The Church on the Hill

I have serious issues with organised religion, mostly because they set me back years of recovery on my journey to stable mental health.

But also the usual issues. The Catholic Church and their shenanigans. Apartheid being implemented because whites are “God’s Chosen People.” The list goes on, and I don’t need to rehash everything.

I grew up in a religious household (thank you, I hear your collective groans and sympathetic noises. Much appreciated). Driven mostly by my mother, and my father tagged along. I obviously can’t speak for him since his passing, but I always had the feeling he never really bought into it.

I have battled with my mental health my entire life. Thinking back, I had serious anxiety issues as a little boy. Constantly worried my mother would die every time she left the house. Hours spent looking out the front door, in an almost panicked state if she was late, anxiously awaiting her return.

Like many with the same struggles, my mental health got worse in my teens. Drinking and smoking (although this is par for the course in any boys school, no depression required). Lots of attitude and anger. Poor grades. The usual story, and anyone with even a slight understanding of mental health issues would have been able to pick it up, based purely on my behaviour.

I fortunately never got involved with hard drugs. Not because I had a moral issue with it,  but because I wasn’t cool enough to move in the right crowds where drugs were handed around freely. Very fortuitous being a nerd in hindsight, although my matric results are the opposite of a genuine nerd.

I absolutely do not believe that school teachers are responsible for the personal wellbeing of their pupils. They are there to educate and discipline, and provide guidance for ignorant young minds, while at the same time being fully understanding of the fact that young people are “stupid.” We were all stupid at that age. I believe it is your prerogative as a teenager. That’s how we learn and become productive adults, by being stupid first.

Thinking back, almost all of my teachers, from different subjects, with vastly differing personalities and backgrounds, operated with the same principle: try to educate them, try to discipline them, but understand at the same time they are also “stupid boys.”

I remember the English Master Mr. Mansfield and his deep love for English literature and culture. He even drove a classic Mini and drank tea all day long. From my perspective, his favourite thing in the world was sharing his knowledge of literature with “enquiring young minds.” Wasted on me unfortunately, but a classmate and good friend of mine to this day went on to become an international award-winning journalist. Mr. Mansfield invited him back to come and speak to his classes a few years ago. The circle was complete. The student becomes the master. At least Mr. Mansfield got it right with one of the two of us.

And Mr. Hasenkamp (Nickname: Ricket). Sterling rugby player. The Geography Master in my day, and now the new headmaster of “The School on the Hill.” The School both needs and deserves him at the top. I feel I will probably even retire before him one day.

And plenty of others. Mr. Brink and his no nonsense approach to maths (and discipline). Dr. van der Watt and his musical genius he was only too happy to share with the boys. Mr. Rathbone, one of the Science Master’s who politely gritted his teeth in response to my irrelevant questions, answered appropriately, and carried on with the lesson as if he wasn’t silently questioning my intelligence. The list goes on, and my school mates will all have their own stories and experiences.

And of course we all remember the legendary Bill Schroeder. A fine educator and Master like no other. Rest in Peace, Sir.

But there was one. I will never forget him. Peter Kirsten. The deputy headmaster at the time. Those who saw the movie The Power of One, based on Bryce Courtney’s book, will remember Peter Phillip Kenneth Keith. Nickname: PK – Pis Kop. A more relevant, appropriate nickname for Peter Kirsten I could not have invented myself.

I still have no idea why he had such an issue with my existence, but I have some theories:

1. Small Man Syndrome. I don’t think PK ever broke 5’5″ and I’ve been 6’8″ since I was 16 years old. And he definitely had the “Klein Mannetjie” attitude to go with it.

2. I had the same haircut as the other Science Master who was shagging his wife.

But more than likely PK was just the exception that slipped through the cracks of Education Departments and Governing Bodies and landed himself as an educator in a good school, a profession he should have stayed far, far away from. Sadly, I’ve heard he is actually headmaster at another school now.

