Terminology

Thinking back quite a few years to when I was in middle school, I remember that I had something of a reputation. Not the one for being a social outcast, weird lunches, uncool clothes or being teacher’s pet, but one I created on my own. I was the “word police” – and there was one word that was the greatest offense. One that teenagers say every single day.

“Retard”.

It’s said to someone who has just done something foolish, someone you don’t like who just can’t do anything right, someone who gets in your way in the hall. The adjective form, “Retarded” is even more commonly used – to describe something that the speaker feels is stupid. In nearly every sentence, “retard” or “retarded” can be replaced with “stupid” and the sentence will still make sense. But what the word actually means is ‘to slow down’ or ‘having been slowed down’. Try inserting “slowed down” into some of those sentences. “This homework assignment is so slowed down!” No one would know what you were talking about, they’d probably look at you like you were... slowed down.

I lost a family member to Down Syndrome before I was even born. Back in the 1960’s when my uncle was born, children like him who just happened to have one extra chromosome were, at best, referred to as ‘mentally retarded’. This was, then, the kindest of the terms. To see the others we need only to look to places and people who have not yet shifted their vocabulary. In one Eastern European country, the floor of the orphanage where all the children with Down Syndrome lie in cribs, the label outside the door read “Malformations”. Ouch. There’s not even an ounce of humanity in that one. Others commonly used across the world, and indeed in the history of the United States, include “mongolian idiot,” “mongoloid” or just “idiot”; “imbecile,” “lunatic” and so many more. Most of them had faded or lost their association with individuals with special needs by the time I was in middle school, but such was not the case for “Retard”. So I made it my crusade.

Now there are campaigns by the number. “Stop the word to end the word”. People first language. Others have taken up the cause, and hopefully are reducing the use of this antiquated term which should not be considered synonymous with ‘stupid’. I personally have started choosing random physical afflictions and using them in place of the “R” word, as an illustration to the listener of how ridiculous it is to use a diagnosis as a put-down. My favorite is “Diabetic”. It usually earns me a double take after which I explain my philosophy.

Today, though, I realized that far more of the terminology we use is inherently prejudicial against people with mental and physical disabilities. In recent years, the DSM-IV, the manual used to diagnose psychological conditions, has been under revision to the recently released DSM-V. In the revision process there was much discussion of what ‘official’ titles to apply to various afflictions. When the first DSM came out, homosexuality was listed as a psychological disorder. In those years “imbecile” was a medical term. As we’ve added to our knowledge, we’ve changed our terminology. But the DSM-V still has what is, to me, a glaring and insulting error.

Mental illness is diagnosed along 4 axes. Axis 1 disorders can be cured, they are usually temporary or intermittent and though disruptive to the life of the individual, are often responsive to treatment. Axis 2 disorders, which tend to be lifelong, deeply built into a person and while therapy and medication can lessen their effects, neither can cure them. The DSM-V, like the DSM-IV before it, terms these conditions “Personality disorders”. This is the terminology with which I take issue. In a world where we are trying to decrease the stigma of mental illness, how can we still use this term?

You might wonder what’s so wrong with it, especially if you’re lucky enough to have escaped Axis 2.Well think about this. Someone falls in love, and when asked what they find so endearing about this person, the other might describe their sparkling personality, good qualities, attitudes, all those non-physical attributes which we use to define people are their “personality”. She has a lovely personality, he has one of those personalities that makes everyone feel at ease, if appearance is the essence of a person’s physical being, personality is the essence of their mental being. Can you imagine telling someone they had an appearance disorder?

I don’t know how we can expect to fight stigma when even the professionally developed material used to diagnose and treat us tells us that there is something wrong, something flawed about our very personality. It tells a group of people who are already prone to self-judgment that their personalities, the fundamental essence of who they are, is wrong, ‘disordered’.

Sometimes I imagine two people meeting on the street. One looks normal but carries an axis 2 diagnosis. The other walks with a limp. One feels physically broken. One feels mentally broken. One carries a diagnosis of a bone or joint disorder. The bone or the joint is broken, not functioning as it should. The other carries a diagnosis of a personality disorder. Logically then we must assume that her personality is broken, not functioning as it should. Her personality, the very essence of who she is, is wrong.

How does this message help the world understand her? How does it help her understand herself?

