A Whole New Type of Counseling

As if things weren’t already strange enough, Brandon started shouting all sorts of other things at us: “I hate this place, and I hate all of you!  You Christians, you’re a bunch of hypocrites!  God doesn’t care about you, he doesn’t even exist.  And for what?  There is no heaven.  It is all a big lie!  I look forward to seeing the devil in hell someday.  Satan created the world, there is no God.  There is no good there is only evil.  And I am proud to be part of the evil.  Satan is coming to take over the world and I look forward to that day.  You Christians have no idea what is coming.”

He continued this rant for a minute or so, Kodak and I were still sitting in the back, totally shocked, and Kevin continued to try to talk with him, constantly speaking the whole time, in a calm monotone voice.  Jesse arrived after putting his dogs in his car to keep them out of the way and he caught the last part of Brandon’s tirade.

Jesse began to point out inconsistencies in Brandon’s statements.  “If there is no heaven, then there can be no hell, one requires the other for comparison, to define what it is.  And Satan doesn’t even claim to have created the world, but he is in and of the world.  If there was no God, Satan would have nothing to resist against, and would not then be evil.”

Kevin chimed in occasionally, “You seem very confused about a lot of things. A lot of the things you are saying don’t make a lot of sense.  We are ready to try to explain the way that we believe things are if you are ready to listen.”

After a few minutes of this, Brandon gave up on the verbal battle, and stormed off to grab his stuff, and started heading down the hill to Frontier.  We followed him slowly in the Bronco, with Jesse on foot.  Right as he passed the driveway to the nurse’s station he stopped on the left side of the road and set his stuff down.  When he did so, his sleeping bag began to roll down the hill, on the road.  He didn’t chase it; he just stood there staring at it.  As it rolled farther and farther, I could see him getting madder and madder, as he began to shake in rage again.  Eventually it rolled into the median and stopped, and Brandon sat down on the grass at the edge of the road.  Kevin pulled the Bronco up next to him in the right lane, and Jesse went around Brandon and sat a few feet down the hill from him, on the grass as well.  The conversation continued from where it had left off, with Brandon as angry and upset as before, and Jesse and Kevin calmly talking to him, while Kodak and I silently watched.

Jesse continued to take the lead, “You may not want to believe me, but I know what it is like to be in your position.  I spent many years of my life not understanding why I was here, or what purpose my life had.  I don’t know who it is in your life that put some of these ideas in your head, whether it was you father or an uncle or a brother, but what they have been telling you is not true.  If you stop and listen to what you are saying, it doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Satan is coming, and he is going to take over this world, and everything in it!”

Kevin responded to this one.  “I fully believe Satan is already here.  We can see that very clearly in the world we live in.  But I also know that he has already been defeated, by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.  And the day will come when Jesus returns in his Glory, and Satan will be thrown into the pit of fire.  I believe that with all of my heart.”

“But why?”

“Because I believe in a God that loves us.  What do you love Brandon?”

“I love no one!  I don’t need you or God or anyone else!”

“Surely you must love something.  Would you say that you love yourself Brandon?”

“No, I hate myself and everything else!”

“That is pretty lonely attitude to have.  What is that heart on your arm?” Kevin asked, pointing to a heart-shaped red mark, scratched into Brandon’s left fore-arm.

“That is the only heart I have left!” Brandon replied scornfully.  And the conversation continued like this for some time.

Since we were on the main road in camp, every few minutes a vehicle would pass between us and Brandon, and we would smile and wave at them, and then return to dealing with our serious situation once they had passed.  Impact drove by on a trash run, the nurse came through, and the kitchen crew from Wild Oak came back down the hill, signifying that we had totally missed the evening meal.  As the conversion continued, Brandon would calm down a bit, and then get riled up again, depending on what was being said.  They discussed all sorts of things from the place that boundaries and rules play in a community, to the meaning of good and evil, and the significance of ethics and morals.  I was very conscious of the fact that what I was watching disproved the idea that there was nothing beyond the natural material world.  Brandon was speaking from a demon’s perspective, and clearly wasn’t faking it.  He had so little control over himself and his actions during his rages, that he couldn’t be faking anything, let alone something like that.  So this demon possessed kids reaffirmed my faith in the existence of God, when it was weakening most.

Eventually the conversation took a sudden turn, and Brandon went from complaining about camp to trying to bargain to stay.  “Okay, well I am going to offer to make you a deal.  I would be willing to stay, if you will stop mistreating me, and prevent everyone else at camp from mistreating me.  So do we have a deal?”

I will be honest, my initial thought on the matter was: “when pigs fly and hell freezes over.”  But I just sat silently and listened to things play out.

When he asked Jesse, the response was something like this.  “Do you know what I do here at camp?  I spent the afternoon pulling maggots out of toilets.  No, I don’t have the authority to make any deal with you.”

Brandon turned and looked at me.  “BullsEye, can you accept that deal?”

I shook my head silently and pointed to Kevin in front of me, but Brandon turned back to Jesse and continued talking with him for a moment.  Then Brandon turned to Kevin and asked “Can you get me the guy who has the authority to make a deal?”

“I am that guy…But if you are going to stay here at camp, you are going to need to stay under our terms, and agree to honor our rules and boundaries.  We would like you to stay, we would like to help you, but you have to be willing to follow the rules.”  The exchange continued for a few more minutes, but I can’t recall it very specifically, since I was distracted as the potential reality that I would have to continue to deal with this kid slowly set in.

Eventually Jesse brought the conversation to a lighter topic and got things moving by volunteering to go retrieve Brandon’s sleeping bag from down the hill.  The tension of the situation began to diffuse as he returned with it, and handed it to Brandon.  We hopped out of the Bronco to load his stuff, but there wasn’t much conversation.  Then we climbed back in, with Brandon in the front with Kevin, and Kodak and me in the back.  Right as he got in, Brandon broke the silence for a second.  “BullsEye…I’m sorry.”

Not certain what to do, I replied “I forgive you.” I honestly wasn’t sure what that really meant, but it seemed like the appropriate response.  Those were the last words spoken the entire drive back to Wild Oak.