Imagine, if you will, the boy going off to college. He is confused, determined, excited. He has been sent to save the school, but he finds that he has stumbled into a new freedom. Imagine the boy jumping on the bed, shouting to the dorm that he can think what he wants to think, feel what he wants to feel.

Imagine, then, the boy tracing out his thoughts, tracing each to each. His classes he selects for this purpose, to find the origins of his beliefs. Those that have clear origins, he begins to discard. He finds others like him, others raised to save others–others finding their way out. Together, they leave the churches and exult in their freedom (and rejoice in their bitterness). They are free.

But the freedom brings a calling. The freedom is a grace, and grace longs to be shared. He leads youth groups, and finds they he can be an extrovert when he needs to. He finds that he loves adolescents (perhaps because he was such a bad one). He continues to trace out his beliefs, and continues to discard them. Still, there are enough beliefs left for ministry.

He discovers that his melancholy is not mere introversion; it is depression. A kind friend’s father makes the diagnosis, prescribes meds. He wonders how long the friend’s father knew–all his life, or just this visit? But no matter. It can be fixed. It is fixed. But he cannot afford the pills, and his working class pride denies him the chance to ask for a handout, a handout that would surely be given. His parents are frightened and will not provide. Let him make do on his own.

Let him go off to seminary, without his pills in hand. Let him rejoice in his scholarship, not realizing–working class boy that he is–how little money, in fact, he has been given. Let a friend of a friend find him a job in a dying church, with a pastor who has lost his faith. Send him your congratulations, but do not call.