InSite and a more positive response

This is a mea culpa, of sorts -- a repentance for allowing the Good News of Jesus Christ, which Gospel Mission has been promoting for nearly 85 years, to get clouded with a political matter.

The CBC is running a feature today on the tenth anniversary of InSite, the supervised drug-injection facility in Vancouver. Initially, it was located in 327 Carrall Street, on the ground floor of the building that has housed Gospel Mission since the 1940s. That same site is now The Lord's Rain; I would call that a case of God redeeming an entire building -- bravo for the ironies He sends us! 

A CBC reporter called us a couple of weeks ago, asking if she could interview one of the proponents of InSite at The Lord’s Rain -- going “back to where it all began”, as it were. But we turned her down, and in the process gave her an earful about our opposition to the facility and its concept. Certainly, we've made no secret of our feelings about the facility.

She called me yesterday, asking for our statement on the opposition to it. Barry, Janet and I had come up with an agreed-on message: that we see no good in InSite and that the money spent on the facility would have been better spent on recovery programs and detox facilities. That's the message I delivered to her.

But on reflection, I realize that I missed an opportunity to say not what we’re against, but what we are for. 

(I have to be careful here, lest I appear to be throwing Barry and Janet under the bus: I did help craft the message and none of us raised this point at the time; but, while I can't speak for them, I believe that, if any of us had raised it, we would have agreed on it.)

So for the record, what are we for?

•          We are for lives turning around
•          We are for second chances
•          We are for healing (not just reducing harm but eliminating it)
•          We are for hope
•          We are for Christ, because it’s in Him – and only Him – that all these things can be achieved.

Anything that doesn’t provide for that is in opposition.  (There’s no shortage of things to be against these days: Jesus gives us a focus on something to be for.)

There are many things that cannot be fixed quickly and can’t be fixed at all, using human strength, but with Jesus, anything is possible. Jesus is the one-size-fits-all solution because He is exactly what every one of us needs to address our unique situation. Whether it’s drug addiction, mental illness, poverty, bad decisions leading to bad situations; even a general emptiness in life – the feeling that something is missing – He is the only Way.

Our job is to promote that message: a positive message – not the negative one of what we’re against.

The Lord’s Rain has accomplished a lot because of that positive message and God’s Will for people to know His Son and be healed of all things.

And that's what we're for.

People Moving Forward ... and a contest

It's hard to believe it's almost quarter-past 2013 -- and harder still to believe it's spring, with snow penning in my mother-in-law in Toronto and the weather here (at least, this past Wednesday, as I started to write this) reminding one of the Two Ronnies gag: "today's weather will be hot in Stott, cool in Goule, choking in Woking ... and those living in Lissing Down are advised to carry an umbrella." And for those coming into The Lord's Rain, the hot showers and/or coffee have been a relief and a blessing.

 

It was similarly awful weather a couple of weeks ago, when I accompanied Frank to OnSite. OnSite is the cousin of InSite, the "safe" drug-injection facility on the Downtown East Side, where nurses keep vigil over people as they shoot up their drug(s) of choice. If someone feels they finally want to take a crack (pun intended) at kicking the habit, they can go across the foyer to OnSite, to see if they have any beds available. Frank has been trying to beat his addiction for years, so this was his latest attempt. I offered to walk there with him and give him moral support. It was 8:30 when we talked and OnSite didn't open until 10, so I told Frank I'd meet him at The Lord's Rain at quarter-to and we'd walk up together. I had a twofold reason: supporting Frank, also to see what was inside the place. As I've expressed before, I'm skeptical of the "harm-reduction" approach, so even a cursory look would be instructive. 

