Former professor says faith brought contentment

With a great career, salary and family, Jeff Casey seemed to have it all, but he was plagued by anxiety and discontent.

The once-tenured college professor now works at Wal-Mart in Mustang and said he couldn’t be happier.

A few years ago, he found the faith that brought him the joy that had eluded him for decades.

Casey, 58, lives in Yukon and admits there are a few things he liked about his life in academia.

“I miss the six-digit salary and the benefits,” he said.

Outside of that, he’s found peace in his new life, and for Casey, there can be no price tag placed on that. He spent most of his life in a quest for happiness.

“I thought if I had a girlfriend, that would make me happy,” he said. He found one, and it didn’t. Then he believed excelling in education and a career would bring him contentment.

The graduate of Oklahoma City’s Northwest Classen High School went to the University of Oklahoma and earned two degrees. Some of his professors helped form his opinions about religion.

Casey had no interest in God or organized religion. Looking back, he realizes he was wrong.

“Man has an inner yearning for God,” he said.

He moved to Wisconsin and earned a Ph.D. in psychology. In 1981, he was married, and he and his wife, Pam, had three children.

He described the next 13 years as “keeping his nose to the grindstone,” as he taught business at Stony Brook University in New York.

On his professor’s salary he purchased things to try to fill an emptiness inside. He achieved tenure in 1993. Then he had a panic attack.

“Having achieved tenure, I didn’t have a goal and went into depression,” he said.

He sought professional help and received medication. That didn’t help either.

By 2011, he could no longer handle the life of academia.

“I didn’t like sitting for a long period of time,” he said. “I couldn’t take it anymore and thought it was time to leave.”

Finding faith

With some money saved, the family returned to Oklahoma. He did not work for a year. By 2012, his wife gave him an ultimatum: He had to find some kind of job.

Casey applied at Wal-Mart and told them he would work as a cart pusher or in janitorial. Before the orientation ended, he suffered a major blow when his wife died.

He said he believed there was a God but was convinced He did not care about what happened to people.

“Otherwise, how could I explain what happened to my wife?”

He went to work at Wal-Mart and decided if he had to be a cart pusher, he was going to be the best at it.

“It was a hot summer, but I didn’t let it stop me,” he said. But he wasn’t done with tragedy. His son, Taylor, plagued by years of drug abuse, had turned his life around. But Casey speculates the drug abuse took a toll on Taylor’s body. He died in his sleep in June 2014 at age 28.

Again, angry at God, Casey was flipping through the radio channels and came across Catholic broadcasting.

“This wasn’t like the fire and brimstone I was used to hearing,” he said.

He kept listening. One day a program called “Catholic Answers” invited agnostics and atheists to call with questions. Casey remembers the hosts having solid answers to the callers’ objections to Christ and the faith.

He emailed the station and was referred to St. John Nepomuk Catholic Church in Yukon. He signed up for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), where would-be members learn about Catholicism.

At the Easter vigil Mass, the students came into the faith.

“I’ve see this happen over and over again,” said Ann Cook, RCIA cocoordinator at St. John Nepomuk. “God makes us want to be with Him.”

The peace of mind and love of God that Casey has today does not surprise her.

“Once people find God, everything else seems to fall in place,” she said.

Casey now helps with RCIA. New candidates have a church sponsor who helps guide them.

“Jeff helped a man greatly who had a horrible incident right after he started RCIA,” Cook said.

Cook recommended Casey’s story to the Archdiocesan Evangelization office.

Casey has worked at Wal-Mart for nearly five years and has advanced into customer service management. He volunteers to evangelize for Catholicism, and his story is featured on the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City’s website under “Profiles in Discipleship.”

“My faith gets stronger and stronger,” he said.

“Even when I’m having a rotten day, there’s a undercurrent of peace and serenity that I never thought I could have.”

Even though the Ninevites did not know God, God loved them. He saw their evil ways and how their violent behavior was destroying them. Everyone was either acting violently or suffering from violence in their city.

We do not know when the Assyrians had turned away from obeying God or how many times God had warned them. But at some point, God knew He had to threaten the Ninevites with destruction to save them from destruction.

We do not know everything Jonah told the Ninevites, but we do know he gave them God’s word: “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4).

The Ninevites responded as God intended. They did not know much about (or remember much about) God, but the Bible says: “They believed God.”

More importantly, they proved by their actions that they believed God and trusted the Word of God that Jonah preached. They demonstrated that they regretted their sins. They humbled themselves and put on sackcloth.

When the king heard, he commanded everyone to urgently pray to God. He also commanded every person and every animal to fast, and he himself put on sackcloth. But more importantly than these symbolic acts, he commanded everyone to “give up their evil ways and their violence” (Jonah 3:8).

When they heard Jonah’s warning and the king’s command, everyone took hope. God had at least warned them, and that showed His compassion for them. They hoped that because of His compassion God might relent and forgive them. They hoped right. God loved them and saved them. They believed and obeyed Him.