KNOWING HOW TO SIT ON A PROBLEM [M 1-2-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections On Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter: KNOWING HOW TO SIT ON A PROBLEM [M 1-2-23]

 

Quite a few years ago, in a different town, we had neighbors who owned and ran a restaurant. They were members of my church. One day Don told me of an experience the night before.

“I had closed up and just gotten home when those folks across the street called me in a panic and asked me to come over. I could hear all sorts of screaming and stuff in the background, so I ran right over.”

I knew the people across the street, but not well. They were an older couple of Asian heritage who’d had a baby late. The baby was now a teen.

That can be a problem. My friend, Bill Linneman, who was in a position to know, used to say, “Having a baby in your 40s isn’t so bad. Having a teen in your 60s, now that’s why you shouldn’t have a baby in your 40s.”

Don said, “I got there, and that girl was going crazy. She’d got into some kind of drugs at a party, they didn’t know what. You know how people say somebody was bouncing off the walls? She really was! She was screaming and running into walls and running into her parents and running into stuff and breaking it. It was clear she was going to get hurt. No possibility of talking to her… So I sat on her.”

Don was a big man. 6 feet two inches. Probably close to 300 pounds. That girl was probably about a foot shorter and 200 pounds lighter. It was a very effective method of subduing her, but…

“Weren’t you afraid you’d hurt her?” I asked. “Nah,” he said. “You’ve just got to know how to sit on a person. Besides,” he said, “when a person is like that, the first thing you’ve got to do is just get ‘em under control so they don’t get hurt. It’s only then you can talk sense.”

I didn’t ask how he knew the proper way to sit on a person, but I filed him away in my list of potential support people in case I ever needed to have somebody sat on.

As we try to deal with the problems of saving our environment, we are hampered by Christians who claim that it’s really no problem. That humans can do whatever they want to the earth because God has given us “dominion” over it, even said to “subdue” it. [Genesis 1:28] [1]

In the first place, of course, “dominion” and “subdue” are English translation words, from The King James translation, when such words were seen in the political context of “the absolute right of kings.” But even then, “dominion” did not mean “destroy,” nor did “subdue” mean
“abuse.”

If you have “dominion,” that means you have responsibility for care, not license for misuse. If you are to “subdue,” well, you have to know the right way to sit on the problem.

John Robert McFarland

1] Some of the same Christians add that it makes no difference if we destroy the earth because “Christ is coming soon” to end the world, anyway. I think I’ll get Don to sit on them.