No Church in the Wild

The title of this blog post may scare some of you. Am I about to use some Jay-Z and Kanye West in my blog to convey a point? The two guys who's names are some form of Jesus, amounting to some serious blasphemy (Jay-z aka Hova, aka J-Hova, and Kanye aka Yeezus)!? Yes I am. More specifically, it will actually be Frank Ocean. In the song "No Church in the Wild" Frank Ocean has a line that always makes me think. He asks these set of questions, "Human beings in a mob, what's a mob to a king? What's a king to a God? What's a God to a non-believer who don't believe in anything?" This is a very vital question that I think our culture wants to avoid when rehabilitating someone, especially one with our set circumstances (remember our patient X model, without a home, mentally ill and suffering from a drug addiction).

Let's say we take our patient X, through proper counseling and medication the patient is able to reach a level of consciousness and state of mind that they haven't experienced in some time. Their network of neurons that have been so jumbled up and entangled, sending off messages that made it physically and mentally impossible to interact with the world has reached a new level of homeostasis (new because they may likely never be able to return to "normal" (I will talk about the permanent effects of drugs in a later post)). They leave said rehabilitation center and walk out onto the streets. Let's say the program they were involved in (And I'm going to go on a quick tangent and let you know that there are very few, if any drug rehabilitation centers that will willingly accept and are properly equipped to deal with mentally ill patients, and few mental health hospitals that allow patients to enter not sober.) is so advanced they even have social workers that connect patient X with some sort of job center that will allow them to do something on a daily basis.

But then a question that neither patient X nor the practitioner could have foreseen comes up, why? Why would I go to work each day? Why do I not go back to using? You see, the homeostasis that patient X reached at the climax of their drug addiction and self medicating became the new normal. The normal lasted long enough to have permanent psychological and neurophysiological effects. Leaving that old homeostasis for this drug free one does not feel good. It actually feels quite terrible. I have heard this from enough people who suffered from drug addiction, the feeling hasn't gone away, the craving hasn't gone away and it is a constant battle each day. Everyday for the rest of your life, you might feel slightly depressed (if not experience full on clinical depression). And everyday you physically feel like crap. So they ask again, why?

I have wandered the streets of L.A, Pasadena, Arcadia, San Francisco and Davis in search for some answer to this question. Not by making any assumptions, but by simply asking and listening. The only answer I have ever gotten from people on the streets is, Jesus.

How can a bearded white dude with long flowing hair (jk that's dumb, homie looked more like me with tanned skin and nappy hair than he did hipster white Seattle man) be the answer to such a question 2,000 years later? Because what he offers is in the works. What he offers is unmatched. And what he offers is eternal. He offers hope, good news, he offers the gospel.

The Gospel is freedom. It is the key that unlocks the chains that hinder us. It sets us free, and gives us a reason to live and a mission to accomplish.

I don't know if or how I can scientifically prove this to you. I don't think it's a science, and so like other things that science can't measure or explain, we have to trust that the stories I hear are true, and know their truth by their fruit.

You see, the Church is absolutely essential in this process. I believe it answers a philosophical question that breaks the cycle of addiction.

But what's a God to a nonbeliever who don't believe in anything? Well good thing as the Christian Church we believe it is our mission to make disciples of ALL nations and ALL people. Good thing we are called to love the forgotten ones, the "least of these." Good thing we have a perfect example of what it means to love and sacrifice. Good thing we know that it is our job to invite those who are broken and hopeless into our lives and to show them the living water that quenches all thirst. Right?

We have a job to do. And I want to leave you, church goer, with this challenging thought that I had to ask myself. If you are not actively seeking to love and bring justice for the poor, stranger, disenfranchised, forgotten, lonely, drug addict and homeless, then are you really a follower of Christ? Because if you spend no more than 5 minutes reading the gospels then you know that's where Jesus was and what he was doing. If we claim to follow him, then shouldn't we be in the places and doing the things that he was?

Often times when I'm on the streets, I look around and say, man, Frank Ocean is right, there is no church in the wild. For us to have any impact on the issue of homelessness, there needs to be Church in the wild. So let's go, and bring the kingdom of heaven here on earth.

