The most beautiful line in the entire Bible

 "They shall not hurt nor harm in all my Holy Mountain." I don't like just about anything else in there but, this statement sounds like the God I hope to know. I don't know if I'm going to make it into such a place, but just the thought of it brings comfort. God's will is not hurting or harming. Therefore whatever is happening in this world that is hurting or harming is not from God. And if I am able to separate from the evil world around me I want to. No thing of God is going to be predating in heaven. Maybe this vile activity happens here but many vile activities happen here. We can at least avoid some vile activities, and it's not too expensive. Beans rice fruit and salad, it's not going to break the bank. 

I'm tired. I hate seeing those fish documentaries. This universe probably has nothing to do with God. Probably He hears us from very far away, and sometimes intervenes, but overall its like the Bible says..there's a separate god of this world, not a Most High god but some inferior being that has hold of our souls until some specified time. That's probably the thing that forcefully the animals to eat each other and took hold of this place after the Fall. 

Truly that God is the Father of lights, the creative power that makes and protects and saves. We must be literally lost from Him. Or captive under this false god. Probably our captivity only ends when we die.

All these external concepts of God. What can I find out about God just from looking inside? God is not lesser than His creation. If I love my children and would protect them and keep them with me, so too the real God all the more. If I feel horrified by the animals eating each other, on my limited morality, so too must the real God. If I would rather suffer myself than my children, so too the real God. The real God probably has restrained horror over this place.

This place has nothing to do with His kingdom where there is peace, perfection, love, fairness, and gentleness between creatures. This place is a separation from God through which some of God is still felt, but not much. Only a few good things are here from God and the rest are just evil manifestations of this gods world. The abhorrent behavior of the fish clearly is the curse of this world. I can only imagine what fish would be like in heaven.

I don't know what I am supposed to do in a world like this. Love the good, hate the evil. Thats a lot of hating! Perhaps just love and support the good, and wait to die. Nothing of significance can be established here. I can maybe try to do less damage.

I guess I can try to recreate on a small, failing level the beautiful utopia that should be here but isn't. That's basically it, live in some kind of sustained protest against this place and hope Jesus comes back in my lifetime. If He doesn't just accepting that this entire place was just a cesspool of insane, useless suffering, and many horrific things. Taking a calming, eager anticipation of death as perhaps a cessation of awareness about this place. Perhaps even taking confidence in death as a sure end to this world.

Perhaps one inherits the kingdom, perhaps one is eradicated, but finally one no longer is part of the cycle of continual destruction. 

That's something to look forward to.

This World Is Only Suffering

 I reflect back upon my entire life, and, while nature and the scenery contained all the beauty that God probably originally intended for it, in the microcosm of human life, or perhaps animal life - it was just constant competition and suffering. I wish there were some "off" switch whereby I could simply take my husband, myself, and the children out of the world. I am so tired; my whole life I have heard Jesus will come back. I still have no good reason why a loving God would have left us here, except in some extreme anger towards us. I see no sanctification here - only varying levels of torture.

The barbarity of the animal system is paralleled in the human world by the competitive barbarity humans show each other, and resource hoarding. If only it were "just" that, it might not be so intolerable - but of course it extends. There's the endless cycles of "competition" and "deadlines" - with associated anxieties. There's the continual shaming of those who are "behind". Much like the starfish world, there's the continual "eating" of the poor by the wealthy. 

I neither want to eat those below me, torture those beholden to me - nor do I want to be beholden to torturers. It does not help to know that our torturers are also themselves beholden - everyone trapped to everyone in one giant cycle of painful madness. Ultimately no one is responsible it seems - and yet, everyone plays a role in the destruction of the environment, the worsening of social conditions, and the creation of extensive and unlivable situations for all of us. The people running the few institutions here are seemingly abject sociopaths. The fact that they too are victims of the system perpetuating the same torture they experienced upon others is of little solace to those being tortured; it is easy to say "I forgive them" but the issue is of course not with them. The issue is with this world period. This world seems like inescapable torture. 

I haven't the heart to do to my children what was done to me, even though I know it to be for "their benefit". I know I don't really have any choice. I see that even the best of people suffer pain, and this, quite a bit. Even if one is vegan and eats appropriately and even fasts, it is unlikely that they will escape the brutal competition and pain that seems to be this world in its entirety. If they do, they are still left with the observation of those suffering below and around them. They are surely only left with the solace that "this world is brief and ending", though evil. 

This, I guess, is the solace. 

I am no longer able to sleep without PTSD and fearful nightmares of some variety. As though my current world were not difficult enough, at night, even worse fearful outpourings of the mind. 

Were I alone I would probably do as the Mr. Tuttle person do - I would pray and fast, and grow accustomed to a life of hard labor in some grocery store. I would patiently wait for my time to expire, appreciating some elements of nature, trying to help a person here or there, but ultimately just waiting to die out of this place where seemingly no beautiful conclusion can be worked out.

If Chris' job were stressful, I would simply say - quit it dear - come to the homeless shelter with me, and we'll make our way on minimum wage, where there will be no anxiety at all - or, let us sell the house and live in a little, ity bitty trailer, take turns working at the gas station, and just wait for this miserable condition to pass.

