You're Supposed to Eat Soup with a Fork

    In most cases, if someone told me to eat my soup with a fork, I would ignore the comment. Maybe they like to eat their soup with a fork, I think, knowing that this is clearly not the best way to eat it, given that I can prove that spoons are the better way; they were invented for this reason. Putting the epistemology of spoons aside, I could also lean on my lived experience, which has proven the facts of the spoons' claims. Combining that with literally thousands of hours of using and studying spoons, it would be foolish to suddenly switch to forks when (clearly) the other person is confused, wrong, or has simply selected a preference that they are entitled to, but by no means should suggest it is of equal validity as the spoon.

    What I'm getting at is that it's very clear spoons are made for eating soup, so surely no one in their right mind would switch over to using forks... right?

    The key is being in your "right mind," of which I find most people these days are not. That is most evident in a situation like this: You, being someone who's learned, experienced, and honestly wanting the best for someone's soup-eating, would be able to easily explain, demonstrate, and justify why they should eat with spoons, whereas the other person is going to have a far harder time explaining the nuance of forking. Not only that, but what you don't understand is that this person has been indoctrinated from birth (or even after) to believe that eating with a fork is the only way to eat soup, and that anyone who doesn't eat with a fork isn't really eating the whole soup. You see, they've "always believed" that soup should be eaten with a fork, and therefore, it is you, the "dumb Spoon-e-stant," who is actually in the wrong. At this point, it would be wise and easy to simply look down at your spoon (far more full of soup than the fork would ever be), wink at their ignorance, and move on with your delicious meal. Who cares, you might think. They're projecting, and the odds of my being able to bridge the knowledge gap are slim to none. I'm going to just keep eating my soup, unbothered, and go about my day like nothing happened.

    But then you remember that it's your job to explain that eating soup with a fork is ludicrous, not only because it is completely absurd, but because if they continue at this rate, not only will they never experience the true glory of the soup (because they consistently diminish their eating experience), but they will eventually die from malnutrition. So, you put down the spoon, lock in, and get ready to explore why this person is so avidly convinced of this clear nincompoopery.

    See, the hard part is that even though you know that this person is bordering on complete lunacy, you cannot say that they are doing such things. You, (having the greater knowledge and therefore the heavier responsibility), are held to a higher standard and must function with absolute peace, conviction, and kindness. This is, of course, easier said than done when you start to realize how this lifestyle they've chosen has changed their behavior (they're really, really hangry). Not only that, but they are blindly loyal to a group of soup eaters who use forks, 1.7 billion strong. Now, basing your beliefs on a popular opinion has historically never been a good idea, but by golly, the fork-o-lics do it. This is just one of the epistemic reasons they cling to their eating habits, and, in all honesty, it's one of the best ones (to them). But then, just as you think you're starting to get somewhere, their handy-dandy ult pops in: Insulting. The rhetorical polemic comes in full swing, usually in a manipulative method: From gaslighting to framing you as an idiot or dishonest, they attack your character rather than the substance of your argument.

    And the hardest part? You can't say it back! If you do, you'll lose the whole argument on grounds of them getting their feelings hurt, even though, since you've been talking to them, they have done nothing but pompously talk down to you as though you are the fool, all while hurling their favorite slur or curse word at you. And you think to yourself, Man... this guy is saying exactly what I'm thinking, only I'm thinking it about him.

    You keep the self-control, doing your best to remember the goal: I want this person to have a better soup-eating experience. This is for them, after all. I am very much content with the notion that I am in the right. Jesus is holding me accountable for my behavior, and I need to behave. Still, no matter how many facts you show, logical inconsistencies you expose, lies you refute, and patience you tirelessly labor, nothing changes -- they don't hear any of it.

    Then, the cavalry arrives, all stroking each other's egos while repeating the same copy-and-paste talking points they learned in their fork-o-lic coloring books. It's an echo chamber, and if you don't know what that is, in a natural sense, it's an enclosed space where sound reverberates, meaning that whatever sound you make is bound to come back exactly the same, slowly but surely losing volume over time. The reason why this term was then adopted to describe online forums, social clusters, and all kinds of varying cliques and cults is that, analogously, it fits the bill: It's an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced, and alternative ideas are not considered.

    As a Christian, one of the many things I pride myself on is being open to other points of view. As long as the other individual can logically, honestly, respectfully, and reasonably justify their belief, I'm willing to hear them out and engage in the conversation. In most cases, I've had fruitful discussions with people who are diametrically opposed to my worldview. I've even changed some people's minds. I cannot say I've had the same experience with people who eat their soup with a fork.

    To avoid being called a hypocrite, I want to explain that I'm not necessarily against echo chambers, just the notion that tends to accompany them by their definition. There's nothing wrong with coming to a logical and reasonable conclusion about what you believe and (after hundreds or even thousands of hours of study and experience) deciding that you are comfortable staying there and in the group that believes the same way as you.

    We're communal creatures; that's normal.

    I'm not saying we have to always be open to being wrong in the sense that we admit we can't definitively prove that we are right, but that, at a certain point, people will believe that there is nothing that could change their mind on something, and reasonably so. The evidence is clear; the reasoning is solid; their worldview offers the best reconciliation with reality. In other words, we get comfortable with the notion that we are lifelong students who can always learn, but cannot simply ignore evidence in an attempt to seem intellectually honest, because that (ironically) is intellectually dishonest and fallacious. We should learn other people's positions and carry them out to their most logical conclusion; that way, we can see whether or not we've been deceived or (more accurately) be more reinforced in what we believe, as their view did not survive testing.

