The Caretaker - one mother's crusade against the system that failed her son

The Caretaker

One mother's crusade to better the life of her mentally retarded son and the system that failed him

By Jesse Hyde

Published on July 31, 2008

Farhat Chishty pushes her son's wheelchair into the shade of an oak tree and sits down with a sigh. It's a calm spring morning at Denton State School, the largest institution for people with mental retardation in Texas, and she has come for her morning visit. She puts a knit cap on her son's head and adjusts a blanket over his bony knees. A gentle gust of wind blows across campus.

• Mark Graham

  

  Since her son Haseeb's attack six years ago, Farhat Chishty has visited him nearly every day at Denton State School.

• Mark Graham

  

Subject(s):

Denton State School, mental retardation, abuse coverup, group home

Spread out over 200 acres of wooded, rolling hills, the school has the bucolic feel of a summer camp. It has been described as a place of systematic abuse and torture—an Abu Ghraib for the retarded—but it hardly seems that way this morning. Not far from the park bench where she sits, a man in a wheelchair is motoring around the leafy campus, headed perhaps to the chapel or the Wooden Nickel restaurant to get an ice cream cone. This is a school in name only. The median age of its 630 residents is 49. The only thing they have in common is the need for around-the-clock supervision. Some have Down syndrome, some are autistic, and some lack the ability to walk or talk. Chishty's son falls in the latter category.

Every day she comes here to be with him—to wash his wiry hair and clip his yellowed nails and rub his calloused feet. The boy has no control over his body. His head rolls from side to side, his eyes dart from one thing to the other, and drool pools out of his mouth. His name is Haseeb, and he is 34.

He wasn't always like this. For most of his life, he has been profoundly mentally retarded, but there was a time when he could sing and dance and communicate with his mother in broken English and Urdu. There was a time when he ate cheeseburgers with his family and bopped his head to his brother's hip-hop. And then something happened.

Six years ago, not far from where Chishty sits, a nurse's aide found Haseeb in bed, soaking in his own blood and urine. No one at the school could explain what happened. For six months he lay in intensive care, suffering from massive internal injuries that triggered toxic shock and then paralysis. His mother insisted someone at the school was to blame—she had seen a bruise in the shape of a footprint near his groin on the morning they found him. But no one had reported any abuse, so her claims went ignored.

For two-and-a-half years, she told this story to anyone who would listen, and then the unexpected happened. Kevin Miller, a former caregiver at the school, admitted he had abused Haseeb in a drug-induced rage, punching and kicking him more than a dozen times. He said his supervisors knew about the attack and helped him cover it up. Even more alarming, he said abuse at the school was rampant. He knew his confession, which he first offered at a drug rehab clinic in Houston, might send him to prison, but he felt it was worth the risk if it sparked reforms.

More than three years have passed since then, and none of the changes Miller envisioned have taken place. Yet largely thanks to Chishty's efforts, her son has become the face of a movement. For the first time in nearly a decade, advocacy groups for the mentally retarded are pushing for the closure of the 13 state schools in Texas. These facilities, which house nearly 5,000 people, represent the largest institutionalization of mentally retarded in the nation, at a cost to taxpayers of $465 million last year. The alternative—smaller, community-based group homes—are cheaper, safer and more humane, mental health rights advocates say. The trend across the country is toward this model of care, and other states, including California and New York, have either shuttered their institutions or are in the process of doing so.

Jeff Garrison-Tate, who heads Community Now, an Austin-based advocacy group, cites the Chishty tragedy as a defining example of why Texas should close all its state schools. "Haseeb is the tip of the iceberg," he says. "By their very nature, these are places where abuse is rife to occur."

While officials with the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services—the state agency charged with overseeing state schools—says Haseeb's case represents an isolated incident, the agency's own records paint a different picture. In April, the Associated Press reported that in the last three years, more than 800 state school employees have been fired for causing serious injury to residents. That followed a July 2007 review of records by The Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle that found disturbing cases of abuse and neglect statewide. Most devastating, however, was an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, which in 2006 documented neglect, cover-up and 17 deaths in 18 months at the Lubbock State School.

The Dallas Observer's own review of more than 800 pages of disciplinary records covering 11 state schools over the last five years reveals a widespread pattern of abuse and neglect throughout the system. These records are littered with incidents of staffers choking, punching and whipping clients. They also indicate that staffers often say injuries to residents, which they caused, were self-inflicted or the result of accidents; threats and intimidation of residents were tactics regularly employed by staff to ensure their abuse went unreported.

• 

  Haseeb was born in Saudi Arabia in 1973.

• 

  At 10 months he contracted pneumonia and the complications of the disease resulted in permanent brain damage.

Subject(s):

Denton State School, mental retardation, abuse coverup, group home

The Observer also spoke with nearly a dozen former and current employees at the Denton State School. These workers—nurses, direct-care aides, investigators and others—have never before spoken to the press, worried that doing so would cost them their jobs. They are speaking now because they say they are overburdened and near the breaking point, often being asked to work back-to-back shifts. Turnover at Denton State School for starting positions, according to the Texas State Employees Union, is an astronomical 65 percent. The reasons are obvious: low pay, a largely unskilled staff and an increasingly dangerous patient population. Says one employee, "No one really trains you in how to deal with a person who comes up to you and says, 'The devil wants me to kill you.' "

None of this surprises Farhat Chishty. For the last six years she has been a constant presence at the Denton State School. She passes between the buildings, almost ghostlike, pushing her son's heavy wheelchair along the shaded walkways. Her eyes are black, ringed in shadows; her cheeks are sunken and hollow. She walks hunched over, as if she is carrying a thousand sorrows. There is something spectral about her presence, as if she has come to haunt the place.

While most staff steers clear of her, others feed her information. They slip notes into her car, or call after hours to report abuse they have seen. Thanks in part to her efforts—she is a fixture at public hearings regarding state schools—the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is investigating the school.

What she has found, she says, is worse than anyone knows. "It's not one person. It's the system. They think I'm evil for being here, but the system is evil. They can't admit that because if they do, they admit that the system is wrong."

————

It's a warm Sunday afternoon in April, and Chishty is at her small Richardson home after a morning visit to Denton State School. She sits in the shadows of her front room with her shoes off, her bare feet curled up beneath her. Much of her youthful beauty—her high cheekbones, her striking dark eyes—is still present in her face, an indication of the resolve she has shown over the last six years in her battles with the state.

Two of her sons—handsome young men with college degrees—are also here, as is her daughter, who through this ordeal has become her closest confidant. They catch up on jobs and kids and Haseeb, and then Farhat disappears for a moment and comes back with a box full of pictures. Here is Haseeb as a boy in Iran, wearing a lavender vest of velvet. Here is Haseeb and his brother Saad, clowning for the camera. Here is Haseeb at Denton State School, a week before the attack. He is standing against a picnic bench, his face toward the sun. He looks unhappy, agitated.

The oldest of her four children, Haseeb was born in Saudi Arabia in 1973. At 10 months, on a trip to Pakistan, he contracted pneumonia, and the complications of the disease, which nearly killed him, caused permanent damage to his brain. After that, he never functioned like other children.

They had never wanted to put him in an institution, Farhat says. And in 1990, when his family moved to Norman, Oklahoma, Haseeb began taking special education classes. But at 21, state law said he could no longer go to school. The loss of structure and meaningful activities was difficult for him, and he often grew bored at home. "He would just get up and walk outside, go in the street," she says. "On more than one occasion I had to call the police. I didn't know where he was."

Because the family couldn't afford to keep him at home with a full-time caregiver, they placed Haseeb in a state-run facility five minutes from their Norman home. It seemed like a good fit. She visited him nightly, and on weekends he came home.

But in 1995, after the state of Oklahoma consolidated its mental health and mental retardation services, Haseeb was moved to a facility three hours away, and his mother began looking for a new place for him to live. She eventually settled on Denton State School, which at the time was the highest-rated public institution in Texas for people with mental retardation. After visiting the campus, she felt reassured. Haseeb's apartment would be as nice as anything she would find in the private sector. The apartment was his home, she was told; the school wasn't an institution, it was a community.

• Mark Graham

  

  Randy Spence is the new superintendent at Denton State School. He has previously held management positions at two other state schools, in Lufkin and Abilene.

• Mark Graham

  

  Denton State School

Subject(s):

Denton State School, mental retardation, abuse coverup, group home

She saw residents freely roaming the sidewalks. Others were on their way to work in one of the school factories. Some were headed to the gym, which featured basketball courts and a swimming pool. The school's medical equipment appeared state-of-the-art; the school even had an on-site wheelchair factory. It reassured her that the school went to such lengths to ensure its residents were not only cared for, but comfortable.

Chishty, who at the time was pursuing a second bachelor's degree at the University of Central Oklahoma, took a three-month leave of absence from work and moved in with her daughter in McKinney to help Haseeb settle in. She visited him every day, staying until the staff asked her to leave at night, often bringing him his favorite Middle Eastern food.

There were some things about the school that worried her. Like the time she found a resident wandering along Interstate 35, not far from the campus. But she decided not to say anything. If she expected top-notch care—and she did—she needed to be on good terms with the staff.

On the morning of September 26, 2002, she says she phoned Haseeb's apartment to check on him and was told he had not eaten his breakfast. Haseeb could be a picky eater. She suggested the caregiver feed him a banana, but that hadn't worked, she was told. Then in a low voice, the staffer whispered, "Ms. Chishty, it's not good."

By the next morning, Haseeb's heart rate had risen to near critical levels, and his breathing was reduced to a labored pant. No one could explain what had happened.

Recalls Chishty, "When we got to the emergency room [at Denton Community Hospital] the doctor asked me, 'Can you ask him where he hurts, does he speak?' I said, 'Yes, he speaks.'" Haseeb told her his stomach hurt and when the doctor lifted Haseeb's shirt, she saw bruising from his stomach to his groin. "And then I sat down on the floor."

Doctors at the hospital said his injuries were consistent with someone who had suffered a traumatic car accident, but that didn't seem possible. He had only been at the school for four weeks, and during that time his family hadn't heard about any accidents.

For six months Haseeb lay in the ICU, during which time he had three major surgeries. The family pressed school officials for an explanation, but none came.

In January 2003, Chishty got a vaguely worded letter that raised her suspicions. She says the letter said a former employee had admitted to beating a resident. That could have been Haseeb.

