The first step is admitting you have a problem...

Hi. My name is Michael Mock, and I... am an addict.

It started small. Just a cup or so in the morning... you know, to warm me up a little. But pretty soon it was more than just one cup. The cups started getting bigger, too. And now... well, some days it seems like I just can't get going without it.

I told myself it was fine. I told myself I could quit any time. I... might have been wrong about it.

But, y'know...? It's not interfering with work. It's not interfering with my family life. Heck, my wife and children actively enable the habit. And I'm just not sure I'm ready to give it up. Oh, sure, maybe I'm a "functional addict," but right now I can live with that.

Plus, the stuff is full of antioxidants... and the way I drink it, it gets a little extra calcium into my system, too. That's healthy, right?

So... I'm sorry folks, but I'm just not ready to for that second step. If this is madness, I don't want to be restored to sanity. I'm just... I'm just not ready to give up my tea.

* * *
The other day, author Martha Wells observed that every time someone mentioned tea on Twitter, she gets a craving for tea. I tweeted back to point out that I get around this problem by making sure that I keep a massive mug of tea nearby at all times. This is true, but I don't think it really captures just how massive a mug I'm talking about.

So, to assist and enlighten you all, I've prepared a quick visual of my tea cup:

That's right, if your mug won't double as a life raft in an emergency, it's just not big enough. (Incidentally, while I did run that picture through Photoshop to put in the word balloon, I didn't mess with the sizes of the objects at all. The mug is seven inches tall and four inches across. You can get thoroughly sloshed just thinking about how much beer it would hold...)

Friendly Evangelism: What is the goal?

Before you start trying to share the Gospel - with anyone, not just unbelievers or former believers - it is vitally important to have a clear idea of what your goal is. I'm going to explore some possibilities, but there's no way I can cover everything. So (again) if you feel there's something important that I've rejected, ignored, or overlooked, feel free to talk about it in the comments.

If you, as a Christian, can't say what you hope to accomplish by your evangelism in a single sentence, then... well, I'm not a Christian, but I'm still going to suggest that you need to spend more time in discernment. Pray about it; think about it; read about it; talk to others about it; whatever helps you figure things out. If you don't know where you want to go, then it's damned hard to figure out how to get there.

Here are some possibilities:

1. I want to have more people attending my church. If this is the only goal, it's easy. Of course, this is almost never the only goal. But in this case, add social activities and other opportunities for people to get involved in the church community. The less you worry about whether people understand your particular approach and doctrine, the easier it'll be to get them involved. Oh, and make sure there are donuts. 
2. I want to convert people to Christianity. This is generally the ultimate goal of any sort of evangelism. I mean, in an ideal world, you'd bring the message of hope and redemption to people who don't have it and desperately need it, and they would repent of their sins and turn to Christ, and the Peace and Wisdom of the Lord would come into their hearts. Right? And honestly, this isn't bad... as a goal. Just keep your expectations realistic. If you aren't going to be satisfied until the person you're talking to has come to Christ, then you've set yourself up for frequent disappointment. And if you let those expectations make you frustrated and pushy, you're far more likely to drive people away... and even if you bring them in, they're going to resent the way you did it. 
3. I just want to share the Gospel. Depending on precisely what you mean by this, it isn't a bad approach. In my brilliantly misspent youth, I worked on the adolescent boys wing of a drug and alcohol rehab. If I'd been deeply focused on tearing them away from their addictions, I'd have been deeply frustrated - and soon after that, deeply burned out. Most of these kids had no reason to believe anything that adults bothered to say to them. So, rather than trying to actually change them, I focused on showing them the tools so that if (and when) they eventually wanted to make a change, they had some idea of how to do it. Sharing the Gospel is rather like that.

So think about it. What is it that you really hope to get out of your attempts at evangelism?

Next up: choosing your target audience.

Previous: The Christian Imperative | Next: Whom Are You Talking To?

Post-Fever Dreams

So I went to bed fairly early last night and got a solid nine hours of sleep. (This is following the Horrible Tummy Bug, better known as Karkainon The Belly Render. I'm still recovering, but at least I can eat.) So naturally, I dreamed. And unsurprisingly, my dreams were a little... bizarre.