 

It was a good sign when Frank came back to The Lord's Rain at 9:30 -- he was serious. We walked up and stood in line: other addicts, waiting to get their hit. A couple of them started banging on the window around 9:58 (the slight peevishness shown when the coffee isn't quite ready at The Lord's Rain is positively virtuous patience by comparison) and when the door finally opened, they all surged through and were directed to a door leading to the injection rooms. When Frank said he wanted to go to OnSite, he was sent to another counter. Two people ahead of him were told to "come back tomorrow," which was not a good sign; Frank went up and was told the same. I hazarded a question. "What treatment method do you use here?" "Oh, a number of things," was the reply, "like acupuncture, meditation, whatever the client thinks will work." "Does anyone help them make that decision?" "Oh, yes: we have counsellors here."

 

I didn't ask anything more, because I was afraid they might think I was spying and that might have affected Frank's situation, so I just nodded and Frank and I left. We agreed to meet there the next day, just before 10.

 

Frank was there before I was and this time I stayed outside while he went in. There was a curtain over the window looking into the OnSite reception area, but I found an opening and peered through. It gave me a good view of the front desk and I saw Frank wait in line, then step up. A few words were exchanged, and then he turned away and went to a different part of the building and through a door. Had he gotten lucky? I waited another 10 minutes as the rain intensified. A guy standing next to the door was calling out, "jib-jib-jib!" -- "jib" is the street term for crystal meth, and I couldn't tell whether he was selling or looking to buy. Finally, when Frank didn't come out, I squelched away, figuring he had gotten in.

 

That was Thursday. The following Tuesday, Frank was back at The Lord's Rain. "What happened?" I asked. "They said, 'come back tomorrow'." "Did you?" "No." He didn't explain where he went when he went through that other door.

 

I haven't seen Frank since. It strikes me that that particular facility is built on the premise that drug addicts have freedom of choice: that they can choose to come off the stuff, and until they do, the "clean" shooting gallery will keep them alive. Then, when they make that decision that enough's enough, there's a facility to help them. On top of that, the treatment facility gives them a choice as to how to be treated.

 

But doesn't being an addict, by definition, mean that they've surrendered freedom of choice? Anchor House, a treatment facility I visited in Brooklyn in 2007, recognizes that, and the house rules are strict. Pastor Roger Jamison took me around the residential portion. In one room, one of the beds wasn't properly made. "This room is a freakin' mess!" he growled at the man sitting at a desk, reading a Bible. "Get this place cleaned up!" The man jumped-to, right away. In another, there was some artwork on the walls that might best be described as bizarre. "What do you make of that?" Roger asked. "Demonic," I said. I'm not one to look for a demon behind every bush (largely because if you do that, you could miss the ram in the bush), but there was little mistaking it in this case. Roger got on his walkie-talkie. "Can you tell (so-and-so) I want to see him in my office?" Roger extends tough love -- and discipline the residents never had while growing up. The Anchor House premise is that people can get well and don't have to be consigned forever to the life of the addict, but they have no freedom of choice at that point. Eventually, though, as they recover, they get back their freedom of choice, along with their families and their lives. (By the way, the nightly Word-and-Worship service ROCKS!)

 

Do I believe addicts should be forced into recovery? I'm not so sure. Part of me still feels that it has to begin with the person wanting to break out of that existence, and that we have to be ready to support him or her not just with treatment plans but with prayer and encouragement so they know that a better life is not only desirable, it's possible.

 

(How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one - but the light bulb has to truly want to change!)

 

But the Anchor House experience makes me wonder. As I recall, Anchor House residents are generally people who've been arrested for crimes and are given the choice of the program or jail. Hobson's Choice, really.

 

What I do know is, we as a society can do a whole lot better at helping people who have crashed and burned -- like those on the DTES -- to regain their lives; and I don't think you accomplish that by surrounding them of ways of making the cycle easier -- or "safer". I believe that removes the hope that they can ever be anything but drug addicts. Mind you, if enough people step up to the plate and instill hope in these individuals, you could have a safe injection site on every corner and they'd all be empty.

 

Selah.

 

As for Frank, it's hard to say: he may turn up again; he may try to get into Union Gospel's program. He's been beaten up so much by his addiction -- not to mention his family and himself -- who knows how many more knocks he can take?