But, how trapped we are with the children! It becomes a sort of complete, inescapable insanity at that point. At all costs they must be safeguarded, kept away from this monstrous and abusive place. And yet, in the best of circumstances, we are delaying their abuse. It's only a matter of time before the world, its expectations, its deadlines, its science-math-technology obsession comes crashing down on them. I have no plan to safeguard them at that time. 

We are at the mercy of God, and yet, it is so hard - does God love us? I read this over and over in the Bible, that, at least for some people - God did love them. But we read "friendship with the world is enmity with God". In the Old Testament all the people God loved seemed to get a free pass from suffering outside self-induced sinful suffering. In the New Testament, some kind of complete inversion happened where it was decided that the only way to love God was to suffer to death as a servant here. 

Who wants a reality where the best way to please God is to suffer to death as a servant? And yet, it must be admitted, who wants rather that someone else should suffer? This is the nightmare of the place. Anyone with even trace amounts of empathy does not want others to suffer for them. But neither do they want to suffer themselves. And then the worst of all realities - everyone suffering with no net improvement, simply out of collective madness and/or the circumstances of this world.

"It is what it is" - and it is terrible! 

So what to do with all of this. Every day there is the latent hope that perhaps Jesus will come soon. I understand now why this is the lynch pin of the Christian faith. It's intolerable to otherwise think of being a suffering servant, along with one's children, with no end in sight, ever. The suicide rate would be through the roof; all the poor, education or not, would throw up their hands and say "better to be dead than under these conditions!". But instead we are told every day "a little longer and Jesus is coming with a Utopia as well; you don't want to be the loser who didn't stick around to experience what is just probably happening tomorrow!"

And then the emotional punch of it too "if you really loved Jesus, you would just suffer here uncomplainingly, and wait without question, because your trust level would be so high for Him; so, here is evidence that you neither trust nor love Him - now if you don't do some more work and suffer more, and give all your wealth away, by which you could escape such a system of oppression, and if you grumble about being poor or on the low end of the totem pole of survival - then you, my friend do not love God!"

Perhaps this is the worst and most heartless thing a person could say towards the poor of this world. 

And yet who is not poor? The rich person at the top feels just as trapped as the poor person at the bottom. They feel like they could "do nothing else" because they would be "outcompeted" by their ruthless competition. They feel that mercy is weakness, and if they exhibit any of it, someone will come and hit them hard while they're being weak, and then they will just join the long line of "the exploited".

Nevermind the gains of this world are temporary, and worth nothing. Everyone is simply living for the day. The starfish completely overtaking some poor little creature wrestling for its life has no ability to show mercy, because if it doesn't eat it dies that day. I am sure it too, has starfish babies.

And yet we read that before the flood, humans didn't eat each other. And at one point, animals didn't predate on each other at all. And God promises some kind of Utopia where this madness ends.

But as beautiful, and painfully so, as these statements are - what good is it in the present moment? What good is it in the lonely "enduring to the end"? 

I reflect on my life and I don't know what to do or where to place the children that they don't suffer. Everyone in this world laughs at me as though only an idiot would have a child into this world and expect that it doesn't suffer. And yet I marvel at them - what kind of parent but a sociopath would want their children to suffer? What kind of parent wouldn't arrange everything so that their children would suffer less?

Here I am trapped. At best I can teach my children to be engineers - but, I know how shitty of an existence that is. It is a shitty existence - fraught with anxiety. Chris is bearing the brunt of it for the whole family. And how long can he withstand doing that? He is encountering the system that has shat on me my entire life, for the first time - because it shits differently on the poor. On the intelligent captives, it forces them into systems of bondage and deadlines, and makes sure they are always anxious and competing against time itself. Never can a person have a 30 year job any longer, or simply learn a trade and stably do that. No, we must maddeningly continually compete every day to get things in faster - useful things, useless things, things that destroy the world, things that don't torture animals, things that do - it doesn't matter, as long as you're sitting there worried trying to either push someone else to do things faster, or yourself getting pushed. Everyone is in fear in the end; nobody can stand such a system. The survivors have "low morale" and PTSD, and it doesn't matter that they sympathize with those getting axed. Those getting axed have their families destroyed, a lot of their self worth, and often their minds. Cycles of abuse with everyone trapped in them.

And the poor, who to some degree manage - in some cases - to escape some facets of the anxiety that comes from this insanity - have to deal with physical pain. They bear their overwork and exploitation in the form of obesity or depression, they rarely get dental care, and they are continually promised by any whore of a politician that, "in the next four years, things will be better if we just win." 

To some degree a person might think, I could simply work extremely hard, get rich, and then isolate with my family. But this is not so. You would be continually bombarded with images of the suffering around you. Everywhere you go, and perhaps you would be even more keenly aware of it, you would notice suffering and feel out of place, and even immoral, having escaped it. Only with some kind of totally deadened to other sense of empathy would you manage to so called "live it up" in this world - and then the question is - what kind of monster have you become that you are able to manage this indifference to others?

So what can I do? I hole up in the house with the children and delay the inevitable. I have no plan. In the end I hope Jesus comes within the next 10 years. If He doesn't, I contemplate the fact that life may not be worth living for my children in this world. Perhaps there could be someone strong and powerful who would take them under their wing and protect them - but look at the sociopathic nature of many of the rich in this world. And even if some sort of spouses were obtained - I don't know, I just don't know. 