The Need for a Holistic Approach

In the field of Biochemistry, a very common and mundane task that scientists have to do when working with a protein, is finding the right pH for that protein. What I mean by that is, in any system that a protein functions whether it be in plants, animals or protozoa, for the protein to do it's function properly and effectively, the pH (amount of H+ ions floating around in solution) has to be a certain number. We see these numbers all the time, 6, 7, 9. Unfortunately for biochemists, this is a log scale, so changing the pH by 1 number is really 10x more or less H+ ions! It's a huge deal. But when working with this protein and trying to understand how it works, the biochemist must, through trial and error, find out with the closest of value what pH the protein functions the best at. There are cool ways to determine how well the protein is function, but that is me just nerding out and getting way off topic. Most importantly, we see that a protein can do it's specific function at a range of pH's, but what we know is that there is a narrow range that it likes the most, that when the protein is floating around in solution with a specific number of H+ ions floating around it, it is most happy and effective.

This long and drawn out intro isn't just a way for me to geek out, but it paints the picture of why I think a holistic approach to the issue of homelessness is necessary. Throughout the past century, as the number of persons living on the street (experiencing mental illness and drug addictions (remember our target population that was mentioned in the first blog)) has increased, as a society we have tried many different things. In a sense (by not calling people experiencing homelessness scientific tests) we have been fine tuning the pH with our therapies and treatments of the issue.

But I'm going to add a 2nd layer of complexity to this analogy. When the biochemist is messing around with the solution to see what pH works best, he or she also has a vast array of varying buffers to use to make this solution just the right pH. A buffer is simply a molecule (but many of those molecules) floating around that has the ability to be an acid or base (remember your high school/college chemistry!!) and when you add a certain amount of the acid and base form in the solution, it tends to stay at a specific pH.

What I am hinting at here is that we are not in a phase with our approach that requires simply changing the pH of our methods, but also changing the buffer. The objectives might still be the same, find the sweet spot for our programs and rehabilitation, but the tools and "molecules" we use might need some changing, and what I am suggesting is that the tool is a holistic approach.

In the previous blog (which was AGES ago, I apologize) I gave a quick intro to what this intersection is, or as I called it, the corpus callosum of homelessness, which included the physical, spiritual and social aspects of the issue. So what can we do to attack all three of these things at once? Well, you attack all three of these things at once. Don't get me wrong, in no way is this an easy task, and I think just like with a buffer, it will take many years of trial and error to get it right. But I am going to tell you where I think we need to start and what the basic skeleton should look like.

To my knowledge, a few places have begun to do some really cool integrative holistic medicine (Lawndale Christian Health Center in Chicago is one), but I have yet to see or here of programs that are solely focused on homelessness with the capacity that I am suggesting.

A huge problem in the field of drug addictions, is that many rehabilitation centers don't have the resources to treat people who are also mentally ill, and many mental health centers require people to be sober to enter into the program. But wait.. what if the two are linked? What if someone's got both? Where do those people go? (to the streets)

So here's what I think needs to happen. One organization. Three parts. One program. A single program that integrates the physical, spiritual and social needs together. Yes, some rehabilitation programs have social workers to help with the transition process, but what I'm imagining is bigger than a few social workers. What I picture is a center that has each of these 3 sections working as one functional unit with one purpose, to make the person whole again.

Obviously, one of the three would be an inpatient drug rehab and mental health facility (yes I know, easier said than done, but there are a lot of smart people out there that will make this happen). The second would be a community center, which involves working with people to help get jobs, write resumes, and train certain basic skills.

The last one.. is the Church. I'm going to leave that for a whole different episode, because I believe this requires some more detail. I promise it will be less than 5 months before the next one is out. :D  

The Corpus Callosum

I learned a very interesting concept this past week in my evolution class. When evolutionary biologists work on creating phylogenetic trees to see the relationships between species and their common ancestor, the natural way that organisms are grouped is that they fall into clades or monophyletic groupings, these are all of the decendants of a common ancestor. Another commonly used grouping method is known as paraphyly, which is considered by many an unnatural way of grouping, because it includes certain decedents of an ancestor, but not necessarily all of them. One that you are probably most familiar with is reptiles! Reptiles all share many common morphological and genetic features and so we as humans have decided with our power to clump them up, but the reptile family excludes a few key players in the common ancestry line, birds and.. us!