 

***

We've been watching others going through their struggles to get clean and free. Michael is planning to go to Day-tox -- another program aimed at helping people get off their substances. Mike's is mainly alcohol, and at age 41, he has an inflamed pancreas and liver trouble -- and some other symptoms he described to me the other day sound a lot like what I went through when my gall bladder finally said no mas! to the fat and salt I'd been loading-up. He suffered a broken collarbone a while back, and the doctors decided not to repair it surgically: they feel that, because he's an alcoholic, there's too much danger that he could fall, re-break the bone, and get an infection. It's not the first time I've heard of that medical decision, but for Mike, it means constant pain and a bone that sticks up crazily beside his shoulder.

 

However, it was also a wake-up call to get serious about recovery. He's also looking into Wagner Hills Farm, which is a Scripture-based recovery program in the Fraser Valley. Stay tuned, and keep him in prayer, as well.

 

Marty is someone else trying to reclaim his life. He was suspended from his job as a teacher for drug use, and a number of other life challenges also took their toll. It's hard to say how well he has the habit under control now, but he's still determined to turn things around. "I thought I could do construction," he told me the other day, "but I'm way outta shape and that's a young man's job. But teaching is what I love." He's putting out feelers to teach ESL or adult literacy around the DTES. We've seen him quite ill, and we've seen him at his best: through it all, he does have a ready laugh (some of my more obscure one-liners in my sermons might go over everyone else's heads, but I can always count on Marty to crack up). We pull for everyone who comes into The Lord's Rain, but one can't help but have extra-high hopes for Marty.

 

And then there's Herbie. Bad knees -- and painkillers -- pretty much shot down his career as a plumber, but over the past year and a half, he's been working hard at building his academic credits. He's setting his sights on social work, and has been learning a lot just by volunteering at The Lord's Rain. Tuesday morning, I gave him directions on how to take SkyTrain to Douglas College in New Westminster, so he could personally hand in his application for courses. He still has to line up grants and scholarships through the various options available on the DTES, but he is a wonderful example of dogged determination and I have no doubt he'll succeed.

 

The trick is to shut out the voices that say, "you can't" -- and sadly, there are plenty of those around the DTES, physical voices as well as endless yammering in one's own head. People can learn from the example of a fellow I heard from this morning. Stu (not his real name) has quite a testimony, which includes a "turnaround encounter" with Jesus Christ, just as he was about to take that Final Step off the Lion's Gate Bridge several years ago. A couple of workplace injuries left him in a great deal of pain and hobbling around, but he was determined to be useful. But there were those voices -- "you can't" -- and finally, Stu simply separated himself from the area. Now, he's been building up a small business doing renovations and installations, and his past is exactly where it belongs: passed.

 

My former employers at the BC Electric Railway Company unveiled a strategic plan just over a year ago, called "Moving Forward": a detailed description of the improvements needed to the region's integrated transportation system. It also -- and this is the really important part -- counted the cost. I think about that expression when I think of the guys around The Lord's Rain who are so determined to bust out of the cycle of poverty and addiction -- especially the part about counting the cost. In many ways, the "cost" involves pushing through pain and frustration, and also giving up that notion of free will, at least until they're free enough to have a will.

 

***

I've mentioned this before: there is an amazing amount of creative talent on the Downtown East Side. A fellow named Dale astonished us one night with his guitar-playing. We had a guest worship leader who sang and played the guitar. After the service, Dale came up and shyly asked if he could try the guitar. Sure, she said. We continued cleaning up, and suddenly, there came the familiar riffs from "Taking Care of Business". Dale, it turned out, was a brilliant rock guitarist, and for a few more weeks, our cleanup time was accompanied by his playing. He never played outside that very private situation. We contemplated getting him a guitar, but because he was homeless and his shopping cart would often get stolen, we figured that wouldn't be a good idea.

 

(Dale was one of the inspirations for The Lord's Rain. Before just about every service, he would make a bee-line for the laundry tubs at the back of the Mission and wash himself, drying his hair with a dish cloth. Ironically, he has never taken a shower at The Lord's Rain.)