    The same can be said for myself, who, after honestly engaging with the premise of eating with a fork (though I always found it absurd), further examined their fork-a-stolic succession, their traditions, texts, and fork-o-getics for their fork-dom. After that, I would go back to the Book of Spoons and find that forks were a later invention and that there is no evidence that early soup eaters even mentioned forks. It was almost as though they didn't actually exist and were made up for ulterior motives. To someone who is educated, this is clearly, not lining up, but that's the tragedy of it: It only seems clear to you, the one who knows that the Book of Spoons (which they have renamed the Fork-a-chism of the Fork-ish Soup-eaters, claiming that the reason you eat with forks is that you don't have the complete Book of Spoons, but theirs does, and that's why you must use forks), is perfect and complete for every good soup.

    You see, it's one thing to know this and try to reasonably contend for the soup with one person, but it's another when you're now being ganged up on -- ratio'd by the fork eaters' favorite fork-ologist. All the while the insults increase, the points keep getting missed. The logical fallacies stack one on top of the other, all the while they find themselves a genius in their own mind. All you can do is watch as they top it all with "reducto ad ab-syrup-um, then gulp it all down, their smiles wide, pancakes mushing out of their teeth as they gnash and chew with piggish delight.

    When did we even start eating pancakes? I think. I thought we were eating soup?

    But you see, they shifted the goalpost from soup a long time ago. They couldn't actually make an argument on soup, so now we're talking about pancakes, which (conveniently) you can eat with forks and not with spoons. As you can see, it works perfectly, as it "always" has. In fact, now they're trying to gaslight you into believing that we've always been eating pancakes, and there was never really any soup.

    This is among the most deplorable behaviors I have ever experienced. In all honesty, I don't know how we got to this point as a society. It's one thing to believe, eat, and eventually poop out what you want, but it's another to serve that poop on a platter and call it pancakes. Oh, what, you thought they were real pancakes? No, it was digested feces that they defecated onto their china, as every other person who eats with forks has done before them. After they did, they tried to convince you that it was always pancakes, and for a second, you almost bought it: You almost ate the poopy pan pie. They made it look pretty, tasty, and even exactly like a pancake... but it was never really the real deal.

    This goes on and on, and as grotesque as the analogy might be, that's how it feels. It feels particularly worse when, after honestly engaging and trying to do your own part in sharing actual soup with people and explaining why eating it with a spoon is proper, your character begins to get attacked. They will lie, manipulate, strawman, bear false witness, and as the cherry on top of the poopy pies, say that you are the one who is doing all these things. No, it doesn't matter that you've sunk 200+ hours into their fork-dom just to properly summarize their point of view, or heard every fork-ologist try to explain their views so that you can understand how they think. Nope! None of that matters. What matters is that their favorite fork-ologist said something they liked, and you were simply the donkey they decided to pin the tail on that day.

    This is actually the inspiration for this post: Yesterday was the most recent attack on my character—an ad hominem attack—so dishonestly presented by a fork-o-lic fork-ologist. I've never really liked his work, but days like yesterday reminded me why I have actually grown to detest it the more I've had the disservice of knowing him. You see, he accused me of bearing false witness while simultaneously ignoring 99% of the witness I was giving. Then, in the comments, everyone not only agreed but attacked my character further. "He's dishonest," "He has horrible arguments," "He can't rhetorically articulate anything." There was even one post where this same fork-o-lic fork-ologist put one of my meme posts over the sound of Kamala Harris' audio (speaking gibberish) and claimed this is what I sound like, to which his comment section happily agreed.

    Grown man/men by the way.

    There's nothing that screams "my beliefs are so weak and pathetic that I have to attack your intelligence and character to justify them" quite like an ad hominem attack. But even so, one thing that grinds my gears is when someone claims that I am bearing false witness while simultaneously bearing false witness. This is a common argumentative strategy called "poisoning the well," which essentially gets the audience to question the opponent's motives rather than their argument. It's rhetorically powerful, but it's argumentatively weak. When you open your argument with a claim that I am doing this while ignoring the fact that you're critiquing one video in a multi-part series (of which refuted his preceding arguments in his video in full), and then build your entire argument off of a strawman of what I actually believe and was arguing, it can be nothing more than complete and utter ineptitude.

    And yet, his audience ate it up.

    The "it" was me. They chewed me up, spit me out, and all the while congratulated him for his pitiful work. And you know, it's not that I can't take criticism: If I'm wrong about something, I want to know. It's when you attack my character and essentially launch a slander campaign against me that really gets under my skin. More so, the fork-o-lics think that this kind of behavior is okay. To claim that someone is bearing false witness, you have to prove willful deception and wrongful intent. The burden of proof for the claim lies with the individual, and, unfortunately for this fork-ologist, simplification or segmentation does not qualify as false witness. The evidence actually points to the contrary in the form of a 20+ part series. 

    Two, actually.

    So, false witness in this scenario would better be defined as taking one part of a multi-part series and claiming that this person was willfully withholding information to make your case seem smart, while accusing them of the exact same thing.

