For most of my life I’ve known people who are crazy. I seem to attract them. If I’m sitting on a bus, the jittery, uncomfortable, anxious person will look around and sit next to me. The homeless guy holding his ragged, urine soaked pants up with one hand, pointing into the air with the other and shouting at the sky in the Walmart parking lot will walk over to my car. But I TRIED to not make eye contact…
But I’ve also dealt with “crazy people” professionally, pastorally, and personally. Recently I’ve had several conversations with a friend that would always begin, “I swear I’m not crazy. I’m not lying to you…” Then he would go on to tell me about his walls vibrating, his neighbor crawling in his apartment ceiling with some device to steal his wi-fi, planes flying over his house and school busses driving by his door reading his thoughts, and the FBI sending porn and secret messages to him through TV. He would call me every time his phone would beep or put a notification on his screen, his TV blipped, or he’d get a phishing text, scam phone call, or email pop up and he’d say, “I’m not crazy and I’m not lying to you… there’s someone in my phone/tv/wifi because there’s something really odd going on…”.
But, of course he wasn’t crazy, just ask him. Self-assessment always guarantees an accurate diagnosis of “not crazy”. Technically, he wasn’t lying because he was accurately stating what he was experiencing whether his walls were stone still, his neighbor was sitting on his own couch watching his TV on his own cable/wi-fi, planes were full of people flying over his house unaware of him thinking their own thoughts, and his TV was broadcasting re-runs of Gunsmoke not CIA coded messages. And of course since I wasn’t THERE when it all happened how could I know it didn’t? It was real to him. I could have driven myself crazy trying to convince him that his experiences didn’t happen as he perceived them, but I knew better. Correcting him with logic and reality was pointless because we were discussing an actual, single “real” world but viewed through two different theories of its focus and intentions. To argue whose “reality” made more “sense” only agitated both him and me. We were eventually able to get him committed to a psych in-patient program where he was professionally diagnosed as “crazy”, medicated, and has slowly embraced a more disinterested, expansive, ambiguous but non-malevolent world that isn’t bent on absolute control of him.
While we were dealing with all of this it occurred to me that it was kind of a metaphor for state of the world and our current discourse and dialogues about it.
We live in crazy times.
Ask most people about “the world”. They will say, “I’m not crazy…but there’s something really odd going on here…” then they will point the finger across the street, across The Aisle, across the country, across the ocean, across the pew, even across the dinner table, and tell you: “THOSE people are crazy.” The crazy thing is, no one thinks they personally are crazy. Just ask them.
But objectively, there is really only one “reality” and SOMEONE has to be sane and know what’s crazy and what’s not, right?
Right?…..
Of course. All of our discourse is predicated on the belief that there is such a thing as an objective reality and that there is a true interpretation of it and a false one. And yes, there can be different “perspectives” like this illustrates.
But. It’s just not as simple as our current solipsistic cultural relativistic mantra “what’s true for you isn’t true for someone else”. Even with the illustration, there is still an “objective reality” (a real object, with real light from real objective geometric angles, that are casting real shadows) that everyone can come to an agreement about even if they were previously unaware of the existence of the object and the process by which they saw what they saw but someone else saw differently. The existence of society, culture, and every human interaction is predicated on the possibility and unspoken agreement that there is a common reality that can be discerned and agreed upon and acted upon in a meaningful way among them. Unfortunately most people are not this philosophical nor irenic when it comes to arguing their perceptions and generally “discourse” is a full on attack with shields up and phazers set on ten. Our cultural polarization has made it crazy to even try to have a conversation about anything consequential it seems. No one is crazy and everyone is crazy. Just ask them.
So, speaking of insanity. This meme keeps popping up around the Ortho-net.
It is often posted by folks who attack what they see as “madness”, theological, moral, political, cultural, ecclesial. When they are attacked in return this proves that they are “sane” because they are being attacked by the “madmen” for pointing out that “something really odd is going on…”.
The quote assumes there is an objective “saneness” and an objective “madness”, which is defined by God, which I think is true. There is a true “sanity” which the “madmen” have lost. Their madness is that they have a crazy, unassailable perception of what is true and anyone who does not concur with it is deemed “mad” and must be attacked, corrected and brought into conformity.
But “sane” and “mad” are defined by God, and therein lies the problem. What does “not mad” look like? And how do we know we are looking at “not mad” or “mad”? “Not like us” cuts both ways. A madman may say a sane man is mad because he is not like the madman, but a sane man could equally say a madman is mad because he is not like the sane man. The problem is if you ask both who is crazy or sane, what would they say?
And perhaps that is the hidden key in the quote. We don’t have a list of “mad beliefs” or “sane beliefs” here, just an interaction. The sane man merely exists. He is observed. There is a conflict, but not because the sane man is attacking the madman or judging the madman’s “world” but because the madman encounters his former sanity in the sane man. The madman judges the sane man. The madman attacks, labels (YOU are mad), and condemns (you are not like us). The sane man does not judge, does not attack, does not label anyone but himself as the chief of sinners thereby standing as one with the madman before the only One who can legitimately say “you are not like Me”.
And therein is “true sanity”.
Am I the madman or the sane man?
I ask myself that every time I read something or have a conversation with someone and I feel an agitation, an annoyance, a desire to correct, a judgement, a sense of superiority, a sense of anger, a condescension, a flippancy, or a desire to “show my chops”. If I don’t have peace, I don’t respond (wellll…I try to not respond, I’m still working on it.) The issue is I may think I’m a sane man among madmen and correcting the mad ones, but madmen don’t only attack sane men, they attack their own because the madman’s world becomes smaller and smaller until it is himself that is the measure and judge of everyone and all: You are mad because you are not like me. That is the nature of madness. Ultimately we end up like the Gerasene demoniac, divided, isolated, living among the dead, shouting at the sky alone.
The only way out of the madness is not to argue about madness among madmen, but to sit in peace at the feet of the One who is Sanity.
And maybe a thousand madmen around us might be saved…
I can easily see how various people are drawn in to you, Steve. God has crafted into you an approachable quality, an openness that feels safe. You are a haven, Steve. Thanks for your example. 👍😌
Super profound!