My parents sent me to a former Model C school in part because they believed in the discipline. “Jacks” had long been outlawed by the time I started, but I wrote out plenty of lines from the school rules, and spent many, many hours in “Lates” (Prefect’s Detention).

My mom had a pretty solid rule: “if you make trouble at school and receive a punishment for it, you probably deserved it. Do your time, I won’t get you out of it.”

But of course, PK was not a reasonable human being, nor particularly intelligent. The one time I had a Teacher’s Detention scheduled for a Friday afternoon. I can’t even remember what my crime was, but I’m sure I’d earned the detention with good reason.

There was a slight problem that week though. On Friday afternoon I was scheduled to attend a family wedding. A reasonable exception to the rules that might happen in anyone’s life. My mom phoned PK to ask if I could rather do a Saturday detention, or serve my time the following Friday.

“Mannetjie” was incensed! How dare she  interfere with the school process and try and get her son out of detention! The rant went on. My mother, a polite English Old Girl from Girls High, and an upstanding member of the local church, eventually slammed the phone down in PK’s ear. I don’t think she had ever done something like that before, nor has she done it since. PK was a piece of shit, and even my mom realised it.

And the cherry on top was that PK even phoned back, in an effort to continue his childish rant, only to have the receiver slammed down in his ear again.

I don’t even remember what the exact outcome was. I know I went to the wedding, and I probably served the detention, but it blurs with all the other detentions that I earned.

But I have seriously digressed here. The Church on the Hill got me thinking about The School on the Hill.

Back to the topic:

https://iol.co.za/news/south-africa/2008-07-09-woman-jumps-off-bridge-gets-hit-by-truck/

Guess who the woman was? The wife of the pastor at my mom’s creepy super church. One of 3 shady brothers who lead an organogram of pastors who spend the majority of their time ensuring tithes are collected at the door or deposited into the correct bank account. I love how you are assigned a pastor based on your surname, just like the way they used to do things in school:

Her illness? Depression, of course. Her treatment? Counseling and prayer. The result? Suicide.

I have absolutely no idea why religious people think they have any right to intervene in someone’s medical treatment. Pray for them? Sure. It’s a free country. In fact there’s a fair amount of evidence out there to show that faith does assist with healing and recovery. But the keyword there is assist.

Insist that faith is better than tested, studied and evidential medical intervention? Please do the world a favour and go jump off that bridge yourself.

My life-long mental health struggles are pretty well documented so far. When I was 24, I finally plucked up enough courage to raise this very personal and at the time embarrassing problem with my mother. I was still living at home and I figured she was the best person to talk to. For anyone who has ever been a 24 year old with an “embarrassing” condition, you will know this is a big challenge requiring alot of courage.

To my mother’s credit, she listened. And she understood. And she even had a solution.

Church camp.

Yip. That was the solution to my very severe medical condition. A condition that in the early 2000’s was already easily treatable with the right medical intervention.

Instead, I was sent to “The Plot” for a weekend where some creepy dude held my head and prayed for my recovery (fuck you, Herman). We wrote our problems down on paper and burnt them in the fire. What the actual fuck? ‘n Vuur sonder ‘n dop of ‘n vleisie? Andries Pretorius rolled in his grave. We didn’t flee the English to establish Pretoria and sit around and braai our problems.

But the worst part? The absolute worst part of this whole creepy experience is that for years I believed they were right and I was wrong. My depression was a direct result of my lack of faith in Jesus.

Years and years lost. Trapped in my own mind. Not understanding that help had always been available, I just wasn’t told how to access it. The rest of my recovery is pretty well documented in my Ketamine Treatment blog, I think its the 2nd one I ever posted.

After starting my own recovery journey, and going through much trial and error, I eventually ended up with people like my psychiatrist “Schalkie.” A self proclaimed Christian but a medical expert and scientist like no other I have encountered.

And of course I only call him Schalkie behind his back. I refer to him as “Doctor” in our sessions. Because that’s what he is. A medical professional who has studied and learnt, in parallel with his faith. Him and I obviously do not discuss much religion in our sessions, but the result is easy to see. A Christian doctor who looks at facts, and understands that his faith is not necessarily the answer if there is evidence to the contrary.

