Staying/Leaving
Keep dreaming those lies
before you find out the truth:
love doesn’t exist.
Doing
Is there a reason for everything I do? Does it blur my intentions if they’re because of something else? Isn’t everything caused by something else? Do I just boil it down to something uncontrollable (or by luck) before I find the true reason?
Musings on/of Myself
Somewhere along the way, I stopped beating myself up over things I can’t change, because God had given me the wisdom to understand the difference between things I could change and things I couldn’t. Even if I don’t like any aspect of myself, it doesn’t mean that I’m ignorant as to believe that I can change (or am willing to change) every aspect of myself. Believe it or not, I have enough hope in God to trust that he made me exactly the way I am for a purpose, without me (as a being, not as a human) being corrupted or something by the fall of man. I believe that God has made me this way perhaps not because I’d be happy or I’d benefit at all from it, but I’m sure that it is in his plan somewhere that I will be beneficial, or else I would not have been here at all.
What I don’t believe in is that God is out to help everyone, or that the result of God’s love is that people are helped in some way. Thus, it it’s simple syllogism for me to conclude that those who attribute to God’s love or will some magical healing power that cures modern-day terminal illnesses (and if there is some ‘miracle’, the ‘terminal’ was a misnomer on behalf of the doctor, who is most definitely not omniscient) is just confusion. It is impossible for me to believe both in an omniscient, omnipotent God who allows tragedies like the Christian Crusades and the Holocaust to occur, and an omniscient, omnipotent God who personally is out to help everyone.
That being said, I seem to have the support of some close friends. Unfortunately, it follows prior logic that because they believe that I’m being stubborn to avoid trying to change; although I seem to have the support of some people, I do not have their true support. What I actually have is the extent of the support of their personal religion, which unfortunately in my case ends quite quickly with respect to my own ambitions. If I had true support, I would be able to have a conversation with them without them (by default) thinking that one aspect of me is (1) bad, (2) necessary to be changed, (3) the cause of my misery, (4) a corruption of God’s intent. Unfortunately, all four of those I find to be absurd statements.
1. I no longer consider this to be bad. Reading passages about love versus passages about hell, it’s obvious that this doesn’t belong in that category, despite what the prooftexts say. It’s as absurd as saying all women are inherently inferior and, should they exhibit womanly features, be condemned to hell.
2. I know that this cannot be changed in our current technology. I take offense to those who recommend it to me, despite their intentions being out of love. A racist slaveowner who speaks racial slurs to his slaves out of love is still a racist slaveowner who says racial slurs.
3. The cause of my misery is not this, but cognitive dissonance caused by it and my religion. I must reconcile the two, but it is not necessarily necessary for this or my religion to be recanted for the two to exist together without causing me misery. Also, I don’t believe that God is out to relieve me of my misery anymore. He picks and chooses who will be miserable and who will live happy, ignorant lives.
4. As stated before, I do not think that this is a corruption of God’s intent. Even if God intends to damn all of us to hell and he made them this way in the first place, “Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?” (Romans 9:21 NIV). God need not be held to his own standard; he’s all-powerful, he’s the lawmaker, and the lawbringer. This highlights the futility of trying to identify “God’s intent,” as we are merely humans, and it may even be an insult for us to even try to conceive of what God intends for human beings.
What people don’t understand is that their idea of what God wants (for me) is not exactly what God wants (for me). Human perception is easily and often deceived by the media, tradition, and the devil, not to mention what God wants for me is not anyone’s business, not even my own. Does pottery created for common use, or pottery created for the purpose of enacting sin so that God’s glory can be shown know what it is for?
Though it is nice to feel like I have support, the realization that that support ends where my religion also has stabbed me is quite demoralizing. To have unconditional support and love of my friends is far too much to ask of most anybody, but I suppose one can hope that it will come one day.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”
Questions
What does it take to be happy?
If who I am today is only because of what I am, then what part of me is me?
If I doubt God too much, is the punishment hopelessness?
Are my doubts justified? Am I allowed to have these doubts?
When does mere questioning become doubting, and when does doubting induce unbelief?
Am I still a believer? What lengths will I go to avoid the answer?
Why can’t I see or believe what I did as a child?
No good in humanity.
Everywhere I look, all I see is selfishness. Even Christians, to me, appear only to be Christians for their own good.
I wonder if I will be able to truly witness an event that wasn’t motivated by some type of self-advancement.
Hope
I fear that my sparks of motivation to do things are only driven by false, subtle and perhaps subconscious hopes that something that could happen would happen.
But don’t we all know how that ends? The result can’t be changed, and so the story goes.
Something to Believe
I am hiding from some beast, but the beast was always here.
Watching without eyes, because the beast is just my fear that I am just nothing.
Now its just what I’ve become, what am I waiting for, it’s already done.
If only, if only
We try so hard, imagine so hard, think so hard of what could happen, if only.
It seems so perfect, so ideal, if only!
I feel like the maharajah, who desires for her so much, and could offer the courtesan anything she pleases. But, like the maharajah, it’s impossible for any of my courtesans to love me.
Don’t you know that I could love you so much? I could love you better and more than anyone else in this world, yet my love is worthless, forgotten, and mocked because of reasons for which I have no one to blame. You don’t even deserve my love, not a single bit. I can’t imagine anyone (even myself) drooling over you (as I do), thinking about you every second, waking or sleeping (as I do), or ripping their heart out and serving it to you on a silver platter (as I do). Yet for reasons unknown I try to throw myself at you, hoping you’ll notice, or even care, and get caught in your arms. Instead, I end up falling lower than where I was before, without you even having had bat an eye.
How can you be so apathetic? How can you not notice?
Yet my heart still tries to reason; it says, “You’re just hiding. Let me bring you out into the light,” and “You really do love me, but you just won’t show it,” and “Maybe.” I would have listened, had it been like before, but now at least I’ve scathed past one before (and barely came out alive), and my idea(l) of love and destiny and fate is slowly deteriorating, with each blow.
Because what kind of God would allow that to happen? If He were the God of my life, then why is everything (that I care about) going so wrong, while what I care about in others’ lives are going completely fine? If He were the God of my life, then why are the roads towards him closing up, and the roads that turn away from him opening so quickly? If He were the God of my life, then why does my heart so freely and powerfully go towards the “wrong” (if it really is wrong, but that’s another story), when my mind and my spirit wish to grow (closer) to God?
Though that’s pretty much effed: my mind and my spirit now follow my heart begrudgingly, while my heart slowly brakes (and breaks). I now only go to church hoping for some message or some words that will magically restore everything back to normal, but all I hear are voices saying that I deserve better than to be deprived of my heart’s function.
It’s funny, the more I deviate from my “faith,” the more I feel like I’m approaching a point where I can stop lying about everything, while in actuality it was my own “faith” that forbade lying.
What happens next? None of my relationships will be the same, since I’ve integrated myself so much into this vineyard. One thing is for sure though, I did not find happiness or joy or peace in religion.
Nothing like what those turnarounds say, probably because I’ve never turned around.
“Community”
You take a sprout and never water it, and you expect it to grow, much less have fruit? You won’t have the opportunity to choke this plant any longer; it’s already long been withered.