In other countries, so-called “personality disorders” carry various other names. If you’re reading this, by now I expect you know that I have a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. Elsewhere it is known as “Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder” (so, you know, basically the same), or sometimes “Emotional Intensity Disorder”. I like that last one best. I can admit that above all, the disproportionate intensity of my emotions to the events in my life is what lies at the root of most of my distress. Further, the latter term removes the word “personality” from the equation completely (which, interestingly enough, has not been the major sticking point on how the disorder should be named). In doing this it removes the connotation “who you are” is not what is disordered. The subject is changed. It is your emotions that are disordered, because they are extremely intense. I can’t speak for the entire BPD community, but I personally can certainly admit that my emotions are often disordered due to their disproportionate intensity.

I don’t know what spurred me to write this today. I’m not feeling persecuted, I know that I am not a label and that I am not my illness. I guess I’ve just been thinking about the wider world, people who are newer to this game than I am, who might be hurt by an inaccurate or insensitive term. Maybe with time the terminology will change. Yesterday’s “malformations” are today’s children with special needs. Maybe – just maybe, in 60 years, today’s “personality disordered” will be called something else, something less stigmatizing, thus helping us erase the stigma from all aspects of our lives and all corners of the world. This is just my attempt at giving the process a little ‘jump start’.

It Really Is That Black And White

I've learned a lot about black, white, and grey in the last few months.

I have a tendancy to think in black and white.  Things are good or bad, right or wrong; there is no in between.  I am slowly learning to notice the 'grey areas' - the 'just okay' or 'not the best' or 'it was fun except'.

But sometimes there are no gray areas.

I don't think I have to name names for people to know who I'm talking about when I refer to the little boy who died when his father left him in a hot car all day recently.  I don't think I have to rehash the details of the case for people to recall the evidence.  If you've read it or heard it once, you haven't forgotten it.  By now, enough evidence has come out to charge the boy's father with homicide.  It is my professional opinion as a public health scholar that the decision to charge the father is the only one supported by the evidence.  It is my personal opinion that there is nothing more horrifying than thinking a parent could ever do this to their own child.

This horrific case has called the entire nation's attention to an even larger problem: dozens of children die this way each year.  I can't even imagine how many animals die in the same way.  And even if someone manages to get to them before they die, being trapped in a hot car is pure torture.

How do I know?  Well, today I watched the video of the veteranarian who locked himself in a hot car for 30 minutes.  And it made me think.  That man looked pretty miserable.  But it was only thirty minutes.  And he wasn't in a rear facing car seat, the sun shining down on him through the rear window... and the windows were cracked, as he stated, like you would crack them for a pet.

How much worse must it be for a child, strapped into a rear facing car seat for hours, with no open windows whatsoever?

So I decided to find out.  This is the part where I post really horrible pictures of myself to prove a point.

It's only 81 degrees outside today.  The day that little boy died, it was 92.  Eleven degrees hotter.  Here is a snapshot of the weather when I began my experiment:

Not bad at all.  Nice day for a walk or a bike ride.  Not really even hot enough that I would want to go swimming.

To recreate common conditions, I turned my car on and let the air conditioning cool it to a temperature that was comfortable to me in the front seat.  I installed a rear facing car seat in the center back seat of my car, exactly how I would install it to transport a child.  Then I turned the car off and got in.

When I started out, everything was pretty normal even a minute or two into the experiment.

1:52 pm:  The temperature in the car was about 30 degrees Celsius, which translates to about 86 degrees F.  For comparison's sake, it dips to 25 C inside my air conditioned house.  This was taken only a couple minutes after turning off the air conditioning in the car.

1:57 pm (5 minutes elapsed):  My body temperature was normal.  98.5 degrees F - just about perfect.

I made notes to myself in my cell phone along the way.

At 2:00 (8 minutes elapsed), I wrote "getting hard to breathe".  The air was a bit thick but I settled in and started to read my book.

At 2:11 (19 minutes elapsed), I wrote "Hard to think about anything else".  I meant anything other than how uncomfortable I was and how much I wanted to get out of the car.  I couldn't believe how quickly my formerly air conditioned car was becoming unbearable.

At 2:18 (26 minutes elapsed), I wrote "sweating all over".  I later laughed at that note, because really only my legs had began to sweat.  My legs were most directly in the sunlight and I'm not a heavy sweater so I didn't really expect to sweat from anywhere else.

