HOW COMMON IS THE UNCOMMON! HOW EASY IT IS TO FALL OFF OUR STOOL, OR OUR MOUNTAIN!

HOW COMMON IS THE UNCOMMON!

HOW EASY IT IS TO FALL OFF OUR STOOL, OR OUR MOUNTAIN!

 

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© April 17, 2014

 

REFERENCE:

As many readers know, I am in the proofreading and editing stage in preparing my published works for TATE Publishing to re-release them in Second Editions. 

The segment shown here is taken from “Six Silent Killers” and deals specifically with passive defensive reckless abandon behavior.  It is shown here because ordinary people, good people, can get caught up in extraordinary circumstances, losing their moorings, and as they say, become history. 

Jim and Tammy Bakker represent such an example.  This is not presented to judge, but to remind the reader we are all vulnerable to deception and no deception more readily than self-deception.

 

JIM BAKKER’S LADDER IS GONE!

Irish poet William Butler Yeats writes, “Now that my ladder is gone, I must lie down where all ladders start, in the fowl rag and-bone shop of the heart.”

Some of us scale to great heights, only to avoid ever running into ourselves. But, there is a time when crashing reality cuts through the fog for many others, and they come face-to-face with their own humble selves as naked, exposed, and truly wretched beings.

It is a wonder we don’t have more compassion in our hearts for those that fall because everyone falls at some time in their lives, be it off a footstool or a mountain. Jim and Tammy Bakker were designed for falling off a footstool, but somehow found themselves falling off a mountain.

How such totally ordinary people could rise so high and fall so far is a telling index of our times. Their “Praise the Lord” (PTL) television club was a resounding success, largely due to its commonplace familiarity and genius for understanding what may broadly be called the spiritual or emotional life of individuals as ordinary people.

Jim Bakker possessed something that intellectuals scorn as “common con,” when it is actually an exceptional sensitivity to the heart of the lonely and lost, which includes most of us. He possessed antennae to troubled souls, something perfectly ordinary, empirical, and quasi-aesthetic. This gift entails the capacity for integrating a vast amalgam of constantly changing events—too many, too swift, and too intermingled to be caught and pinned down — as elements in a single pattern where simple prayer is the pragmatic answer.

Denomination, dogma, liturgical scripture, and even the Bible were not the common focus. Indeed, Bakker brought followers into his flock beyond Christianity. To be able to do this well seems to be a gift akin to that of the creative artist.

He gave the impression that he was directly acquainted with his listeners’ pain and texture of their lives, not just the sense of the chaotic flow of experience, but a highly developed discrimination of what matters most to the wounded. Above all this, he had an actual sense of what fits with what, what springs from what, what leads to what, how things seem to vary to different people, what the effect of such experience upon them may be, and what the result is likely to be in a concrete situation of the interplay of human beings and impersonal forces.

No, this was not the raving of a “common con.” Bakker demonstrated a sense for what is qualitative rather than quantitative, for what is specific rather than general in the lives of his listeners. Bakker epitomized a direct acquaintance with pain, distinct from a capacity for description of pain or calculation of what the pain might mean to a Freudian psychoanalyst or a social engineer. He presented no credentials as an expert. Nor did he attempt to present himself as beyond being flawed. He possessed what is sometimes called “natural wisdom” as opposed to scholarly erudition. What he possessed was an imaginative understanding, insight, perceptiveness, and intuition into the matter of ordinary lives of ordinary people.

With this practical wisdom, he demonstrated a capacity for synthesis rather than analysis. His troubles began when he tried to analyze his own success and, with it, his audience’s tolerance for his family’s flaunted, blatant, and escalating eccentricities.

Somewhere between the Bakker home and the homes of millions of Americans, Tammy’s mascara and war paint and Jim’s cherubic grin became diabolical. Essentially nice people in common with most, the Bakkers got caught in the war of ratings and the insatiable appetite for more glorious projects, which required more and more television dollars. Long before Jim’s sex escapade and scandal surfaced, the PTL club had become “show biz,” departing from its practical message and spiritual intent.

The PTL club became entertainment with a capital “E.” There is no way to substitute the perceptual gift, the capacity for taking in the total pattern of the human condition, or an understanding of the way in which things hang together—a talent which Bakker possessed, then neglected—and expect to stay on course.

When Bakker started listening to advisers with uncanny gifts for analysis and stopped using his natural wisdom, he embraced alien if not hostile forces. When that happened, the Bakkers commenced to behave like superstars with other people’s money. The mansions, the Mercedes, the elaborate vacations, Tammy’s shopping sprees—all became part of a growing scam that led to Jim’s dalliance with Jessica Hahn, or to reckless abandon passive defensiveness— “you can’t touch me!” When that came to dominate their lives and lifestyle, when that happened, the Bakkers became a “born again disaster.”

Jim Bakker forgot that his rise had little to do with him personally and everything to do with his acquaintance with the ghosts that haunt us all. Failure came from his resistance to what worked best for him and from ignoring it in favor of systematic verification—polls and ratings—and then becoming enamored of and overwhelmed by his own genius.

What happened to Jim Bakker could happen to anyone who climbs off the stool and starts trekking up the mountain oblivious to its obstacles if not its danger.