Alternatively I could do what - beat them into learning now so that their life might be easier in hyper-competitive and dehumanizing ventures later? This is what my parents did with me. It builds up in the child - this constant beating. And in children like my own, who are soft and empathetic, it cannot produce the sterile results hoped for in others. It is just pushing them with pain, to try to get them to escape pain later. 

What I earnestly think about is, that better than all of this, we can just enjoy each other's companionship and love for as long as we can; I can be, first and foremost, a mother to them, rather than some asshole teacher, pushing at them like some kind of madman, for their benefit admittedly. Maybe that makes me lazy and heartless. It probably does. It probably makes me a monster, not to prepare them for the future like this.

I have to live with that. 

My plan is actually to love them for this brief period of time that I can still have them to cuddle and love. To give them, at least for 10 years, total freedom, as much as I can anyway, and then...to accidentally and painlessly off all of us at some future juncture. Before they have to suffer through engineering college. Before they have to suffer through the disappointment of romantic relationships and all the defilements of the world. Simply to explode a CO2 bomb in the bathroom at that point, and quickly and quietly take my children with me out of this world. Though it would leave Chris with a little bit of pain, I am sure it would give him the strength to follow suit as well. I could take my greatest treasure out of this place of mindless suffering, and I don't know what happens then.

I guess it's terrible because I will be breaking one of God's commands on the way out. But I think the true and merciful God will understand. I think the God that desires a painless utopia - whose original plan that was - and whose final plan is also a utopia of animals not hurting each other, and humans being good stewards, and everyone serving and loving each other - the God of all Mercy - and who put love in my heart anyway - will that God actually stare at me implacably and condemn me forever for doing what was the most merciful thing I could do in my reasoning for the children? When my very motivation was not to hurt, or destroy, but rather to end their lives on the highest, purest note - before this world would rape them of all joy and happiness?

I feel so strongly that despite the indoctrination of this world, that God would have a heart of understanding and compassion. I don't think it would be a great mystery to Him as to "why couldn't you endure to the end better?" I just don't see a loving God asking this sort of question. My reply, in any case, would be rather easy - "because I didn't want my children to suffer needlessly in a system that seems to me to be just mindless, useless, suffering and decay." Will the God of all compassion and empathy really not understand that? Really have no empathy for that? Will the God that made me really be surprised by this action, the God who clearly designed me to be able to think of such an option, and to view it as the best one possible under some circumstances? Does not compute. 

I guess there are the 10 commandments, but I really do think God will have mercy, in that - it could very well be argued that we were sadly born into the worst of times. A world with no Christian social support. A world with some kind of tyrannical capitalism torturing people through the full spectrum of their lives (whereas just 100 years ago all you needed was to add and subtract and you could live as a farmer). A place where you can't hold a job with any stability for 30 years, or have any hope of affordable healthcare. A place where everything is burning, and all the animals are slowly going extinct. A world where suggesting a turn towards more compassionate living brings total social ostracism, where women are viewed as expendable sex objects, and who themselves in turn adopt grotesque, impure ways of being, where all of nature is seemingly against you, and where increasingly, there's less and less place for family, much less large, stable, wonderful families. Will God really have no mercy in the face of all these extenuating circumstances?

I don't know.

Part of me feels like "it cannot stay terrible like this forever." Part of me feels, perhaps there will be some people's movement, or some regeneration of the churches, some shift in how everyone does things, or even the return of Christ Himself in the interim. That keeps me going a little bit. 

But if it should come to the point where my children have to begin going through everything I went through, I will very lovingly, very kindly, assure them that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, and we will call on the name of the Lord, and explode our little CO2 tank, and I will die with all my children undefiled in our little house, and hopefully that will permanently end our affiliation and that of any of our spiritual progeny with this world. Because it is not a world worth prolongedly living in.

If we should lose an eternity in heaven over it, at least it is something that we will have never known. If we should lose the experiential love of God over it, then, surely that love was not so great to begin with having no empathy for our situation. But, I believe that God does have empathy for our situation. And given that our motive would not be to hurt or harm others, I believe God would understand. Perhaps we would not be some "pain heroes" in his Kingdom, or perhaps we would just get offed eternally, but still out of the available given options, I think even my children will agree, it will be best, especially if the world continues to get more wicked. And it's already pretty bad.

My life will conclude in the most intimate, best possible terms. My children and I, in a loving embrace, could be boldly going where no man has gone before. So to speak. Having loved each other all of our lives without any interfering mentality from the world - perhaps having spent a lifetime drawing pictures together - we would depart and leave this inferno to whomever enjoys it. We will have really gotten, all that could be gotten out of it - the togetherness of our own love.

Increasingly, I have less and less reservations about this being the best solution for the long term. I am no genius to join the ranks of the very intelligent who turn to suicide, but, I have something worse - "life experience". I in no way want my children to have a "curriculum vitae" here. 

