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Loma Linda University Student Association

Relationships Week 2006

Don Mackintosh

God? Why?

Hey good to see all of you today, and you know the world kind of focuses on relationships when I went to school unfortunately My life my grades were really a barometer.

They really showed what was happening in my life relationally.

If things were going wrong with, you know, you got the wrong 1 baby, uh-uh.

My grades were going wrong, and up and down and around, and so, you know, what I'm talking about this week is like really relevant and I see some of you like nodding already you know and the same thing is true once you get married you know I'm a pastor of 2 churches and if mama's not happy you heard to say ain't nobody happy and so usually on Friday night you know we're attacked as ministers and God you know the devil tries to take me out because the next day I have to get up and preach and teach and so those relationships have to be in tune or I'm gonna be in trouble.

This week we're gonna be talking about relationship with God, relationship with parents, relationships with peers, and then are you normal.

I'm not gonna tell you what that's about but it's kind of kind of build 1 on the top of the other and I got to tell you that all I'm going to be really doing is telling you my Story, you know like hi.

I'm going to be telling you about You know my relationships and different things.

That's all I really have to share with you.

So Today I introduced you to a couple of the ladies in my life.

I I have I live with 3 ladies My wife and then my 2 daughters.

Can't really see her, but she's right there in the shadows.

Then we have Shmooky, which really her name is Elizabeth, means rest and she's anything but restful.

And then there's Catherine Caroline, she's my southern bell and she rings all day and night.

Then, I mean it's just great little kids and oh man, Schmookey is just, oh man, I'd say she is sugar.

This is my newest, it's the first picture of him.

This is Malcolm and we didn't know it was Malcolm yet because you see there's many ways that could go there but the the 1 that finally won we called Donald Malcolm.

And there if I blew it up a little more you could see everything that helps us know that he's a boy.

That's like 3 or 4 minutes after he's born he came out he's like sneaky looking you know like just looking around like I said to my wife oh God help us because I know he's gonna be trouble but I'm looking forward to it So this week again God why parents how peers who then are you getting back to normal?

Why God, you know, I didn't always believe in God I was raised in a Christian home I was raised actually in the Seventh-day Adventist home.

I actually am a fourth-generation Seventh-day Adventist pastor.

But being raised in an Adventist home turned me off completely to religion for a time.

I left the church, I became an atheist, a card-carrying atheist.

I read all kinds of the philosophies, which I'll get into a little bit later, that take you nowhere quickly.

And I find myself, you know, without God in any way, and I was vitriolic about this.

I like to eat them for lunch and have a few leftover for supper and dinner.

But it was when I got into health care, when I finally graduated from nursing school and when I got out and I started working in a health care situation that I came to know God.

Right here you're in a health care situation and if you listen the voice of God is there it will speak to you.

I remember just like yesterday I'm gonna tell stories that are not in chronological order in terms of this presentation but I'm telling you different ways God spoke to me.

I better look at my notes here, kind of keeps me on track when my wife's not here.

1 of the reasons I believe in God is because he speaks to the worst.

I was working this particular night in the emergency department and the hospital emergency radio network, the hern, went off.

There was someone coming in who had been severely injured and they were on the way to the hospital and here they came in and this guy was messed up.

They said, when he first came in the door, they said his name and all of us knew, oh, it's from that family.

I hope that your name is not Saffel, but anyway he was Sam Saffel.

He came in and this guy had a terribly injured leg because he had been inebriated and the frontal lobe was not connected to anything else.

And so everything else became disconnected from the frontal lobe.

But he had this ability to just completely turn the place upside down.

He walked in or he came in on the gurney and he sees the lady that's the receptionist who happens to be back in the emergency rooms.

He goes, man if I was your husband, if you have 1, I would have left you a long time ago.

He didn't realize that her husband had just left her that week.

She looked at another lady who was there and says, man you sir are fat.

This lady had a terrible self-image and was struggling with that and she left the room upset.

He continued to go down the line and it was as if he had a sense of what was wrong about everybody and he just honed in on it and pretty soon everybody was all upset with Sam.

Nobody wanted to take care of him, no 1 wanted to kill him.

Now I was attending the seminary at the time and working as a nurse at night and they all kind of of 1 accord turned and looked at me and said, you will go in to take care of Sam.

And I said, oh brother, son of Sam, here I go.

And I went in there and I was praying at the time, God help me.

