Jesus Christ and the Möbius Strip②

 

This Book is dedicated to My God, Lord Jesus Christ　And　My Beloved Wife Sachine

 

Jesus continued: There was a man who had two sons.The younger one said to his father, `Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he devided his property between them.

 

Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that country, and he began to be in need.So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sebt him to his fields to feed pigs.He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

 

When he came to his senses, he said, `How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare,and here Iam starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

 

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

 

The son said to him, `Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

 

But he said to his servants, `Quick!bring the best robe and put it on him.Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.Bring the fattened calf and kill it.Let’t have a feast and celebrate.For this son of mine was dead and is alive again;he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

 

Meanwhile, the older son was in the field.When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.So called one of the servants and asked him what was going on.`Your brother has come,’he replied,`and your father has killed the fattended calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

 

The older brother became angry and refused to go in.So his father went out and pleaded with him.

 

But he answered his father,`Look!All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders.Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

 

`My son,’the father said,`you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’

 

           　　　　 ＜Homecoming of the prodigal son＞ (Luke 15:11～32)

 

I’m going to write a story about what has happened until today since I met the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

I could give it a long title: `how a stubborn skeptist came to believe in Jesus Christ as God, the Lord.’

 

－Skeptist refers to somebody who is extremely suspicious , even about obvious matters.

 

First of all, I’d like to talk about my career.

 

I want to tell you what kind of person I had been before making a vow to live in the Lord Jesus Christ.－That person is already dead anyway…

 

I am a psychiatric doctor, but I went through twists and turns before taking this profession.

 

I learned the Bible while I was going to a catholic missionary middle and high school for 6 years, but it meant nothing to me.

 

－I considered the Bible as absurd fictive story.

 

My reports for the Bible class were always blank papers; I always got D-grade.

 

At that time, even though I believed Jesus to be a real historical figure, he was nothing but a human being, symbol of the miserable underpriviledged people slaughtered by the social authority.

 

I couldn’t understand at all why Jesus was called `God or `Lord’.

 

I was already a selfish and arrogant boy when I was in elementary school, looking down on everybody just because I had good school grades.

 

This tendency of my character spurred more and more after middle school, I didn’t have a single friend at high school; I wouldn’t join after-school activities set as duty for students.

 

－I was a troublesome case for teachers.

 

Nevertheless, I was always studying hard without doing anything else; having no friends meant nothing to me.

 

I was convinced that school grades alone help you join the elite of society.－My character was already broken at this point.

 

I enrolled Kyoto University, faculty of medicine, right away after finishing high school.

 

Did I wish to help suffering people as a doctor? －No! I just wanted to become one of the elites.

 

From then, my life was going to fall down.

 

It was what is called `burn-out syndrome’.－I was not interested in anything, totally depressed.

 

At the same time, I began to feel anxiety and fear very frequently for no reasons.

 

－All of a sudden, I got so scared that I breathed too quickly and too deeply.This abnormal breathing is known as hyperventilation.It made me as if I had not been breathing enough and as if I had been choked, going to die on the spot.

 

－That was the onset of my panic disorder.

 

Those panic attacks started just after enrolling the university.I was transported many times to the hospital by an ambulance.

 

My mental disease, however, was not limited to panic attacks: it was accompanied by weird hypochondriac symptoms.

 

For example, I thought, `I’m so short of breath.That must be some kind of serious sickness.I must have a hole on the lung. Perhaps, I must have a lot of fluid around the heart.It must be pressing the heart…’

 

－I used to invent imaginary sicknesses one after another.

 

I also used to have innumerable kinds of abnormal perceptions: my head felt like ballooning infinitely, length of the both legs felt different, my esophagus felt closed, it felt as though dusts had been always stored up in my eyes, and so on and on…

 

And finally…I ended up not knowing at all how to breathe.

 

I was always breathing in a weird manner: you couldn’t have known if I was breathing or making a sigh.

 

I was struggling to learn the `correct’ manner of breathing everyday with trial and error.

 

My mental desease was as well accompanied by obsessional ideas and compulsive acts. Those were bothersome trivial thoughts and meaningless acts.

