Alan
\nCopyright 2013 by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n
I am departing from my usual format and subject matter for \u201cMeditations for the Contemplative Christian\u201d this week in order to write about a friend of mine named Alan. I have known Alan for about ten years, having met him at the evening service of a church I no longer attend. It was immediately apparent to me that this was a human being who had been through some terrible experiences in his life. He was, in this world\u2019s eyes, what might be described as \u201cscary looking.\u201d By both his appearance and manner it was apparent that Alan was mentally ill. <\/p>\n
This fact did not alarm me, as I had worked with people with severe emotional and psychological problems in the past, so I made a point to talk with Alan. Within a short period of time we became friends and after every service Alan and I would sit in my car and talk for a while. During this time he shared with me a story of childhood abuse that remains the worst story of this kind I have ever personally heard. He had grown up in a family in which both parents were mentally ill. He had been sexually abused by strangers they allowed into their home. Presumably this was true for some of his siblings as well because, with one exception, his dispersed brothers and sisters were all troubled to the point of barely being able to function in the world. As for Alan his abuse at home had been followed by merciless bullying throughout his school years, mostly because of the haunted appearance he displayed even then. By the time I met him he was on permanent disability and living at home struggling to take proper care of his invalid father by himself.<\/p>\n
As I said his was one of the saddest stories I\u2019ve heard.<\/p>\n
I wish I could say that Alan found the love he was starving for in the Church, but this was not the case. If there was one thing he made crystal clear to me it was that people in the many churches he attended had not reached out to help him. I saw this in my own church of the time. Most people avoided contact with Alan altogether. The few who spoke with him at our services did so for a few minutes at most and then politely, but firmly excused themselves. This pattern had basically repeated itself with every congregation he encountered\u2026and that included the leaders of those congregations.<\/p>\n
After I left the church where I met Alan I continued to call him every few weeks to continue our relationship. As the years went by I witnessed him become more and more isolated, and more and more difficult to talk with about spiritual things. Alan simply could not understand why the people who bore the name of the Son of God he had read about in the Bible did not reach out to someone as obviously lost and lonely as he was. During these long conversations basically all I could do was listen. He did most of the talking because he had almost no one in his life to talk to. When I did find moments to speak it was very difficult to communicate the grace of God to a person who had found the church to be not much different from the rest of a world that \u201ckept its distance.\u201d<\/p>\n
By this time Alan\u2019s father had died and he was living alone. He had also begun to drink heavily.<\/p>\n
Last month my calls went unanswered. Finally I received a disconnected phone message when I dialed his number. The next day I drove to Alan\u2019s home and found it dark and empty. I left a message in his mailbox asking him to please call me and put the flag up. It ended up being the mail man who found it and contacted me. My friend Alan, he told me, had been found dead in his house by the police in mid-January. By the condition of his body it was apparent that he had died around Christmas. The mailman did not know the cause of death, but I could guess. Alan had recently had the flu and never sounded completely recovered from it. I suspect he died of pneumonia aggravated by alcoholism (It apparently had not been considered a suicide because there was no mention of his death in the local media. Had he clearly ended his own life there probably would have been.) I could find no obituary, no notice about a funeral, no mention of his death whatsoever.<\/p>\n
Alan was 52 when he died. I\u2019m not sure he ever really progressed emotionally beyond the age of the young boy who had known only abuse. He died alone. I can only hope that, when no one else was there in that empty house, the God Alan had once asked to save him was there with him as he left this world behind.<\/p>\n
The very sad truth is that if Alan still retained any faith in God at that point it was mostly in spite of Christians, not because of them. That is why I\u2019m writing this article in his memory. I write in the hope that those who read it might make a point to reach out to the \u201cAlan\u2019s\u201d in their own congregations, even if that means resisting fears about the emotionally disturbed that often are not justified. But when I remember what my friend encountered in too many 21st Century American churches I cannot help but question if I write in vain.<\/p>\n
Also, as I ponder what the Bible says about judgment starting among the people of God I sincerely wonder if part of that judgment will not be for our neglect of lost souls like Alan\u2026in the one place where those souls might have reasonably expected to find the radical love of Jesus Christ displayed.<\/p>\n
May God have mercy on us all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alan Copyright 2013 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved I am departing from my usual format and subject matter for \u201cMeditations for the Contemplative Christian\u201d this week in order to write about a friend of mine named Alan. I have known Alan for about ten years, having met him at the evening service of a… <\/p>\n