Dr Jon’s Renegade Commentary

There is a growing awareness in “Christendom” these days about the difference between

Heart and Head, Wild and Civilized, Desire and Duty.

For me personally, it all started with John Eldredge and Wild at Heart. Finally, someone that could articulate my deep and long-held desire to get real with myself and God and get past all the form and ritual inherent in the religion we call Christianity!

Just tonight I finished another author, Erwin McManus and his The Barbarian Way, who used different words but captured the same concept that God is Untamed and Outside the Box and unencumbered with ritual and decorum.

Actually the theme has been around a while - like since the Garden of Eden, and before, when God first thought of creating. Scripture says Jesus was crucified before the foundation of the world - that’s pretty outside most of our boxes! And we are to be the kids of the Almighty, actually have his life within us - that’s pretty wild, too. More recently, but even predating the authors mentioned above, CS Lewis captured the theme when he described Aslan as Unsafe, but Good, in his Narnian Chronicles.

So what is this all about?

I believe that God invites as many of us as will, to get wild with Him, let loose with him and get really open and vulnerable with Him, to share His Heart and His Desire and His Wildness. I think this is a throwing off of everything that binds us, at all levels:

Our fear
Our shame
Our sin
Our need to control
Our need to be responsible
Our emotional hangups, sadness, grief, depression, feeling sorry for ourselves
Our accomplishments
Our need to be sick
Our need to be well
Our …………….(your own special need)
Even our clothes

I believe that Father invites us back to the Garden in terms of the picture drawn for us there:

People communicating with Loving Father, with themselves and with each other in complete openness, complete vulnerability and complete shamelessness. Naked and unashamed.

It is interesting that these “Freedom Authors,” as I will call them, each have their little vignette about nakedness and the freeing, releasing effect it has on one’s heart, soul and life.  Eldredge alludes to his Naked Man Creek where his colleagues can shed their final restraints and get totally real.  McManus has his Men’s Retreat story where naked tug-of-war brought men into a sense of their primal, warrior, powerful selves.

Granted not all are eager, willing or have the interest to be so open and vulnerable and that’s OK.  Many others will get hung up with the body/naked = sex and body/naked = sin myths that have conquered “Christendom” for centuries.  Those are themes for another time.  Suffice it to say that we need a fuller, deeper, more practical understanding and experience of what Christ did on the Cross for us and for our relationship with ourselves and Father.

In the meantime, for those Wild, Barbarian, Freedom Fighters among us who march to the beat of The Wild, Open, Naked and Unashamed God, let’s shed everything that holds us back and go after His Heart - and thus find Our Own.

Blessings,

Dr Jon

Find the books alluded to at Amazon:

Our local Fox News Station did a feature on this evening’s news just a couple of hours ago about community-acquired MRSA.  They featured an 8-year old who almost died as a result.  Then they went on to talk to an Afro-American Doctor who has a clinic in the city.  This all was the result of a study just done by the Washington University School of Medicine here in St Louis who did a study on MRSA.

They found that Afro-American youth are several times more likely to get MRSA infections that other ethnic groups.   The clinic physician pointed out that many of these youth live in poverty where there is a lack of cleanliness and where personal items are shared more than they should be.

They also found that the Staph bacterium is everywhere.

Again, I would like to remind you that we have discussed this before on this blog.  I would also like to remind you that the all-natural, food-based, non-toxic, effective remedy BioDefense works against MRSA.

The best treatment for MRSA, as the TV article pointed out, is prevention.  Wash your hands, don’t share personal items.  The other thing to remember, which the TV article failed to mention, is that a strong immune system will fight off MRSA and make it difficult for it to take hold.  Besides  making a frontal attack on the MRSA bacterium itself, BioDefense is also an immune system builder.

Go get your supply today!

http://www.biodefense4u.com

Blessings,

Dr Jon

This just-past election made things very clear to me.  Not only did it bring into focus the most crucial issue (see my group on Facebook about Life trumps Wealth), it clarified my personal conflicts about marketing.

We have elected a person to lead us who has no known skills except to know how how to market, or at least to be aware of the power of marketing and to know how to pick a good marketer.

