Christianity Unraveled

November 8th, 2019

I don't know how I'm supposed to begin this today. There are so many directions I could go, and so little amount of time and energy to write about it all.

It feels like having a broken heart. That's all that I can think about – this time has just been a season of longing and mourning. I spent the last half-hour crying on the floor of my room, mourning the fact that I can never return to the person that I was before, a person who was so completely infatuated with God. My life revolved around him, my hopes revolved around him, my actions revolved around him. I was genuinely joyful, peaceful, and loving – but most of all, I never felt lost. I never felt abandoned.

But that's what I feel right now. It feels as though the love of my life and I had just drifted away, that it was a lie, and that I have to somehow figure out how to continue living when everything feels like it fell out from under me.

I hate it! I feel so bitter, so angry, so selfish, so prideful, so completely ugly inside! I hate everything that is going on in my mind! I want it all to stop, I want to be rid of it, I want to revert back to where I as before! I want to have the same genuine love for God that I had before, and I don't know how to regain that since I can't even see the same God as I did before. Sometimes I just think and ask if everything is a lie, not just what I thought were lies. How do I even know right from wrong, how do I know goodness from evil, how do I differentiate anything anymore?

I miss my love of God. I really, genuinely do. It feels like I am in the process of mourning the loss of a loved one. But more than that, it feels like I am despondent about nothing, because I'm not even positive that he's real anymore. And I talk to other people about it, and it feels as though the more I talk about it these feelings of mourning and anger just increase and I absolutely dislike everything about it. Oh, how I wish I could put it into better words.

I just hate knowing that I'm hurting people, that I'm frustrating people, and that I have so much bitterness and anger. The only problem is, I don't know how to stop it. And I don't know if I even want to stop it. I hardly even know what I want anymore anyway – all I know is that I want to love God with the same fervor that I had even six months ago (a year ago or even two would be a blessing!). I know that I want him to be real. I also know that I don't want to pray (nor do I want others to pray for me,) I don't want to believe in the God that I see currently, and I don't want and yet want at the same time to bring everyone down this same hole with me.

Again, I think that's just the bitterness talking. And I can just feel it exuding off and out of this screen as I type. I feel the heaviness and I feel the anger. I feel the frustration and I hear that hopelessness. I just don't know what's right anymore, and I don't know if I'm okay with knowing that I won't have all the answers. I don't understand how other people can just go through life daily being content with having all these questions unanswered or answered insufficiently.

The only thing that I currently understand is that I have bitterness. I have anger. I have frustration, I have a loss of understanding. And the only things that I have gained from them all is pride, selfishness, and isolation. I don't know if I can continue like this. I want so desperately to change, to revert back into the person and belief system I was and had before, and I know that I can feasibly do this. All I have to do is train myself and lie to myself for a little bit and I can enjoy the love that I had previously. But I know that I never will do this. I can't live a lie. I can't do that to myself or to other people.

I think that one of the worst things about this all is that I know what I'm doing and I have an idea of why, but I don't know how to stop hurting myself and other people. I don't know how to stop any of this – even though I desperately want to stop everything.

And by everything, I really do mean that. I want to quit my job, my academics, my friendships, and tonight I had the fleeting thought of my breathing life as well. It feels as though I have hardly anything to hold onto anymore. Just hope, I suppose. That's the only thing that is getting me through it right now – the hope that I'll find the truth at the end of it, and the hope that I'll like and be content with the truth that I find at the end of it.

This isn't all that I had on my mind, though. I was talking with the person who disciples me, and I was telling her about how I can't believe that the God as we know him can be both perfect in justice and in unconditional love. That he can't have perfect love if he doesn't give everyone at least a chance if not provide everyone with eternal life anyway. That if he were truly good, then he must provide everyone at least – and by this, I mean the very least – an equitable chance to hear and believe. And maybe more than that, I feel as though he could have created a better plan than using humans to save other humans.

I know how arrogant that sounds, as if I am projecting my knowledge and plans as better than God's. And perhaps, actually no, I do believe that is what I am and have been doing. I think that if I were God, I could've come up with a better plan of loving and saving humanity. I could've come up with a better way than using humans who time and time again fail. I wouldn't have chosen that because it is obvious – at least in my thought process – that it isn't the most equitable or just answer to the problem. In fact, it isn't that just to begin with.

And I suppose this must be a thought for another day. I continue to become more riled up, and it is not good. I recognize this, and I dislike this, and I wish it weren't true. I wish I weren't placing myself above God. I wish I weren't so angry and bitter and confused. But most of all, I hate how it feels as though every day I am slipping farther and farther away from what I loved most, and I don't know how to nor can I bring myself to try to travel closer to God.

I don't know what I believe anymore. Somedays it is that he exists, and that he is good and perfect. Somedays it is that he exists, but that he is injust and unloving. And then on other days, he doesn't exist at all because it feels easier to believe in nothing than in something that claims to be all-loving and perfect in justice when I don't see it.

My discipler told me that she can't wait until I am brought out of the lies that Satan is blinding me with. Me, I don't even know if that's what I want. If what I find at the end of this with my eyes 'being opened' once more is the same God that I knew before with the same character traits that I was taught and with the same mode of what I perceive now as conditional love and harsh judgement, I don't want my eyes to be opened. I just want God to prove that he is better than who I currently think him to be.

And hopefully, that will satisfy the longing for justice in my bones.