Why do I bring this up? Well, this idea of monophyletic and paraphyletic grouping prompted me to think about how best I can explain the importance and essentialness of Neuroscience, Homelessness and Jesus. Many times we create associations between things that I believe are unnatural associations. Often times they are loose associations that I don't believe are encoded within a specific concepts DNA. Take for instance my relationship with some of my friends back home, which consisted of Disney movies, Chocolate Milk and Mean Girls references. Although these 3 things are great, I don't believe they are a "monophyletic" grouping because they don't include all the essentials to friendship, but just a few (a paraphyletic grouping of friendship).

The three I write on and have devoted my life to, I believe are natural associations. NHandJ isn't something we as a culture have clumped up together because they might share some common features, rather my theory is that these three things are intertwined in an objective way, and the only way to solve the problem of homelessness (and all that comes with it: the mental illness, the poverty, the spiritual warfare and the drug addictions) is to integrate and approach it holistically. And here is where I find the corpus callosum of my blog.

The corpus callosum of the human brain is where the neurons of the right and left hemispheres meet. The two sides of the brain, which serve varying functions are able to communicate with each other. This bridging of the brain is essential to many of our vital functions. In the same way, I believe the corpus callosum of our target population meets, but from three directions (NHandJ).

I want to make a small clarification, that will better help me describe this holistic approach and crossing between these three. The idea of homelessness is the central issue, that encompasses the need for the holistic approach of these three sections: Neuroscience (physiological component), homelessness (as it's literal meaning of being without a home), Jesus (the spiritual component). It can be a bit confusing because the main theme is also a sub theme.. but I have confidence in your intelligence to see through my weak forms of communication :)

Now, I believe the rehabilitation of our target population requires practitioners to understand the vitalness of these three subjects and the lack of their independency with relation to each other. I have heard each extremes in contradiction to my belief:

1. All you need is Jesus, none of this unnatural medicine business. Jesus can Heal all. Just pray and you will stop abusing drugs, just pray and god will provide a house.
2. Through enough counseling and proper drug dosage, the patient will stabilize and reach a level to function normally.
3. Once they are off the street and into housing they can begin to get everything else in order.

I don't think these three independently could be further from the truth. But together, with a few adjustments, I think you would have a pretty solid philosophy. 

You see, within our corpus callosum, we find many, not one issue. As signals are sent through our "corpus callosum" we get them from the physiological part, the social/economic part, and then through the spiritual part. If we are only providing stimulus from one or two and not the other, we will find ourselves relapsing into one of the other issues. Here is an example that I have seen.

I one time met a man in Pershing Square. He told me how he had been addicted to cocaine for many years now, he had no job, no family left around him and he was living on the streets. But he was extremely happy, because he had gotten into an inpatient drug rehab center that was going to house him and help him get off the drugs. A month later when my friends and I returned downtown, we saw him on the streets and asked him what happened, we knew the program was longer than a month. He told us that after one week he stopped going, he saw no point in the whole thing. What was he getting better for? He didn't have any friends, and he was rejected by all his family for the abuse he put them through in the past. What was the point, he said.

This to me is a clear example of how addressing only the "neuroscience" and "homelessness" part and not the "Jesus" part will put a huge whole in the rehabilitation. But I wonder, and I really think this to be true, if there was a loving body of Christ, supporting, caring and in relationship with this man as he went through this, would his outlook be very different. Maybe something like a church? 

I have opened a huge can of worms. This holistic approach thing is one of the central ideas of this blog so I want to take the time to really develop it. For the next few weeks I want to bring up more examples of this corpus callosum and show you how necessary it is to approach this issue holistically, and also the potential damaging effects when it's not.