We will think happy positive thoughts. We will take into remembrance all the good things. The beauty of Autumn. The beauty of shared experiences beholding happily little animals. The shared experiences of meals together. The shared trips to the beach. The moments the world could not ruin. And hand in hand we will leave this place and leave it to someone else to contemplate when God might return to it, or what cosmic plan there is for it, or why so much cosmic suffering, etc. These interesting to daily contemplate questions will all end in the silence of sleep, and if Christ is coming back for us, it will be no big deal for Him to raise us up dead, than alive.

Am I crazy? Am I wrong?

 I've been thinking about things. Perhaps I shouldn't say anything. Perhaps my thoughts are wrong on these topics, isolating, divisive. And yet, if I am right, then, it would be immoral to stay quiet on some level. If it is true what is happening to the animals, then it seems immoral to stay quiet. If it is true that we are spending too much on consumerism, it is wrong to stay quiet, and to passively continue. If God truly hates sports, then it is wrong to stay quiet. If he hates Christmas or pagan ideology mixed with worship of Him, then it is wrong and unloving to stay quiet.

But if, on the other hand, God doesn't really care about paganism that is non-violent being mixed in with worship of Him, if, knowing Father Christmas doesn't exist, or Bacchus or any of that - if God simply doesn't care about this stuff, it seems like an outrageous and pointless thing to even bring it up with anyone. Then I could send my children to the Bible school and while they apparently would be learning little about the Bible - it wouldn't be a sin to have them participate in "harmless" entertainment - except of course the squanditure of money on the book. If God doesn't really care how women are dressed at sporting events, or about the sporting events themselves - if that is not His definition of idolatry, if God doesn't care about military involvement or lack thereof, if God doesn't care about the eating or not eating of animals at this present moment - if none of this is actually critical or even important, and if He doesn't care about how much money is wasted on empty buildings, then, perhaps it all doesn't matter and we can participate quietly like all the other Christians. 

But my fear is always that He does care. And that is my fear - but I don't know from God that that is His desire. It seems like there was a problem with this sort of stuff in the Old Testament, but, perhaps it was different because of the violence and debauchery involved. Perhaps "paganism light" doesn't bother God - like the ridiculous yoga or Buddhism or something. But then again I read that God is a jealous God. Though I may be crazy I'd rather be crazy and lose out on all of life than be wrong and find out that God was furious with me the whole time. I don't want to endlessly focus on it though. If these pagan influences are all around me I should just ignore them. I would be more vocal about it I think if I definitively knew these things to be wrong. But as it stands I don't know, and I don't want to be needlessly divisive over what could be in my head. I fear I may have already said too much wrong - in case the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe truly is predominantly a Christian story. I don't know and I don't even want to risk it. But perhaps that's a summary of my whole life. Except this stupid drug I took. If only I could undo that. It seemed to me so critical that I do it to bolster my belief system at the time. I just wanted to feel like an altered state was possible so that I could adhere better but it was wrong - it too was a wrong action. I wish I could have just done a better job imagining an altered state without taking the drug itself. 

Perhaps my father is right. Perhaps I need to work at some point. I don't want to be lazy before God, any lazier than I already am. Perhaps when the children are grown I will start then to try to re-enter the workforce. I will have no problem staying apart from the world - it is only critical for me right now that the children do so. Once they are through college and adults themselves, they will be able to see with their own adult eyes everything I have been trying to say to them. Hopefully they can integrate with some church without compromising their faith in God. Hopefully they can succeed unscathed in their beliefs despite my failures as a parent. 

Then one day I can die with all my fears, and, I will have tried my best to follow Gods' commandments, even though it might have turned out as one confused disaster. Even if I die like the Pharisees, straining a gnat and losing the main focus, at least I will die like an honestly deluded Pharisee. Because unlike the Pharisees I am not really that interested in the outward appearance of things; no, my own bullshit terrifies me on a continual basis. So if it winds up to not be true, I guess I will just have to look back on judgement day and say "oh, damn, too bad I misunderstood everything, sorry about that God, at least you know I sincerely misunderstood everything, and I did not intentionally try to do anyone wrong." 

That's basically all I probably will have at judgement day - a sincere desire to follow, however poorly implemented. I know I will need God's mercy and righteousness to save me because, clearly my life isn't some exemplar of success. 

However, I no longer care that the rest of my life will be spent in this hoveled up anxiety, and state of semi-isolation. This is just my existence and I am not going to complain about it. I am thankful I am not on the street. I am thankful that I have a family that loves me despite my mental illness. I am thankful I can still cook and clean for the family, and maybe even one day financially do my part as well. I am sorry if I have pushed around the church people with my delusive hopes and dreams for an "ideal" implementation of some higher standard here on Earth. It really doesn't matter. I am a dying thing, I will die, I will pass out of this world, and like every other creature that attempts to worship God, I will have tried my best to worship Him "right". I will have applied my own blinded interpretation of what that means to His Word and surely, like everyone else, come up short some way or another. 

I don't hate C.S Lewis. I don't hate the Baptists. I don't know what is right and wrong. All I know is I will certainly be alone for the rest of my life, and, it is ok. 

Thoughts

 Even though in all honesty I would like to be the person formerly described, I realize that in my present circumstances, and given my emotional composition, this would be quite impossible for me. I'm not sure if it's because I am a woman, or if that is an excuse; or because I am emotional. Perhaps, it's the later. Also, I tend to actually be very poor at implementing things like a doctor would. A doctor has to be rather organized, highly impersonal in their emotional life, and very focused on what they are doing, mechanically, and obviously above all that they have to have a medical degree. The competitive ability to make it through medical school, which seems antithetical to the type of personality I am talking about anyway, but I am sure they would grudgingly participate in such systems as necessary evils. Whatever that is anyway, a necessary evil.

