Logos57: A Caring Community, Edited version January 12, 2012, originally posted January 9, 2012, by Paul Evans

Did you ever watch those Warner Brotherss cartoons when you were a kid, specifically Road Runner vs. Wiley E. Coyote? Sure it was a gas, but there was sort of a point to it. The coyote never won, but he kept on trying, no matter how many times he got hurt in whatever way.

I’ve done Evans Liberal Christian Politics/Logos57: A Community of Caring for three years and two months now. I’ve tried my best to bring you the Truth with a capital T about what is going on in the United States and the world. Meanwhile, my family members have died off or been incapacitated so that I am basically alone in the world.

So very much that is hurtful or wrong or even evil has happened to me that I sometimes have believed — however delusional this is — in the old concept they teach you in anthropology or sociology class about all societies having “scapegoats”. It is, I am guessing, a lesson for all of youth, that when you are young, you had damn well better conform or else. I was always a critic, always ready to analyze and comment on what was going on around me, and in our society. I had so much to say, and I felt what I had to say was very important, so that in conversations I seldom spent much time LISTENING and responding to what other people had to say. This was a HUGE mistake.

In any event, I feel that I have not been enough of a man in my situation, and feel strongly that I have fallen short of what God expected of me. Despite a long period of several years in which I have failed despite the reality of this staring me in the face, I am still trying at this late stage to pull together the pieces of my life. I am trying still fairly hard to do what is expected of me. A lot of days I fall short of that.

I do not feel that continuing to report on what is going on in news and politics is what is now expected of me. I fought that for at least a couple of years, now.

I wasn’t strong enough back when I had a fairly decent chance to have a good life in the early eighties in grad school. Loneliness seems to me what ruined my efforts as a student. I remain lonely and rather isolated. As for graduate school, I passed all the courses necessary and passed the comprehensive exams, but mental illness, as they call it, made me constitutionally unable to write my thesis.

My life as a mentally ill person has in all honesty been 85 percent a sheer waste of time (and the waste of a fairly decent mind), and 15 percent really rotten treatment by all sorts of people in so very many walks of life so that sometimes I have actually believed I have been such a scapegoat for society. Everything I did or said seems to have passed through this “filter” (for lack of a better word) in which what I said was to be discounted and my efforts and any accomplishments colored by the fact that “he’s mentally ill, you know.” Yes, I am a very different person than most people, but does that really make everything I do, say or write irrelevant? Apparently so, insofar as I can tell.

However, I also feel that there is a very good chance that all that was not society’s fault, nor because of society’s discounting my efforts because I am mentally ill, but my own basic failure to measure up. They say I need feel no guilt, that it was my rather severe mental illness which caused me such difficulties. I really used to sign on to that idea, hey, I’m mentally ill, so please forgive the weirdness, please keep paying for my SSA and SSI, Medicare A, B and D, and Medicaid. Please forgive my ineptness in conversations, my lack of social grace amounting almost to high functioning autism, even though no one taking care of me mentally has ever mentioned anything like autism. It just kind of seems that way to me.

You know, I really don’t know what the truth is about my life, nor if it is anyone’s fault beyond my own. I leave that up for God to judge.

By this point, I’ve pretty well determined that I am not going to convince anybody of anything any more on this website, if I ever did. I mean, there’s the 16 TRILLION which the Fed has lent out at 0 percent interest to banks and big corporations all over the world since December of 2007 — there’s all kinds of things wrong with our society, its lack of caring, its hypocrisy, its emphasis on everything materialistic. Yes Virginia, money IS the root of all evil.

The point is, society demands conformity, and I didn’t conform when I was young, I was a dissident and a critical voice, but I was alone and had no support from any organization. And I couldn’t hack it alone. If only several people might have a look at this post and look around the website, you would see my efforts to share truthful news and politics reporting with everyone. But society is not interested in the truth. A the higher levels it is only interested in conformity and in success, and wealth and power. And these people call themselves Christian and seem not to worry about God’s judgement when their life is over.

