dr. Spain, he was retired. I asked him if he was doing any writing. He said that he was not, and I expressed my disappointment. Then he told me that his wife had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and that he was taking care of her. A short time after that he was diagnosed with cancer himself, and actually preceded his wife in death. Carl Spain will always be one of my heroes.
OUR BOOK IS READY FOR MAILING
I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get the information out to you about the book. Three hospitalizations in two months hasn't helped, but we're ready to go. I've already sent info about the book, but let me refresh your mind without boring you.
THE BOOKAffair-Proofing Your Marriage: Preventive Maintenance for Christian Couples_.
by Norman & Ann Bales
10-session book-workbook
Softcover: 8.5 x 11", spiral
Page Count: 155 pp.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT“In Affair-Proofing Your Marriage, Norman and Ann have captured the essence of the intentionality which is essential to preventing an affair and building a successful marriage. I appreciate their transparency in sharing their very painful experience in the hope that others would be healed. They masterfully reference the Holy Scriptures as they relate their path toward wholeness, illustrating that God does have the answer for our marriages. Preachers, pastors and leaders need to regularly address the health of the family in their churches. Affair-Proofing Your Marriage is an excellent tool for this purpose.”
Mikal Frazier, Family Therapist, MA, MMFT, LMFT, LPC
COSTMail order.$12.00 plus $3.00 postage and handling = $15.00 total cost(20% discount over list price).
To pick up in Shreveport$12.50 (tax included)
ORDERING INFORMATIONSend check or money order to
Norman L. Bales
320 Sage Hill Drive
Shreveport, LA 71106
318-795-0410
or
318-686-2190
I'm sorry. We're not set up for debit cards, credit cards or Pay Pal.
Send us you mailing address and telephone number.
We've got plenty of books on hand, if you need to order them for Christmas.
Grace and Peace,
Norman
SOME THOUGHTS ON MY RECENT ILLNESS
SOME SPIRITUAL THOUGHTS ON MY RECENT ILLNESS
September 24, 2007
Revised on October 2, 2007
This is the 10th day following brain surgery. On all fronts I am feeling better than I have before. I have less pain and more strength, although I am still in the hospital. Up until today, I didn’t think it of it as a constructive spiritual experience. I mean that I don’t think I had felt particularly deepened, or that I had opened up new channels of thinking about the Bible, God, prayer and Christian living. Today, that all changed.
I’m somewhat intimidated by the process. On the one side, I’m simply overwhelmed with the outpouring of love, concern, communication and prayer that has come from friends and others. I almost feel guilty because people all over the world are praying for me around the clock, and my own prayers seem perfunctory and self-centered in comparison. My main prayer has been “Lord, get me out of this mess. I want to feel better.”
Here is the way things shook out today. I was shaving this morning, already conscious of how I wanted (1) a better prayer relationship with God and (2) some way of sorting this out in terms of my general program of living.
Then I remembered my lifelong interest in the Problem of Pain. Several months ago I decided to start taking a comprehensive study of God and the Problem of Pain and Evil. I already knew it is a subject I cannot master. I hope that I learn more about it than what I know now, and perhaps even eliminate some of my faulty conclusions. I started several months ago but I haven’t worked very diligently toward keeping the project alive.
For a long time, I’ve maintained an academic interest in pain. At 24, I knew the answers. Of course I hadn’t experienced much actual pain. In the ensuing years I’ve seen a lot of it, but actually experienced very little. My present experience has taken me out of the “classroom” and the “books.” I’ve gone through a wonderful laboratory experience. I’m no braver than anyone else, but neither do I flinch away from it. I think C. S. Lewis once said something to the effect that pain is God’s megaphone to get our attention.
My lab experience has helped me to understand why people are sometimes tempted to stop fighting and give up. I’m a fighter by nature, and to date, at least, “surrender” is not part of my vocabulary. That being said, I will admit that there were some occasions when I was in the lab that my self-absorbed desire to get past this point of my illness was the only prayer I seemed to be able to muster. I know why the bureaucracy of the medical system frustrates people, but at the same time I understand why some of that bureaucracy is necessary. I understand why the inexcusable breakdowns in communication take place. If nothing else, it has made me more sensitive to the plight of people who are in the “furnace of affliction.”
I don’t really want to talk about that. I want to talk about the way my mind is working. The experience started while I was shaving, and it went on through my bath, getting dressed, almost all the way up until noon with a few interruptions. To me the most valuable thing I learned today connects all the way back to the decision to engage in the pain study. In the last ten years no one has stimulated me to go back to the Bible and rethink my conclusions quite like my young co-worker John Hawkins. That study decision was stimulated by a question from John. He said, “We are getting much better about praising God for the good things he’s done for us. But do we praise God for some of the troubles we have?” The Minor Prophets are saying trouble is inflicted against God’s people by no one other than God himself. Furthermore God does not build a hedge of protection around the righteous. The righteous will suffer with the wicked. Here’s the difference. The righteous will eventually prevail. You can’t miss the message if you’re honest in your study of the prophets.
