Desynchronized

This another step in the real and raw walk that is my Christianity. If Haiti was about losing control and this post on losing doubt, this is...losing my mind. There are three parts, each separated by the date it was written - read all three before asking questions.

"Do not be deceived, God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please the flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction. Whoever sows to please the spirit, from the spirit will reap eternal life." - Gal. 6:7-8

9/22/12
In living I stand at an impasse. My mind and soul have thoroughly steeped in proofs and experiences of Christianity. I've attended countless classes and retreats then examined and tried to live other worldviews.  Nothing else makes sense logically. Emotionally, everything else leaves me narcissistic and wretched or empty and hopeless. I see the Christian ideal, how it might be - fulfilling my purpose in relationship with God - and it's beautiful. Like I wrote before, I've seen, I've felt, I've tasted; I took a jump of faith, found solid rock on the other side. Revolutionary, yet nothing new for far too many. I think this entry will shake that a bit.

Like everyone, I've failed so much over the past years; so many times I've hit the snooze button through devos, so many times I did something else instead of spend time with God. So many times I've chosen games or girls, or who knows what else. And of course, I soon would find myself sorry and guilty. I'd get some time with God, and everything would be alright again. Until I messed up, then went back, and messed up, repeat ad nausem. But something's not working any more.
Something's broken, and I don't know what it is. I've grown sick of this cycle of heartbreak. Sick, frustrated, and so tired. I've had that healing motivation so many times before, but after watching it evaporate so many times I've come to resent it. How can I kneel in repentance when I know I'm going to break again? It's like promising faithfulness to your wife while keeping the prostitute on speed dial. You can make all the promises you want, but without an honest and brutal examination of the deeper issues there, nothing's going to change. I want nothing more than to live an integrally authentic life, but sin happens again. If you know you can't stay faithful to one person, why did you take the marriage vows in the first place? I can't live Christianity. I can think it, I can understand it, I can argue and proselytize it, but I can't live it.  

If nothing else, I've learned that there's a critical fragment of personal initiative in this: just how deeply God respects our will, allows us to choose apart from him, and discover the consequences. Think of the last moment you felt that tug to seek God - did you obey the impulse or numb it with distraction? The conscience keeping you on the former path is malleable. If you listen, it becomes the engine that keeps you churning towards God; refuse it long enough and something begins to change. So what happens if you ignore it and always choose something else in the moment? How many times can you ignore your screaming soul and watch another show on Netflix before something dies? What's the state of your salvation when you see the right path to take, yet in full knowledge and pure stubbornness refuse it? 

I know what you're thinking - this is stuff everyone struggles with and it all just adds to the beauty of redemption. "Oh, just trust God and let him give you strength" - thanks, Sunday School Guy. Yes, God loves me, go back and trust Jesus. But I don't want to go back; where I was didn't work. There's something wrong in all this back and forth, but I can't quite...figure out what it is. So after putting myself through this abuse for so long, I'm tired. The repentance is hollow, forgiveness prematurely given, and authenticity never whole. That bit of free will - the motivation necessary to pursue him - is the needed fragment to live an integral Christian life. And mine died. So I should pray for that, for help? I don't want help. I want to be real. So in desperation - or defiance, selfishness, whatever - I've deliberately chosen the latter path. I choose to stop trying and see where this road leads. 

God I believe everything. But I can't live it.

11/24/12

Recently some friends and I read through a chapter in the Bible under the guidance of a wise pastor, Bill. Remember the story of Peter walking on water? Right in the middle of a storm, the disciples spot something coming towards their boat, and think it's a ghost - until the thing identifies itself as Jesus. Peter immediately asks for permission to run out to Jesus, who replies with a smiling "come". After a few initial steps on water, Peter grows afraid of the wind, looks away from Christ, and sinks. Then - I love this part - the moment Peter cries out for help, Christ "immediately" catches him.

You can almost see Christ's sighing grin as he pulls Peter out of the water with a "oh you of little faith". In original text, "little faith" is actually one word, denoting it as a kind of pet name: "oh, you littlefaiths." It's like when five-year-old me cannonballed into the deep-end towards daddy's open arms, then forgot all those expensive swimming lessons and screamed at Dad to save me. What parental pride at the gleeful initiation, what a laughing head-shake as Dad picked me up out of the water his arms - "oh, Joshie..."

But that wasn't good enough for me. Bill noticed I was wrestling with something and urged me to spit it out. "Well...it's great that Peter called out to Christ and was saved," I said. "I don't doubt Christ's love and saving power, but I'm unsatisfied with the story. What if Peter kept falling - falling and crying for help again and again? What if Peter fell so many times that he despaired and lost the strength to even ask for help? Would Christ save someone who wouldn't even cry out? What do you even pray when you're that low, despairing of a way out, and actually shun the hand up?"

Bill looked down and seemed to be deep in thought. Then he looked me straight in the eye and gave one of the best answers I've ever heard. "You know, sometimes the best prayer...is the prayer that's one word long." Then he leaned back and mouthed a strong consonant "F." I let out a short laugh as I realized what word he meant, then retreated into a mind pounded by wordless questions. 

12/7/12

"Because he knew no quiet within, he will not retain anything he desires." - Job 20:20

Frustrations and questions unanswered, I now walk the only road I've never taken - spiritual inaction. Of course it's impossible to stand still spiritually - calling it inaction is a lie - so I'll be honest and call it spiritual rejection. It's living with disappointment - what feels like God's disappointment - until despair hits. Then from the scars of my mind tearing itself apart: hardness.

