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Some
time after the bad thought episode my father applied the
positive power of Jesus Christ to another of my problems,
perhaps the most difficult problem I ever faced as a youth:
namely, my horrible inferiority complex. I was shy, reticent,
shrinking, filled with self-doubt. In fact, I lived like a
scared rabbit. I was bashful. This word, not used much
in later years, was a very descriptive word, meaning, as it
does, abashed. I constantly told myself that I had no brains,
no ability; that I didn’t amount to anything and never would.
I lived in a miserable world of self-depreciation. I then
became aware that people were agreeing with me, for it is a
fact that others will unconsciously take you at your own
self-appraisal. At any rate, I was a pretty wretched victim of
the inferiority complex.
One
summer Sunday afternoon my father said he wanted to call on a
family of his church who lived a couple of miles out of town
in the country at Greenville, Ohio, and he asked me to
accompany him. We went on foot, our little fox terrier, Tip,
running along with us. It was a rich countryside we
traveled–Darke County, Ohio–and we passed prosperous-looking
farms and waved to the people, as of course we knew them all.
I recall that one family persuaded us to stop for a drink of
cold lemonade, it being a warm day, and then the farmer’s wife
served us a heaping dish of homemade vanilla ice cream with
cookies. I have eaten ice cream all around the world, but this
homemade dish remains in memory over all these years as the
most delectable–unforgettable.
We
reached the family my father wanted to visit. There was some
kind of trouble to which he brought his caring spirit and
practical skills. Then we started home and he got me to
talking about myself. I unloaded my problem about my
inferiority feelings, which had been discussed with him on
previous occasions.
My
father’s medical experience as a doctor and his genius as a
pastor made him an acute and competent curer of souls. His
perception that abnormal guilt from the bad thoughts or wrong
thinking about personality traits could be harmful made him
adept in dealing with my inferiority feelings. Indeed, it was
this religio-medical characteristic of my father that was
influential in my own founding, years later, with the famous
psychiatrist Dr. Smiley Blanton, of the American Foundation of
Religion and Psychiatry, now called the Institutes of Religion
and Health.
Finally
we came to a place where several trees had been cut down, and
we sat on convenient stumps. Father described the mechanism of
inferiority and self-doubt feelings in a manner that would do
credit to a modern psychiatrist. He stated that scientific
treatment could probably cure me, but that such treatment was
not available in our little village, and besides, it was quite
expensive.
“But,”
he continued, “there is a Doctor right here who can cure any
disease of the mental and emotional
life
He has a rare and amazing power to correct our unhealthy
thought patterns. And He can heal the sensitive
self-centeredness that lies at the root of
inferiority-inadequacy feelings.” Long afterward when I told
Dr. Blanton about this treatment he said admiringly, “Your
father was a genius in his insights.”
Finally
Father said, “Norman, are you willing to let this great
Doctor, Jesus Christ, treat you for that inferiority complex?
If you will let Jesus take charge of your mind, indeed your
whole life, you can be freed of this misery which, if it
continues, can destroy your effectiveness.” I was profoundly
impressed and said I would give my life into the hands of
Jesus. Father told me to kneel down by the stump and he, too,
knelt. I remember that Tip came up and licked my ear, then sat
beside me. Father then committed me to Christ in a moving
prayer. He then asked me to tell Jesus that I was giving
myself into His hands and letting go, by an act of
affirmation, all my inferiority feelings. As we walked home in
the gathering twilight I felt a strange sense of peace and
happiness, as though I was really on top of my problems. While
I had another bout with this trouble during college days later
on, the same remedy was again applied, with the result that
this self-defeating thought pattern was healed through the
positive power of Jesus Christ. |