She says she expected some kind of an investigation, but nothing happened. School officials would not give her any additional information. She called State Representative Myra Crownover more than a dozen times, asking for help, but was ignored. (Crownover, who represents the district where the school is located, is a staunch supporter of state schools. She told the Observer that she was traveling when Chishty called, but that her director of constituent services met with her. "I didn't want to get involved in a legal matter," Crownover says.)

Chishty says she also called staff at the governor's office and was told there was nothing they could do. Figuring she had no other recourse, she hired Dallas attorney Kelly Reddell, who on September 23, 2004, filed a federal civil rights suit against the school, seeking monetary damages that would cover Haseeb's in-home care for the rest of his life.

What followed could have come from the pages of a John Grisham novel. Reddell hired a private investigator, who tracked down Miller, finding him in California through his unemployment checks. When Miller was served with the suit, he called Reddell and told her he had found Jesus, and said he was ready to come clean. Six months later, he hitchhiked to Dallas and gave Reddell a two-and-a-half-hour videotaped deposition.

For the school, Miller's admissions were damning. He said he had come to the school looking for a purpose in life in August of 2001, but before long he was witnessing abuse. "There was the way we were trained to do things, and there was the way it worked in the real world," he said. "...There were techniques for everyone; different things worked for different people." To keep one resident under control, Miller said, he and other staff members used a large metal serving spoon. Sometimes they tapped it on the floor as a warning, and sometimes they beat the resident on the head with it. "It got to the point where it was fun beating them and hitting them and torturing them."

• Mark Graham

  

  Before being attacked, Haseeb, though profoundly retarded, could communicate in English and Urdu.

• 

  During his six-month stay in intensive care, Haseeb's family members were a near-constant presence at his bedside.

Subject(s):

Denton State School, mental retardation, abuse coverup, group home

He also said he and other staffers regularly used drugs on the job, often slipping into the bathroom to snort cocaine or smoke methamphetamines. His supervisor was not only aware of drug use on the night shift, Miller said, he was also a user who bought painkillers from one of his employees. (The state has denied these charges, and the supervisor has said in a sworn affidavit that he never used drugs on the job or witnessed anyone else doing so. A nurse, who also worked during that time at the building where Haseeb lived, told the Observer none of Miller's claims are true.)

Miller said that once he had been fully "brought in to the fold" he began to see the sorts of abuse from which he had previously been shielded. Now, sitting on a couch stoned with other staffers, he watched as residents "ran into walls." Sometimes, he and his co-workers would throw balls at the residents as they passed by. "Basically what it came down to was systematic torture of residents to get them to change their behavior," Miller said.

Like other residents, Haseeb could be difficult, Miller said. Haseeb sometimes hit, scratched and pulled hair. He often refused to sit down for meals, to eat or to work in one of the school's workshops, according to court records. Occasionally, Haseeb grabbed him around the neck and dug his nails into Miller's skin.

On the evening of September 25, 2002, Haseeb did not want to go to bed. Miller was irritable and angry, coming down off a high. He told Haseeb to go to bed several times, and then, when Haseeb didn't listen, he punched him in the stomach. He had done this before to control Haseeb, and other staffers had done it as well, he said.

"He kept coming up to me, and he kept coming up to me, and I kept punching him, and I kept punching him, and he wouldn't stop," Miller said. "I can't recall how many times."

There was no way Haseeb could ward off the blows. He weighed just 116 pounds, and Miller stood 6-foot-1 and weighed 265 pounds. When he was done, Miller was sweating profusely. He said he shut the door and walked away.

Most damaging to the school was Miller's claim that his supervisors were aware of what he had done and had concocted a story of a seat belt injury, claiming Haseeb had struggled against being restrained during his transportation from his previous residence to Denton State School. "I'm not saying we all huddled up and said, 'This is going to be the story.' It was something management came up with."

With the tape rolling, Miller claimed he wasn't trying to get even with the school but rather hoped to right a wrong. "What happened there goes against every fiber of my being."

The next morning Miller turned himself in. Prosecutors at the Denton County District Attorney's Office charged him with injury to a disabled person, a first-degree felony. On August 11, 2006, Miller was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Despite the confession, the Texas Attorney General's Office, which represented the school in the Chishty suit, maintained that Haseeb's injuries—the perforations to his intestines—were caused by a seat belt injury on the trip from his previous residence to the school. True, Haseeb did not like being restrained, but his mother says she saw him immediately after the trip and didn't notice any injuries.

In April 2007, Reddell and Chishty took their findings to Austin, where each testified before the House Civil Practice Committee. They asked lawmakers to give the Chishty family a waiver from sovereign immunity, a legal defense which can protect the state from civil suits. Marianne Reat, an attorney with the Department of Aging and Disability Services, told the committee that an investigation into the matter had not found any evidence of abuse or neglect.

The House unanimously approved the request, but the Senate never acted on the bill. The lawsuit was dismissed last year after the state successfully defended on grounds of sovereign immunity.

Back in their home, the Chishty family says they still have a hard time believing what happened.

"We took all the avenues we could," says Haseeb's younger brother Saad. "Like any huge, overblown bureaucracy, they are designed to protect the institution instead of the people they serve."

His sister nods and talks about the toll this has taken on their mother. "Every day she is there, she's afraid to leave him alone for half an hour. It's taken over her life."

• 

  On August 11, 2006, former Denton State School employee Kevin Miller pleaded guilty to injuring Haseeb Chishty. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

• Mark Graham

  

  A poster at the Denton State School instructs staff to report incidents of abuse or neglect.

Subject(s):

Denton State School, mental retardation, abuse coverup, group home

Their mother sits slumped on the sofa in their living room, listening. As her children talk, she thumbs through the pictures on her lap, and tears begin to stream down her face. She tells them how guilty she feels for the time she spends at the school. She has lost her job, her car and now her oldest son helps support her financially. She is separated from her husband, who lives in Houston. Still, her deepest regret is that in some way she failed to protect Haseeb.

"The hardest thing for me," she says, recalling the scene of the crime, "is to think of him lying there all night, soaking in his own blood."

————

When Chishty is not at the Denton State School tending to Haseeb, she is often on the road, tending to his cause. Two legislative study groups are investigating the issues surrounding the state schools, and in February she testified in Dallas before one of them. If either committee introduces legislation during the 2009 legislative session, she plans on lobbying lawmakers to ensure they understand her position: that the large, cumbersome state schools are fraught with the potential for abuse and should be shuttered in favor of smaller, community-based facilities.

Her fight is one with a long history, one that began more than 30 years ago when a man named John Lelsz filed a lawsuit on behalf of his son, alleging that Richmond State School near Houston used inhuman methods to control its charges, including the use of cattle prods to administer electric shock therapy. The suit languished in the Dallas federal courts for years until Judge Barefoot Sanders, now retired, forged a settlement in 1991. Two state schools—in Fort Worth and Travis—were shut down as a result. Then-Governor Ann Richards considered closing others, but intense opposition, fueled largely by the Texas State Employees Union, killed the effort.

"It's kind of like closing a military base," says mental health rights advocate Garrison-Tate. "A lot of these places are in more rural areas—Brenham, San Angelo, Abilene—and they are an economic boon of that town."

The Mexia State School, for example, employs one in four residents, adds Cecilia Fedorov, a spokesperson with the Department of Aging and Disability Services. "If you represent one of those districts, and you close down a place like that, you're committing political suicide," Garrison-Tate says.

Although advocacy groups continued their push to get people with cognitive disabilities into community-based facilities, nothing stoked the prospect of change more than the December 2006 report of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the Lubbock State School. "It was more horrific than we ever imagined," says Garrison-Tate.

The 43-page report revealed that the Lubbock school was severely understaffed and was providing its residents an alarmingly low level of care. The report noted that the school had almost no training for medical emergencies and had one full-time psychiatrist, who had a caseload of 180 residents. Some of the observations noted in the report seemed like something straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. On June 5, 2005, for example, a male resident was told he could take a shot from the nurse "the hard way or the easy way." Opting for the hard way, staffers grabbed, choked and threw him to the ground, slamming his face in the floor.

The report sent shockwaves through the Department of Aging and Disabilities. During tough questioning from a state Senate committee last year, DADS commissioner Addie Horn broke down in tears. This was her life's work, she said, and she took great pride in it. The agency did everything it could to identify, prevent and stop abuse, and would continue to do so.

Officials at DADS went on a public relations offensive, asserting that the problems in Lubbock were not occurring elsewhere and, that as the report pointed out, the main problem was funding. But subsequent media reports—in The Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News—revealed that conditions were just as bad, and possibly worse, at other state schools.

Perhaps emboldened by these press reports, employees and family members of residents at the Corpus Christi State School visited the offices of state Representatives Solomon Ortiz Jr. and Abel Herrero last fall, telling them their own stories of abuse.

"People would bring pictures, 'Here is my loved one severely bruised. Here is my loved one with a broken arm,'" Ortiz recalls. "And there was no explanation from the school as to how these things had happened."

Then, in May 2007, a resident at Corpus Christi hung herself by her shoelaces, the first suicide at a state school in years. Ortiz says he was told the suicide was due at least in part to staffers who had not made their rounds.

"We started to talk to mid-management-type people, and they started telling us about how understaffed they were, the back-to-back shifts, about the drug use among employees, and that they were seeing a new [criminal] element being sent to state schools: people who were found not mentally competent to stand trial."

• Mark Graham

  

  "Every day she is there, she's afraid to leave him alone for half an hour. It's taken over her life."

Subject(s):

Denton State School, mental retardation, abuse coverup, group home

The Observer's own review of disciplinary records for 11 state schools (Denton and Lubbock were not included because of pending litigation) also supports the view that what happened to Haseeb Chishty was not a unique event. While most of the disciplinary violations the Observer reviewed, for incidents reported from 2002-2007, were for minor rules violations and accidents, dozens more raise serious concerns.

There are also disturbing episodes of exploitation, sometimes sexual, and humiliation. Some mirror the environment Miller said existed at Denton State School. At Abilene State School in the spring and summer of 2006, for example, staffers regularly threw balls at residents as they passed by. The same group of employees also forced a resident to sit while one of their co-workers punched him in the arm, chest and stomach. These abuses went on for six months before any staffers were disciplined, even though their supervisor had been aware of the problems for months.