2:20 pm (28 minutes elapsed):  I took the first picture of myself.  I looked... okay, well, I looked horrible, but to be honest I was actually already pretty uncomfortable when I took this first picture.  It had been nearly a half an hour and had the circumstances been different I would've already gotten out of the car for some air even on this cool day.  But only my legs were perspiring and my skin tone is fairly even.

At 2:21 pm (29 minutes elapsed), I write "Stopped reading".  At this point I had become unable to focus on the book I was reading and set it aside in favor of slouching down in the car seat and closing my eyes.

2:23 pm (31 minutes elapsed):  The thermometer reads approximately 35 degrees C, or 95 degrees F.

2:24 pm (32 minutes elapsed):  The first real beads of sweat begin to roll down my legs.  My body temperature reads 98.8.

At 2:27 pm (35 minutes elapsed), I write "Stifling and pouring sweat, dripping down both legs."  Little did I know I would later yearn for the time when only my legs were sweating and the temperature remained in the double digits.

At 2:34 pm (42 minutes elapsed), I notice "[the] breath I exhale feels like cool breeze".  It occurred to me at this point that an adult would start fanning themselves, but a toddler wouldn't know to do this, so I didn't do it either.

2:39 pm (47 minutes elapsed):  I'm starting to look pretty worse for the wear, my face is blotchy and shines with tiny pearls of sweat.

At 2:41 pm (49 minutes elapsed), I note "it is getting really hard to breathe".  I remember it occuring to me that I should elaborate on that more, but I didn't have the energy.  I wanted to describe how close the air felt to my face, like when I was a little kid and I was hiding from the monsters in my room with my head under the covers trying to breathe through my comforter.

2:51 pm (59 minutes elapsed): Nearing the one hour mark, I take another picture.  These are starting to get pretty bad.  I note that "all [of my] skin [is] wet and clammy, [and the air] feels suffocating."  This is the point at which it actually started to feel like someone was pressing a pillow over my face.  I knew I wouldn't be able to stand much more.

At 2:55 pm (64 minutes elapsed), I comment that "beads of sweat [are] popping up all over [my] legs".  I take a few pictures over the next five minutes.  My thinking has become disorganized and confused, the methodical approach to my experiment deteriorating.

Sweat running down my leg

Beads of sweat like pox marks on my shins

I know my face will soon be pouring sweat as well.

After this point I make no more notes.  I lack the energy and mental capacity to complete this simple task.  What remains are only pictures.

3:01 pm (69 minutes elapsed): The mercury is reading close to 40 degrees C, or 104 F.  Remember, it is only 81 F outside!  I take a series of pictures.  My face, my drenched arm, my crossed legs with sweat beading all over them, the beginnings of drips of sweat on my face.  I am disoriented and take more pictures than I intended to.

3:05 pm (73 minutes elapsed):  I'm pretty much continually taking pictures at this point as I notice new issues every moment.  My face is now dripping with sweat.  My legs look like I've been caught in a rainstorm.  Sweat drips down my back and chest and soaks my clothes.

3:08 pm (76 minutes elapsed):  I decide I'm done with the experiment and start to get a few last pictures.  The thermometer is reading over 40 C so I know it is at least 105 F in the car.  I take my body temperature and it comes out to 99.1.  The final few pictures of myself show me literally pouring sweat.  I remember hearing it drip from my elbow onto the seat of the car, and wondering what made that noise, before realizing that *I* was actually dripping onto the car.

At this point I'm shaking so badly I have to take nearly all of the photos twice.  I take a short video of myself to show how bad I am shaking which I am not adding at this time as I haven't watched it and I know I was pretty delirious.

I can't get out of the car fast enough.  I fumble with the lock.

At 3:12 pm, after one hour and twenty minutes, I emerge from the car.  The outside air at 81 degrees feels crisp and like life itself and I drink it in.  I am suddenly overcome by an aversion to being in the car or even near it, even though my rational mind knows I was in control the whole time.  Still, I keep the door open as I gather up my things and move it to a slightly more shaded area.  My clothes and skin are soaked in sweat and all I can think of is the hose beside the house, and how much I want to just turn it on and pour it over my head.

For the sake of research I only splash the hose water on my face, arms and legs before going in the house.  There I change into dry clothes and take a look at the shirt I wore for this experiment.  It's a medium tone, not white, not black.  You can only tell it's wet by noticing the disparity between the sparse lighter, dry portions and the rest.  The back is nearly all wet.  I'm still not thinking clearly.