This brought up all my personal, subconscious ideas about marketing.  Which are:

One, marketers basically lie to get what they want because they convince you that they have what you want.  This is the rather convoluted corollary of the maxim that we marketers are taught:  find out what people already want and find a way to give it to them.  In my mind I have taken it another twist to say that marketers will give people what they want no matter what they have to do, say or become to get it for them, just so they can make a profit.

Two, marketing is about getting money from people for yourself, not about providing what would benefit others.  Just because people want something doesn’t mean it is good for them.  Marketers, however, are not supposed to make that kind of judgment, just blindly provide what is desired.

Now, I am not saying my ideas are right, just that they have been the subconscious program that has driven my marketing for the past several years.  Proof that they likely are not right is that my marketing has been gloriously unsuccessful!

I have always thought/believed that I would try to provide people what they needed, what would be good for them, not just what they want.  That makes me arrogant and potentially all-knowing, I realize, and I apologize for that.  However, when you see lots of people that drugs are not helping and then watch a vitamin turn their life and health around, it is very difficult to keep passing out drugs when the vitamin brings health.  Somehow the Oath to “first do no harm” superceded the personal need to generate an income.  Altruistic, arrogant, poverty-producing for me, but helpful for the patient/consumer and that is what I thought medicine was about, at least for me.

I have always thought that money was not the all-important.  Consequently I treated people whether they had money or not.  I still find it difficult to charge people for services or knowledge that I have gained when they need it or ask for it.

Bottom line - my ideas about marketing and providing services and helping people have been all screwed up.

Here are some new ones I am working on, trying to get into the subconscious to write the new program:

1) Marketing is based on building relationship FIRST, not just finding out what people want.  This allows me to get inside of where people really are and discover what they are really thinking.  Maybe they really want what is good for them and not just the external thing that is not so good for them.  Maybe when I spend time and effort to really listen they will share their real thoughts and desires.  Maybe not.  Etiher way, we will have connected.  That is better than just marketing, though may still not pay the bills!

2) Marketing is me being me and letting people who want what I have find me.  This is the hard part for me.  First I have to be confident in who I am.  Second I have to be willing to let others see me as I am.  When I get there, products and services I market will be a reflection of me, not just some product lots of people seem to want.  This gets past the idea of lying.  In the context of relationship, this lets people know who I am just as I am learning who they are.  Again, connection has been made.

3) Money is just a means of exchange of value once the relationship has been established and maintained. It is a reflection, not a goal.  It is a symbol, a sign of approval, a sign of value and worth that must first come from within.

Friends in the Beginners Marketing Class are helping me with these concepts.  Feel free to join us and join the discussion.  Add your thoughts and insights and experience.  Maybe you can help straighten me out.

Meanwhile, I’ll go work on some more relationship building and become a better marketer.

Blessings,

Dr Jon

I have been stirred up in the last few days.
It all began with the political drama unfolding and realizing that no one is talking about the BIG issue - killing babies.

Yeah, you heard me right. KILLING babies.

As a doctor whose goal and passion is to help people get well and as a father who has lost two babies by miscarriage and as a God-Lover-Loved, I hold Life sacrosanct; all life, especially the life of the unborn.

So I decided to add my voice to the cacophony, to try to sound a clear ring for protecting Life and caring for others.

I started a group on Facebook to try to bring out the importance of putting Love and Life first, over everything else, especially money.  Of course, it also brings out the difference between the political stands of our current candidates for higher office and folk think it is all just about my choice for elected office.  Nonetheless, the big picture here is way more than just American politics in 2008 and way more than legislation and state vs. federal rights.  This issue about concern and care for Life goes to character and is a benchmark, even, for character - my character, your character, the character of potential leaders.  Want to know something about a person, about how he will really care for you? - ask his/her belief about protecting and nurturing Life.

Now I know we put lots of ifs and buts and what ifs around the issue:  What about rape?  What about incest?  What about women’s rights?  What about….?  We try to make things complicated and think we are intellectual enough to figure it out.  These are all excuses we use to take control, to avoid believing that God can change us.  Granted they are serious issues and can be real sticky.  We would prefer to take a quick fix approach, put on a bandaid and thus avoid the deep issues.  We prefer to believe that we can fix a problem by killing it.