    The hypocrisy and projection are astounding.

    I think at this point it's pretty clear that I'm venting, and honestly, I don't think that doing it anymore would be productive. The point is, I'm discouraged. It's not a pleasant feeling to be slandered for trying to help people out. It's an even more unpleasant feeling to know that Jesus fully expects us to hold our posture, be loving, and ultimately remember the goal of getting them to him, but man, if it isn't challenging. The worst of it is that this is nothing new. I experience this pretty much every day, on average, from sunup to sundown via dozens of separate minds all parroting the same copy-and-paste arguments, insults, and general meme-ry (not even joking. Some of these people will just post a meme making fun of you, and that's their argument. The crazy part? It works.) The only thing that gives me some assurance is that I know I have peace with God (Romans 5:1-2), and that at the end of it all, I'll go home to be with Him, knowing I tried my best, even if I am constantly in a state of grief.

    I know it might sound kind of childish, but these things get to me. They hurt my feelings, and for someone who is currently struggling (deeply) with some of the worst circumstances and thoughts that I've ever had (capable of toppling even a strong man), I really don't need some middle-aged dude attacking me for something that I'm not, so he can get followers and likes (presumptively). 

    It's crazy how people talk to you as though you're not made in the image of God (they have no respect) and go out of their way to make you feel small, stupid, and generally just downright bad. I'm not a stranger to this. I know how easy it can be to talk so harshly to someone because they're nothing but a little icon next to a username, but it doesn't change the fact that behind that ambiguity is someone Jesus died for.

    I was watching a Gavin Ortlund video, and he made the comment on the disagreements ongoing between the spoon-e-stants and the fork-o-lics online (to the best of my remembrance): "The rhetorical polemic is just awful on both sides. Do you not fear God?" That stuck with me. From that point forward, when I've wanted to match someone's energy, be mean, or even just let out all this pent-up aggression that's been building lately (not related to them), I think: "Do you not fear God?" We should have a humble reverence for God in our walk with Him (Hebrews 12:28-29). I think we forget, sometimes, that those "idiots" who are eating their soup with their forks may be wrong, but making them know that in the most brutal and unloving way possible is also wrong and worthy of judgment.

    The nuance is that calling someone a fool is merited at times (Matthew 23:17), especially when it's not an ad hominem but a legitimate description for someone ignorant and blind (which is the type of person we're discussing). Still, the key is to make sure we don't fall into the other category, which puts us in danger of hellfire (Matthew 5:22). We shouldn't be hateful about it, despite how much they sling our way. Anyone who has hatred in their heart is not of God, and that's why Jesus warns us of such things. So I think these things in my head (and write them only to show that these are my honest thoughts), while trying to remember the tragedy of it all: These fork-o-lics are the blind leading the blind:

[10] And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: [11] it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” [12] Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” [13] He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. [14] Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” [15] But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” [16] And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? [17] Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? [18] But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. [19] For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. [20] These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”

-- Matthew 15:10–20 (ESV)

     GotQuestions has a great elaboration on this passage. I'll let them stick the landing:

"The tendency to elevate human interpretation of Scripture and tradition to a place of equal authority with God’s Word is a blindness that has afflicted people of every generation. The inclination Jesus confronted in the Pharisees is no different from the legalistic traditions and unwritten rules that many churches, denominations, spiritual leaders, and individual believers try to enforce today. When we allow human rules and regulations to take priority over God’s laws, we lead people astray from 'the simplicity that is in Christ' (2 Corinthians 11:3, NKJV). If we become blind leaders of the blind, we heap God’s judgment on ourselves: 'Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to' (Matthew 23:13; see also Matthew 18:6). We must be careful not to let arrogance and denial blind us to our spiritual condition. We must make sure that our vision is clear enough to guide others in their spiritual walk. Likewise, we do well to choose our leaders wisely, being careful not to follow blind guides who will lead us away from the straight and narrow path of God’s Word."

-- GotQuestions.org, https://www.gotquestions.org/blind-leading-the-blind.html.

    There is wisdom to letting people go to their blindness. God exemplifies that (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12). People will go where their itching ears want them to go (2 Timothy 4:3-4), and we can't stop them, even if we really want to. We all have to make our own choices. I just wish they wouldn't be so deplorable about it.

    So, here we are, back where we started: Eating soup. And as I dip my spoon back into my bright red liquid, slightly colder, now, after having taken the time to harshly deal with this fork supremacist, I sip and try to block out the noise; the bickering, insults, logical errors, inconsistent epistemology, and whatever else they might throw at you to get you to "submit to Fork." Eventually, they'll stop trying. Eventually, they leave you alone. And then, they go, and there's peace for a little while, only for the next one to sit down and say:

    "Ugh, you dumb Spoon-e-stant. Don't you know you're supposed to eat soup with a fork?"

Wheat, Weeds, and Wonton Soup

    Being a Christian is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or genuinely hasn't gotten into the proverbial weeds of the territory. I mean that figurative language in the biblical sense:

[24] He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, [25] but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. [26] So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. [27] And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ [28] He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ [29] But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. [30] Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.' " 

-- Matthew 13:24–30 (ESV)

    The wheat and the weeds grow together, the wheat being planted by the Son of Man, and the other sown by the Devil. Yet, despite knowing this -- the weeds being wicked and life-sucking and the wheat being good and life-giving -- Jesus (as portrayed by the Master) says that the servants should wait until harvest time before getting rid of them. Thus, the Lord has left us with a principle and reality of our faith: You can't get rid of those pesky weeds, and if you do, you might accidentally get rid of a wheat, so we should let the final judgment come from God.