In the end I am well aware all a doctor can do is heal broken things in the body, or rather, position things such that healing can occur. And even if I were by some feat able to do all that, to get to the position of this doctor, in the end, I would face several added impediments, and I am not even referring to my children - how could I ever refer to them as an impediment? But even if I were to restart at 26 or whenever, and even if I were of some frigid emotional composition such that I could handle people dying on me constantly without flinching and remain dedicated to task, without feeling the need to blow my brains out to handle the pain of their family's sufferings - I would obviously face that other hurdle - that of continually passing out in the presence of cutting someone open, and no natural love of the thing itself - only the result of the thing - which would be healing. Of course I am sure that is overcomable.

More pertinently, I am an entirely poor fit for such a role, and I am certain I would collapse under such conditions, worse than I have collapsed in my far less demanding life. It is sort of like a janitor saying "I am having difficultly regularly cleaning up this trash on a regular basis, but here, let me try to quintuple my workload and see if that helps." We can all agree that such a doctor, with such a personality, if they were to exist, would be a truly admirable human being.

But dreams aside there is my reality.

Presently, I seem to have "derealization". At least that is what I think it is. It may be an offshoot of schizophrenia, I don't know. 

Furthermore, I'm not sure if it's some weakness in me, but, I seem to have female emotions, and all my life I have had feminine desires, which really have no place in this fantasy. What would look very stolid and impressive in a man, I don't know, might look sort of bizarre in a woman. I guess it could look just as admirable in a woman, but the woman would definitely be a more masculine, independent type of woman. I guess there are women like that too, and perhaps they are more admirable than me.

But I have to deal with the reality of who I am. 

Rising seemingly against this image of this independent, self-sacrificing martyr type of doctor, is an equally beautiful, but probably more selfish? image of a beautiful and pure type of woman. I can see her standing in a garden in white, sunlight falling on her among flowers, with all the innocence of a person inexperienced with this world. Beautiful, tender, soft, vulnerable, pure, and possible to complete the picture pregnant, she would just be a living work of art. It does not seem such a creature would have much of her own existence at all, but rather, be an accompaniment. Intrinsically, her identity would be relational to others, a comfort, a nurturer, not at all emotionally independent, but rather the exact opposite, a creature of total emotional investment, a living flowing source of loving nurturing. Soft and quiet, loving and reverent, gentle, and kind. Not really strong in and of herself, but an accompaniment to her strong husband. Not really a father type of disciplinarian figure, or a person of boundless self-strength, but, a loving giver in a family unit. Unable to be divorced from a family unit, somehow beautiful there, like a piece to a puzzle.

I don't know, this world would have many words for such a type of a thing. "Lazy", "entitled", "weak", "useless", etc. etc. But such a thing is the topic of many fine art masterpieces. 

I am a little too practical and too rough to be such a thing. But I have seen elements of it.

I don't know I think back to when I was younger - it seems I was very disinterested in other things except to be married and to have a husband and a family, and everything else was a side goal around these goals. I don't even know why I had these desires so strongly but, I just remember having them. Desperately wanting a husband, and the validation thereof. Desperately wanting a companion, and a lifelong bond. Desperately wanting children, and to be with them. How would any of these things go with some kind of ascetic life of being a hero doctor in some refugee country? And yet I find the doctor figure more admirable than me. 

I don't know what I'm doing here, and I don't really know why my life has been what it has been. It has all been greatly upside down. I scarcely know what to aspire to that I could term success anymore. Even my belief system seems to have dead ended in insanity. 

And yet here I am and what am I going to do? What can I do? 

I am not really sure what God wants from me. I read in there that it's faith. I don't know how to produce such a thing. I don't know whether God is angry at me or not, or whether I just lost my mind all on my own. I don't know if I hear messages from God, or if it's a satanic deception, or the product of a diseased mind. I don't even know what God wants more - ministering to the poor, or the sort of personal worship that is common to a human being. It seems that pure undefiled religion is external - it seems it is in doing practical things for the poor - it seems like this is the "pure" religion. But then why would any of that require faith? Are internal things important at all? What is a relationship with God anyway? Is it like obeying a great King of altruism? Is it about doing as many altruistic works as possible? Or is it something about a heart condition? Is it something selfish and personal, like a relationship with a husband or a parent? What does it mean that God is a jealous God who wants praise and worship? How does God define worship? Is it exclusively caring for widows and orphans? Why would God require this when He is very capable of caring for all of us? Is it just as an exercise in learning about Him or is He delegating a task or ...why did He say this at all? And if this is the "purest" form, does He even want any other form of worship? Is He emotionally needy in any way, such as to want worship or praise, or is He totally autonomous, in which case, why is idolatry important at all? If God is God and without any need for praise or worship or need for anything, why does it matter if some people are silly and pray to some dolls of their own making? Supposing these people were walking in the ways of giving and altruism that God described, why would it matter what they felt internally? Is it all about external doing in a selfless way? Or is it really like an intimate relationship, like one between a man and a woman? What does it mean that God is like a husband? Does it mean that He is like a provider? 