In the midst of all these insights, Ann brought the mail to the hospital. All the cards and encouragement notes were greatly appreciated, but there was one that spoke to me above all others. I’ve mentioned my dissatisfaction with the quality of my prayers. It’s pretty hard to maintain a quality prayer life when you’re about half doped up. It’s even harder when you’re fighting nausea and fever. Even after that subsided I was still too weak to give it adequate attention.
The card explained everything. Strangely enough I cannot locate it now, but I remember the gist of the message. It said something like this, “While you couldn’t pray, you had prayer cover.” Of course. Others took over and supplied my lack. What a relief that was. Since then I’ve found new vigor in my prayers, and I’m grateful.
I’ll be a long time getting through the pain study, but I am determined to renew the study.
THINGS THAT MATTER THE MOST
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been sorting out the things that really do matter, and separating them from the things that don’t matter quite so much. I put all that in a sermon I preached at Vivian, Louisiana today. I won’t give the sermon, but here’s my list of things that matter most. I’ve divided them into two categories – human relationships and divine relationships. In the human category I came up with the following (not necessarily in the order of importance): friends, family, church, Ann children, grandchildren. In the divine category I put these things. – God, Christ and him crucified, Grace. You may wonder why I left out love. It seems to me that all of them are expressions love. So love is the thing that matters most to me
The Tumor Tumult (7)
I haven’t had any more contact with doctors about my surgery in September. Waiting is the hardest part. It’s funny how things work on my mind now that I know I’ve got a tumor near the spinal cord. I start thinking that every ache, every pain, every sore muscle and joint, every tingle, every itch is related to this pecan sized lump at the base of my brain. Of course I’ve had all these same symptoms for years and never paid any attention to them. It’s enough to make one paranoid. We did have one bit of encouraging news. We were concerned about our supplementary insurance, since LSU is an “out of network” hospital. This week they informed me that they’ve reviewed my case, and agreed to cover the surgery. That helps the pocketbook quite a bit.
I also got a bit of encouraging news from the
Shreveport Times. Dr. Anil Nanda, the man who will do my surgery, was recently invited to lecture to a group of neurosurgeons in New York. Guess what his subject was? He talked about performing surgery at the base of the brain. I wonder if he used pictures of my brain. If he did, it's the only way my brain will ever make it into a meeting of doctors.
When New Information Makes You Uncomfortable
Sometimes we become threatened when we come to awareness of the fact that our previous understanding of things is either flawed or incomplete. It’s like putting on a new pair of shoes. It feels uncomfortable at first. I ran across an analogy which I find helpful when I deal with that discomfort. “It is easy to think you have mastered Shakespeare’s plays if all you have on the shelf is the comedies. When someone brings you all the other plays as well – the tragedies and the history plays – plus a volume or two of the great man’s poetry for good measure – you will complain that things are now getting confused and highly complex. But you are actually closer to understanding Shakespeare, not further away.” N. T. Wright.
Simply Christian. p. 63.
CHARACTER CONTENT
O. K. It’s soapbox time. I’m going to be serious for two reasons (1) to prove that I can be and (2) because I’m passionate about what I’m about to say.
A few days ago, an elderly gentleman talked to me about the section of town where the lives. He said, “It’s being taken over by blacks.” That’s not too uncommon in a southern city where a rather large number of white males are called, “Bubba.” It’s what he said next that got under my skin. He said, “But there are still a few good people living here.” To me that was a horrible remark. The implication is that white is good, and black is bad. It has been more than forty years since Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” sermon in which he said that he dreamed of “a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character.” I think we’ve made progress to that end, but the man’s careless remark indicates that we aren’t there yet.
Two black men made the news this week in different ways, and their stories illustrate the stupidity of stereotyping. I’m sure all of you know about the first one – Michael Vick. For the most part the largest number of people living in America consider his behavior reprehensible if indeed he did what he’s accused of doing. In today’s Shreveport Times, a black minister, who is a well-known civil rights activist, expressed his display at Vick’s behavior. To be sure he’s entitled to his day in court, but the future looks bleak for him, and if he’s guilty, he deserves to pay for his crimes.
To me it’s unfortunate that most of the world didn’t hear about the second black man. His name is Alley Broussard. You’ve never heard of him? I didn’t think so. Let me tell you a little about him. He played running back for the LSU Tigers. He has one season of eligibility left, but this week he informed Les Miles, the LSU head coach that his heart isn’t in football and asked to be released from the team. During his career he rushed for nearly 2000 yards, and was considered a top NFL prospect, being ranked the Number 4 running back in the country by some experts. So why did he give up football? To concentrate on academics. What’s wrong with the guy? Where did he ever get the idea that you go to college to get an education? He’s expected to graduate from LSU in December. Believe it or not some Louisiana people are suggesting that he should get his degree elsewhere. I don’t know the details, but on the surface my hat’s off to Alley. He’s got his priorities right. A professional football career would only serve him until he suffered a career ending injury in the NFL. I just wish you had heard as much about Alley Broussard as you heard about Michael Vick.
So back to my original point. How totally ignorant, unfair, prejudicial, and just downright racist it is to judge people like Brossuard as “bad people” because their skin pigmentation has a different hue from mine. I believe in a level playing field for everyone. The “content of character” statement resonates with me, and I think it should for everyone. I do not believe in giving a man special privileges because he’s black, but neither do I agree with treating him as subhuman for the same reason.