It is hard to reconcile these reports with what one sees touring Denton State School. During a recent visit, the facility appeared clean, the staff cheerful. "It really is a community here," says recently appointed Denton State School superintendent Randy Spence, who has held management positions at other state schools. "I never would have stayed for 29 years in a situation where what's been portrayed in the media is the truth. It's very hard to read things and know they just aren't true."

Still, employees say there are problems that must be addressed. Because starting pay for an entry-level job as a direct-care aide is a relatively low $1,522 a month, roughly $9 an hour, finding applicants with relevant work experience is difficult. The only requirement for the job is a high school diploma.

It's a stressful job, and over the years it has only become more difficult. Thanks to advances in medical science, residents in state care facilities are living longer, which brings a whole set of new problems. "It means more medications, more shots, more room for medical error," one nurse says. The population has also become more dangerous. As Texas has cut overall funding for mental health, state schools have been asked to pick up the slack and have seen a steady increase in the number of residents with the dual diagnosis of mental retardation and mental illness.

In places such as Corpus Christi and San Angelo, state schools also take court referrals, meaning part of their populations are now accused criminals.

Because of high turnover—2,138 state school employees quit last year—experienced staff are stretched thin while new workers must manage a situation that is often chaotic and frequently dangerous. As a result, staffers say that accidents happen and occasionally tempers flare. "Most of the people I work with are compassionate and really care about their jobs," another employee says. "But we do have people not cut out for the job, and sometimes bad things happen."

DADS spokesperson Fedorov argues that state schools are open to visitors 24 hours a day, making rampant and systematic abuse nearly impossible. She says that while abuse allegations are high—investigators have confirmed 1,266 instances of abuse system-wide in the last three years—that does not tell the full story. Ninety-one percent of all abuse allegations come back unconfirmed.

The future of state schools now lies in the hands of the state Legislature. Over the past year, a mostly Democratic legislative study group, led by Representatives Ortiz and Herrero of Corpus Christi and Garnet Coleman of Houston, has held hearings in Corpus Christi and Dallas, and plans to hold more. They expect to issue a report in November.

A second legislative committee appointed by House Speaker Tom Craddick has also hosted a hearing in Austin and plans to release a report before the start of the 2009 legislative session. The chairman of this committee, State Representative Larry Phillips of Sherman, believes that reports of abuse and neglect have been exaggerated in the press. What has been lost, he says, is the number of people who are pleased with the facilities.

"You hear from families who say, 'I don't think my loved one would be able to make it if it weren't for state schools,'" Phillips says. "And then you hear from those who say it should all be closed. It's very difficult when you have two sides who are very adamant about things."

As far as community-based facilities are concerned, Phillips says, "There will always be abuse in the alternative as well. You can't say that just doing away with this parameter, you're going to do away with abuse."

Fedorov maintains that when residents capable of existing outside state school facilities request to leave, they are allowed to do so, provided there is space for them in state-run group homes. Since 2005, there has been a steady increase in the number of state school residents transferred to these facilities, from 76 in 2005 to 97 in 2006 to 118 last year. Already this year, 144 state school residents have gone into the community.

• Mark Graham

  

  Since her son Haseeb's attack six years ago, Farhat Chishty has visited him nearly every day at Denton State School.

• Mark Graham

  

Subject(s):

Denton State School, mental retardation, abuse coverup, group home

But Garrison-Tate says this is far from enough. He points to a July state audit report that said of the 644 residents at state schools who asked to leave in fiscal year 2007, 449—or 70 percent—were denied. Each state school has an interdisciplinary team—made up of a psychologist, a nurse, a guardian and others—that decides which residents are allowed to leave.

"There's an inherent conflict of interest when the people deciding whether you can leave are those whose livelihood depends on the continued existence of these facilities," Garrison-Tate says. "We would love to see the state close these facilities down, as other states have done, and move to community-based care. That's the trend across the country, but we know it can't happen today, or tomorrow. So what we want to see is a right-sizing. How many of these [schools] do we actually need to have? The people who want to get out should be able to leave, and we shouldn't put any more people in."

So far, the legislative response has been to increase funding for additional employees. In the 2007 session, the Legislature appropriated $49 million for state schools to hire an additional 1,700 employees. While DADS officials say the money has already had an impact, Denton State School employees say they aren't seeing much of a difference. The quality of training is going down, says one staffer, and new workers are often thrown into situations they aren't ready for.

Representative Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, says things must change. "For too long the answer has been to ignore these problems and to act like they don't exist, and we've done nothing," he says. "Well, doing nothing has got to stop. These are our most vulnerable citizens. It's a measure of our worth as a government, and as a society, how we take care of them."

Just how well the Denton State School takes care of its residents is somewhat obscured by DADS' refusal to provide relevant documents related to the facility, citing pending litigation.

But Chishty says what she has found suggests the school is just as bad, if not worse, than other facilities in the system. Over the last year, Chishty says she has uncovered several mysterious deaths at the school. One involved Manuel Lopez, a 17-year resident of the school who died in January. His family members told the Observer that they regularly saw bruises on his legs and face. Now they wonder if what they were told was an accident that caused permanent paralysis more than 13 years ago was actually the result of abuse. The family says the state has refused to release an autopsy report, and DADS declined the Observer's request for the same report, citing confidentiality concerns. The Texas State Attorney General is currently reviewing that decision.

While Chishty refuses to reveal what role she has played in the pending U.S. Justice Department investigation of the school, she had advance knowledge of the arrival of federal investigators at the school and the resignations within the last year of the superintendent of the school, its director of nursing and director of incident investigations. One Denton State School employee who spoke to the Observer on condition of anonymity blamed the federal investigation on Chishty. The employee also said abuse allegations at the school have dramatically spiked over the past two years.

For Chishty, this is good news. "It means somebody is getting the message. They know I am there and that I am watching."

————

She knows the answers now. For so long, they told her she was crazy, that what she said happened to her boy couldn't be true. And then they found the man who did it, and he confessed and is in prison. Everything that has come out since has only confirmed what she has always believed.

The prison is in the middle of nowhere, at a far west corner of the state in Fort Stockton. It is a bleak and foreboding place—a cluster of tan buildings surrounded by razor wire—and on hot days it bakes in the sun. It's the perfect spot to shelf a man the state would just as soon forget about.

In July, Kevin Miller agreed to a visit with the Observer, said he was ready to talk again. He knew the school, despite his confession, had never taken responsibility for its role in the matter.

He wanted to talk, he said in a letter, but wondered what difference it would make. After all he had said, so little had been done. He'd gained nothing by confessing, other than to give the Chishty family some semblance of justice, and they still wanted him dead. And so, not long ago, weighed down by what he had done, he tried to kill himself. It was his second attempt.

• Mark Graham

  

  Since her son Haseeb's attack six years ago, Farhat Chishty has visited him nearly every day at Denton State School.

• Mark Graham

  

Subject(s):

Denton State School, mental retardation, abuse coverup, group home

There was so much about him he wanted people to know—the abuse he suffered as a child, his habitual bouts with drug addiction, his bipolar disorder. Not that any of that was an excuse for what he had done.

"The above is not intended to put the blame on others and somehow reduce mine," he wrote. "I just feel now that it would have never happened if there weren't a hostile work environment, chronic drug abuse, and a system of abuse of residents already in place."

Chishty says she knows all this, has known it for years, but it's good to hear again, to re-validate what she's been fighting for. Because he is now a danger to himself, Miller has been transferred to a mental health unit. Both he and her son have become victims of the same act, and now both reside in institutions for the mentally challenged.

In October, the state agreed to let Haseeb come home and provide a nursing assistant to help Chishty with his care. She says she expects Haseeb to be home within a month or two, but considering the history of her battle with the state, she wouldn't be surprised if it takes longer.

Back on the grounds of Denton State School, she pushes her son in his heavy wheelchair, as she does most days. They cross the grass that leads to the edge of campus and stop under a grove of trees. Off in the distance, at the top of a small hill, is the cemetery, surrounded by a white picket fence. Every year, the residents of this school who have no family end up there. The school will not say how many they bury, but she knows that last winter 11 died in one month alone. She thinks of the many residents who have no family, and she says a silent prayer for them.

"Whatever happens, I will keep fighting," she says. "Not just for Haseeb, but for the other people here. I have to make sure what happens to him never happens again."

Rural Telecoms Pay Big Dividends

Rural Telecoms Pay Big Dividends

If the market been a little too exciting for you lately, it may be time to consider something really boring, say, rural telephone companies.

These phone companies provide old-fashioned local and long distance voice landline services to rural areas with low population densities. Most also offer dial-up and broadband Internet services and some also offer TV and wireless phone services.

What takes rural phone companies out of the boring category, at least for me, is that they pay big dividends. Dividend yields (expected annual dividend divided by the recent share price) range between five and eight percent, and sometimes higher.

Unloved
The major phone companies view the traditional landline business with disdain because it’s not growing. In fact, if you count the number of lines in use, it’s shrinking. Some users are abandoning land lines altogether, relying solely on their cell phones. Others find that they can make do with one less line when they switch from a dial-up Internet connection to DSL.

Consequently, many of the big carriers have sold off their landline businesses to smaller operators or to investment groups who later took them public. As it turns out, things are not as bleak as first thought for the rural carriers. Despite the shrinking need for landlines, most have figured out how to replace the lost business with revenues from new services such as DSL Internet connections, web hosting, digital TV and corporate communications.

Surplus Cash
Now, these rural phone companies find themselves in an unusual situation. Their landline operations are generating large and relatively stable cash flows. But, since, they’re not spending much money on developing new products or expansion, they don’t need all of that cash. So, many of them have decided to pay out their excess cash to shareholders as dividends.

Here's How to Find Them
You can use Yahoo’s user friendly Basic Screener to create a list of high dividend paying telephone companies.

Find Yahoo’s Basic Screener from its Finance homepage (finance.yahoo.com) by selecting Screener in the Stock Research section and then clicking on Launch HTML Screener.

Once there, select “Telecom Services – Domestic” from the Industry menu and specify a minimum acceptable dividend yield. Figuring that you can buy CDs in the mid-four percent range from many banks, I specified 6% for minimum dividend yield. Try reducing that requirement if you want to see more stocks.