Does God have feelings and needs and wants? 

Why does God want worship? What is worship? Is this a human delusion that God wants worship? Why would God want worship from fading dust vapors? 

I don't understand any of it. 

Anyway, it says in the Bible that God wants worship. Even though perhaps that is primarily taking care of other people. But maybe the faith thing goes with the relational aspect of God. Maybe it goes with the husband analogy, as a form of trust. 

But why would God want to be trusted? Why would this be important to God? Or rather, why would God care if His creation didn't trust Him. This somehow seems correlated to this Earth experience. 

Well certainly God is worthy of trust. Maybe God feels disrespected when we don't fully invest in the words He says, maybe it is viewed as some form of rejection, and some antithesis of obedience. Maybe it is not loving to distrust God, or try to work out what we can't work out on our own, maybe it's that.

Maybe this situation has something to do with that. 

I know I don't want to disrespect God, and my goal is to be obedient, and pleasing to Him. If it is within my capacity to hurt God through lack of faith, and myself in the process as well, I would not want to do it. In the end, I am not some independent, self-sufficient sort of thing, even though I admire the image of that. In the end, I am very dependent on the Lord, and the last thing I want to do is to distrust His words. I don't know what that will mean for my life. 

I see in my insanity the phrase coming up again and again that God will strengthen me with His right hand. I don't know what I am supposed to do with that. I see that it is written there and constantly before my eyes. I don't know if it's a coincidence, from the devil, applicable to me, or not applicable to me. I guess maybe God wants me to trust that it's applicable to me as well, and not just to a group of people in the past. 

Maybe God has allowed these circumstances to happen to strengthen my faith in Him. After all, this is certainly a circumstance by no means in any way of my own, or devised by the world - that I would ever find myself out of. I have no confidence in the medical establishment's attempts to cure anything beyond broken bones or open wounds or things that can literally be cut out of the body with surgical brutality. For a spiritual problem, I know only God can heal me. If my mind is ever healed, I know it can only come from God. 

And perhaps He is saying He will at one point heal me. I guess I would thank Him for that, what else would I do? 

I guess I would feel special and loved. 

But perhaps its some sort of lifelong test of sorts, I don't know. Or some lifelong consequence of sin. I don't know. 

Maybe God wants me to somehow love Him through painful circumstances so that my love for Him is sincere and not situational.

I wish I knew what it was that God wanted, besides this thing I don't understand, this faith that I don't know how to produce.

All I know is that God made me, and He is my Lord and Savior. And if I could make Him happy by worshiping Him, or walking in his ways, I want to. Because I do worship him in my heart, even though I don't have the amazing life report of a refugee doctor, and even if my life looks more like a total disaster right now than anything to glorify God with. If I ever met Him, I would bow down and worship at His feet, and love Him very much I am sure. And I am trying, in the interim, however failingly, to do what is right. I know I need to try better, and repent of the sins I daily do, like beating poor Willy. I know I need to be less selfish.

My life will be over in a few years anyway. I know that only then will I have the answers that I seek. I am trying to do the best I can where I am at, even though I am not at present, some beautiful completed spiritual thing. 

I hope I can grow to be less disappointing.

Thoughts

 What can I conclude from this life experience? All my life I have read this Bible, and, I don't know what to think. It contains within it the only reasonable hope, but I start to wonder, is it a delusive one? From what we read, things once, a very long time ago, went sort of terribly, but occasionally well for a group of Jewish people. On this, it seems, hinges the hopes of the entire world. Well, the entire world of faith anyway. 

We read of a time when God was actively, at least for a small group of people, enforcing His laws and interacting with a small group of failed people. On this experience we base the Bible stories that inspire basically everything that we teach our children today. A series of events, with a climatic end that seems to basically have ended 2,000 years ago when Jesus left back to heaven.

From there, things seem to get sketchy. 

What can I say? Can I say that God has never acted in my life, I cannot say that. Surely every good thing is from Him, including these past 2 years. 

But though there are these punctuated mercies that inspire hope, I still look at the entire miserable situation. We are born into this world where everything is sick and dying. Even the most healthy things are only beautiful and vibrant briefly. It is this brief span that we call "life" - and it is fraught with survival anxiety. When one is a child, childhood is sadly cut short by the need to learn. This cannot always be made fun, or, at least I think it can't; perhaps it can and I'm just not able to make it so, or creative enough to do so, or perhaps I just haven't put forth enough effort in that area. Then, as childhood approaches adulthood, life inherently becomes this seemingly ruthless competition. Sometimes for money and food to survive, sometimes for a "place in society" so that one can have a family, sometimes simply for a desired spouse; everywhere there seems to be, at least, scarcity, even if this scarcity may be artificial from a lack of maturity of people to share or adequately distribute resources. This is another question - is there actual scarcity or is this too just some kind of disease on this place - a delusion that could be avoided with better group effort? It appears there is always land scarcity, but then again this could be hoarding on behalf of people. It appears there is adequate spousal scarcity, but this could be avoided with people doing a better job of raising children with different values; it could simply be a societal disease not an inherent part of this world. 