The final temperature in the car was over 105 degrees F.  In an hour and twenty minutes, the temperature rose to over 20 degrees higher than the outdoor temperature.  My body temperature went up from 98.5 to 99.1, over half a degree and enough to qualify as a low grade fever.  My mental senses began to deteriorate, my body poured sweat, and at the very end, I began to shake so hard it actually scared me as to whether I could get out of the car fast enough.  It was a horrible ordeal that I wouldn't wish on anyone, even though I did it voluntarily.

This is what dozens of children go through every year... only they can't crawl out and peel off their sweaty clothes... they're strapped into car seats, too little to know what's going on... I can only imagine what comes after the shaking.

This is inexcusable.  Look, I know that accidents happen, and parents like the ones who have been in the news lately are the exception, not the rule.  Oftentimes when this happens it is a genuine accident and the grief-stricken parent is left racked with guilt forever.  But this is exactly why we need a wake up call.

Leave your purse, your wallet, your cell phone, your briefcase - something you need, in the back seat next to your child's car seat every time you get in the car.  Start making a habit of looking in the back seat - even if you KNOW you don't have any children with you... because all it takes is one time of being wrong to end a life.  Let's all take action to make SURE this isn't allowed to happen any more.

And as for the people in the news... the evidence speaks for itself.  What they did is horrible in ways that I could not imagine, more evil than I naively thought existed in this world.  There will be a trial, a judge, and a jury, but I already know the verdict.  Dying this way, as dozens of children do every year, is torture.  That it could be anything less than an honest mistake is unfathomable and amounts to intentionally torturing a child to death.  That *defines* murder.  Yes, it really is that black and white.

A Short Story

The mother of two young children wakes up on a Saturday morning, and for one blissful moment, hovers in that state between asleep and awake where she's only partially aware of her surroundings.  Then in an instant it all comes rushing back... everything that happened yesterday, the painful treatment she had to go through at the hospital, crying because things felt so hopeless, not being able to do the things she wanted to with her children... and she feels crushed all over again.

She drags herself out of bed because she knows she has to care for her children, who will be waking up any minute (in fact, it's a shock that they're not already up!).  No sooner than she steps into the bathroom to take her shower, she hears the crying coming from her one year old little boy's nursery.  Followed by a loud yell of "MOMMY, THE BABY'S CRYING!" from her four year old daughter.  She sighs and retrieves her son from the crib, snuggles him, changes his diaper, and then, already exhausted, goes to the bathroom with both kids standing there vying for her attention.  She just wants to get back into bed... she feels so terrible this morning... not that it's different from most mornings.

Knowing she has to at least feed them some sort of breakfast, she pops in some microwave oatmeal, cools it off, and serves it to the kids.  She doesn't bother with making anything for herself... nothing agrees with her stomach lately.  Shower forgotten, after breakfast, the four year old (who is a little princess) is the only one who gets dressed.  She bounds downstairs with more energy than a small Midwestern town and chipperly asks "Mama, can we go to the park today?  It's pretty outside."

Guilt washes over the mother, knowing that there is no way she can take her daughter to the park on this admittedly beautiful day.  Just the thought of getting the kids and herself ready, loading them into the car, keeping an eye on them at the playground, loading them back up, and coming home, exhausts her.  Heart breaking because she can't give her daughter the kind of childhood she wants her to have, she says "Not today, sweetie, Mommy doesn't feel good."  The little girl nods - she knows what this means by now.

All day, the children's mother fights against feelings of panic, depression, exhaustion, and complete apathy.  She forces herself to do the things necessary for the health and well-being of her children, but it completely takes the wind out of her.  She wishes, over and over, that she had someone to help her with all this.  Her whole body hurts by now.  She just wants to collapse into her bed, or onto the couch, or even the floor at this point.  She hasn't eaten all day, yet she feels like she's going to throw up.  As she's fighting these overwhelming feelings, the guilt is overwhelming.  Her children deserve a whole mother, one who can do all the things she wants to do with them.  She hates that they have to understand, at such a young age, what it means when mommy doesn't feel good.  If she had a magic wand, she'd fix it all... not for her, but for her kids.