High Dividend Telecom Domestic

Symbol	Company	Div/Yld	More Info
CZN	CITIZEN COMM CO	8.40%	Quote, Chart, News, Profile, Reports, Research, Msgs, Insider, Financials, Analyst Ratings
CNSL	CONSOLIDATED COMMUNI	11.00%	Quote, Profile, Reports, Research, Msgs, Insider, Financials, Analyst Ratings
FRP	FAIRPOINT COMM INC	14.40%	Quote, Profile, Reports, Research, Msgs, Insider, Financials, Analyst Ratings
IWA	IOWA TELECOM SVCS	8.50%	Quote, Profile, Reports, Research, Msgs, Insider, Financials, Analyst Ratings
Q	QWEST COMM INTL INC	9.00%	Quote, Chart, Profile, Reports, Research, SEC, Msgs, Insider, Financials, Analyst Ratings
WIN	WINDSTREAM CORP	8.40%	Quote, News, Profile, Reports, Research, SEC, Msgs, Insider, Financials, Analyst Ratings

Finally, select “All Available” from the Display Information menu and click on “Find Stocks.”

Yahoo listed six stocks with dividend yields ranging from 6.7% to 8.2% when I ran the screen. They were: Citizen Communications Company, Consolidated Communications Holdings, FairPoint Communications, Hickory Tech, Iowa Telecommunications Services, and Windstream.

For each company, Yahoo lists the recent price, dividend yield, average analyst recommendations, a variety of valuation ratios, and other information.

Ignore Earnings
Analyzing rural telephone companies requires a different approach than what you’d use for growth stocks.

Most important, these telecoms are not necessarily profitable, at least in terms of reported net income. They all have huge investments in equipment, phone lines, and other infrastructure items that, according to the rules, must be depreciated. The depreciation charges deduct from reported earnings, but are non-cash accounting entries. No cash changes hands as a result of depreciation charges. So, instead of focusing on net income, pay attention to “operating cash flow,” which is the actual cash that flowed into, or out of, a firm’s bank accounts as a result of its normal operations. It’s the operating cash flow that fuels dividends.

Count Cash
You can see how a company is doing in that respect by getting a price quote and selecting “Cash Flow” in the Financials section. About half way down the report, Yahoo lists “Total Cash Flow From Operating Activities” and then further down lists “Dividends Paid.” Since the dividends are paid from cash flow, you want to verify that the operating cash flow significantly exceeds the dividends paid for each reporting period.

Check Dividend History
A firm’s dividend history is also critically important when you’re analyzing dividend stocks. You can see that on Yahoo by selecting Historical Prices (after getting a price quote) and then selecting “Dividends Only.” Yahoo displays a firm’s dividend history going back 30 years or so, if it has been paying dividends that long.

Your best dividend candidates pay dividends either quarterly or monthly, and show a record of steady, and hopefully, rising dividends. Avoid stocks showing an erratic dividend payment history. Many foreign stocks pay dividends only once or twice a year. I avoid those stocks. It would be disheartening to wait a year and then learn that the company decided to skip its next dividend.

Since there are only a handful of high dividend rural telecom candidates, spend some time to learn about each one. Yahoo’s Profile report gives you a good overview of a firm’s operations. For more details, read Reuters’ Full Description report (www.investor.reuters.com). Also, read the recent news reports and press releases that you can find for each company on Yahoo (Headlines report).

The more you know about your stocks, the better you’re results.
published 3/4/07

Question: "Did Jesus really exist? Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ?"

Question: "Did Jesus really exist? Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ?"

Answer: Typically when this question is asked, the person asking qualifies the question with "outside of the Bible." We do not grant this idea that the Bible cannot be considered a source of evidence for the existence of Jesus. The New Testament contains hundreds of references to Jesus Christ. There are those who date the writing of the Gospels in the second century A.D., 100+ years after Jesus' death. Even if this were the case (which we strongly dispute), in terms of ancient evidences, writings less than 200 years after events took place are considered very reliable evidences. Further, the vast majority of scholars (Christian and non-Christian) will grant that the Epistles of Paul (at least some of them) were in fact written by Paul in the middle of the first century A.D., less than 40 years after Jesus' death. In terms of ancient manuscript evidence, this is extraordinarily strong proof of the existence of a man named Jesus in Israel in the early first century A.D.

It is also important to recognize that in 70 A.D., the Romans invaded and destroyed Jerusalem and most of Israel, slaughtering its inhabitants. Entire cities were literally burned to the ground! We should not be surprised, then, if much evidence of Jesus' existence was destroyed. Many of the eye-witnesses of Jesus would have been killed. These facts likely limited the amount of surviving eyewitness testimony of Jesus.

Considering the fact that Jesus' ministry was largely confined to a relatively unimportant backwater area in a small corner of the Roman Empire, a surprising amount of information about Jesus can be drawn from secular historical sources. Some of the more important historical evidences of Jesus include the following:

The first-century Roman Tacitus, who is considered one of the more accurate historians of the ancient world, mentioned superstitious "Christians " ("named after Christus" which is Latin for Christ), who suffered under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. Suetonius, chief secretary to Emperor Hadrian, wrote that there was a man named Chrestus (or Christ) who lived during the first century (Annals 15.44 ).

Flavius Josephus is the most famous Jewish historian. In his Antiquities he refers to James, “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” There is a controversial verse (18:3) that says, "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats. . . . He was [the] Christ . . . he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him." One version reads, "At this time there was a wise man named Jesus. His conduct was good and [he] was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who became his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive; accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders."

Julius Africanus quotes the historian Thallus in a discussion of the darkness which followed the crucifixion of Christ (Extant Writings, 18).

Pliny the Younger, in Letters 10:96, recorded early Christian worship practices including the fact that Christians worshiped Jesus as God and were very ethical, and includes a reference to the love feast and Lord’s Supper.

The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 43a) confirms Jesus' crucifixion on the eve of Passover, and the accusations against Christ of practicing sorcery and encouraging Jewish apostasy.

Lucian of Samosata was a second-century Greek writer who admits that Jesus was worshiped by Christians, introduced new teachings, and was crucified for them. He said that Jesus' teachings included the brotherhood of believers, the importance of conversion, and the importance of denying other gods. Christians lived according to Jesus’ laws, believed themselves immortal, and were characterized by contempt for death, voluntary self-devotion, and renunciation of material goods.

Mara Bar-Serapion confirms that Jesus was thought to be a wise and virtuous man, was considered by many to be the king of Israel, was put to death by the Jews, and lived on in the teachings of his followers.

Then we have all the Gnostic writings (The Gospel of Truth, The Apocryphon of John, The Gospel of Thomas, The Treatise on Resurrection, etc.) that all mention Jesus.

In fact, we can almost reconstruct the gospel just from early non-Christian sources: Jesus was called the Christ (Josephus), did “magic,” led Israel into new teachings, and was hanged on Passover for them (Babylonian Talmud) in Judea (Tacitus), but claimed to be God and would return (Eliezar), which his followers believed - worshipping Him as God (Pliny the Younger).

In conclusion, there is overwhelming evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ, both in secular and Biblical history. Perhaps the greatest evidence that Jesus did exist is the fact that literally thousands of Christians in the first century A.D., including the 12 apostles, were willing to give their lives as martyrs for Jesus Christ. People will die for what they believe to be true, but no one will die for what they know to be a lie.

Recommended Resource: Case for Faith / Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

Existência Histórica de Cristo

LEITOR QUESTIONA ARTIGO QUE NEGA A EXISTÊNCIA HISTÓRICA DE CRISTO

Por Carlos Martins Nabeto

- Envio-lhes um email que recebi e gostaria de receber ou ter acesso a posição católica sobre o assunto. Grato. Do Irmão em Cristo. Enner Jefferson.

Prezado Enner,

Pax Christi!

Antes de mais nada, gostaríamos de agradecer pelo encaminhamento desse artigo que "põe em dúvida" a historicidade de Jesus, a quem nós cristãos consideramos como "o Cristo" e "Filho de Deus".

Mais ainda, damos graças ao nosso Bom Senhor por tal artigo ter sido encaminhado por você, um cristão protestante que, certamente com toda a boa fé, "gostaria de receber ou ter acesso a posição católica sobre o assunto", confiando, assim, em nossa humilde resposta.

Que o Pai todo-poderoso, com a sua graça, possa nos ajudar a empreender essa tarefa, para que você também, assim como nós, possa render-Lhe um "cântico novo", por ter sido tão bom e amoroso para conosco, pobres pecadores.

Para facilitar a compreensão e não deixar NADA sem resposta, faremos uso do nosso costumeiro método de abordagem da matéria, considerando cada parágrafo ou idéia do artigo original.

*****

Iniciemos... O conteúdo original do artigo é indicado em azul. Nossas respostas seguem em preto:

"Antes de iniciar o aspecto da inexistência do homem chamado Jesus, é necessário dissociar o conceito Jesus do de Cristo".

É evidente que o CONCEITO entre Jesus (uma Pessoa) se diferencia do de Cristo (o Salvador Ungido). Porém, isto não significa que JESUS DE NAZARÉ - E APENAS ELE - SEJA O CRISTO! Há, pois, total compatibilidade entre Pessoa e Função.

Nada obstante, verifica-se claramente que o articulista pretende demonstrar a inexistência histórica do "homem chamado Jesus" (se esquecendo ainda que os cristãos não consideram Jesus apenas como mero homem, mas verdadeiramente como "homem E Deus"); logo, mais exato seria ele pretender provar a impossibilidade da Encarnação do Verbo (o que - reconheçamos - não conseguiria mesmo fazer, pois "para Deus, tudo é possível" [Mateus 19,26]). Então, como não pode provar a premissa maior, tenta a menor...

"Cristo vem do crestus essênio e significa peixe, literalmente, mas o sentido é de ungido, entre outras palavras, referindo-se ao estado transpessoal do ser humano".

Sabemos muito bem que os primeiros cristãos atribuíam, sim, a figura do peixe a Jesus Cristo, Senhor Nosso. As catacumbas de Roma possuem inúmeras pinturas do Peixe nas lápides que encerram ou encerraram corpos de cristãos falecidos e martirizados.

Porém, Cristo não significa "peixe", mas "Ungido"; e tal fato nada tem à ver com "o estado transpessoal do ser humano" - como quer fazer crer o articulista - se relacionando, ao contrário, ao fato de que o Pai consagrou o Filho para uma missão de salvação (esclarecendo, assim, o Novo Testamento, o motivo prefigurado pelo qual os reis e sacerdotes de Israel eram ungidos com um caráter sagrado: eram a "sombra" de Cristo Jesus, o Messias! O único que seria DE FATO simultaneamente rei e sacerdote!).