Even if all these failed human factors were removed, would that change the fact that this place is sort of a giant death pile, with animal predating animal, and after a brief span, all creatures declining into illness, death, and loss? I just cannot waive this observation off as "that's just part of life!" Since we believe in a God, there must be an explanation. 

The Bible says this horrible reality is caused by our sinning against God 6,000 years ago. But then it says "God is quick to forgive." So then has God borne a grudge for 6,000 years allowing death to continue, sickness, illness, etc.? The Bible says it is not for man to question God, but the question of course is still there, festering, and it is quite a feat to daily ignore it. It is easier to ignore this question when one personally is not sick, poor, downtrodden, or otherwise spat out by society. But actually, I would not say it is easy at all to ignore it - it takes a feat of constant distraction - but perhaps this isn't such a feat because it's necessary to focus on what one is doing to just get through the day anyway, to just secure one's small piece of survival. So I would say most people just "accept what they can't change" - and go from there, without asking, why is this the case? We have a forgiving God, so why are we still on a world of death, suffering, and all of this? Is this forgiveness something that can only come after 6,000 years? 

The alternate conclusion is that truly the Bible is as it says, and the forgiveness is in fact quick, but it is only quick and effective for those who are "righteous" and "holy". This starts a long permutation of continual self examination and self blame, where one continually wonders why God has damned them personally, and one is constantly trying to "get more holy" in the hopes of being "heard". It also starts the frantic side struggle to "find a holy person", who is "good enough", to be "heard by God". The search for prophets always seems to be running through the Christian community, as each person hopes that, at last, someone has been holy enough to have "effective prayer". Alternatively, some people just revert back to the self blame route saying "well prayer can be heard by anyone, but it is neither that we are not holy enough to be heard, nor that God is not forgiving enough to hear, but simply that we are not asking anything in His will." While this is very easy to grasp if a person is asking for a million dollars or some materialistic bauble, this becomes harder to reconcile when one is actually continually sick, or ailing. One inevitably must fall back to "there is unrepentant sin" and just continually be chasing a person's own tail trying to figure out why one is not properly capable of "true repentance" or what the "hidden sin is". Inevitably someone has sin in their lives. Indeed it seems that "perfect people" would be selling everything they have, and then what, shortly, probably, dying on the streets. We would never hear back from these perfect people whether this strategy of selling everything worked or not, because, presumably, they would have no resources left to survive, so this cleans up a possible mess for the church quite easily. Ultimately, people who are "truly following God", quickly die. This could still work out in the Christian framework, but then it really is as Mona said - a religion of death. For the celibate person who has this awareness of the world, it might actually just be a logical conclusion and not a horrific one at all. But for a person invested in the world through children, it's not so easy to say - "well, the only beauty to this world is religion, and so, I'm going to go all the way, and hey, if my children all starve on the street, it's just the price we're going to pay!"

Sadly, with this mental illness, and probably my own preoccupation with making the promises of the Bible real in my life, this is the path I have tried to go, even if I have been thwarted in full completing it. Perhaps it was for the best that it didn't fully complete, because it seems like there are some dangerous people on the street, and, I would really not like to see my children starving to death. It is sort of a selfish thing to say "well, I need the Bible to be true, otherwise this world isn't liveable for me, so children, though I had all the comforts of the world, just go along with me on this one."

In fact the whole concept of having children seems strangely perplexing, and, were I not driven to it by an absolute desire to have them, and a loving fawning over them once having had them - if, like food and other things that I enjoy about this world, I were not "addicted" to them so to speak - but if I rationally and coolly evaluated this situation, what conclusion could have but with the "ethical" atheists that it not just wouldn't be expedient to have children, but perhaps that it would also be "morally wrong" to do so. It would really be bringing in a creature for "temporary enjoyment", knowing full well the predominant theme here, for many at least, is suffering. 

The one pocket of people who seem to avoid most of the suffering - well, at least some of it, they seem to get quite a bit too - is the wealthy. But this in particular we are prohibited from being lest our souls are destroyed or we be found guilty before God. And so the one thing that might cushion all of this existence, is forbidden. And, I guess even for "ethical atheists" this would make sense. Hoarding resources from others exacerbates the suffering of others, so actually the best "cushion" for suffering would seem to be humanism indeed, a well implemented communism. This would reduce the horror of this world to just bad weather disasters, agricultural fall out, sickness, and death. That's not much of a reduction, but it's a marked improvement. In this world of half-successes, I think it's an improvement worth striving for.

But it doesn't seem to say that that's what the point of this place is in the Bible, otherwise, the churches would basically be institutions of communism, with that point blank. No, continually hard and incomprehensible things are required. Constantly there is some kind of talk about "trust" and "faith" and how it's not good enough to just try to failingly follow God's law, or be concerned about the poor and share resources, or to simply act in a communistic way - loving one's neighbor as oneself, etc.; no it seems like even if a person were to try to act this way (and it is extremely difficult to do so because of short sighted people who feel like acquiring all the wealth of the world and hoarding it is in their or their progeny's - sometimes they don't even have progeny to spend it on - best interest) - it would not be enough. There must always be this area where one is inadequate unless one has enough "faith" in God. And then the ultimate whopper statement, the least palatable thing in the whole thing - as though it were not already hard enough to aspire to be the most decent version of oneself that one could hope to be - that "without faith it's impossible to please God." 