    "This is a hard saying. Who can hear it?" I say, echoing the Jewish forerunners before me, only I do not stay in the matters of fleshy things, inevitably turning my back on Christ, but on the things that are of Spirit and life, therefore partaking in the actual Eucharist (technically). This is a really drawn-out analogy to make this point: Like Peter, I have no one else to go to, so if the Lord tells me I gotta stay amid the weeds, then it is what it is. As a born-again believer, obedience to my Lord is my primary objective. Admittedly, it has become more challenging since my days in  "T H E  C U L T," aka, The Message, but it has also never been clearer. It's as though the more I mature with the Lord, the more difficult it becomes to walk in obedience with him, feeling as though he does not hear me, or see me, or sometimes even care for me, though I know, in my heart of hearts, that is not true. I know He feels the exact opposite, but I do not feel it. 

    It's hard to with my mind in the state it's in.

    Perhaps that's a little bit of leftover from The Message, that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad cult that loves its charisma more than Christ. They would essentially rework your emotions into a "Holy Ghost experience" while simultaneously creating the environment that emotionally manipulated you, so that when you went to church and these "mighty men of God" brought the "fire" down, you would scream, and yell, and cry, and dance, not because you were worshipping God, but because your body was releasing the days, weeks, months, and years of trauma you were experiencing. 

    Pastor-made trauma. Minister-endorsed trauma. You know: Abuse and all that jazz.

    Anyway, the point is I hate them. That's the point. The problem? I shouldn't. Jesus tells me not to. He tells me to forgive them, to help them see the light, to help them repent (like I continuously have to), to potentially restore them to good standing. I've thought about this a lot -- this idea that my old cult church (being as imphatic as they are), if restored to biblical principles after they would hypothetically reject that no-good false prophet, the "Almighty William Branham," then they might just have an amazing church on their hands. At the core of it all, there was a community there, a family, and this family, despite all the bad that's caked over it, could really do some good. Weirdly, after some study of the Eucharist and how it looked in the early church, my cult church was practicing it pretty closely, at least in appearance. 

    It's odd how close to the real deal deception is. 

    That's the hard thing about the wheat and the tares, as Jesus emphasizes in his teaching: most of the time, humans can't tell the difference. Sometimes, I look back and only think about the good things, the parts that were wholesome, fun, and, dare I say it, loving. This is a common happening for people who were in abusive relationships (which is what I would quantify every relationship I ever had in the Message as), but that does not mean that the good times, the good things, were not actual. In fact, that's what makes it so appealing and so hard to navigate: There was something real there. Good stuff happened. The evil ruler let us eat cake. Sure, it would be comparable to eating a chocolate cake mixed with poo, but by definition, it doesn't make the cake any less of a cake.

    What I mean to say is, not all of the weeds in the Message were weeds in the same way that not all of the wheat were wheat. Not everything bad was bad, and not everything good was good, but both happened. Both were real. For every fun youth activity, there was an indoctrination camp. For every fall festival, there was that one salsa that no one ate at the contest because it was absolutely vile (though they would all lie about it because they didn't want to hurt their feelings... though they would still gossip about it behind that same person's back). For every legitimate friendship, there was a bit of animosity underneath the surface; for every version of me that existed throughout it, there is the current version of me that destroys them as often as he can. 

    I saw a meme the other day that said: "When you make a joke in 2026 but remember that ain't **** funny." The video was a clip of Michael Jackson singing "It's a wonderful day," a big smile on his face, whimsy fluttering off of him, only for him to look around, drop his smile, and stare into the abyss. That's hilarious, I think, not smiling. Perhaps this random meme lord is right: **** really ain't funny. 

    I used to be happier. Smile more, talk more -- have more hope. I remember a co-teacher I worked with when I was teaching high school would (playfully) get annoyed with me because of how optimistic I was. One day, when I was particularly excited about this new lesson I was going to try, she looked up at me and said, "Aw. That's adorable. You still have the light in your eyes." I chuckled. She did not. She continued: "Don't worry. It'll go away." She laughed. I didn't. 

    But the funny thing about it was, the joke I didn't get was that she was right: It did go away, and ultimately, what that taught me is that with or without a cult, life is going to rob you of that light, that spark of life that we all have before the horrors of it set in. Jesus keeps that fire stoked and helps in all those matters, but that doesn't mean the matters aren't still real with lifelong effects. The real revelation of it all is that he is the light in and of itself. But the older you get, the harder it gets -- the more you think about what was rather than what is, and then (worst of all), you want to throw it out; remove the weeds. I think that was what was most interesting about my coworker's outlook on life, her sense of humor: She recognized the hilarity in the harsh truth that the light will eventually go away, and when it does, you learn the truth of the real at the cost of your innocence. Therefore, the innocent and immature laugh at the absurdity in the statement, while the mature and experienced laugh at the punchline that comes with time.

    I suppose I have yet to get the joke. 