Write this down: Killing a problem never solves it.

However, if we take the big picture stand that Life is most important, it frees us to find creative solutions to all the other “sticky” ones.  It gives us opportunity to find ways to relate to those involved and help them find healing even as it stretches us and helps us find our own healing as well.  It gives us the opportunity to listen to Loving Father and hear how much He loves us and allows Him to go deeply within us and change us.

So I, in my zeal for the unborn and in caring about people I know who get it “wrong”, am all worked up.

And here comes the irony.

God, who Loves us and me and them more than I can ever, who would love for us and me and them  to get it right, LETS US DO OUR OWN THING!  He didn’t stop Adam and Eve from walking away on Day 1.  He knew it would cause untold misery and suffering and murder and rape and death, even the death of Himself! But it was OK because He knew He could and would come alongside and do the deep, healing work required to fix the problem.

So, again, having made my squak and “eased my conscience”, I take my hands off and let my friends go where they need to go and think what they need to think, even if it is wrong :-).  I will love them anyway and believe that Father will draw and heal and Love them, too.  Together we will learn to Love and Live and Grow.

That big picture keeps it all pretty simple.

Blessings,

Dr Jon

I’m in the middle of a book that is very touching. It’s about dogs, and loving dogs, and about feeling.

It is wonderful to care about dogs.  It is even more wonderful to feel, especially in those deep places where we form our thoughts and ideas about ourselves and the world and people and things around us.

 

It is also a book about dogs caring for us and what they can teach us.Definitely worth the not-so-long time it will take to enjoy it!

Blessings,

Dr Jon

We all grow up with some idea of who God is, or isn’t.   Mr. Young has learned how to look at Father through different eyes.  Helpful for all of us, has been especially helpful for me.  Would love to hear your comments.     Blessings, Dr Jon  P.S. And go here to watch an interview with the author.  This is a YouTube video. On the same page are some naysayers giving the negatives about “The Shack”. We can talk about all of it; opens up some good lines of conversation and can lead to some clarity about Father and about ourselves.

After many attempts at various ways to generate extra cash (does that sound familiar to anyone??) I have decided to try a program that looks like it would work.

But - this time there are a couple of differences from the previous astoundingly failures:

1) I have decided to stick to it and give it a real shot, not hop around and skip to something else before it has a chance to get going (aboaut time I grew up, right?)

2) To help me stay on course and to help you find out if one of these programs can actually work, I am writing the daily activity report of how I learn, get lost, get frustrated, ask for help, wend my way through the maze, build the web site(s), talk to the support team, etc., etc.

So, it is either going to work or not. Either way you will benefit from knowing either it will or it won’t or changes that need to be made to make it work. And, you will find out how a rank novice marketer may have a shot at being a success online.

Hope it proves helpful for you; I know it will for me!

Also hope we all make some money - wouldn’t that be fun to look this supposedly dying economy in the face and come out a winner?!

Blessings,

Dr Jon

PS. Follow the process through the diary here.  WARNING! Nothing fancy, just raw information.

Was talking to a friend the other day and we got to talking about labyrinths and mazes. I didn’t even know what a labyrinth was until I went to massage school and some students educated me.  You can learn about them from Wikipedia or from this link.  In fact, they will teach you a lot more than I can or will.

However, as I thought in general terms about them, these thought came to mind:

A labyrinth is a complex, seemingly random pattern of lines (at first appearance) that has no actual blocks in the path and leads inexorably to the center.  It requires only that you stay on and follow the path.  It is a design that enhances and converges energy, both its and thus yours.  It generates peace and restfulness.

A maze is a complex, seemingly random pattern of lines (at first appearance) that has  probably several actual blocks in the path and leads generally back to the outside.  It requires that you use all of your reasoning powers and/or lots of trial and error.  It is a design that disperses and tends to scatter energy, both its and thus yours.  It tends to generate unrest and frustration.

As I thought about the differences, I realized they represent differing views or approaches or responses to life in general.

Which is yours??

 Blessings,

Dr Jon

When it comes, it often may come looking differently than one might expect.

When it comes, it does so because the healed one is able to let go of the hopes and expectations and needs and just receive - the word spoken, the gesture given, the thought passed on, the touch that says “I care” - that thing which comes from deep within the heart of the “healer” that brings life to spirit.