God help me because the guy might kill me number 1 and number 2 all these people for the glory of your name help me out here so I go in there and Sam is yelling I mean just like that could 1 of the demoniacs times 6 he's yelling at me oh you piece of protoplasm and some other things added in there and he was just going on and on and he was like ripping me up and down he's like look at that look at you I heard you're a bitter boy.

On and on yelling and screaming there were 2 armed guards there you know in the room and he was tied he was strapped here and here and he was kind of flailing around like a fish and he was trying to get at me, you know.

I said to the guards, I said, maybe it's the guards.

And all he was like going backwards in generations and forwards in generations.

I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do.

So finally I said, man, what I need to do is he's yelling so I need to, I need to do what I want him to do I'm gonna whisper so I said all the sudden he looks at me and he goes...

The people outside now, see it's completely silent in the room.

He had been yelling, they hadn't heard me.

Parents? How?

Yesterday I tried to show you a picture, and it was too dark.

I live with 3 women, my wife and 2 daughters.

Strabu is now in the second round of hair.

Her first round of hair fell out, and she had a rapid developing alopecia that was reversed by a microsurgery on the table, some felt and a glue gun, and 3 burned fingers later.

She came back to life, only to be lost at the park for 3 weeks, but she's back with us.

Her name is really Catherine Caroline, but I call her Schmiki.

Man, I tell you what, if she was here today, you would just fall in love with her.

She would come up and hug you and kiss you even if she never met you before.

If you're looking for a relationship she would have a relationship with you.

She is just a really relating type person.

They're always trying to get her to sit with them at church and other wherever.

We knew he was going to be Harry from this picture.

Now this is just a few minutes after he was born and he was already just kind of looking around.

And he's just a great guy and I can't think of having a life without these people.

I'm glad to not see you guys anymore and go back to see them again.

And we talked about the fact that God wants to, He knows about us, he cares about us, he loves us.

Even if we're despicable, like Sam, we talked about.

Look, if you didn't get to come yesterday, I think you might enjoy the tape.

This is kind of part of my personal testimony.

And today I want to share a little bit more testimony with you as we talk about our second subject today which is parents how now how many of you this is any question have parents most of you do some of you may if I ask another question how many of you live with both biological parents?

That would be a little harder for some of you to answer.

How many of you get along well with your parents?

Might be a little harder for some of you.

How many of you have great parents, have never had any problem with your parents at all?

You've just raised them correctly and they're doing everything right.

Some people just have a real good experience with their parents.

I did not have a great experience with my parents at the beginning.

I want to talk about the importance of that today.

Do you have a positive relationship with your father?

Last days, it says that there'll be problems with parents.

People will be disobedient to their parents, will be ungrateful, they'll consider nothing sacred, the Bible says.

And researchers have shown that this is very important.

The Harvard Masters of Stress Study says 82% of participants who had low warmth and closeness with their fathers, had diagnosed diseases in midlife compared with only 50% of those who had a high warmth and closeness with their fathers.

There's a physical problem, or physical problems that develop when we don't get along with our dad.

John Hopkins University looked at cancer and said the best predictor who would get cancer decades later was the closeness of the father-son relationship early in life.

You have a positive relationship with your mother?

Again, Harvard study, 91% of participants who did not perceive themselves to have had a warm relationship with their mothers had serious diagnosed diseases in midlife, including coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, duodenal ulcers and alcoholism compared to only 45% of those who perceive themselves have a positive relationship.

Is it important to have good relationships?

100% of participants, all of them who rated both their mothers and fathers low in warmth and closeness 35 years earlier, had diseases diagnosed in midlife.

If you didn't get along with both your parents, You are on a trip, a train wreck ride to heart disease, to cancer, to diabetes.

Could it be that the problem is not so much what we eat, although it can be, but our relationships that are related to health?

This lady and her husband go to my church, great people, this was a great mom and dad figure and they were so loving and kind that they had, you know, at their home 20, 30, 40 people just kids that were starving for love.

There are some people that are just parental in all the right senses.

I think in the Bible the wonderful theme that sometimes is skewed because of our misrelationships or our distorted relationships, our diseased relationships with our fathers and mothers.

Still, nonetheless, the biggest theme in the Bible is the paternal love of God.

God was always talking about the Father and how He loves us.

Perception of love itself may turn out to be a core vital psychosocial spiritual buffer reducing the negative impact of stressors and pathogens and promoting immune function and healing.