    In Jesus's parable of the wheat and weeds, there's a fourth party: the reapers. The Master says that he'll send them to harvest one day, and the wheat will be taken up, the weeds burned. Clearly, this seems to be an allegorical allusion to the second judgment, when the believers are taken to spend eternity with God's joy, and the others with His wrath. You'll notice the wheat and the weeds are not the reapers nor the Master, which I think puts things in perspective quite obviously: We don't make the final judgment call. We simply continue to coexist as long as the Lord may tarry.

    Coexist, I think. I can't stand that word. It's been hijacked by spiritualists and liberalist worldviews that, I think, simply tarnish the term. In their view, it's more about recognizing that everyone's truth is equally as valid and that we should all respect everyone's subjective choice to believe what they have, as it is what's real to them, which is just as real as what's real to me, to which I reply, "No, Karen, the dude who believes that he is a woman but doesn't have her reproductive organs or genetics (except for the breasts he had sliced into him) is not a real woman, nor as valid of a truth as mine, and definitely not more mentally unstable than me, the guy who believes in the God that defined two genders very, very clearly." 

    The word "coexist," as Jesus would define it, means living in peace, being loving, and not making judgment calls on people before they mature. The key component here is to stand on truth, which is objective in its belonging to God and coming from God. We live peaceably among the Gentiles but do not partake of their idolatry, fornication, moral depravity, tomfoolery, cultism, and "all that jazz." In doing so, you might just be able to see that the one you thought was a weed turned out to be a wheat, and because you didn't take the scythe to them and cut them down because they disagreed with you, attacked you, or hurt you, you gained a brother or sister. Because we were kind in our speech, patient in our laboring, and ultimately working in love so that we could better the world we're in, not count it out as a lost cause, someone was able to see the love of God and that predestinated wheat was called, justified, and glorified (harvested), all the while we thought it was a weed.

    I suck at this. I am terrible at keeping the fruits of the Spirit fruiting. Sometimes I wonder to what level I am to blame for my behavior (I am entirely to blame), because of how hard it is to deal with people these days. How do you convince a man that he's a man when he legitimately believes that he's a woman? So much so that he believes if you do not support his views and call him a woman, you are murdering him -- committing genocide against the transgender race, a ludicrous statement in and of itself. How do you communicate reasonably with someone like that, over and over, on and on, all the while they are accusing you of being a murderer and hating your guts? How do you speak to someone in a cult who is so brainwashed they can't comprehend the fact that William Branham said women don't have hemoglobin, which is literally one of the quickest Google searches you could ever do to disqualify this man's entire ministry, all the while they're accusing you of being demon-possessed, controlled by a witch, or taken over by Satan? Not to mention the whole "holier than thou" complex that leads them to quite passively declare, "Eh, you just couldn't live the life. You love sin too much, and that's why you left the true faith."

    Yes, Pastor Meanie Poopoo Head, I left William Branham's Message to go sin as much as I wanted to all the way to Hell by... serving Jesus? 

    People tend to not think about that part, the whole "I live this life because I love Jesus" thing. I'm not projecting; I recognize I'm at fault for forgetting this as well. You see, the issue is never sincerity; the tension is in the question: "Who is sincerely right?" Who is objective, can justify their beliefs with evidence, and can come to the conclusions that are reasonable, real, and life-changing? This is the hardest thing about talking to Catholics, who have been my most recent grievance and test of fruit. How do you reason with someone about their faith when their pride is so palpable, their mind so hijacked that, in most cases, when you come to reason with logic, clarity, Scripture, history, church fathers, long-form content, short-form content, kindness, harshness, steel-manning, and oversimplifying, at the end of the day, no matter what you do, you get one of two responses:

1. You're an idiot.

2. You're a heretic and also you're an idiot. 

     The hard part is they mean this, sincerely. They are zealous for what they believe, and are particularly blinded by the spiritual scales over their eyes. Most people in false doctrines are this way. They are also extremely sincere, devoted, and loyal. Most people in life are, too, at least to whatever they deem legitimate; the problem is that most people are also sincerely wrong. Even I, a brilliant mind of my time (who is kind of an idiot sometimes, I'm ngl), can be sincerely wrong. I can have a lapse in judgment, misread a scripture, or let my emotions get the best of me, thinking I was justified when, in reality, I'm convicted and condemned by God's judgment (in the courtroom sense, not the "you're going to Hell now because you sinned" sense) just a little later. I can't tell you how many times I've felt bad for being a jerk to Catholics, cultists, or leftists who, despite insulting me literally every time I post, serve as a reminder that I am supposed to have some self-control. This is particularly true for the Romans. If I were to ratio it out, I would say for every insult or nasty jab I make at Catholics, I receive about 50 in my direction on all platforms. Yet, that 1 that I let slip haunts me for days. 

    Why? 

    Because I decided I could play Judge, that I was the reaper sent to cut down these weeds well before the harvest. It's then I think to myself, What if this person could have been brought to Christ, but now you just ruined it? What if they go to Hell because of you? 

    See? Things really aren't funny in 2026, especially when you factor in everything else going on in my head. Maybe I should stop doing ministry. I think. Maybe I should give it up and step away. If I can't keep myself from vengeance from even one person, then I'm a hypocrite for all the rest. The hard thing about it is that the ministry is one of the only things keeping me going, right now, as I feel like it gives me some sense of purpose. Still, it's like that purpose is slowly getting warped and twisted as I fail and fall to more and more of the principalities sent my way, and those suckers know just what to say to make me tick, too. "You're an idiot," "I've heard better arguments from a moron," "You have undiagnosed autism, and also you're retarded."