 

But there are also many brilliant artists -- many of them Native, who draw and paint wonderful images and scenes. So over the next few weeks, we're hoping to tap that talent with a contest: design a logo for The Lord's Rain. This is Pastor Janet's brainchild, and the submission deadline is April 30 -- the 5th anniversary of the opening of The Lord's Rain. A panel of judges will choose the winner, and the winning design will go on letterhead and signage and anything else appropriate. Some great sponsors have donated prizes, too: a home-made birdhouse, courtesy Janet's uncle, a gift certificate to Army and Navy, and a prize pack from the Vancouver Canadians baseball club.

 

By the way, if you'd like to see some examples of this creative talent, check out www.indianartfromtheedge.com -- it's a project by Marylee Stephenson, specifically to promote and sell work by DTES aboriginal artists, many of whom we know personally at The Lord's Rain. I've always thought their work was undervalued, and now, someone is taking steps to fix that.

 

InSite - reminding us of the job at hand

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that InSite -- the "supervised" drug injection facility on the Downtown East Side -- should continue to receive public funds on the grounds that drug addicts have the "right" to shoot up in a healthy environment.

Once again in this country, "rights" has trumped "right". InSite has been around for eight years, and despite its claims to having reduced the infection rate of HIV/AIDS, there are some inescapable facts:

• people are still doing drugs, many of them openly on the streets or in alleys
• there is still a "market" for drugs, because those coming into InSite had to have acquired them from someplace
• women are still selling their bodies for drug money and often getting killed in the process
• street crime has grown worse over that time
• gang activity -- fuelled by the drug trade -- has also grown worse over that time
• police are increasingly frustrated at not being able to enforce the laws that are supposed to protect people (get a cop talking about InSite and you'll see a completely different picture than the one put forward by the proponents)

Certainly, the idea that someone should be able to inject drugs with a clean needle in a more-or-less sterile environment is "good", but as we so often see, "good" is the enemy of "best". As you'll see from the Province article, the federal government argued eloquently about the mixed messages InSite sends. We try to tell people that it's bad to do drugs, then we turn around and enable it. The subliminal message from society -- as represented by certain "experts" and various levels of the court system -- is, "we really don't care if you go through life as a drugged-out zombie: that's your 'choice' and we won't take that away from you".

This just in: drugs have already taken away that freedom. You look at someone groping around the streets and alleys, looking for a grain of crack cocaine to smoke, fumbling to find a vein with a needle, or sidling up to someone passing through with the "I-just-got-a-job-in-Fort-McMurray-but-I-need-to-get-enough-money-for-the-bus" line and tell me how capable they are of making a wise "choice".

This is all in the name of "harm reduction", and as I've said before, Jesus is not into harm reduction: He's into harm elimination. The law of His time on earth banished the "woman with the issue of blood" in the name of harm reduction. Jesus turned around and healed her. Same with lepers and demonized people. So much of the Downtown East Side resembles a leper colony or Samaria. But the healing has to begin with the hope that healing is possible. The woman with the issue wouldn't have put her life on the line -- literally -- to touch the hem of Jesus' garment if she didn't have a glimmer of hope that it would work when spending her life savings on medical treatment had failed. Statements like the remark by then mayor Sam Sullivan to the effect that, while addicts want to be clean, he'd like to get up and walk out of his wheelchair, but that's not going to happen either (emphasis mine), serve to stomp that hope into ashes.

But wailing and gnashing teeth that the law is an ass won't do. The ruling simply strengthens our resolve to continue preaching the Gospel -- and with it, Hope -- to the people we serve on the Downtown East Side. Let them know that a life without drugs, poverty and despair is not some vague promise in a book, but something mandated of God and, in fact, attainable. Drugs, poverty and despair are not really the problems -- in fact, as a student from Columbia Bible College pointed out recently at the Mission, for many people, they're the solution. The problems that lead to that solution are deeper issues that only God, through Jesus Christ, can identify, expose and heal, and they involve turning to Him and letting Him do His thing. That way, people on the DTES can become a generation of Overcomers, which could be far more dangerous to The Man than a neighbourhood full of addicts.

