Sin, Church Discipline and Thoughts About Bob DeWaay - Part 2

In Part 1 of my two part post aboutSin, Church Discipline and Thoughts About Bob DeWaay, I described my friendship with Pastor Bob DeWaay, how it came about, and how his diagnosis of alcoholic hepatitis had come as a profound shock to me. This was true not only for me, but for all who knew Bob. According to his wife, who had also become a friend of mine, she had truly never known a thing during Bob's years of secret alcohol abuse. She explained to me that both she and Bob are pretty independent, and that they gotten into a habit of going to bed at separate times. She told me that this was in part because Bob had suffered from insomnia for years. It seems he had a difficult time getting his mind to "turn off" so that he could fall asleep.

In hearing Bob's wife describe his difficulties with insomnia, my youngest son came to mind. My older son is like me: if he gets still enough, he's asleep in about 15 seconds. My 8-year-old, on the other hand, is extremely intelligent and has a mind that simply doesn't want to quit "consuming." His I.Q. has tested in the genius range, and he already reads at an adult level, composes music and writes poetry. His mind seems like a hungry animal to me, sometimes, and I find myself struggling to stay a few steps ahead of him! And he also has a very difficult time getting his mind to "turn off" so that he can fall asleep. So in listening to Bob's wife talk about Bob's problems with getting to sleep, and how, unbeknownst to her he had turned to alcohol to help him shut his mind off, I began to have some sympathy for his problem. This is not to say that Bob was not in sin. He was. And as this secret sin came to light, it was also obvious that Bob had gone to some lengths to hide his drinking which, in alcoholic fashion, had grown progressively worse over the years. Keep Reading...