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)
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