There you have it, the single hardest thing in there. This enables the church to go to the moral atheist, even if they have spent their entire wealth establishing a hospital or given away all their money to the poor; even if they are childless, intelligent, and acquired money solely for the purpose of giving it away - even if this person, should such a person exist - never had even intercourse with anyone, and were just indefatigably altruistic. A sort of successful other-centered Tibet monk of sorts. Well anyway the church could go to these people and basically spit in their faces and say, well, you know, that's nice and all but, you're actually not pleasing to God, even with all that. Because, you see, you've never expressed any faith in Him.

What can we make of this insanity? 

Who furthermore out of these two would one even want for a friend, or to have dinner with, or to have one's child marry? I can say one thing but it would be dishonest. I can say "well certainly the people of faith are more admirable, they are following what God has said; they are quoting verbatim what God said, and are following more faithfully." And yet if push came to shove and Banana was considering a man who had worked himself to the bone for the poor his entire life, versus this other one that had just prayed his entire life, with questionably unanswered prayers, and then furthermore, despite this lower level of accomplishment, come at the other one saying that he had faith, and that the other one was more deficient in the eyes of God than him, I don't know. What could I say here? 

Maybe this is a strawman scenario. I suppose it could be that both men are working hard, doing everything they can to the utmost of their ability to help others. Suppose both of them worked hard, obtained whatever they obtained in this world, and gave it away. Suppose both were equally hard working, equally ambitious. I guess then, the one who has faith would be more attractive than the atheist, and neither one would be hypocritical.

I guess it is an attractive thing regardless, that one has faith. Assuming whatever earthly morality could be gotten here was obtainable by both the secular atheist and the man of faith. I guess perhaps because the one who has faith would usually be more upbeat.

It would seem that the secular atheist would surely be more affected by people dying around him than would even an equally motivated man of faith - why, because for the former, this is all there is. That means when a child is starving to death in Africa, or when a coworker of his would be facing deathly illness, one would expect this person to work all the harder to save them, because, "this is the only life they will ever get." So one would expect the secular humanist to be an altogether miserable creature, full of surpassing sorrow. And ultimately, would such a person not go point blank insane?

I guess this is where the image of the ideal doctor comes in. Working some crazy long hours trying to rescue children in mindless, man made wars of outrageous insensitivity. Like the sole person with a remaining brain or heart, constantly scooping out the sand that keeps falling in on the sandcastle that is is his medical practice. Having dedicated his entire life, probably even having lost the chance to have a fulfilling family himself, just tirelessly working there to try to save another child for some destitute and seemingly hopeless starving family, starving needlessly from global greed or wars that even the best historians cannot find the original cause to. There in a hopelessly collapsing shithole, unable to comprehend what he is doing there anyway, some dazed, tortured animal trying to fight all reality, and, curiously, without any religion to bolster him, just for the very honest and unfeigned sense that "this is what is right, this is the only beauty that can be had in a place like this." I don't know how can this man come out less before God than the one saying "have faith, have faith, turn away from your sins". 

And yet, we read that according to the Bible this man has utterly nothing before God. Because he has no faith in God. 

Has he given God something that God could not have done himself? No, he hasn't. Objectively, we see he cannot "perform" his way into God's acceptance. I guess this is a point that came up on the radio that I just don't understand. But then again, I don't understand this world.

It seems to me such a doctor has done the best that any human being could do with this situation, and surely the most selfless thing. And yet I know it could not be said that "on his own merits" he would enter heaven. Surely he would have some hidden sin plaguing him, even if he were a vegan. Maybe he would grow to be prideful; but, assuming he wasn't. Maybe he would have lust, but assuming he were depressed enough about his existence so as to be without lust entirely. Surely such a person would not be drunkenly brawling in the streets, so that's out. What would he covet in this world? 

I don't know, I'm thinking about this. But perhaps it's just a rule of this reality that such an individual as I am imagining simply could not exist without faith in God. In fact, I guess, the world would be surprised to find such a person in a pure state, but at the same time "entirely without God." I certainly have never met such a person, and so perhaps this person I am imagining, and all the ideals therein wrapped up, by some universal law of this place, could not even come to this fruition without God. 

Anyway, these are idle thoughts, with no practical application to my life. Vain philosophies, I guess. 

Ultimately I am entirely confused about this faith thing. Why it is in there. Is it a patch fix solution the church created for the vast amount of problems for which there seem to be unanswered prayers to, so they could shift the blame to their constituents and say "you didn't have enough faith" and thereby avoid questioning people? I just don't view the church as psychologically cunning enough to devise some kind of system as this.

I think it is truly what God requires, for reasons I cannot understand. It has something to do with this world - this having faith, indeed, is critical, even if I can't understand it at all. Much less can I implement what I do not understand.

I guess it has something to do with trust. 

Anyway, I will place it in a category of things commanded that I cannot understand, that I must somehow do, that I have no idea how to do, that are probably underpinning all my current problems, but, sadly, I cannot figure out how to do, so I guess that falls into "failed requirements at this time." Hopefully it just works itself out because I certainly cannot force upon myself some kind of magical solution to this missing item.