Por seu turno, o hábito de os cristãos apontarem Cristo pela imagem do Peixe também nada tem a ver com o tal "crestus essênio", pois o óleo da unção dos reis e sacerdotes encontra-se detalhamente descrito em Êxodo 30,22, o qual foi redigido centenas de anos antes da própria existência dessa seita judaica.

Na verdade, a figura do Peixe foi sabiamente escolhida pelos primeiros cristãos (que passaram a ser perseguidos logo no início de sua formação, quer por judeus, quer por pagãos) porque encontrava fundamento bíblico nas palavras de Jesus: "Eu vos farei pescadores de homens" (Marcos 1,17) e também porque a palavra "peixe" em grego (escrita em caracteres latinos "ichtus") representava abreviadamente a expressão "Jesus [I] Cristo [CH], de Deus [TH] Filho [U], Salvador [S]".

Cristo, como se vê, é representado pelos caracteres latinos CH que, por sua vez, correspondem aos caracteres gregos P (chi) e X (rô). Prova disto é que também são encontrados inúmeros símbolos "PX" nas catacumbas e túmulos cristãos, tendo se convertido no monograma clássico de Cristo (que, mais tarde, em latim, passaria a significar também "Christus Rex", ou seja, "Cristo Rei").

Qualquer cristão que visitasse as catacumbas mais antigas (onde eram enterrados não apenas cristãos mas também e principalmente pagãos) conseguia rapidamente identificar um túmulo cristão através desses símbolos ou outros, como a âncora, o pelicano, o pavão e o pastor.

Percebemos, assim, que o articulista, desconhecendo ou desprezando completamente a primitiva iconografia cristã, as Sagradas Escrituras e a Sagrada Tradição da Igreja, inventa estórias (sem "H" mesmo!) e faz uma tremenda salada, que se revela indigesta para os incautos.

"Autores de peso, como Sêneca, Marcial, Juvenal, Plínio o Velho, Apuleio, Fílon de Alexandria e muitos outros, viveram no transcorrer do século I e nunca o mencionaram, apesar de serem imensamente interessados nas questões religiosas da sociedade em que viviam. Os autores gregos, hindus, árabes e judeus também nunca ouviram falar na existência de Jesus".

Primeiramente, vamos ver quem era cada um desses homens: Sêneca (+65), Apuléio (+164) e Fílon (+50) eram FILÓSOFOS e não historiadores, possuindo crenças pagãs próprias; Marcial (+102) e Juvenal (+50?) eram POETAS e não historiadores; Plínio o Velho (+79) era NATURALISTA e não historiador.

Em suma: NENHUM deles tinha compromisso com a tarefa de apontar e narrar FATOS HISTÓRICOS, pois se dedicavam principalmente às matérias ESPECULATIVAS. Com efeito, não nos surpreende em absolutamente nada que TALVEZ nada tenham abordado sobre a figura histórica de Jesus.

E usamos aqui um "talvez" porque, sabendo do penoso processo de redação, publicação e transmissão dos textos na época antiga, é bem possível que diversas obras desses escritores nem mesmo tenham sido copiadas e transmitidas...

Ironia do "destino" é que as obras literárias desses homens, que conseguiram chegar até os nossos dias, só foram salvas GRAÇAS aos monges católicos medievais que as copiaram e as difundiram em manuscritos, ainda que não fizessem referências a Jesus Cristo ou à religião cristã, o que redunda em prol da própria Igreja Católica em dois pontos:

1º) Por salvar a literatura "clássica" e antiga;

2º) Por demonstrar que os monges copistas reproduziam, com boa fé e fidelidade, tais textos de origem pagã. E se tomavam tal cuidado com essas obras, quanto mais tomariam com as Sagradas Escrituras e outras obras de autores cristãos!!!

Seja como for, o articulista OMITE que outras personalidades antigas NÃO ESQUECERAM de falar de Cristo! Inclusive historiadores, compromissados com fatos históricos...

Tácito (+115), historiador e jurista romano, aponta: "Este nome (cristãos) lhes vem de Cristo, que no tempo de Tibério tinha sido entregue ao suplício pelo procurador Pôncio Pilatos" ("Anais" XV,44).

Ou o também historiador e sociólogo romano Suetônio (+141), que observava que durante o reinado do imperador Cláudio (41-54), "expulsou de Roma os judeus, que, sob o impulso de Chrestós, se haviam tornado causa frequente de tumultos" ("Vita Claudii" XXV). Observe-se que "Chréstos" é uma forma grega equivalente a Christós e a informação condiz perfeitamente com o relato de Atos 18,2: "Cláudio decretou que todos os judeus saíssem de Roma" .

Ou o historiador judeu Flávio Josefo (+98), que afirma: "Por esse tempo apareceu Jesus, um homem sábio, que praticou boas obras e cujas virtudes eram reconhecidas. Muitos judeus e pessoas de outras nações tornaram-se seus discípulos. Pilatos o condenou a ser crucificado e morto. Porém, aqueles que se tornaram seus discípulos pregaram sua doutrina. Eles afirmam que Jesus apareceu a eles três dias após a sua crucificação e que está vivo." (Josefo, "Antiguidades Judaicas" XVIII,3,2).

Ou, ainda, com o antiquíssimo Talmud Babilônico, relatando a seu jeito, para favorecer os judeus: " Na véspera da Páscoa suspenderam a uma haste Jesus de Nazaré. Durante quarenta dias um arauto, à frente dele, clamava: 'Merece ser lapidado, porque exerceu a magia, seduziu Israel e o levou à rebelião. Quem tiver algo para o justificar venha proferí-lo!' Nada, porém se encontrou que o justificasse; então suspenderam-no à haste na véspera da Páscoa" (Tratado Sanhedrin 43a do Talmud da Babilônia). Note-se que este relato judaico não põe em dúvida a existência histórica de Jesus, muito pelo contrário...

Como se vê, todos eles falam da PESSOA de Cristo (não simplesmente da existência de cristãos). Logo, não há como se afirmar que "escritores antigos" nunca ouviram ou falaram acerca de Jesus Cristo. Afirmar o contrário é querer passar uma "borracha" injustificadamente sobre a História, deliberadamente para satisfazer seus próprios interesses e desejos pessoais.

"Nada consta no Sinédrio de Jerusalém, nem nos anais de Pôncio Pilatos, nem nos do Imperador Tibério, malgrado a ameaça de um novo rei, ainda que do 'outro mundo' merecesse toda a atenção do Império Romano. O silêncio é gritante!".

Jerusalém foi destruída pelos romanos, no ano 70 d.C., em razão dos constantes tumultos e levantes judaicos; no ano 135, após nova e violenta revolta, os romanos tornaram a invadir e, desta vez, a destruir por completo toda Jerusalém... Praticamente nada sobrou e o Templo foi arrasado. Quereria o articulista ainda esperar encontrar algum documento do Sinédrio e, mais especificamente, sobre Cristo? Quanta pretensão!

No que diz respeito aos registros públicos romanos, também não seria necessário lembrar que Roma foi invadida, pilhada e destruída algumas vezes pelos bárbaros, outras vezes pelos próprios governantes romanos em guerras que travavam entre si. Portanto, poderiam muito bem ter sido destruídos em algum desses eventos ou o articulista pode provar, com ALGUM registro histórico, o contrário?

Ademais, se Jesus de fato nunca tivesse existido, tal "mentira cristã" não teria durado muito, até porque contava com a total repressão dos judeus? Como poderia um "mito sem pé nem cabeça" conquistar todo o vasto e poderosíssimo Império romano, sofrendo duríssima perseguição, quer de judeus, quer de pagãos, em apenas três séculos?

Como quer que seja, pelo que apreciamos até aqui, a evidência histórica fala muito mais favoravelmente à existência de Jesus...

"Segundo La Sagesse, 'As bibliotecas e museus guardam escritos e documentos de autores que teriam sido contemporâneos de Jesus os quais não fazem qualquer referência ao mesmo. Por outro lado, a ciência histórica tem-se recusado a dar crédito aos documentos oferecidos pela Igreja, com intenção de provar-lhe a existência física. Ocorre que tais documentos, originariamente não mencionavam sequer o nome de Jesus, todavia foram falsificados, rasurados e adulterados visando suprir a ausência de documentação verdadeira. Por outro lado, muito do que foi escrito para provar a inexistência de Jesus Cristo foi destruído pela Igreja, defensivamente. Assim é que por falta de documentos verdadeiros e indiscutíveis, a existência de Jesus tem sido posta em dúvida desde os primeiros séculos desta era, apesar de ter a Igreja tentado destruir a tudo e a todos os que tiveram coragem e ousaram contestar os seus pontos de vista e os seus dogmas'".

Com a apreciação que fizemos anteriormente, percebemos como são vãs e ridículas as palavras de La Sagesse... Até porque vimos que foi graças aos monges copistas da Igreja Católica que nos chegaram até mesmo as obras de escritores pagãos...

Se fôssemos levar à sério as palavras de La Sagesse, deveríamos começar a duvidar também da existência de muitíssimos (não só de alguns!) personagens antigos e anteriores a Cristo, inclusive Sócrates e Platão, que só nos chegaram graças a esses monges...

Ou teríamos ainda que concluir - ABSURDAMENTE - que a Terra e todo o universo não existem verdadeiramente porque faltam registros históricos confiáveis e documentados que sigam a "ciência séria e pessoal" de cada um destes críticos do Cristianismo e da Igreja Católica.

Com efeito: se os documentos que fazem menção à existência histórica de Cristo que citamos acima foram corrompidos, que nos apresentem - segundo a mesma ciência EXATA que nos pedem - QUAIS são os manuscritos mais antigos, dos MESMOS escritores, que contradizem a existência histórica de Jesus e os relatos acima transcritos.

Que não façam, pois, acusações LEVIANAS E GRATUITAS, mas que demonstrem com dados cientificos CONFIÁVEIS E IRREFUTÁVEIS. O articulista, portanto, faz uma alegação pura e simples, mas não apresenta PROVA em contrário e nem se dá ao luxo de pelo menos fazer uma referência, segundo o critério científico, de onde tirou as suas "conclusões racionais".

