state of the Union (or current lack thereof)

 so now it's time to trace back how i got here

.....

i "came to Christ" out of months of suicidality in november of 2018 and was baptized the following february

for just about three years (november 2018-november 2021) i considered myself a Christian. sure, "the World" pressed in on me, with a documentary from my spanish class in spring 2019 being an early source of questions on God's goodness in light of horrific human suffering.

but, i talked through this with my family and pressed onwards. i knew i had been saved and what i had been saved from. it also helped that my faith gave me hope for redemption of my own brother's suffering through intense mental health struggles and his eventual death by suicide.

this was, essentially, a starting place for years of hope, joy, and intense intermittent anxiety. worship, fellowship, and hormones (attraction to a friend of mine lol) kept me going. scripture reading raised hopes and spawned doubts. but i definitely clung to the hopes. 

i did love others in a way that seemed outside myself - feeling led by the Holy Spirit to talk to, pray for, and help homeless people and others i encountered. i had many times where i did and said the right thing at the right time.

and i miss that.

to jump ahead, fall of 2021 was the final unraveling. over the summer, i had some intense bouts of doubts and anxiety over my faith. God seemed to remind me, in the midst of one particularly debilitating period of anxiety, that i was His doulous - His bondservant. i was bought with a price, saved by grace alone, and i now lived unto Him; my freedom was found in His plans and purpose for me. i also met a dear friend in august who i spent time with and comforted and supported me through my doubts. she is very dear and compels me to consider the God i once thought i knew. and, as an important side note, she is one of many that i have met and am still friends with who love God and love me and others so well. that matters a lot.

anyway, the eventual unravelling occurred in november of 2021 when i was listening to Nomad Podcast - an episode on different conceptualizations of Hell. 

and, oh boy - everything came together just right. the "cosmic weight of suffering", as someone once described it to me, and the incomprehensible inevitability of some, perhaps many, people ending up in a place of eternal torment - be it physical pain, emotional pain, consciousness amidst utter darkness - who knows.

but, yeah. that kinda threw a wrench in my idealistic conceptualization of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ being not only the silver lining, but also the deeper reality invading and pervading all of existence, making all things right and instilling meaning in the overwhelming senselessness of existence. was my understanding of God and His Story misguided? very possibly. does that alone mean that i'm currently wrong in my thought processes? well, there's a lot more to unpack to thoroughly consider that.

and, to be honest, the - buzzword warning - deconstruction has been progressive. the beauty of God sending his only begotten Son as the Way to the Father - the Savior of wretched sinners who had rebelled against an Almighty God...

 well.... 

it doesn't make sense to me anymore.

and, yes, i know that the Bible accounts for this. the Gospel appears foolish to those who don't believe. but, like other things in the Bible (that can be for another time), it seems too convenient. 

there's more to this story, but i do want to say that anecdotes of miracles and unconditional, self-sacrificial love by followers of Christ (Corie Ten Boom, Helen Roosevere, George Müller - to name a few) compel me. they really do. the notion of self-sacrificial love is VERY compelling. and it's something, amidst the apathy i have squandered in for far too long, i would do well to pursue whole-heartedly.

so. this is very incomplete. but it's something. i don't deny that a deity exists. if it's the God of the Bible, then there's a loooootttt to sort through. but, as many would point out, i am of but a very finite mind and cannot hope to understand it all. 

that can kinda go both ways, though.

and that generally sums it up - enough to have some understanding!

p.s. - if you're wondering, i still mourn, in some way, this loss of faith and that of others. think of that what you may - it just is.

♡

- william