Now that I think of it and run it through the filter of seeking God and His glory in all things, the court ruling isn't so bad, at that. It reminds us that The Man -- the legal system, social-service programs and health-care "professionals" -- cannot be relied on to save people. Only God can do that -- just as Jesus told Martha after her brother Lazarus had died, "you will see the Father glorified". So while there is still daylight, we have to keep working hard to remind people that God can be glorified in any situation -- even (or especially) in the midst of Canada's Worst Postal Code.

Shouldn't do it to a dog ...

The outrage du jour in British Columbia lately has been the slaughter of sled dogs by a sled-dog tour operator in Whistler. Apparently, these dogs were deemed expendable when the company experienced a downturn after the initial post-Olympics surge in business.

It's a horrifying case, both in and of itself and also in the exercise in "rush to judgment". There's been this outpouring of anger -- including death threats -- against the company, the person who did the killing (who's just been granted worker's compensation benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder) and the Olympic games; there's even been a Facebook page set up (oooh! a Facebook page! Now they're really in trouble!)

Interestingly, none of this outrage seems to be directed at the general public - the tourists who created a perceived demand for this service in the first place. It's a little like demanding Big Macs and Quarter-Pounders and then complaining that the South American forests have been destroyed to increase beef cattle lands.

Mind you, God is not impressed, either: A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. (Proverbs 12:10 KJV)

(Reading this, Temple Grandin is definitely more in line with the will of God than most animal-rights activists: reputedly, one of her key observations about cattle management was that in dying, animals provide us with food, so we have to treat them with respect while they're alive. But I digress ...)

But one of the sidebars to this outrage has been people pointing to the lack of outrage when it comes to inhumane efforts against people -- like the deaths of 21 children who were under the care of the Ministry of Children and Families. The province's Child Advocate identified those, and I can tell you, there wasn't anywhere near the public outcry over that than there has been over the dogs.

And let me add this to the mix: where is the outrage over the human condition on Vancouver's Skid Road? Why have so many Christians, who are called to reach out to the poor and destitute, abrogated that responsibility and handed it off to a vast socio-political experiment in not-so-benign neglect? Solutions like harm-reduction and mixing affordable and market housing run counter to the will of God:

• mixed-use housing is not a bad idea, per se, but as I pointed out in my previous post, it keeps drug addicts in the very area where their problems are all around them. They need to move -- like Abram was instructed by God -- to a different place, so they can move towards the promise God as for them
• (it also provides developers an excellent opportunity to promise an affordable housing component in their plans and then, when sales go sideways -- as happened with Olympic Village -- cry poverty and demand to be released from their promise)
• as I've said numerous times before, Jesus was not into harm reduction; He was (and still is) into harm elimination -- total healing, not just band-aids
• drug advocates rail that the US "War on Drugs" has been a failure, but the peace treaty with drugs we have in this society has led to the problems on Skid Road today -- the reason why people are terrified of walking through the area between Chinatown and Gastown. Neither works, because of the spirit behind them: the spirit of a "quick fix".
• The US approach is to try to drop the Monty Python 16-ton weight on the drug industry;
• the approach we see in Canada is to make life easier for the addicts: lots of social housing, clean needles and a "safe place to shoot up";
• the court system fails to back up law enforcement officers;
• the news media glamorize pushers by publicizing the dollar value of drug seizures and printing photos of gang leaders who look like they belong more in GQ than Hotel Crowbar

The devil provides quick fixes; God provides solutions.

God's solution involves recognizing that drug addicts and the mentally ill are fallen human beings like all of us -- everyone has a different response mechanism and theirs has involved a more spectacular crash. It's the duty before God for all of us to reach out with love and hope that overpower the need for the drugs.