"Paralelamente, Alberto Cousté diz que 'A única exceção estaria em um parágrafo das Antigüidades Judaicas, de Flávio Josefo (37-95), mas Hainchelin demonstra, pela crítica comparada que faz de outras passagens, que se trata de uma grosseira e tardia interpolação. Voltaire já o havia intuído no artigo 'Cristianismo' do Dicionário Filosófico: 'Como teria esse judeu obstinado afirmado que Jesus era o Cristo? Que absurdo colocar na boca de Josefo palavras de um cristão!'. É muito importante se indagar qual o porquê desta interpolação forjada por Eusébio. Qual motivo haveria senão encobrir a inexistência de Jesus?"

O autor cita a passagem interpolada de Flávio Josefo, mas esquece de dizer que existe uma outra, mais antiga, que não possui tal interpolação e que não nega a existência de Jesus (apenas não afirma que ele era o Cristo, como realmente seria de se esperar de um historiador que professa o Judaísmo!). Tal passagem é justamente aquela que apontamos mais acima e que novamente reproduzimos aqui, para relembrar:

"Por esse tempo apareceu Jesus, um homem sábio, que praticou boas obras e cujas virtudes eram reconhecidas. Muitos judeus e pessoas de outras nações tornaram-se seus discípulos. Pilatos o condenou a ser crucificado e morto. Porém, aqueles que se tornaram seus discípulos pregaram sua doutrina. Eles afirmam que Jesus apareceu a eles três dias após a sua crucificação e que está vivo. [Talvez ele fosse o Messias previsto pelos maravilhosos prognósticos dos profetas]" (Josefo, "Antiguidades Judaicas" XVIII,3,2)." (Josefo, "Antiguidades Judaicas" XVIII,3,2).

Mas ainda que se considerasse a interpolação (indicada acima entre colchetes), o fato é que ela também não diz respeito à historicidade de Jesus, mas parece apontar uma "dúvida" de Josefo de TALVEZ ser Jesus o Messias prometido ao Povo de Israel (e nada mais que isso!).

Cai por terra, assim, e de uma só vez, todos os argumentos de Cousté e de Voltaire... Novamente notamos que a História tende para a existência de Jesus de Nazaré!

Mais interessante, porém, é saber - ah, como a História nos faz bem!! - que Voltaire morreu buscando a sua reconciliação com a Igreja Católica, tendo sido assistido por sacerdotes católicos, que ali estavam a seu pedido (ou seja, será que não acreditava mesmo na existência histórica de Jesus Cristo?)!!!

"Os maçons do mais alto grau sabem (ou desconfiam) que as palavras postas na boca do mito de Jesus eram na realidade de João, o Essênio, também conhecido como o Batista. Marcelo Mota, em Carta a Um Maçon, denuncia esse fato, explicando que João teria nascido antes do século I e o seu pensamento teve grande impacto sobre a época em que viveu, afirmando que 'o homem era o templo do deus vivo'. Assim, os primeiros patriarcas não puderam deixar de incluí-lo, sob pena de levantar suspeita. O quarto Evangelho diz que 'Havia um homem enviado por Deus, cujo nome era João'. Iguala, pois, João a Jesus".

A fé e a doutrina da Igreja Católica é TOTALMENTE incompatível com as crenças e as afirmações maçônicas.

Ademais, nunca é tarde para lembrar que a Igreja Católica continua DECLARANDO não ser possível a ninguém querer ser católico e, ao mesmo tempo, maçon. Se alguém afirmar ser maçon, CERTAMENTE não poderá afirmar ser "cristão católico", dada a condenação existente.

Logo, o que os maçons acham ou deixam de achar sobre Jesus NÃO NOS QUER SIGNIFICAR ABSOLUTAMENTE NADA! Se eles acham que Jesus e João Batista eram iguais, PROBLEMA deles. Responderão por sua posição no Dia do Juízo.

Porém, para sermos um pouco mais práticos: onde e como o tal Marcelo Mota PROVOU que Jesus não existiu? Apenas por ter dado a entender que Ele usou ensinamentos de João Batista? Mas João Batista era judeu, assim como o próprio Jesus!!! Logo, os pensamentos de João Batista e de Jesus, EVIDENTEMENTE, não se opunham às verdades contidas no Antigo Testamento e poderiam ser realmente bem semelhantes!!! Ora, em que isto contradiz a existência fática de Jesus? Em nada!

"Em relação aos supostos milagres do mito do nazareno, a cópia descarada foi, agora, de Apolônio de Tiana, que teria revivido os mistérios de Dionísio. Vejamos alguns desses milagres, de acordo com Alberto Cousté: a) Apolônio teria nascido também de mãe virgem; b) Diversos reis enviaram presentes e cartas à parturiente; c) Ainda criança, ele discutiu com os doutores do templo de Esculápio e os derrotou; d) Os cisnes cantaram no seu nascimento e um raio caiu do céu (adoração dos pastores e a estrela de Belém); e) Os anjos transportavam-no pelo ar (segunda tentação de Jesus); f) Ressuscitava mortos, curava cegos e aparecia na frente de amigos distantes; g) Entendia a linguagem dos pássaros; h) Convocava o demônio, que lhe aparecia sob a forma de um olmo; i) Tinha poder sobre os demônios inferiores que atormentavam os possuídos, expulsando-os ao capricho dos seus desejos. Basta dar uma consultada em A Vida de Apolônio, escrita por Filóstrato. Não é só. Os ritos solares baseados na fórmula do deus sacrificado, copiaram-se uns aos outros. Seria cansativo repeti-los todos aqui, mas, veja-se, por exemplo, em relação ao mito de Horus, há milhares de anos antes do conto de Jesus e, depois, leitor, julgue você mesmo a espantosa semelhança: a) Horus nasceu de uma virgem em 25 de dezembro; b) Horus teve 12 discípulos, que representavam os doze signos zodiacais; c) Horus foi enterrado em um túmulo e ressuscitado; d) Horus era também a Verdade, a Luz, o Messias, o Pastor Bom etc.; e) Horus também realizava milagres; f) Horus ressuscitou um homem chamado El-Azar-Us, que, é óbvio, traduziram como Lázaro, o leproso. O copista nem se deu ao trabalho de mudar o nome, já que a grande massa era ignara e não sabia latim; g) O epíteto de Horus era "Iusa" (Jesus), "o Filho sempre tornando-se" de "Ptah", o "Pai"; h) Horus também era chamado o "KRST" (Cristo) ou "Ungido". Se perscrutar outros ritos, como o de Mitra, Adônis, Krishna, Osíris etc., fica patente novas e inúmeras cópias, vários plágios de textos religiosos, com pouca alteração. Indico aqui ao leitor que quiser se aprofundar no assunto a obra Ísis Sem Véu, de Madame Blavatsky."

Como o articulista - NA VERDADE - não possui NENHUM ARGUMENTO SÓLIDO (principalmente histórico) para fundamentar a sua pretensão de negar a existência de Jesus, parte para um plano B, que seria dizer que o Cristianismo (em especial o Catolicismo) é resultado de um Paganismo misturado com crenças judaicas. Em outras palavras, os cristãos teriam criado o "mito" Jesus fazendo uso de uma série de crenças pagãs.

TAL ARGUMENTO É PRA LÁ DE VELHO... E ANTI-HISTÓRICO!! O argumento, aliás, costuma a ser explorado pelos protestantes (Hislop, White etc.), sem convencer dada a precariedade das "provas" suscitadas.

A propósito, há alguns anos, um Pastor protestante, pr. Ralph Woodrow, publicou um livro, baseado sobretudo nas teses de Hislop, rotulando as crenças católicas como "pagãs"; passados alguns anos, humildemente reconheceu que fôra injusto e se retratou publicamente, tirando o seu livro de circulação e publicando um outro em que restabelecia a verdade que descubrira em suas pesquisas mais honestas (veja aqui, nas suas próprias palavras: http://www.ralphwoodrow.org/books/pages/babylon-mystery.html). Obviamente que, além de desagradar os ateístas de plantão, acabou por desagradar muitos protestantes que enxergavam no seu livro anterior uma arma hábil contra os católicos... ;)

Ora, nós, cristãos em geral (católicos, ortodoxos e protestantes) oramos a Deus. Os pagãos faziam (e fazem o mesmo). Então porque oramos, somos pagãos? Nós cremos em Deus, os pagãos também; então somos pagãos? Nós cremos que Deus tem o poder de fazer milagres, os pagãos também pensam o mesmo de seus inúmeros deuses; então nosso Deus teve origem pagã? Uma mentalidade bem simplista... e curta...

E as ORIGENS de certos detalhes seriam exatamente as mesmas e expressariam também os MESMOS SIGNIFICADOS? O Natal dos cristãos expressaria a recordação da Encarnação do Verbo ou A adoração de um deus pagão chamado Mitra?

É ÓBVIO que a origem do Natal encontra-se na Encarnação de Jesus, Deus feito homem, e sua celebração NADA TEM a ver com o Mitraísmo... A idéia é ridícula e sem sentido algum; TOTALMENTE FORA DA REALIDADE, demonstrando apenas a FANTASIA de certas pessoas que, para negarem alguma coisa que não lhe agrada, misturam alhos com bugalhos e só podem confundir mesmo aqueles que NÃO EDIFICARAM A SUA FÉ SOBRE A PEDRA (Mateus 16,18), mas sobre a areia.

Pois muito bem, se tais coisas REALMENTE são pagãs, então que nos PROVE não apenas alegando gratuitamente, mas apresentando fontes confiáveis e, acima de tudo, PRECISAS! Na verdade, o autor do artigo incorpora aqui o famoso "espírito de papagaio", repetindo coisas afirmadas por outros, que por sua vez ouviram de outros e assim vai, sem se atentar para uma análise mais cuidadosa e... histórica!

Os 12 Apóstolos correspondem aos 12 signos do zodíaco? Em que fonte ESCRITA foi relatado isso ORIGINALMENTE? Em que livro, em que capítulo e em que ano foi escrito PRECISAMENTE? ... E que o articulista faça o mesmo para cada "plágio cristão" que encontrar, vez que o ônus de provar é sempre de quem afirma...

Estaremos aqui, SENTADOS, esperando as PROVAS...