 

I thought sometimes that I might have done something inappropriate in public: touching women’s private parts for example. －Even though I didn’t do such a thing, I couldn’t help thinking of it.

 

I repeatedly washed my hands to get rid of dirt from them; I kept on checking the door to make sure that it was closed. －I did know that it was absurd, but I couldn’t help repeating these acts.

 

I had also depression and writer’s cramp.

 

Nevertheless, I had something that kept me from complete nervous breakdown. －It was club activities.

 

I didn’t feel anxiety or fear only while I was concentrating on tennis and on tough trainings.

 

Even with my broken personality, panic attacks and psychotic symptoms, I managed to graduate from university.But I was at a loss about what kind of doctor I could be. －That was the natural consequence of my lacking motivation to become a doctor.

 

However, I thought as follows.

 

－`I have a mental desease.So I’ll never be a psychiatric doctor.I’d better take a tough work just as tennis saved me.Ok!I’m gonna be a surgeon!’

 

I tried to hide away my own weakness.

 

After all, I chose to be a urologist, without enough courage to be a general surgeon.Urology refers to surgery of the urinary tract.

 

But it was not easy to be a doctor in surgical fields.

 

I could be an assistant operator with no problem but when I had to be an operator in charge, seized by strong anxiety and fear, I felt like getting those panic attacks.

 

When I tried to control it, my mind went blank with my hands trembling terribly.I couldn’t possibly operate on the patient.

 

In the meanwhile, I met a young woman who supported me so I got enough courage to accomplish operations.She was a nurse working in the same ward.

 

－I was completely dependent on her.

 

My abnormal dependence on women became obvious at that time and it was to take root inside me for decades.

 

After 3 years, I began to think of marring her.

 

I reluctantly told it to my parents.I had no choice since I couldn’t work without her support.Yet why reluctantly? －It was because my parents were apparently against our marriage, and above all, because I was looking down on her as somebody who didn’t deserve me.

 

As a consequence, our relationship broke up.

 

On fully understanding my weak-mindedness, she walked out of my life with her own decision.

 

Having lost the only object to depend on, the same kind of anxiety and fear as before started again to torture me, making it impossible to perform operations.

 

Nevertheless, the director of the department at that time offered me as many cases as possible, trying to get me stand on my own.

 

But I always made plausible excuses to stay on the assistant’s side.

 

It was around that time that I began to study French whenever I had free time.I was studying it at home of course, but I ended up studying it in secret at the medical office during working time.

 

I made the first encounter with the French language, back in middle school days.

 

Even though I was getting more and more isolated, I stood aloof from the other classmates.I felt so lonely that I was seeking a place to stay on my own, in a paradoxical manner.

 

－First of all, by means of being at the top with school grades, among the students of the same year.

 

－Secondarily, by means of escaping from reality into the world of literature.

 

I was already flattered by myself that I was a kind of expert in literature, at the age of 14.

 

Above all, the French literature was my favorate.I was deeply enchanted by its decadant and immoral atmosphere.

 

My longing for it became so strong that I wanted to read French novels in their original language.－This is the reason why I began to study French by myself.

 

I thought that I was enjoying the fragrant world of the French literature while the other mediocre students were struggling with English.

 

`I surely belong to a kind of aristocracy…’

 

－Wrong self-esteem was pushing my arrogance to an extravagant point.

 

Facing the fact that I was not only qualified as a doctor but also as a human, I slipped in time back to adolescence, without knowing it.

 

－`Why should a noble person like me work as a doctor?That’s a humble job.I’m gonna be a professor of the French literatrure!!’

 

That looked like an inspiration to make a breakthrough out of this occluded world and to open up infinite possibilities.

 

It was nothing but escapism, indeed…

 

At the age of 28, I enrolled Keio University in Tokyo, majoring in the French literature.

 

I stayed in France for 1 year while in the university.

 

I got acquainted with students 10 years younger than me.

 

I got familiar with the mindset of liberal arts, namely, the basic attitude to think about problems without answer until the very dead-end.