    [He's wrong, by the way: I have diagnosed autism, so HA! Take that, random Catholic guy who blocked me shortly after saying those super godly words that were very edifying.]

    It's like the demons (not the Catholics) know my weakness: To be like my dad. Try to identify those insecurities and really drive the knife in deep. I find that so bizarre because it seems like the apologetics for Catholics are literally to bully you into believing in their religion. What they don't know is that they could never abuse me worse than my father or the men I grew up with in that cult. They are quite literally nothing in comparison -- jokes compared to the monsters that lived under my bed. 

    So jokes on them, I guess?

    I can't judge him too harshly, though, because even if I've never said anything that mean, I have been mean, at times. Just the other day, I mocked this dude using baby-speak, talking to him like he was a toddler because he insulted my intelligence while simultaneously missing the point that I was making in my video, proving that he was projecting and not actually making a valid argument or criticism, which, ideally, would lead a teacher to bridge the knowledge gap rather than be a jerk about it.

    I chose to be a jerk about it.

    Condescendingly, I simplified my argument to its basic formula while talking to him as though he were being spoon-fed applesauce in his high chair. I'm pretty sure it actually hurt his feelings because his response was pretty sheepish... and that was the point. I wanted him to feel bad, look bad, and feel stupid, because that's how I felt. I might know that it's not true, but it doesn't change how I feel. After hearing the same nonsense fifty times, dealing with everything I am in my personal life, and working through what I have been for a while now, I finally snapped. Shortly after, two people (one a subscriber of mine on YouTube and the other some random guy) both convicted me by rebuking me and reminding me that I'm supposed to be fruitful despite being insulted, misunderstood, and attacked for literally everything I post.

    They were right, and that ate at me. It's still eating at me. 

    I hope that dude is okay. If you're by some random, God-ordained chance reading this, guy on YouTube who I mocked by talking to you as though you were still in diapers, I am legitimately sorry. I was having a bad day. That's not an excuse, I'm just explaining, and I think that goes to the heart of the issue: I've been having a lot of bad days. I can't remember the last good one. The one where I smiled, was proud of myself, and was happy. 

    Heck, I'm going to publish not one, but three books (technically) this year, and you know what? I don't feel anything. Something that used to make me so excited now leaves me with apathy, and as the days go on, that apathy grows, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I'll think to myself, Man, I wonder how Mom and Dad are doing? I wonder if they would be happy to know that I published my book, which I've been working on for years. Then I remember that even before they were left behind in the cult, when I still had a relationship with them, they didn't care much about my books anyway. In fact, most times it felt like there was a slight tinge of jealousy or animosity, so in all actuality, I can't tell what I'm missing. But I miss something. I grieve something. Maybe not so much what was, but what could have been.

    Either way, every day I end up grieving something new.

    Last month, I tried wonton soup for the first time—the cheap kind you get at that generic Chinese food place we all have in town (you know the one). Historically, I have always hated it, but I got it because it was and probably still is my mom's favorite soup, and I wanted to try it to see what she felt when she ate it or why she liked it so much. That's what missing someone does to you, I guess. What grief does. It makes you do weird things. A few months before that, I tried Taco Bell's Mexican Pizza because it was her favorite order. At one point, she liked it so much that she ordered it every week, almost every other day, for about a solid month.

    I like wonton soup now. I get it a lot, actually -- at least once every other week, because every time I do, it reminds me of her. 

    And this is how my life goes for everything. Things I once hated, I love, and things that I loved, I now hate. My life has become wonton soup in that way, and in the soup's hidden realities, the "substance" in the "accidents," if you will, I can see people. What was once terrible in every way is now something that I appreciate in ways I never thought I would, because I didn't see what it was or understand why it was so good... but I get it now, Mom. 

    I understand wonton soup. 

    You can't really ever know how good something (or someone) is until you get to know them. Spend time with them with an open heart and an open mind -- coexist. You'll never really know what's a wheat and a weed, but as both take time to grow, they start to make themselves more clear in their characteristics -- expose themselves for what they've always been, and even then, it is up to God to determine who is who and what is what, at the end of it all. 

    We're supposed to have charity in everything we do; otherwise, no matter how miraculous it is, how much it might even be edifying, it's all just a "clanging cymbal" if it does not have love (1 Corinthians 13:1). That's been hard for me, the whole "loving my enemies" thing. It's been hard for me to grieve day in and day out, having my mind eat at itself and my heart night after night, and still keep civil. All the while, for the full 24/7, all I do is mourn; I exist in existential pain, and I do not see it ending. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20, which, in some ways, gives me hope, but at my last physical, I was told my eyesight was 20/10, and a part of me wishes that could apply to the future.

    But it doesn't. We're finite beings in an infinite Creator's plan, and that means that there will (naturally) be limitations. Thankfully, despite the limited time we have on earth, there is no time limit on grief. I suppose it never really goes away, but gets easier to handle, in my experience. As you work your way through its five or seven stages (depending on how you look at it), you learn to manage the vortex of it all.

