Cognition can be an Idol

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Living with and ministering among people with dementia is shifting my priorities and way of viewing the Christian faith. I am being confronted with my own idolatry.  I think I may have made an idol of cognition, thinking straight, and being intellectually competent.

Knowledge has always been a priority for me! Education became important very early. I’m not sure why. My parents only went through the sixth and eighth grades. The only book we had in our home was the Bible. But somehow “knowing” became important to me.  I suspect it was partly compensation for feelings of inferiority born of economic poverty.

I never considered myself to be smart and those intimidating standardized tests varied that I’m not “intellectually gifted.” But I worked hard, made good grades, and got lots of affirmation from teachers and others. Being intellectually proficient has been and continues to be highly valued. I genuinely want to love God with my mind.

I’ve spent a lifetime clarifying my beliefs and  helping others make intellectual sense of Christian doctrines. I’ve written books and articles on the importance of right beliefs. I have taught and preached those doctrines as a pastor and seminary professor. Beliefs and intellect do matter!

But the margins of my thinking are shifting! When Linda was diagnosed with Frontotemperal Dementia (FTD) in 2009, I was deeply immersed in the hyper-intellectual environment of Duke Divinity School. I spent my days teaching and writing. I graded students on their intellectual comprehension and integration and their oral and written communication skills. I was in intellectual heaven!

What a contrast to my current context! Now I am immersed in a different world.  While continuing to teach part time in seminary and the church, my daily life is among people whose intellectual comprehension and communication abilities are being stripped away by disease. Abstract thinking has ceased. Reading is nonexistent. Memories have vanished and only the present is real.  Most words have been deleted from their lexicon and verbal expressions are garbled and disconnected at best.

Many of those with whom I relate no longer know their families and some have forgotten their own names. Several don’t recognize themselves in the mirror. None of my congregation at Bethany can claim to know or explain such orthodox theological affirmations as the Trinity, Incarnation, Justification, Salvation, Atonement, authority of Scripture, etc. Many have forgotten who God is!

Yet, I have never been among people who seem closer to God and more faithful in their discipleship than those who live at Bethany, the memory care facility where my beloved Linda now resides.  I remind them regularly that they are in the home of Mary and Martha where Jesus felt most at home. I suspect Jesus feels more at home at this Bethany than in many churches.

Dementia shifts the margins of orthodoxy from the intellect to the heart, from knowing to being. Neuro-cognitive impairment provides a different lens through which to view such core doctrines as Creation, Incarnation, Imago Dei, Salvation, Discipleship, Vocation, etc.

What does it mean to know God? What does it mean to “accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior” when the person doesn’t know who Jesus is? Can people who are unable to comprehend and/or recite the orthodox creeds be disciples, full members of the church?  Do people with dementia have a calling, a vocation?

Where do people with dementia fit into the mission statement of The United Methodist Church: “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world”?  What is “right” and “wrong” behavior when the ability to make decisions has been lost? What would the local church look like if people with dementia really belonged?

These are among the questions I am raising as my understanding is shifting outside the margins of the abstract thinking. The people at Bethany know God, Jesus, and Church in ways that transcend cognition.

We have made cognition an idol if we assume that salvation is the product of our thinking. Some theologians have identified reason as “the image of God”, buying into Rene Descartes’ dictum “I think therefore I am.” That’s idolatry! That’s just plain wrong! The notion contributes to the dehumanizing and marginalizing of people with cognitive diseases.

At Bethany, the issues that occupy the contemporary church have little, if any, relevance. Arguments over who is orthodox and who isn’t, the definition of marriage, and which religion is right aren’t on their experiential radar. Those are abstractions, outside the margins of their existence!

What’s real are Love, Belonging, Dignity, Safety, Peace, Connection, and Presence that transcend the margins of intellect and language. The cognitively impaired know God, though they may no longer know about God!

The cognitively impaired are now my primary teachers! They are teaching me things I’ve not learned in books or from the intellectually astute. If we will enter their world, they just might save the church from its idolatrous notion that we are saved by our intellectually constructed doctrines and abstractions! We really are saved by GRACE!