What about a study looking at college-age students, the same group, 95% of subjects who used few positive words and rated their parents low and parental caring had diseases diagnosed in midlife, just the way they talked about their parents.

Only 29% of subjects who used many positive words and rated their parents high and parental caring had diseases diagnosed in midlife.

Do you say positive things about your parents or negative?

The relationship of these descriptions of parental love and caring to future health was independent of a family history of illness, of smoking, of emotional stress, of death and divorce of parents, and of marital history.

He was a teamster, big thing, and he was just known for his anger and his hostility and getting things done.

I wanted to say to you today that while I seem pretty happy, there was a time in my life I was just very bitter, very angry.

And there's really, now that I think about it, not too many reasons to have been bitter at my father.

My dad got hit by a train when he was 7 years old.

That doesn't do too much for your physical body or the way you relate to people.

Maybe you've been around someone that's had a head injury and they have a hard time concentrating and all those different things.

And I didn't really know that, but growing up my father and I became estranged.

I have 3 daughters, I mean 2 daughters and 1 son now, and I want to be close to them all the way through.

I know I'm going to probably screw something up.

But I want to be close to them because I know what can happen when bitterness comes in and it's not dealt with.

I can remember of 16 years old finally coming to the conclusion that my dad and I were just not going to be getting along and I can remember telling him 1 day in the car, dad I can see that you're not happy about life.

You're just a miserable angry person and you happen to be a minister too and that must just be terrible.

Dad looked at me and he just dismissed it.

Peers? Who?

I mean, in the last couple days we've talked.

We've talked about God, who, our first time together, and we discovered that God is there.

No matter how despicable and unruly we are, perhaps like Sam, the man we talked about, he, in each of us there is this desire to do what's right.

It's a knowledge of what's right and wrong.

I mean, even if you have 2 atheists walking down the street and 1 hits 1 in the mouth, you know, the 1 that got hit in the mouth kind of thinks that's wrong.

So he has instilled in us this right and wrong and preferring the right over and against the wrong.

And then secondly we learned in that talk that he cares for us and he knows what's happening.

And then in our second time together we looked at friends or rather we looked at what we look at the second time parents how and we talked about how significant these relationships are with our parents if we we don't have a relationship with God where we're in trouble We don't have a healthy relationship with our parents.

And sometimes parents are just unhealthy toxic individuals you never can get along with ever.

But from your side of the equation you can forgive.

You can you can move through bitterness and different things.

You may have to set up some boundaries and different things afterward, but you don't need to be ruled by what they do.

That text that saved my life in Ezekiel, considering and considering, seeing, considering, but not doing likewise.

How many of you were just here for the first time today?

Oh man, guys are going to have to go to, what is it?

Audioverse.org if you want to know what's happening.

You'll think maybe I'm a little tangile or perhaps even a schizophrenic today, so please get the other messages.

Alright, so today we're gonna talk about friendships.

And you know when I became a Christian I started to change.

And I'm a Christian now but I would say to you I'm still becoming a Christian.

It's a relationship we have that's growing and it's not a static thing.

And so for me I'm always learning more things about why I'm not like Christ and how I could you know you look at Christ and you're like oh man I'm a disaster but I'm glad he loves me you know what I mean so I'm not saying I'm at the end of the road but when I became a Christian my whole idea about friendships began to change it started kind of before because I was more and more made aware of my un-Christ likeness.

Even before I became a Christian, this happened.

I remember working, like I said before, as I shared my testimony, I went through school as a nurse, and I got through, and I was working there in the hospital and taking care of different people.

And I was basically an unkind, bitter person.

I had all kinds of friends, but I really, they were all acerbic and the punchline was always kind of mean.

And so I remember 1 day this lady came in and she was a lady of the night.

She came to the emergency department and there she was.

She had the smell of alcohol on her breath, and I went in to talk with her, and she had children with her, a couple children with her that had different last names.

And so I was already, you know, having this feeling that, you know, I could say something mean or think thoughts that were mean.

She said, well my child has a fever, and this and that, and the other, and I said to her kind of sarcastically, well, have you considered Tylenol?

And the way I said it, when someone is already slightly inebriated and compromised, It just set the lady off.

And then, you can fill in the blanks, she just went to town, man.

And she just threw all costs into the wind and she just, I mean, it was so blue in the room, I don't think any of the other primary colors would have shown up.

I mean it was just, and then bang, she kicks me.

So the head nurse comes in and says, Don, I think you may have compromised the patient-nurse relationship here.