    That's what it is, you know? Grief. It's a tornado of feelings. They're not linear, and sometimes you feel more of them at once, but above all, it's volatile -- it tears you apart, destroys everything, and that's what's been happening to me over the past year. My soul has become the next best Tornado Alley, uniting my different states of being as I face the storms. Sometimes they'll pass, at least for a little while, but just when I think the storms are ending, another whirlwind touches down, and it all begins again.

    I saw this video the other day where a guy put a cup of coffee with the words "me:" next to it under a running water faucet, showing that the water would (eventually) fill the cup and wash away the coffee. The caption above had read, "time heals all wounds," and yet, as he's recording, someone offscreen reaches in, pouring a cup of coffee back into the cup, with each entrance into frame accompanied by a word beside it: "another tragedy," "unexpected bills," "the world ending," and on and on. It was meant to be funny, but as the meme lord before us had said (and we must remember), skubalon ain't funny. 

    I related to the video. So much has happened and changed over the past year. It's been exactly one year since I left the cult, and at the end of it all, I really do believe I got the short end of the stick. I was the one who ended up alone, who lost everything and everyone. I took all the risks on that terrible day, deciding to free as many people as I could from the Message's grasp, and, thankfully, it worked (for most of them). I am the one who is alone, physically, but am haunted by them, mentally. The memories of it all, and everywhere I go, that's what I see: the ghosts. I see the faces of all the ones that I loved inside the cult, and even though I know that they hurt me, threw me aside like nothing, that I'm no longer even human to them, I still want what's best for them. I want them to make it home, to know Jesus like I have gotten the privilege to.

    But why?

    Maybe this is the part of God's light in me, that heart that He knew before it all. That supernatural empathy that I legitimately can't explain, though I'm sure there's some skeptic out there who can tell me it's some neurological-chemical reaction that's causing me to have psychological attachment issues or something. Personally, if it is all just evolution and primordial soup from star farts, then I am currently waiting for the survivalistic reason for why I mourn people who are alive, to the point that I wish I wasn't alive to feel it, as good for my survival. How irrational acts of altruistic impulse (primarily putting our lives in danger) are meant to be an evolutionary strength. 

    Whatever. That's not the point of this essay. The point is that I care more about people who hate me than I do myself, and that's odd to me. The mean-spirited Catholics, cultists, liberals, and Pastor Meanie Poopoo Head are all on the naughty list, but I don't want them to stay there. I want "Santa" to put them on the good one. 

    I want to see them when I meet Jesus. 

    They're not all wheat; they're not all tares; they're like wonton soup, and I really hope there's wonton soup in Heaven. And even though I can't see them, I see them. They're there in my mind as I relive the good days. I see the smiles and the laughs, not the venom nor the fangs. Maybe that's how you strike that balance, I think, that chord of harmony that God reminds us of relentlessly. To have grace and truth (John 1:14), which is to stand on the Law but not forget the mercy that we have since the Son of Man came. To remember that wheat and weeds are so hard to discern. 

    And there's that word again: Hard. Being a Christian is hard, and though I know that there's no one else I could go to except Jesus, it doesn't change the fact that walking with him is hard. 

    "It's a hard saying," I repeat. "I'm still trying to figure out who can hear it."

Dying Passion

    It's been a while since I've posted here, mostly because I've had no time. I started this blog to improve my SEO and online presence, but with how much things have changed, that goal has fallen by the wayside. 

    But now, after so much has changed since I last posted on here, I find myself sitting in a classroom, staring into the void, the "nothing" if you will, wondering what I could do with my time. There's something wrong, I think, knowing that before this, I always had a mission -- something to entertain myself with. Keep me busy. The underlying objective was always "help the people come to Christ," or, even more broadly, "help people." The means of accomplishing this mission came in the form of projects, often books, but sometimes reaching beyond that, such as music or social media. But something's wrong, I think again, knowing that, deep down, the gears aren't turning. 

    There's a passion, a dying passion, one that I can feel going out like that feeling you get when you watch a candle burn: It's slow; you know it'll be a while before it goes, but it's going, and if you stop paying attention to it and just keep letting it burn, eventually it'll be gone. But it burns, I ponder. That must be good. The burning is present even if the aroma is absent. It's like one of those scentless candles that are there simply for the aesthetic, which seems like a pretty existential creation to me, this thing that has a reason to exist, but it's not a full reason. It's just there to look at, but functionally, it does nothing to its fullest degree.

    So that's it, then? I'm just a scentless candle? Burning, burning, burning with no aroma, no real purpose.

    If the purpose is to be seen, then being seen is accomplished, and I suppose the scentless candle can have solace in that. But I don't want to be seen. I just want to be. To exist, to love, to feel. Though a slight correction needs to be made, because I do feel it, but when I feel it, it's just sadness. Anguish, anger, consternation, anxiety, and again, that deep, relentless sorrow that grows and grows with the darkness that the candle can't quite hold back. And that's the downside to the scentless candle, I suppose, is that not only is it not working to its fullest potential, but it's eventually going to die in that state, and that darkness -- the unrelenting Nothing, is going to come. It's going to win. There's nothing you can do to stop it. 

    As much as we might try, we all have an end, and that end (to some) is a new beginning. To others, it is oblivion. To me, it's peace in my time.