 

 

Shifting the Margins

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Throughout my more than half century of ordained ministry, I have felt called to ministry and presence among “the marginalized.” The imprisoned, the poor, and the hidden people in our communities have been critical to my life and ministry as a pastor, bishop, and seminary professor.

A significant shift in my scope of ministry took place six years ago. My wife and partner in ministry, Linda, was diagnosed with Frontotemperal Dementia, one of the neuro-cognitive disorders that fall under the umbrella we regrettably label dementia!

Since that dismal rainy day in November 2009 when we first heard the dreaded word dementia, my world and vocation have shifted. Losses have multiplied and the boundaries of engagement have significantly narrowed. I moved from bishop and professor to caregiver! Rather than the “world is my parish,” my family became my world!

The global became very local! Major concerns dominating the denomination and academia receded to the margins of my preoccupation. My daily relationships shifted from the hyper-cognitive and hyper-productive to the cognitively impaired and productively diminished! Life became a series of losses, a receding circle of relationships, and a restricted sphere of engagements and influence.

But being with people who live within the margins of the present moment, whose abstract thinking has disappeared, whose language is garbled, and who may not know their own names shifts the margins of one’s thinking about God, about life, about the church and its mission, about what really matters.

The motivation and name chosen for this blog is inspired by John Swinton, one of today’s premiere pastoral theologians. His book, Dementia: Living in the Memories of God, has reframed the way I view the margins and those affected by dementia. His book has become a theological companion as I accompany my beloved Linda on our mutual journey.  He provides a theological alternative to the dominant medical lens which views people with dementia in terms of their symptoms rather than their stories! And, he also helped me redefine the meaning of “marginalized.”

Swinton’s work reaches far beyond issues related to neuro-cognitive disorders. His theological perspective emerges from his experiences as a psychiatric nurse, hospital chaplain, and renowned academic scholar. He does theology through the lens of those whom society pushes to the margins but whom God claims as prime recipients and means of Divine Grace. Swinton writes:

 It is certainly the case that Jesus sat with the marginalized and it is also true that he offered them friendship, acceptance and a valued place within his coming Kingdom. However, it is not quite the case that Jesus sat with the marginalized. He certainly sat with those whom religious society had excluded and rejected as unclean and unworthy of attention. However, in sitting with such people, Jesus, who was and is God, actually shifted the margins. By shifting the margins with the pushed aside at the center, the religious authorities became the marginalized! They didn’t realize that Jesus had moved the margins to a totally different place.[i]

Where God is preferentially present becomes the center of reality! The Bible clearly declares that God chooses the most vulnerable—“the least of these”—as special recipients and means of grace! Indeed, Jesus so closely identifies with the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned that what is done to them is done to him (Matthew 25:31-46).

Could it be that those of us who separate ourselves from the most vulnerable and despised are the marginalized and  away from the center of God’s present and coming reign of justice, compassion, generosity, and joy? I know that Linda and the residents in the memory care facility where she now lives are pushing me to shift the margins of my thinking and living!

My daughters and a few friends have encouraged me to share some of my reflections as Linda and I continue “our long goodbye.” I do so somewhat reluctantly, for I do not wish to be presumptuous or in any way unfairly exploit our personal journey. I share in the hope that we all will be open to how God in Christ shifts the margins!

Ponder these additional words from John Swinton:

. . . God was with a totally different group of people doing something quite different: offering friendship and acceptance and revealing the Kingdom in and through that friendship. Jesus offered no “technique” or “expertise.” He simply gifted time, presence, space, patience and friendship. He befriended the tax collectors and sinners; he befriended the prostitute, the stranger and the stigmatised. He offered relational space and time to people for whom the world (and religion) had no time. In and through his friendships, he gave people back their names. Indeed, he gave them new names: “I no longer call you servants; now I call you friends.”[ii]

[i] John W. Swinton, “Doing Small Things with Extraordinary Love: Congregational Care of People Experiencing Mental Health Problems”, ABC Religion and Ethics, October 2014.

[ii] Ibid.