And I said, I think you're probably right.

So I would like to put you on something else.

I said, that is definitely okay-dokay with me.

So I go down the hall and you know and of course all the nurses are like yeah that lady and this and that they're all telling me that what she did you know sees this and that and the other and by the way she's a prostitute and all that and they were all talking about and everybody was like confirming that what I've done and how I behaved was okay.

But I was just kinda convicted that this is kinda was not right.

You know, so I go home, not yet a Christian but this is just before I you know that other lady that you heard about the first day died and it was, you know, it's still kind of that time.

I go, I'm thinking about this and that night I go home and I just, I'm just kind of, it just comes back and I go, man, You know, if I saw that lady again, if it was possible I saw that lady again, you know, I'd probably have to tell her I was sorry, which I don't want to do, but I probably would.

I went back the next day, go in, go in to see the first patient, open the door.

And she looks right at me and she starts swearing again.

And I said, you know what, I'm really, I was amazed.

I wasn't willing to admit that God did it, but I said, you know what, I'm really glad that I ran into you again because I just wanted to tell you, I mean someone else can give you the, in a silly shot, but I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry about what happened.

She looked at me, and she started to cry.

She said to me, very few people in my whole life have ever told me I'm sorry.

And I think he went to here, to this school, to medical school, but like so many people, even in health professions, he had lost his vision of Adventism, of Christianity, and he basically was, you know, not believing in God and all these other different things.

And I was taking care 1 day of this other guy.

And of course, if you've taken care of sickle cell patients, you know they need a lot of fluids and they need pain medication.

And this guy came in and I haven't quite put that all together.

I was relatively new with taking care of sickle cell patients, and so I thought he was malingering and perhaps wanted some narcotics and different things and everything.

And so he asked me for a drink and I was like, I'm not going to get you a drink, I'm not getting you this and that and the other, and this guy heard me.

And he came to me and he goes, don't you know the Bible says that if anyone asks you for a drink, you should give it to them?

Now this guy was the most unsavory clinician you'd ever work with.

He was just rude, crude, all these things.

I had never heard him ever mention anything about the Bible, but here he was bringing the Bible out.

And I was like, yeah, so I got the guy a drink.

So these kind of things were happening even in my benumbed state.

But there's another reason my friendships changed and this is why.

I began to see, as I looked at my friends, what was happening in their lives.

I had a good friend named Lance and he liked to smoke things that were grown.

And he always said this was part of his vegetarian lifestyle, you know.

He was really kind of a twisted and confused individual.

Although, at that time, I thought he was quite profound.

And I was like, look what's happened, look what happened to my friend.

And then several other people, the same thing was happening to them.

And then I went to Chicago, I was working with a bunch of my friends in Chicago.

I was dodging in and out and I went there and I was talking to all these friends and these friends were there they were we all had something in common we were all ministers sons actually seventh-day Adventist ministers sons we all didn't believe in God anymore we were all miserable and angry and just didn't want to act like we were so we're trying to fool ourselves and it was amazing 5 of us some were about my age a couple younger and then the guy that was our crew manager, he was in his 60s.

And all of them were, We would go to the clubs, we would be at that whole scene, we were doing this and we were just, you know, you know, acting like we were really cool.

But when I got alone with these guys, you know, the 2 things that would come up number 1 they would talk about why they didn't believe in God but then they would talk about how they were angry at their dad and guess what I saw I didn't realize it then but God was playing in my mind If you continue in this way and your relationships are going this way, your friends are all bitter like you and you're gonna be bitter at 25, at 30, at 35, at 40, at 65, you're just gonna be a wreck your whole life and I could tell you the stories they were telling me but I don't have time.

Back to Normal

It's been good to be here in Loma Linda and talk about relationships.

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Series

Relationships Week 2006

Courtship Question and Answer Session

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Phil Mills: Preparation for a Happy Marriage

Courtship Question and Answer Session

41m

Love and Marriage

1h 4m

Practical

Surviving & Thriving in a Spiritually Mismatched Marriage

1h 18m

ABC's of Prayer

8-All This and Heaven Too

41m

Responsibility in Communication

49m

Balanced Living

Creating Connections Part 2

15m

The Theology of Trauma: God’s Radical Response to the Mistreatment of His Children

49m

Broken but Bonded

46m

Habits that Last

05 Habits that Last

54m

Family Health

A More Beautiful Story- Christ Our Editor

48m

Sound Doctrine