I had commuted back to Lawton, Oklahoma, to work at the drug and alcohol rehab in its new location. That was disturbing enough in its own right, but it occurs to me as I write this that I hadn't really sorted out just how much of a conflation that really is. Lawton, as I've mentioned before, is the little known Tenth Circle of Hell - at least, it was for me. The drug and alcohol rehab, however, was actually located in Stephenville, TX. Stephenville wasn't so bad, but working on the adolescent boys' wing of the rehab was easily the most purgatorial job I've ever held.

There had been some changes since the last time I was there (and in the dream, I was vaguely aware that I'd worked there once before). They'd moved to a somewhat ramshackle house, rather than the sprawl of decrepit, lowest-bid buildings that I remember. The staff was friendly, glad to see me, happy to get started - the whole environment was much cheerier than I remember it ever being in real life. Apparently there'd been some changes in management.

So really, it was a fairly pleasant dream (even if commuting to Lawton seemed a bit much for a low-paying job). At least, it was fairly pleasant, until the residents started screaming - at which point I ran back to see what was happening, and found that the house had come to life. Apparently it was haunted - really, really haunted. Doorways-splintering-into-teeth haunted. Faces-forming-in-the-wood haunted. Eating-the-patients haunted.

On the plus side, the facility was much better run when the vengeful, flesh-devouring ghosts were in charge than it ever was in real life.

You just can't win

During my brilliantly misspent youth, I spent some time at a drug and alcohol rehab. (I was recently reminded that when I say that, I should be sure to emphasize that I was employed there, rather than being a guest of the facility.) I was on the adolescent boys' wing, and this was not, let us say, an ideal job. The management was atrocious, the pay was abysmal, and the work was unrewarding. However, it allowed me to work nights - and night shifts were usually slow, so I could study. And there were some interesting bits; I learned more about Twelve Step programs than I ever wanted to know.

That was also the first time I'd really done any serious thinking about the nature of denial and the role it plays in human behavior. Denial can be a problem for anyone; for addicts, it's one of the mechanisms that allow people to continue self-destructive activities long after the point where any objective assessment would tell them to stop. As a result, learning to recognize and overcome denial is a large part of the treatment process.

So how do you tell if someone is an addict? The primary distinction is whether or not the person can stop. For drinkers, one test is whether you can cut yourself off after two drinks. (This leads to numerous, and often amusing, stories about ways people have tried to fudge the test; for example: "He only had two drinks, but each of them was a twenty-ounce mug that was half full of rum!" Denial and rationalization in action...) Another way to look at the question is whether the behavior is causing trouble in other areas of a person's life. Is drinking (etc.) causing poor performance at work or school? Is it leading them to make bad decisions that get them into trouble?

It's probably worth noting that addiction is often part of a larger pattern of destructive behavior. This often makes cause and effect hard to determine, and also means that a lot of treatment focuses on changes in lifestyle: finding new hobbies, learning how to make better friends, and like that.

Anyway, the problem with that kind of assessment is that you have to know what's going on in someone's life. You have to see their behavior in order to evaluate it. That takes time, resources, and access to the person. Counselors, as a general rule, don't have any of that.

So if you've been sent to rehab (and the adolescents were almost always sent, by either their parents or the court), there is essentially no way to establish that you are not an addict. If you try to say that you aren't, the counselor will automatically assume that you're in denial, which is clear evidence that you're an addict. If you try to lay out the specific details of your behavior, they will assume that you are rationalizing, downplaying, or lying outright about your usage - because, again, that's what addicts do. Pretty much anything you say, do, or offer just provides further proof that you're an addict.

This is the best example of a real-world Catch 22 that I've ever encountered. It's also exceedingly frustrating to deal with (but don't get angry about it; then you're acting out, which is - again - further proof of addiction). Hell, it was frustrating to watch - because I knew that inevitably, the facility was going to wind up with some boys who didn't actually need to be there. There was no way, in that system, to account for the fact that the world is full of people who simply aren't addicts.

I bring this up because it's a very similar dynamic to the one I mentioned in a previous post: the idea that if you aren't a Christian, it must because you've never heard about Jesus; or, if you're an ex-Christian, that you must never have been exposed to True Christianity - you were never really a Christian in the first place (I John 2:18-20). I've even encountered the (rather daft) argument that since the Bible says people will leave the faith (1 Timothy 4), the fact that people leave the faith is actually proof that the Bible is true.

The problem with both of these views is that they narrow down the available options, creating a sort of logical trap. The only way to disagree with them is to reject the validity of the whole setup. Depending on the power dynamic, that may or may not be possible.