Quotes about Diagnosis

A few days after I left UConn my mom took me to a psychiatrist in Stamford. After talking with me for an hour, smiling kindly and calmly asking me questions, he diagnosed me. "You have an anxiety disorder," he said. "It's a rare and very unpleasant type called 'plateau panic disorder.' Basically you're having panic attacks that don't ever end.

In most popular Christianity, "heaven" (and "fellowship with God" in the present) is the goal, and "sin" (bad behavior, deserving punishment) is the problem. A Platonized goal and a moralizing diagnosis—and together they lead, as I have been suggesting, to a paganized "solution" in which an angry divinity is pacified by human sacrifice.

Our purpose (in relationship) is to get what we want but God's purpose is to give us what we really need. We think things are going well only if we are getting along with others. But God says that it is also when we are not getting along with others that he is accomplishing his purpose. God has designed our relationship to function as both a diagnosis and a cure.

When anyone develops a skin disease, he must be brought to the priest.

The priest will examine him, and if there is a white swelling on the skin that has turned the hair white, and there is raw flesh in the swelling,

But if the skin disease breaks out all over his skin so that it covers all the skin of the infected person from head to foot, as far as the priest can see,

and a white swelling or a reddish-white spot develops where the boil was, he must present himself to the priest.

But when the priest examines it, if there is no white hair in it, and it is not beneath the skin and has faded, the priest shall isolate him for seven days.

When there is a burn on someone’s skin and the raw area of the burn becomes reddish-white or white,

the priest must examine it. If the hair in the spot has turned white and the spot appears to be deeper than the skin, it is a disease that has broken out in the burn. The priest must pronounce him unclean; it is a diseased infection.

When a man or a woman has white spots on the skin,

the priest shall examine them, and if the spots are dull white, it is a harmless rash that has broken out on the skin; the person is clean.