The consequences are very real and disturbing: all color, meaning, and passion drains from life. What's left compounds on itself and morphs into a sick shade of grey. That tugging to study scripture? No! Stay behind after a meeting and initiate conversation? No! Exercise? Eat right? Sleep? Work? Forget it, what's the point anyways. Care about someone else? How tiring. There's always been that little voice - call it conscience or God - always pulling me towards those things that stretch. Like tell her she looks pretty today, talk to that homeless guy, do your work instead of screwing around online, go home before you do something stupid. But the voice is deliberately ignored, and then the other life issues pile on and I collapse. You kidding? I can't ask that girl out (because I'm a coward), I can't find God in church (because I'm too self-conscious), I can't open up in social groups (because I'm too insecure), I can't go back upstairs and have that hard conversation (because I just don't want to), can't, can't, can't.

This life saps strength. And with no strength to desire change, the choice of passivity becomes the habit of active passivity. A hard resistance grows to even the suggestion of spiritual initiative - church makes me positively uneasy, like I'm sitting on a bed of ants. My mind starts...hurting, until I just have to walk out. I did that this past Sunday - my usual annoying mind yelling the "should-dos", so I yelled back at it "SHUT UP FOR ONCE IN MY DAMN LIFE." It listened. 

I want to be happy, but I don't want to change. Anything involving opening up, gaining a bigger perspective, and change is snuffed by a "don't want to". And that becomes my modus operandi - I don't want to. Now the final step - the habit of active passivity grows into one of deliberate suffocation. Anything that might electrify my mind and get me "out" is now evil. All forms of self-improvement were long ago discarded; relationships, experiences, and even life itself are now the enemy.

There's a weird satisfaction in this small world, one so defined and closed. After so many raw nights of loneliness at college, that loneliness is now my greatest desire. I want as little human contact as possible, which drives me to yet further emotional and relational isolation, leading eventually to total…something. Just let me hide in my room and try to drown out my screaming soul; it's the only thing I know to do. Thus I sink into a quagmire of cold introversion. 

You have no idea how much it hurts. God formed my mind with two elements at its core - crushing self-awareness and an infuriating integrity. I always know exactly what I'm feeling, why I'm feeling it, and then go and act on those feelings with my entire self. This brain constantly analyzes everything around and inside it, always thinking about thinking about thinking. So I'm fully aware of what I'm doing here, why I'm doing it, and the darkness that's been created. But even within sight of the cliff, I don't want to turn away; my mind knows the right path, and absolutely will not follow it. It's a deliberate desynchronization between my life and how I live: awareness pitted against integrity. And that internal grind creates a most horrible pain.

  

There was an episode in House where a genius is found to be taking drugs to "dumb" himself down. Without them, he's deeply unsatisfied in his normal life; with them he can enjoy his wife and janitorial job. I feel like that. This constant mental scraping for depth and self-awareness - I just want it to shut up, to take the drugs and stop feeling this horrible desynch between what I know to be true and how I live. Perhaps that's why sleep is my only source of peace - unconsciousness is the only relief I know.

I can tell you this - living for self is gradual suicide, starting spiritually, then socially, then ending personally and physically. After so many dark decisions this isn't even a choice any more - it's a flinch reaction, the kind that's been so ingrained you can't do anything else. A reflex where your mind is broken and its "I just don't want to" is what makes decisions. I've chained myself by my choices. Even worse - I threw away the key and the desire for freedom with it. I'm like a stray dog that won't quit the cycle of eating its own vomit and throwing it all back up again, snapping at anyone that tries to help.

I still pray. But my prayers are all the same: silent, angry, and one word long.

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Epilogue, 1/4/13

There are times when you can only marvel at undeniable truth being poured into your life. A group of friends and I recently drove out the coast of Delaware for a week-long retreat. Still shackled by my broken desires that'd become too powerful to fight, imagine how this famous C.S. Lewis quote hit me:

"...if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. 

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

Give me a minute while I mentally stagger. Of course I'd heard this before, but...not like this. Not with my soul resonating along with it. 

That was a key realization: that my desires are messed up. I'd abused them so much that my "want" gear was broken; how could I use it to make choices? My spirit no longer had the ability to discern good from bad. It was stuck in the mud, choosing the most temporal, stupid things over the greatest peace, wholeness, and depth possible in life. I'd thought my desire was ruling me, overpowering me…but in reality it was too weak? That realization provided direction, and once you have direction you can start asking for help. So I formulated a prayer, but it was composed mostly of feelings rather than words. I'll try to translate.

God, make my desires strong. Deep. Real in the deepest possible meaning of the word. I ask for strength...to ask you for strength. To just draw me to you through whatever crap I put myself through. I'm a miserable idiot sitting arms crossed in a puddle of my own vomit. Can you fix...this?

Then - hopeless, broken, and honest - a little conversation occurred. 

"...forgive me."

"Already have."

"...love me?"

"Already am."

A few years back my brother gave me one of the most dangerous prayers I've ever read: A Franciscan Benediction:

May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart

I saw that and had to lean on something. That right there is my cursed blessing from God. And that's what had me so bitterly digging in the entries above: for motive. My motivation for seeking God had become rotten: because I just always have, because people'd be disappointed if I didn't, because I should. My soul felt that and pulled away from the dead thing I'd attached to my living Christianity. Unless your motive is right, everything with God - and consequently everything in life (as experienced) - falls away. So here's the right motive: that I am grieved when my relationship with God is not right. That's all.

Sunday School Guy was right. This is all "just" part of redemption. But that's not a process you can direct with a left brain fix-it reflex. It's something you have to deeply experience, sweat, and bleed through yourself. This - indicating the darkness written above - is a good thing, and is just one beautiful part of a long journey. Thank you for experiencing part of it with me.