When it comes, it is life and breath and sustenance and nurturing to a soul that has admitted its “dyingness”.

It comes from the Heart of Loving Father who shares His Life in us so we can share it with others.

And it comes with healing for the “healer” at the same time.

Amazing!

Blessings,

Dr Jon

I have a farmer friend who says that everything he wants to do as a farmer, providing quality food products to consumers and generating an income in the process, is illegal.   That is his way of saying that everything (or nearly everything) in our society is set up to keep our real selves under wraps, in fear, fettered, unable to fulfill our true self/destiny.

I agree.

Christianity is a good example.

The basic foundational principle upon which Christianity is founded is a verse found in Jeremiah in the Bible which states that the heart is deceitfully wicked.  From that paradigm, all else in Christendom follows.  We have churches (purported to be for “fellowship”) whose main purpose is to provide group therapy to keep folk from letting their “evil” bust out all over the place.  Along with church we have lots of rules and regulations, dos and don’ts to keep us on the “straight and narrow.”  In the process there are also programs and procedures to “save the lost”, the wicked not connected to the church who have not attempted to control their evil urges.  John Eldredge of Ransomed Heart Ministries calls it “sin management.”  And he is right.  If you start with evil, you have to control it.

Unfortunately, most of us haven’t read, at least with understanding, the Scriptures.

The evil heart is the “bad news”, the “old covenant”.  The gospel came along with the “good news”, the “new covenant”.  The good news is that we are no longer possessors of an evil heart, but of a good heart.   Jesus talks about seed falling on good soil.  The cold, stony heart is replaced with a warm, living, breathing heart that can feel and love and communicate.

We watched a movie the other night whose theme was the depravity of man.  Some guy was killing people and expecting other people to dial in online to watch.  Gross.

News flash!

I could not do that!

I could not purposely kill someone, or lie, or cheat, or commit adultery.  Inasmuch as the Life of Christ, poured out for each of us on the cross is living in me, and chosen by me to be in control, it transforms my heart from the evil of Jeremiah to the good of the gospels.  (Am I perfect?  No.  Still have lots of working out of this good heart to do, but I am on the good trail, fighting the good fight.)

Before Christ came to the planet, there was no redemption, only the promise of a redemption to come.  But when Christ came, Redemption came in fulfillment as well.  Nor do we have to wait for “heaven” to participate and to be the benefactor of so great a salvation.  Jesus said “It is finished.”  He completed the task for which he came, and that task was to redeem what was lost.

What was lost?

What was lost was the Garden of Eden with its complete and total nakedness and unashamedness; the good heart that could look on another in their entirety of body, soul and spirit and know only innocence and love; the good heart that could walk with God in a sensual, real existence (the cool of the day) and communicate without fear of being struck down for unholiness or unworthiness; the good heart that could live at a level of spirit that transcended the physical, unfettered by the restraints (I believe) of space and time.

Jesus not only came and brought Redemption, he modeled it for us while he was on the planet as well.  He spent his time hanging out with the “wicked,” including the wicked religious called the Pharisees and Saducees.  Only the wicked prostitutes and thieves and liars and drunks knew they were “wicked” and welcomed Him as a Savior, as a Life-Giver.  The wicked religious felt they had no need of a Savior and became Life-takers, murderers, to prove it.

This good heart of the true believer is still certainly capable of living in freedom among the “wicked” of the earth, those who are lost, who are perhaps searching for meaning and reality in the middle of their existence.  We are also capable of living among the “righteous” churched, but we should be warned that crucifixion will likely result when we do!

For those of us who have been reborn and now have a good heart, it is time to step out from behind the Fig Leaves of form and performance and expectations of others and all the other games we play and  learn to live with open hearts, souls, minds and bodies and to get real with each other.  It is time to live beyond the rules and regulations and oppresions and live from the good heart of Christ In Us.  It is time we began to see Jesus as the Man who was the first GoodHeart and believe it when He said that what He did we will do and much more, even.

Lovingly, Challengingly,

Dr Jon

GoodHeart Group, Inc. 

see God’s Plan of Redemption