After a whole day of hearing other moms and dads outside playing with their children, reading parenting magazines about exciting springtime activities, the mother is feeling incredibly defeated.  If only she could do all these things for her children, who she loves a hundred fold more than herself.  If only she were healthy.  As she tucks them into bed, skipping baths because it's just too much today and asking them to choose a short book so she can get to bed herself, the thought occurs to her that this is what tomorrow will be like too.  Monday her children will go to a sitter while she is at the hospital... and then when they all finally get home, she will be too exhausted to really enjoy them.  Tuesday, the same pattern will happen again.  And over, and over, and over, for what seems like forever.  Sometimes she thinks she's never going to get better, that her children are going to grow up with only half a mother, that she is going to miss the golden moments of their youth.  She cries to herself as she falls asleep, praying for healing.

Having read all that, what are you thinking?  Keep in mind that this is a true story, a thousand times over.

The mom is obviously sick, but she's doing her best.  She probably needs some help at home.  What is she sick with?  Is it cancer?  Is chemotherapy why she's so exhausted?  Is it degenerative?  Will she die too young?  What horrific disease has stolen even the joy of playing with her children?

What if I told you that she is physically perfectly healthy?  That all her screenings have come up negative?  She doesn't have cancer.  She doesn't have heart disease or kidney failure or an aneurysm.  She has Borderline Personality Disorder.  Or Major Depressive Disorder.  Or Panic Disorder.  Or Bipolar Disorder.   It doesn't even matter which one, those are in a completely separate category for most people.  They are *mentally* ill... not physically ill.

I bet the first time you read this story, you felt sad for this young mom and wished you could help her.  Now go back, knowing what I've just told you, and see if you feel the same way.  Are you still sad for her?  Do you still want to help?  Or do you blame her?  Do you think she shouldn't have those beautiful children since she can't take care of them the way healthy person could?

I think most of us would like to say that it doesn't make a difference to us where the illness lies... but it does, because I've seen it.  Cancer is never anyone's fault.  A person with MS isn't expected to just 'push through it'.  Those of you who know me know that I help with car seat checks because motor vehicle accidents are a top cause of death in the United States and proper restraint can prevent that.  Public health dollars are allocated to these things en masse.

We find out someone we know has been stricken with a terrible disease, or hurt in an accident, and all the sudden a meal train is going on, people (some of whom you don't even know) are bringing you dinner every night, offering to clean your house, watch the kids for free, refer you to specialists that they know, offer a shoulder to cry on.  We find out that same person has a mental illness and we pull away.  Friends stop coming around so much.  They don't invite you to social events.  They tell you it's 'too hard' to be your shoulder to cry on.  There's no meal train.  No sympathy cards.  No flowers.  No concerned coworkers coming by your cubicle on the rare day you make it into work just to ask how you are.  Why?

In the 21st century, with everything we know about how the brain works, why would we treat it any different than any other diagnosis?  And because we do, how many people go without the treatment they need because they're terrified of the judgment that might come with a diagnosis?  For most physical ailments, failing to treat them *will* eventually be fatal.  Why would we expect any different of mental illness?  Just because it's a different part of the body?  Because there aren't quite so many awareness walks and ribbon months?  Because people you know don't just come out and say "I have a mental illness" they way they might say "I have diabetes"?  There have even been cases where social workers, knowing that the mother is mentally ill rather than physically ill, read the above story (in real life) as neglect and take the children away.  Would YOU seek treatment, knowing that in doing so you may lose the only parts of your life that still occasionally bring a smile to your face?

This has to stop.  It has to.  Because - and no, I'm not being overdramatic here because I have SEEN THIS HAPPEN - our inability to accept mental illness as something that occurs naturally, requires treatment, but does not change the person we know and love, IS KILLING PEOPLE BY THE THOUSANDS.  Look at the suicide rates in America over the past few years.
In 2010, suicide was ruled the cause of 38,634 deaths (up from 34,598 deaths in 2007) in the United States alone.  Motor vehicle crashes, however - admittedly an area in which I have done much research and volunteering, accounted for 33,687 deaths in 2010, having been officially surpassed as a leading cause of death by suicide.

Many people will say "Well then, why don't more people just get treatment?  They just shouldn't kill themselves."  But for what other illness or injury do we blame the victim for not getting help?

