The Waiting World
By Buff Scott, Jr.
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A few months ago my co-worker and I wrestled with and subdued a drug addict, a criminal. We did not want it this way but he gave us no choice. Another of our patients, a young intelligent student in a leading university, who had taken a number of trips on LSD, was picked up nude on the highway and brought to my ward. Due to his state of mind he thought he was Jesus. He often placed himself on display with out-stretched arms, as the resurrected Lord.
One day I took him for a walk and talk session on the grounds. He asked me to point toward the east. I asked him why. He informed me that his desire was to go to New York and make his singing debut. A few minutes later he slipped off his shoes and shirt and started running in an easterly direction with me right behind him. I had been out of training for some time so lost out after a few paces. We waited for him on the other side of the river and within an hour he was caught, brought back to the hospital, and given a shower to remove the mud. By the time he was discharged to face society again, he was rational and coherent. He even permitted the barber to cut off his long hair. A year later he was still making progress.
Two years ago I was alone guarding the ward when one of our chronic patients, who weighed in excess of two hundred pounds, went berserk. I had to subject myself to the possibility of serious injury or death while trying to overpower him. I finally overcame him but sustained bruises to the right arm and right jaw when he struck me with his fist and threw a chair at me. I could go on and on. These are but a few of the many experiences on "the other side of the world" when one's ministry is largely confined to caring for and helping those in a psychiatric hospital. My title is "hospital worker" but I look at it as a type of Christian ministry.
Some patients are helped, others are not. One cannot comprehend the nature of the problems facing such a large segment of our society until he comes in direct contact with those whose lives are entangled in a world where the god of carnality, of drugs and alcohol, is served.
A clergyman who is associated with Iowa's mental health services said recently that "theologians should lay creeds, dogmas, and church doctrines aside, get off their 'cans,' and start helping people!" It is not likely that theologians, even those in our ranks, will ever be able to make much of an impact upon the lives of slum dwellers, drug addicts, alcoholics, and others, as long as their allegiance is to "the establishment" and they remain shackled to the pulpit, trying frantically to pump the living water down the throats of a flock when most of them are no longer thirsty.
Jesus was not "whistling in the dark" when he instructed his pupils to get out into the world and penetrate and infiltrate the domain of darkness and bring sight to those blinded by the forces of evil. The vast majority of these people are outside of our edifices and far away from our pulpits. They are found in psychiatric wards of our general and state hospitals. They are in jails, country clubs, and on the streets of our large cities. They are where wine, beer and
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whiskey outflow water. They are in the ghettoes, and on the campuses of our colleges and universities.
In fact, they are found everywhere but inside the places we have erected as "houses of worship." Until pulpiteers and theologians get up and get with it, free themselves of the claims of "the establishment," and take the offensive, the problems within our great republic will simply worsen. The world needs a heart transplant, and we hold the tools for the operation. But we are using them to cut the hearts of our brethren to pieces and replacing them with hearts of bitterness and division. We have lost our sense of mission while the world is still there and waiting.
Buff Scott, Jr., works with a mental hospital and can be reached at P. 0. Box 83, Clarinda, Iowa.