And people like Ryan, my psychologist. One of the few mental health professionals (apart from Schalkie) who you can say anything to, and he doesn’t even blink. Unfortunately, most mental health experts I have encountered are unable to reach this level of understanding, and probably never will (Oom Willem was another one of the good ones, in spite of his penchant for wearing bandanas like the 60s never ended).

In the same vein I need to make special mention of Cynthia the psychologist, who went red in the face and almost fell out of her chair when I told her the new anti depressants had given me erectile dysfunction (for those unfamiliar, this is one of the most common side effects experienced by men taking anti depressants).

She insisted I should rather speak to the psychiatrist she had referred, upstairs in the hospital medical suites. The psychiatrist who only allowed 15 minute sessions, and had her entire office covered in decor and trinkets supplied by the pharmaceutical companies. Stress balls, pens, notepads, motivational posters. The new side effect was another problem I chose to rather keep to myself.

The creepy church and the “recovery camp” was something I actually hadn’t thought about in years. But apparently it was still bothering me under the surface.

On Christmas Day last year, I was invited to church by my mom, and politely accepted, mostly in order to keep the peace around the holidays. Pick your battles.

Off we went to the mega structure, somewhere I had visited before, with only slightly more enthusiasm this time. I discovered the coffee was no longer free, you now had to pay for your latte at the Church Coffee stand. Not the worst thing, a latte beats the Ricoffy urn any day, just a curiosity. Didn’t Jesus turn the tables over for doing business in the church? My Bible knowledge is average at best.

We entered the auditorium to the sound of the pastor’s voice booming through the usual announcements. My first thought was of course: “man, these oaks still really love the sound of their own voice.” Almost nothing had changed, although there were decidedly less people there for the Christmas service than I had seen on my previous visit a few years prior.

I felt… odd? I didn’t really think too hard about it, maybe it was a lingering effect of a little too much Christmas Eve whiskey.

Then they started praying. Then we had to turn around and shake everyone’s hands and hug a bunch of strangers. I felt… really weird?

I think by this point I’d been in church for a sum total of 4 minutes. They then started singing. Silent Night. More people who really shouldn’t allow their voices to be amplified from a microphone. But of course to them it’s Neil Diamond’s Beautiful Noise: “A sound that I love.”

I cracked. I didn’t actually know what was happening yet. I turned to my wife and just said “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”

In spite of all my mental health struggles, I’ve never been one for public meltdowns. Swallow hard. Grit your teeth. Save it for when you get home. But that day was different.

I walked out of the church and burst into tears. There it was. Years and years of repressed rage against the people who felt entitled to involve themselves in matters of medicine and science, with neither experience nor education to support their foolish beliefs.

In that moment, there was only one person I wanted to talk to. My sister on the other side of the world. Someone who grew up in the same house as me and shares my feelings on religion. She was also punished with Church Camp for her crime of mental health challenges.

She answered almost immediately. I very rarely make phone calls to anyone, even my own wife. If Boetie was calling, something was wrong.

We spoke for ages, tears streaming down my face. Even she knew this was unusual for me. I don’t need to quote the whole conversation, just the brilliant conclusion she helped me reach:

“You’re free now. You’ve identified the problem and chosen to walk away. Let the anger out, you deserve it. I had that day too, it’s your turn now.”

And she was right. I felt different. The clichéd “New Person.” They WERE wrong (and also disgusting people). Depression and a multitude of other mental health conditions have nothing to do with Jesus, the church (or Cash Collection Centre as I like to call it), or some fool’s opinion on faith and power of the mind (fuck you too, Trevor).

My advice to anyone with even slight mental health struggles, based on many miserable experiences of my own: have it treated professionally. Find the experts. Work consistently towards recovery, no matter how many times you fall down. Recovery is most definitely possible. I know because I did it, and I came from a very, very dark place.

And you have my, and the world’s permission, to completely ignore anyone who insists on being addressed as “Pastor.”