I'm not just talking about the addicts. I grieve for the dealers and enforcers and lookouts I see on the street outside Gospel Mission: lurking about in their hoodies, talking on cell phones, swaggering back and forth looking as tough as they can, talking among themselves as if they're old friends, but you know deep down, none of them trusts the others. What will their lives be like in 5, 10, 20 years -- if they're still alive? Believe it or not, we as Christians have a duty to reach out to them, too.

But where is the outrage? Do we really care more for sled dogs than for other humans? Jesus told us there'd be days like these -- when "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matt. 24:12 KJV) -- as the world awaits His return.

Or is this lack of outrage really because deep down, we're convicted that -- to use Walt Kelly's overworked line from Pogo -- we have met the enemy and he is us?

The real picture of the DTES

A couple of weeks ago at Westpointe, I shared the story of Davona, the young woman who'd been a "fixture" for a while at The Lord's Rain but who recently had a baby: a confirmation that, even as we're surrounded by the death and despair on the Downtown East Side, God still wants LIFE to show forth and win out. Pastor Jon Boyd remarked afterwards that you hardly ever hear about good news out of the area -- the media and the activists who command attention know that bad news sells and good news is no news.

I may be a little late to the party with this one, but I discovered a TV series over the weeend that is the most realistic portrayal of the DTES I've seen in the six-plus years I've been ministering in the area. Actually, my mother-in-law in Toronto had been talking it up for some time: "The Beat", airing on OLN Saturdays at 10PM and Sundays at 9pm (Eastern), or online at http://www.oln.ca/details.php?id=99.

It's a reality show, focusing on Vancouver Police patrolling the Downtown East Side, dealing with the drug addicts and dealers, the prostitutes and the others generally labelled "street people". And rather than serving up the usual doom-and-despair that the popmedia give us about the DTES, I actually got a pretty good feeling from watching it. It has a very positive tone, showing police as compassionate individuals who truly care about the people they encounter on the DTES.

Talk about against-the-grain thinking!

I was reminded of the son of a friend of mine who's been on the VPD force for just about a year now, and whose hope has been to be assigned to the DTES.

The popmedia portrayal -- egged on by those "activists" -- is generally that cops are violent psychopaths who abuse poor, helpless vulnerable people. Of course, that's the image that gets the headline and the 40-second video clip. (Funny how scenes of police stopping to chat with a street person, helping them if they're lying on the street, or just keeping drug dealers off-balance, never seem to get "caught on tape".)

The episodes I caught last night went against-the-grain in another way: giving voice to the utter disdain the police have for Vancouver's "safe injection site". Many of you already know how I feel about it. It's a human experiment that has failed miserably, as evidenced by the fact that the situation of drugs, crime, homelessness and poverty has grown worse since InSite opened. A stat that came out from the police in last night's show was that, in 2001, the needle-exchange program dealt out about 180,000 needles; by 2009, that figure had ballooned to 3-million. Yet, as one of the cops said, getting anyone in the mainstream media to report a "contrarian" viewpoint is nearly impossible.

But it's like the little kid in "The Emperor's New Clothes": everyone's so blinded by the flash and glare of the myth that they can't see the truth. I've often said that Jesus is not about "harm reduction": He's about harm elimination. The solution involves getting people off drugs, rather than making it "healthier" for them, and you start by instilling the Hope of Christ in their lives. Things like InSite and needle exchanges make our jobs a lot tougher. But with God, nothing is impossible, and that's the good news.

(We note that the last two mayors who were ardent supporters of InSite only lasted one term, and they and the previous mayor -- who helped initiate it -- were all fragged by their own parties. Perhaps God is sending a political message?)

For all its grittiness and cinéma vérité, "The Beat" gives a good-news portrayal, showing up-close-and-personal what we deal with, without getting mired in the doom-and-despair thing. Well worth watching, and you might be moved, as I was, to fire off a letter of appreciation to OLN and to Galafilm, the producers.