Make no mistake, suicide is a result of mental illness.  Physically and mentally healthy people do not just kill themselves.  Suicide is the 'terminal' of mental illness... only it isn't nearly as easy to predict or prevent.  Until we shatter the stigma associated with seeking treatment, so that getting help for mental illness is on par with getting help for physical illness, these suicide rates are going to continue to skyrocket.  Everyday people... mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brother and sisters, are going to wake up every day and live the kind of life the young mother at the beginning of this post lived.  I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

This month, May, is Borderline Personality Disorder awareness month.  The color is gray.  Admittedly, everything has a month, or a day, and a color, these days, and May is probably an awareness month for at least half a dozen other things, but my goal today is to shine a light on a dark corner of MEDICINE that is rarely seen or heard outside the clinics where it is treated and the lives of those who suffer it.  BPD CAN BE FATAL!  It can kill you just like any other disease!  10% of BPD sufferers eventually end their own lives.  It would not have to be this way if we could erase the stigma of seeking treatment.  This is only the first of my posts on the topic.  And I'm not saying we need to start up meal trains every time we hear that someone has BPD, starting tomorrow.  I'm not even saying that mental and physical illnesses CAN be treated medically in the same way - they cannot.  But what does need to change is our perspective.  Admitting mental illness should not be a source of shame or embarrassment.  It should be no more frightening to come out and say "I have Bipolar Disorder" than it is to come out and say "I have epilepsy".  The reaction to such an admission from a loved one should not differ.  That is the first step to stopping the epidemic rates at which mental illness affects our populations.

And that is something YOU can do.  Next time you hear that a church member has been hospitalized for a suicide attempt, don't avoid their gaze the next time you meet them.  Ask that awkward girl who mutters to herself how her day is going... and then just LISTEN to the response, no matter what it is.  Don't decide that these people can no longer be trusted or helped.  If and when it's appropriate, say something.  "Hey.  I heard you were having some problems.  Here's my number.  Please call me any time."

You might just save a life.

I Have A Problem With This

In the recent days, I read about a series of events that made me happy - and then sad - and then sadder.  These concerned the activities of Christian children's charity World Vision, and many of you may be familiar with the events to which I am referring.  For those who are not, you may find some information here, or just continue reading and I will briefly summarize the events.

On Monday of this week, World Vision, a Christian charity that offers a 'sponsor a child' program to aid impoverished children around the world, announced a policy change reflecting its intention to hire Christians who identified as homosexual.  In the two days since that information was released, large numbers (some sources says thousands) of Christian World Vision sponsors immediately withdrew or threatened to withdraw their support of their sponsored child through the program.  Facing this backlash and the prospect of having to tell thousands of children that the benefits of having a sponsor were ending for them, World Vision chose to cut their losses and reverse the policy in hopes of keeping its sponsors and maximizing benefit to the children they serve.

Now, I know there were a lot of things wrong with what you just read, but I want to take it one step at a time.  First, though, I want to make one thing absolutely clear.

These "Christians" who withdrew their support for the children they had promised to help over a doctrinal disagreement DO NOT represent Christians as a people, and they DO NOT represent the God we serve.  We'll get to more on why in a moment.

First let's talk about the initial decision - the policy change to allow the hire of homosexual employees.  When I heard about this, I was thrilled.  That decision by World Vision was very Christ-like.  You see, the God I worship wrote a lot of things in the Bible.  Sure, some of them can be interpreted as stating that homosexuality is a sin.  My opinion on that is neither here nor there.  The point that is important for me to make here is that this is not all the Bible says.  The Bible lists a multitude of other things that are considered sinful.  Lying.  Stealing.  Cheating.  Disobeying your parents.  Working on the Sabbath.  Using the Lord's name in vain.  Divorce and subsequent remarriage.  In the Old Testament, where most of the references to homosexuality are found, even things like consuming pork or wearing the wrong type of clothing.  It also states, in more than one place, that God does not consider any one sin 'better' or 'worse' than any other.  This means that murderers and liars are guilty of the same sin, not one more than another, neither more worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.  None of us sin better or worse than others, we simply sin differently.  So to bar homosexuals - CHRISTIAN homosexuals - from employment, would be no different in the eyes of God than barring anyone who had ever committed any sin from it.  And none among us are without sin - so who exactly would World Vision employ?