Darned few people I have dealt with in my almost 55 years really live their life as though they understand the real message and lessons of the Gospels and the Book of Acts, which is where I take my main inspiration (however poorly I am able to do so). If only society ACTUALLY followed what Jesus said, and his example, NOT to the extent (or in the exact way) that Jesus lived his life, but even as we are readily called upon, in ways that would not be all that hard.

In the final analysis (so far), I have been selfish with my life, and also inattentive about practical matters that everyone needs to attend to in order to succeed and be “normal.” Yet for two years plus now, I have seen the centrality of CARING in Jesus’ life and message.

Living as best we can an unselfish life is a huge change, but really it is sort of a whole different reality. Once you force yourself to fit into that reality, and keep trying to do that (live caring lives), you find that it is much different than the way you were living, and in my experience, very shortly after that, it is actually fun and even easy, although of course the difficulties that everyone goes through apply equally. I will say, knowing that my own knowledge and experience fall very short of many, many people, who have lived caring lives — unselfish lives — that for me doint that has been a 180 degree turn from where most of us have been living, insofar as I can see. I have been trying to live that way, and I find it is an entirely different way to live.

I have spoken to several people about aspects of this, and they mostly don’t know quite what to say, except for advice to snap out of it and pay a lot more attention to finding a way to keep a roof over my head. I don’t know quite why, but I do not see how anyone could escape the money trouble I am in. I am planning to now make it a priority to get a decent full time job with at least some benefits. It is really reminiscent of that old World War I song, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” But basically, it is in God’s hands.

Strangely, now that I have written about caring and leading unselfish lives as Christians following Christ’s example — and I don’t know how many of you will believe this — it is actually a lot of fun and very rewarding, as I am just beginning to find out. I believe that my difficulties stem from all those many years when I didn’t live that way. Having never been married, of course I never had the experience of living for my children, and sacrificing for my family. I do think that conceptually I have a much better idea about that, in recent years. Although you may find yourself poor monetarily as I have, it is a really great feeling to try to live this way. There, I have tried to say the same thing about four different ways. Please try to understand the true message of the Gospels, not what they teach you in church, so much, but following Christ, whatever difficulty may come your way. At least, you will be helping others and you will be happy. I will guarantee you that you would be happier.

As far as achieving much popularity and success with this website, I am pretty much through with trying to get there. In that sense, I am giving up and surrendering. I’m probably going to lose this house next September for failure to pay my property taxes, and I’m going to have to join the ranks of the homeless. Without a car. It would take a concerted effort from people I have known or from someone powerful in society to prevent this. The unlikeliness of any sort of salvation from the debt I am in and the looming property taxes I cannot pay, sometimes makes me terribly sad and upset, but then who cares? O.K. I certainly admit that I don’t look forward to any probability of being homeless. I just strongly am trying to say that circumstances like poverty or even homelessness sometimes seem far less daunting if you are happy nevertheless. I’m almost 55 now and it’s too late for me to have much of a career. But I am leaving the ranks of those who report on the news and bring you a selection of liberal and progressive political pundits. All I’m going to post up here is stuff like human interest stories, or maybe political comedy, or basically whatever the Spirit of God leads me to write or republish.

On the other hand, I will no longer comment on the immorality and greed of the rich. Frankly, at this point I would gladly and obediently serve those people if I could just find someone who might give me a way to survive — some way to get enough money to keep body and soul together, as they say. I hope this is not a cop out, and actually is simply a hope that I may be able to keep living in my father’s house and support myself. If you will, a more mentally healthy way to live my life, as society envisions it. Still, I am what my experience has made me, and that means I will always try to serve God.

This article is my own truth, insofar as God has let me understand it. This is some of what has happened to me. Some few people will read it, but if experience is any teacher, I expect nobody will care enough to help me materially or give me some kind of a chance to avoid homelessness (like a decent job befitting someone with my education and experience). I would love to be proven wrong, but I don’t anticipate it. I have an IQ of 149. I have edited 12 books, and once had the cover of an issue of History magazine. None of that apparently matters. The unemployment rate as of February for those making $100,000 a year or more was 3.2 percent. The unemployment rate for those making $20,000 a year or less was 31 percent. Could the unfairness and immorality of our society be shown any more clearly in a few simple statistics?