    In Titus 2:11-14, the Apostle Paul writes that we should have a zeal for doing good works. I read that today, and it perplexed me, not because I am alien to the zeal, but because I should (now) have more zeal than ever. I mean, just look at this:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. 

-- Titus 2:11–14 (ESV)

    "Zealous for good works," I repeat out loud, remembering what that was like while I was in the cult. Ah, yes, I sarcastically ponder, the Message cult, because you've never mentioned that one before. And I suppose I have, numerous times, to a degree that I worry it's damage to my spirit is becoming me; that I am nothing more than a survivor who can't seem to quite slip away from the grips of this godawful thing. And I sit, and I think, and I squirm in my torment, thinking about the Before while trying to survive the After. Yet, in the After, everything is so much harder, so much more of a fight. I sometimes wonder if God should have just left me to suffer in that cultish nonsense, to go on doing the best I could for Christ, even with my works being hijacked by Branhamistic gobbledy-gook. At least then, I was on fire, I contemplate. Then, I was writing every day, had a plan for every outcome, and was excited to be working for the Kingdom of God. 

    And yet, it was all a lie. It was never real. It was all a facade that (from the top down) was nothing more than an illusion. My family, friends, leaders, and even certain experiences with God were all nothing but a wash of the hog. And the After? Oh, God, the After: It's unrelenting. The thoughts never stop, the pain never ceases, and despite it all, worst of all, I can't seem to get the words to come out. Yes, I recognize the irony of such a statement, given that the words are coming out right now, but what I mean is that the passion, that feeling, that fire... is gone. It was left behind in the Before, and now, in the After, it feels like such a chore just to feel even a bit of happiness. To not feel guilty for living or for surviving -- for moving on.

    How can I?

    The other day, after getting some quite troubling news from my wife, I went for a run on the treadmill. As I did, the song "Sand Drawing" by Judah Earl came on, and it was then I saw their faces. I can't stop seeing them. I imagine (to some degree) this is how soldiers feel coming off the battlefield after their brothers are brutally killed in war. It's not highly significant, but it's at least somewhat significant. The importance is real, because as I saw their faces, ranging from friends, to family, to those that I helped and those that I hurt with, all I could do was sob. Why me, Lord? I thought. Why did you choose me? Why not them? Could it be so that I might switch places with them so that they might have what you have given me:

    Freedom. It has a price, you know. I don't mean that to be sarcastic; I mean that in the sense of understanding you don't really know what freedom is until you have it at the expense of someone else's blood. You don't know freedom until you know what it's like to have a memorial wall filled with the photographs of faces that you once went through Hell with constantly on repeat in your mind: 

    memento mori

    memento mori  

    quando unum tecum ero

    So I sit, and what once brought me joy now only brings me pain, and that familiar feeling, that old "friend" who comes for me, draws closer and closer. The darkness that I cannot beat, that does not relent, that pulls me into its embrace, only before, when I felt nothing but anger toward it, now it feels like a mercy. In my honesty, I have asked the Lord to let it come -- let it be so that I might not. But he does not heed those prayers, as he never has. Maybe it's because of that deal, I think, remembering 2020 when I told the Lord that I would stay around, but the moment he was done with me, for him to take me home. 

    Maybe. Just maybe. Yet, who am I to make a special covenant with God that has not been granted to others before me (as far as I know)?

    So I work. I work, and the works are good, for I know my redeemer lives, and he has made them good by his righteousness, but I don't feel. Not like I used to. Where I once felt joy in helping, now I feel nothing. I know it's good. I have a cognitive recognition of its goodness, but I don't feel good. The compliments seep into this emptiness, this pit in my chest that once felt so full but now just feels like nothing. What's worse, I question, to feel apathy or the rage, melancholy -- the grief that got me here?

    Here to the Nothing.

    I suppose I don't have a choice. I don't know if I ever did, or if any of us ever do, when it comes to how we feel. As much as we might not want to feel the feelings, we cannot beat our humanity. I don't believe God expects us to, in that sense, be emotionless robots, given that's not what God is. We control our emotions, but we cannot stop them. They just are in the same way that life is. Yet apathy, in all its emptiness, is a feeling, though it is a paradox of an emotion: How do you feel the feeling of not feeling? 

    I don't know. All I know is I am, and it has bled into everything else that I once felt so much joy for. Where I could process my sadness in a poem, I can now barely pick up a pen. Where talking about God with someone was once so rewarding, now it is something that keeps me busy. Keeps me alive. In Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, the zombies are not in control of their own bodies, but they are (to some degree) aware of what's happening. They have agency, and, in a rather horrifying way, they grapple with what they are doing, albeit against their will. But they are dead. This is true, scientifically: Dead indeed.

    That's how I feel, in my relationship with God, though I will admit it is less vulgar, violent, disturbing, and horrific, but only in the physical sense. In every other, it is almost exactly the same. 

    I am dead, I think, I died. Yet in my death, there is life.

    I have always found this to be my central understanding of the Gospel: That it is life, but the life was attained by death. These are two absolutes in our existence, these two unavoidable truths that, though we may not like it, though we may not feel it, and though there may be blurred lines only seen in our dissociation, there is death, and there is life. There is light; there is dark. In the pain, the passion, we see the two crossover, where the dead become living, and the living work. 

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. 

-- Titus 3:4–8 (ESV)