Contrary to what the Westboro Baptist folks would like you to believe, God LOVES homosexuals.  He also loves liars, cheaters and even murderers.  In many places the Bible states that never should any one of us stop another person from doing good in God's name because they do so differently, believe differently, or because they are not "one of us".  To stop another person from doing good is to do bad yourself.   In changing their policy, World Vision was following Christ!  Their decision to allow even those whose doctrinal beliefs differ from their own to do good works in the name of the Lord was Christ-like. 

What followed, however, was the opposite.

As I previously stated, following the announcement, a large number of World Vision supporters either withdrew, or threatened to withdraw, their commitment to their sponsored child, citing what they believed was a policy that violated their religious beliefs.  Since this is my blog and it's about my opinion, I can state quite plainly here that they were WRONG.

Further study of the Bible would reveal to these people that World Vision's actions did not violate the beliefs of Christianity in any way - in fact, it is exactly what Jesus would do.  Love every person, encourage them, despite whatever their sins may be, to do good in His name.  You see, God LOVES the world.  He SO loves the world that He gave His Son so that we might have eternal life.  God does not love 'only those without sin'... that's not what the Bible says.  It says "For God so loved the world".  He loves the sinner.  He loves everyone - all colors, shapes and sizes - born and unborn, married and single, gay or straight, rich or poor, happy or sad, clean or dirty.  He loves us all... even the liars, the cheaters, the murderers, the adulterers, even the very people who denounce Him.  None of us is without sin.  He loves us anyways.  God would not have us stop any of these people from doing good in His name - so why would we expect World Vision to do that?

What does violate the beliefs of Christianity is withdrawing your support from an innocent, impoverished child who needs your help because you disagree with some higher-ups about a doctrinal issue.  This is failing to heed the call of the Bible to care for the orphan and the widow, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.  There is no clause in the Bible for only doing what is right when you get to make the rules.  There is no clause that states that it is more important to judge others for their sins than to do good works.  Yet that is exactly what all those people did by withdrawing their support.  Is that what Jesus would have done?  I think not.  To hear that people had done this, withdrawn support from innocent children, supposedly 'in the name of God'... well, that hurt my heart.  And I know it hurt His too.

So then the news came today that World Vision was reversing its decision... they will no longer hire Christian individuals who identify as homosexual.  This made me even sadder.  Now not only are they also stopping people from doing good in the name of the Lord... we, the church, by allowing this to happen, are sending the world a message about Christianity.  We are sending the message that it is more important to judge than to help.  That charity and being Christ-like take a back seat to judgment and pride.

This is where I want to make a different message very clear.  These people do not stand for all Christians, nor do they stand for the God we worship.  The message they are sending is nothing but harmful to their cause - as it will turn more people off to Christianity, seeing the religion as judgmental and bigoted.  But sadly, these people are the vocal minority.  There are many, many Christians such as myself who supported World Vision's initial decision.  Some of us even sought out the organization to make donations or sign up to sponsor a child because of Monday's statement.  But you won't see any mass exodus of these people now that the statement has been reversed - because they actually value being Christ-like first, and would never withdraw support from one of God's children, or from an organization that helps God's children, over such a disagreement.  Certainly, to me at least, World Vision's reputation has been tarnished by the reversal - but if I had chosen to sign up to sponsor a child, I would not withdraw my support of that child now - the only person who loses when people do that is the innocent child.

It would be easy to assume that since things will quiet down now that the statement has been reversed, that Christian sponsors are happy with the results.  But like I said - the outcry came from the vocal minority.  The vast majority of Christians support both the ministry of World Vision and the equal hiring practices proposed in the initial statement.  We are saddened and disappointed by the reversal - but we won't be taking it out on the children.

So please, I ask you as you read about these things in the news, do not judge all of us by the ones who give us a bad name.  Do not be deceived into believing that we are all judgmental and bigoted - because the vast majority of us are not!  Those who are truly following Christ, even if they believe that homosexuality is a sin, also realize that we are all guilty of sin and that none of us should be judged solely by our sins.  We believe that none among us should be held back from doing good in His name because we sin in one way or another - because who, then, would do good?  We do not value being judgmental - the Bible does not call us to that.  We value being Christ-like, which the Bible does call us to... and He loves each and every human soul.  We truly do believe in asking ourselves, "What would Jesus do".  And in this case, well, as my favorite pastor used to say... "God loves you.  He loves you just the way you are."

So do good in His name.  Let no one stop you - any who try are not doing the work of the Lord.  And know that a vocal and judgmental minority does not represent our religion, or our God.