"Além disso, os textos pagãos, essênios e gnósticos foram descaradamente copiados para compor o atual Novo Testamento, junto com o expurgo dos apócrifos, no Concílio de Nicéia, em 325, onde provavelmente foi criado o mito de Jesus para dar cumprimento à profecia judaica sobre o advento de um messias. O anônimo autor de Supernatural Religion demonstra o caráter espúrio dos quatro Evangelhos, perpetrada por Irineu e seus lacaios".

Desta vez o autor "viajou na maionese"...

Primeiro: se os textos gnósticos foram COPIADOS para compor o Novo Testamento então porque Santo Ireneu (+202) escreveu justamente sua obra "Contra as Heresias" especificamente contra os gnósticos e citando inúmeras vezes trechos do Novo Testamento?

E isto basta também para demonstrar que o tal "anônimo autor de Supernatural Religion" caiu também em total contradição ao afirmar que os Evangelhos foram "perpetrados por Irineu e seus lacaios"... Ora, se Ireneu é antignóstico, como poderia usar os textos gnósticos para compor o NT?

Segundo, a ciência já PROVOU DEFINITIVAMENTE que o Novo Testamento é muito anterior ao Concílio de Nicéia. Diversos fragmentos de papiros do NT são datados - segundo as modernas técnicas e metodologias das ciência - como ANTERIORES ao séc. IV (vários deles, inclusive, do mesmo séc. I d.C.!).

Ademais, existem muitos autores cristãos anteriores ao referido Concílio e a Ireneu (Clemente de Roma, Inácio de Antioquia, Policarpo de Esmirna, Hermas de Roma, Pápias de Hierápolis, Aristides de Atenas, Taciano da Síria, Atenágoras de Atenas, Teófilo de Antioquia, entre vários outros) que citam LITERALMENTE passagens e seções inteiras do Novo Testamento tal como sempre conhecemos em nossas leituras...

Percebe-se que o articulista, no seu afã de pregar contra a existência de Cristo, CAI EM TOTAL CONTRADIÇÃO, pois ao querer fazer uso favorável dos apócrifos gnósticos para retirar a autoridade do Novo Testamento canônico, SE ESQUECEU QUE OS ESCRITOS GNÓSTICOS APÓIAM E CONCORDAM QUE JESUS REALMENTE EXISTIU!!!!

E assim, o próprio o Autor deste artigo contra Jesus perde TOTALMENTE a sua autoridade (se é que ainda lhe restava alguma...).

"É óbvio que esta fraude em nada influenciou os judeus, que sabiam da história toda, razão por que eles têm sido perseguidos nestes dois milênios pelo Vaticano".

E eis que novamente o articulista cai em contradição... Afirma ele agora que a "fraude do NT não influenciou os judeus" e que eles "sabiam da história toda" (isto é, de que Jesus não teria existido!)...

Ora! Se isto fosse verdade, ou seja, se soubessem MESMO que Jesus nunca teria existido, não teriam preferido afirmar isso CLARA E ABERTAMENTE ao invés de se reunirem em Jâmnia, por volta do ano 90 DEPOIS DE CRISTO, para estabelecerem o cânon da Bíblia judaica - "retirando" (como se pudessem fazê-lo após a vinda do Cristo Salvador!) a autoridade das escrituras aceitas naturalmente pelos judeus alexandrinos (que adotavam a Septuaginta, com os livros que chamamos hoje de "deuterocanônicos") e que agora vinha sendo usado pelos cristãos para suportar todo o ensino cristão (inclusive da própria existência de Cristo)?

E (relembrando mais uma vez a afirmação do autor feita no parágrafo anterior), porque esses judeus, que "sabiam de tudo" não agregaram à sua Bíblia oficial, de Jâmnia, os livros gnósticos se estes tinham verdadeiramente alguma autoridade? Mais: por que não teriam feito o mesmo no seu Talmud, ao invés de - ao contrário - confirmarem a existência histórica de Cristo? Ora, leiamos novamente o que o Talmud afirma CATEGORICAMENTE:

"NA VÉSPERA DA PÁSCOA suspenderam a uma haste JESUS DE NAZARÉ. Durante quarenta dias um arauto, à frente dele, clamava: 'Merece ser lapidado, porque exerceu a magia, seduziu Israel e o levou à rebelião. Quem tiver algo para o justificar venha proferí-lo!' Nada, porém se encontrou que o justificasse; ENTÃO suspenderam-no à haste na véspera da Páscoa." (Tratado Sanhedrin 43a do Talmud da Babilônia).

Com efeito, se o autor assume que os judeus "sabiam de tudo", DEVERÁ RECONHECER QUE JESUS CRISTO REALMENTE EXISTIU NO TEMPO E NO ESPAÇO TERRESTRE, pois os judeus reconheceram isso!!!!!

CHEQUE-MATE!!!

Quanto à acusação de que o Vaticano persegue os judeus, eles mesmos já reconheceram HISTORICAMENTE que foi graças ao Vaticano que muitos deles se salvaram durante a II Guerra Mundial. E, além disto, o papa João Paulo II emitiu um pedido de perdão aos judeus pelos crimes praticados pelos FILHOS DA IGREJA. Portanto, o articulista está tratando, no mínimo, de coisas que desconhece; ou pretende - inutilmente! - ressuscitar uma culpa que já foi sepultada pela própria História.

"Havia quase setenta seitas, no século IV, de acordo com uma enumeração de Epifânio, que compartilhavam sobre a maldade intrínseca da criação e viam em Jeová um demiurgo imperfeito e rancoroso, que se deixava enganar por sua própria criação. Uma dessas seitas, de opinião diversa, sofrera enormemente a influência do culto mitral, trazida pelos soldados de Pompeu, pouco antes do início da era cristã, deslumbrados pelo dualismo persa. Estando o Império Romano fragilizado, esta seita aliou-se a Constantino. O benefício seria mútuo. Por um lado, ajudaria a fortalecer o império, por outro destruiria as outras seitas, firmando-se por absoluto. Esta seita se transformou no que conhecemos hoje como a Igreja Católica".

Esse argumento já foi inúmeras vezes refutado aqui, no site do Veritatis Splendor.

Por essa razão, além de observar que o articulista faz novamente uma afirmação gratuita, sem apontar fontes em que possa fundamentar seu o "raciocínio", preferiremos indicar os artigos em que as teses mais absurdas sobre um "possível" relacionamento entre Catolicismo e Paganismo foram abordadas:

- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/575
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/3001
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/468
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/3958
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/4044

Esses são apenas alguns textos; mas é possível encontrar MUITOS outros usando a ferramenta de busca existente do site Veritatis Splendor, digitando-se no campo de pesquisa (no topo superior direito) palavras-chave como "Paganismo", "Babilônia", "Pagã" etc. Para aí remetemos o leitor interessado em mais detalhes.

"Portanto, o Cristianismo só poderia se assentar através da pena (fé cega) e pela espada (perseguição religiosa). E, invocando a própria Igreja Católica, está na frase histórica, proferida pelo papa Leão X: Quantum nobis prodeste haec fabula Christi! - 'Quanto nos ajuda esta fábula de Cristo!'".

O desfecho CERTAMENTE não poderia ser o pior e mais desastrado possível...

Inconformado pelo "cheque-mate" dado anteriormente, parte o autor para jogar no ar uma "lenda urbana", citada por muitos protestantes anticatólicos (na base do já mencionado "espírito de papagaio"), mas NUNCA PROVADA...

Pois muito bem, CHEQUE-MATE 2: Aponte-nos em qual documento da Igreja o Santo Padre o Papa Leão X (1513-1521) escreveu tal coisa!!!

EIS AÍ O NOSSO DESAFIO, já que a Verdade é única!!!

Se achar, aliás, mande-nos uma cópia para que possamos disponibilizá-la na Área de Documentos da Igreja, que mantemos aqui no Veritatis Splendor. E não se importe se não encontrar tal documento em português, mas só em qualquer outra língua, pois teremos IMENSO PRAZER em traduzí-lo.

Aliás, achamos que isso seria o mínimo que o articulista deveria fazer... Pelo menos assim, talvéz pudéssemos rever este nosso segundo "cheque-mate" e então ficaríamos empatados, já que ele NUNCA conseguirá derrubar o nosso primeiro "cheque-mate"... ;)

Em outras palavras... O ARTICULISTA NUNCA PROVARÁ QUE JESUS DE NAZARÉ NÃO EXISTIU!!! E NÓS TEMOS A CERTEZA DE QUE TAMBÉM NUNCA CONSEGUIRÁ DEMONSTRAR QUE O PAPA PIO X TENHA PRONUNCIADO TAL DESATINO!

Bom. Se antes esperávamos sentados, cremos agora FIRMEMENTE que poderemos deitar e dormir pra lá de despreocupados ;)

CONCLUSÃO: A HISTÓRIA E A RAZÃO DEMONSTRAM QUE JESUS CRISTO EXISTIU. A ESTÓRIA [DA CAROCHINHA] E A FALTA DE RAZÃO DEMONSTRAM O INVERSO!

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Em complemento a esta resposta que oferecemos, sugerimos ainda a leitura dos seguintes artigos do Veritatis Splendor:

A Igreja e o Paganismo
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/3958/
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/4073/
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/3001/
etc.

Historicidade de Cristo
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/569/
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/570/
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/4041/
etc.

Vaticano e Judaísmo
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/3339/
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/3729/
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/3123/
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/57
- http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/1832
etc.

(Use a ferramenta de busca existente do site Veritatis Splendor, para obter outros resultados e artigos interessantes!).

---

Para citar este artigo:

NABETO, Carlos Martins. Apostolado Veritatis Splendor: LEITOR QUESTIONA ARTIGO QUE NEGA A EXISTÊNCIA HISTÓRICA DE CRISTO. Disponível em http://www.veritatis.com.br/article/4697. Desde 5/16/2008.

Tony Snow - Cancer's Unexpected Blessings

CT Classic

Cancer's Unexpected Blessings

When you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change.

Tony Snow | posted 7/20/2007 02:30PM

Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined the Bush administration in April 2006 as press secretary. Unfortunately, on March 23 Snow, 51, a husband and father of three, announced that the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen—leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but resigned August 31. CT asked Snow what spiritual lessons he has been learning through the ordeal.

Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.

Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.

The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.

I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is—a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.

But despite this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.

Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of dying can send adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You think of nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the impact on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere.

To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death, but into life—and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many nonbelieving hearts—an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live—fully, richly, exuberantly—no matter how their days may be numbered.

Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want lives of simple, predictable ease—smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see—but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and comprehension—and yet don't. By his love and grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.

'You Have Been Called'

Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet; a loved one holds your hand at the side. "It's cancer," the healer announces.

The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler." But another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter—and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our "normal time."

There's another kind of response, although usually short-lived—an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tinny, and placed before us the challenge of important questions.

The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing though the known world and contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain), shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.

There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue—for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever could do.

Finally, we can let love change everything. When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for himself, but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city. From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness, and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.

We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us—that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others. Sickness gets us partway there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two people's worries and fears.

Learning How to Live

Most of us have watched friends as they drifted toward God's arms not with resignation, but with peace and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of love.

I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment. "I'm going to try to beat [this cancer]," he told me several months before he died. "But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side."

His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity—filled with life and love we cannot comprehend—and that one can in the throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future storms.

Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?

When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way. Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions know it.

It is hard to describe, but there are times when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up—to speak of us!

This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.

What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don't know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place—in the hollow of God's hand.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

SLAVERY TODAY AND THE BATTLE OVER HISTORY

SLAVERY TODAY AND THE BATTLE OVER HISTORY

When I was invited to lecture on: “Slavery – The Rest of the Story” at three university campuses in Minnesota, I expected that it would engender some opposition. What I could not have foreseen was the intensity of hostility and emotion that would be whipped up by some radical students against myself and those who had invited me.

Karl Marx declared: “The first battlefield is the rewriting of history.” Evidently, many of Marx’s disciples have been very busy on the university campuses rewriting history, rearranging reality and brainwashing students.

The University of Minnesota has 37,000 students, including over 2,900 international students from more than 130 countries, including China, India, Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and many others.

I have been invited to lecture at the university campus before, on the persecution of Christians in Sudan. Those presentations received some opposition, but nothing like what we received on this occasion.

Muslim students from Somalia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia expressed great hostility, anger and emotion in opposition to my presentations on Slavery – The Rest of the Story . At one of the lunch time presentations in a university auditorium, the questions and answers and discussion went on for over 3-and-a-half hours after the end of the presentation. One Somalian stood up and made a long and vitriolic speech against “President Bush’s war of aggression against the people of Iraq,” and attacked me for not dealing with this. In response I pointed out that I was not an American citizen, that I had never worked in Iraq, that I am an African, and the subject that I had been invited to speak on was: “Slavery – The Rest of the Story.” I had spoken on what I had personally witnessed and researched in Sudan, but I could not speak with any authority on Iraq, as I had never even visited that country.

However, I did point out that I was not aware that America was waging “a war of aggression against the Iraqi people.” It was my impression that the Allied forces had freed the people of Iraq from one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Middle East. In fact, I asked, didn’t Iraq now have the first elected government in its history? So, perhaps it would be more accurate to refer to the conflict in Iraq as a civil war where the US forces are assisting the first elected government in Iraq’s history against local insurgents?

A woman, who identified herself as coming from Saudi Arabia, was most agitated. She declared that it was false to give the impression that women were oppressed in Islam. Women were “completely free and equal.” It was wrong to suggest that Muhammad had owned slaves, she claimed, he never mistreated anybody, and Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion of brotherhood.

I had to remind this lady that both the Quran and the Hadith confirm that Muhammad was a slave owner and a slave trader. Muhammad gave detailed instructions concerning the treatment of slaves, including that Muslim slave masters could lawfully “enjoy” their female slaves sexually or even hire them out as prostitutes. “How many women can a Muslim man marry?” I asked. “Four” she replied. “And how many men can a Muslim woman marry?” “What’s that got to do with it?” She responded angrily. I pointed out that this indicates that there is no equality for women in Islam.

“Are you, as a Muslim woman, allowed to vote in Saudi Arabia?” “Of course not!” she responded angrily. “Can you, as a Muslim woman, drive a car in Saudi Arabia?”“No, but Saudi Arabia is the land of Muhammad!”“But you can drive a car here in America? Why is it that you have so many more rights and freedoms in America than you would have in your home country of Saudi Arabia?” In response, this woman expressed very hostile views of America and its government, prompting me to ask why she had come to study in such a horrible country, under such terrible conditions, when she could be enjoying such perfect freedom back in Saudi Arabia?

One student, apparently from Pakistan, declared that I did not deserve to live, and I should not be allowed to remain on this planet! When I asked where he would suggest I go, he exploded: “To hell!” In response to this I said: “I’m sorry, but the Lord Jesus has already dealt with that, so I will not be able to join you.”

One of the most surprising aspects of my visit to the university campuses in Minnesota was the hostility of many university lecturers against Christianity and America. As a missionary who has spent almost 25 years ministering to restricted access areas in Africa, I expect opposition from Muslims and Marxists. However, as experienced during these campus outreaches in Minnesota, some of the most fervent opposition we received came from nominal Christians who seem either infatuated with, or in fear of, Islam. They seemed most antagonistic towards Biblical Christianity and even hostile to the Christian civilisation, which they benefit from.

One university professor stood up during the question and answer time and declared that he was most disappointed with my presentation. It was “the most bigoted, narrow-minded lecture” he had ever heard in his life. He had brought his students from his history class to hear me, expecting that I would speak about the American involvement in the slave trade. He didn’t understand why I would have dealt with such “hurtful” and “offensive” material as the Muslim involvement in the slave trade. Why hadn’t I given more time and attention to America’s involvement?

To this I had to respond that surely the advertised title of my presentations: Slavery – The Rest of the Story should have made it abundantly clear that it was not my purpose to come to America to repeat again what most Americans are so familiar with, and what ended over 150 yeas ago. As an African missionary, who had witnessed the ongoing slave trade in Sudan today, I had undertaken a research project into the history of slavery in Africa and the result was the book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam – The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat – on which these lectures had been based.

The American involvement in the slave trade lasted for less than 3 centuries; however, the Muslim involvement in the slave trade has continued for 14 centuries and is still continuing to this day. Considering that 95% of the African slaves who were transported across the Atlantic went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions, and that less than 5% of the slaves who crossed the Atlantic went to the United States, it was remarkable that the vast majority of academic research, films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrated only on the American involvement, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration. The vastly great involvement of Portugal, Spain and France seems to be largely ignored. Even more so the far greater and longer running Islamic slave trade into the Middle East has been so ignored as to make it one of history’s best-kept secrets.

Now, I pointed out, if I had concentrated on the American slave trade, that would have been ignorant, bigoted and prejudiced.

Numerous Sudanese university students stood up to confirm the truth of my presentations, that there was indeed slavery continuing in Sudan today. “It is a fact! No one can deny it! The facts and the documentation are there, for anyone to see. We ourselves have seen and experienced it. The Americans are very honest and admit their involvement in slavery over 150 years ago. Why can’t you Muslims be honest and admit what is going on in your own countries, and deal with it?” challenged one student from Sudan.

Another man from Mexico spoke up: “My ancestors were the Aztecs. We were the biggest slave traders, and the slaves were used for human sacrifice - to make the sun rise each day! Our Aztec priests ripped out the beating hearts from living slaves who were sacrificed in our temples. Men were enslaved and sacrificed like that. I don’t like it. I am not proud of it, but it is a fact. It is part of our history. We have to face up to it. And the slavery and human sacrifice in Mexico only stopped when Christianity came and brought it to an end. That is the fact of history. When are the Arabs going to face up to the facts of their own history, and to what is going on in many Muslim countries today? When are they going to rise up like the Christians to bring this slavery in their own countries to an end?”

The atmosphere in the university auditorium was electric, as various students and some lecturers took part in the very vigorous question and answer time, and debating, arguing and discussing these volatile topics.

At one of the university campus meetings, I was still surrounded by about 10 students, including some from Somalia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, 4 and a half hours after the beginning of the presentation. Suddenly I realised that all the discussion had stopped and everyone was silent. They were all listening to me. After hours of shouting and argument, it was an eerie experience as I related the parables of Christ, particularly of the two men who went up to the Temple to pray: the one was a religious leader, a Pharisee; and the other was a tax collector – a sinner. I related the contrast between these two men. The one self-righteous, convinced of his own goodness and moral superiority, and the other man humbled and repentant only crying out: “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!” Then I asked them which of these two men were justified in God’s sight? Whose prayer did the Lord find acceptable? The Muslim students remained silent as one of the Christians responded: “The tax collector, because he was repentant.” This seemed to shock the Muslims as they would have thought that the religious leader, with his fasting, was the righteous one.

I also had the opportunity to share the Gospel in the story of Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son and how God Himself provided the lamb. I pointed them to Jesus, who is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). He died in our place, the Just for the unjust.

After all the heated emotions, anger and shouting, it was an extraordinary experience to be able to communicate calmly and clearly the Gospel presentation to these Muslims who had been so emotive and hostile for so many hours.

My respect was greatly increased for the campus ministries that have to work in such volatile and hostile environments on a daily basis. Campus ministries, such as Maranatha, are laying a foundation for righteousness for future generations. On a daily basis they are seeking to evangelise in dorm rooms, class rooms and offices throughout the university community. With guest speakers like myself, and through men’s and women’s Bible studies, prayer meetings, contact tables and outreaches, they are challenging the present politically correct propaganda of Humanism and the New Age Movement with the life changing power of the Gospel of Salvation and Jesus Christ alone.

My host, Rev. Bruce Harpel, who founded Maranatha Christian Fellowship over 25 years ago, explains: “In the classroom, students are indoctrinated to think that truth is relative, that there are no absolutes, and what is right and wrong are determined by the individual and society.”

“Drinking, drugs, sexual immorality, and lack of accountability lead some students to self destruction. The student usually exits college much more wounded and addicted to sin than when he/she entered. Many times students who were raised in Christian homes abandon their beliefs as they are challenged by opposing worldviews. When these students return to their respective towns, cities, and countries, this bondage to sin is transfused into the bloodstream of society. We see more white-collar crime, violence, sexually transmitted diseases, abortions, suicide, divorce, depression and despair in society than ever before. The University is truly a mission field and that is why we are here. To ignore campus ministry is to surrender the culture to the enemy .”

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17

Dr. Peter Hammond