I am often upset every day, and hurt and saddened by my inability to support myself and my two friends who live with me, or help them to do better in life. I’m still trying to help them, and I will not give up trying to help them, whatever that costs me. I get about $700 a month of SSA and SSI for a disability which is in fact for mental illness. With that amount of money I am helping out the two adult friends who are living with me, and trying to keep up with the repairs to an old farm house, and pay the property taxes, not to mention being able to come up with a down payment for an old used car. It is actually my Dad’s house we live in, yet somehow I am responsible legally for paying the property taxes. (There seems to be something wrong there, at least morally, and maybe legally, but I am powerless to do anything about it. Wayne County Legal Aid has confirmed for me the legality of what is going on, and I don’t anticipate coming up with $400 a month in payments which starts in March.) You know, you try and try to join the ranks of successful people, because really, at least some form of success is something we all wish for and need. You see month after month and year after year that you are failing at this, but once you admit to your failings and get used to it, well I was going to say it gets somewhat easier, but I guess not really. I guess I will never be at peace with the difficulties I have had, but facing an even worse future is hard to take. Sorry, I really didn’t mean to get on the soapbox, I am just like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, I guess.

We only keep a few rooms heated in winter. I’m also trying to save money for a down payment on some kind of a junker type car. We don’t have a car, and we live six miles out in the country. My friends, except for two wonderful people, have given up on us and stopped helping me. Mostly I lost my several friends and I guess I made them feel bad when they would not help me. That has been hard to take. Oh, they could easily afford to help us, some of them, but so far as I can see, they, too, like the Republicans, believe in everyone pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, root, hog or die, as they say down South. Some of them speak of various reasons why they should not or will not help me. Yes, there are all these reasons…

So I have been sitting here, writing this article and then rewriting it, almost in tears part of the time. If I actually had some kind of chance to materially survive, keep this house and help my two friends — just a chance — I would not be depressed. But it is not depression, it is just realism. I’ve tried to remain strong, but lacking help, I have recently been at the point of giving up.

I also feel that God has been demanding of me for years now that I quit smoking. I’m still trying with that. When I had money I used to smoke up to three packs a day. I have hope that if I can quit, if only I could, perhaps my life still might be better than it is. A lot better.

As for the two young people who live with me, I strongly feel that I have failed them. It is their welfare AND my own in terms of quitting smoking and finding a good full time job which is the only thing, actually, that will make me feel less guilty, or, as sure as God cares about us all, will give the three of us a decent life.

How Much Is This Worth?? I KNOW God is real, and I see him at work in my own life, sometimes very dramatically so. I have tried for six or seven years to better understand God and his reality. I have used several resources trying to understand better, and at a few points, the attempt was too much and I lost my sanity. Actually, back in November of 2005, I feel that I actually had a good warning to give up my efforts there, yet felt unable to do so. It has at times been for me as for a moth driven to the light of a candle. Sometimes I got my wings a little scorched. Now, at this point I know that God is Spirit, and Spirit is love. I have tried for untold hours to understand this better, but I am now happy and satisfied with what I know of God. This is extremely fulfilling for me, and makes my life far easier, and also gives me peace, no matter how difficult what I am going through is. How much is that worth??

I wonder now why I have tried so hard to write this article to the very best of my ability, over several days. I believe there may be some wisdom for most everyone in it, in at least one or two aspects of what I have written. I wonder if it matters at all that I have tried so hard with this. I simply leave you for now with two songs which may speak a little of the truth, for those who may need a little advice.

Finally, to all those I may have offended in ways both large and small, I humbly apologize. Some people will object to this blog post. To those people I humbly repeat that I won’t be doing so very much of this any more.