Pain is ultimate; dying is final

The agony that leads to death, in whatever form it takes, is the ultimate reality of life. Everything else that we can sense in this life pales by comparison.

And in view of this, what have we as a human race done? Redeemed the time? Hardly. Just the opposite, in fact. We have raped and destroyed everything we have touched. We have tortured and maimed. We have rendered useless, sucked the lifeblood from, and dismembered and disordered everything living. We are the scourge of existence.

In this light, I celebrate nuclear warfare. It doesn't happen often enough. I shudder to think of all that is living that isn't human that would be destroyed in its wake, but I celebrate the mass death of humanity. If we are exterminated, all the better for whatever life can survive us. We are the cancer of existence. Let the bombs rain down.

The despair of politics

As a Christian and a being necessarily encumbered to politics, I keep slamming into the deep divides between people who call themselves Christians, between people who do and those who don't, and between people who share their non-Christianity and little else. I keep thinking of an old Bad Brains song, "I Against I":

We are all at odds with each other, and faith does not heal, it does not bridge. It divides further. For all the talk of love, we humans hate far more effectively than we could ever hope to love anything or anyone. We lie to ourselves about that very thing on a nearly constant basis.

I have friends on many points of the political spectrum, and I love them no more or less because of their politics. That's to say nothing special about me; I just don't trust political boundaries as the final arbiter of who is worthy and who isn't. I prefer to stand in disagreement, but not to divide over it. And I am in a tiny minority, apparently, for that very reason.

Christians are people who disagree on a variety of issues, both political and theological. Such has it always been. But the divisions that have broken the church into pieces are a great shame, sin upon sin. We are called to union, not division. Yet how many times I have heard people who consider themselves Christians mock and belittle, or even deny, others who do the same over disagreement on a nonessential issue. Important, perhaps, but not essential to the faith.

But that is not the modern American Christian church or the modern American Christian, and I very much feel at odds with all that. Honestly, I don't "feel" like a Christian at all. Oh, I believe. I believe that Jesus is the risen Christ, the only begotten Son of God. I believe in salvation through Him alone. I believe He is my only hope, that my sin condemns me in the eyes of a holy God, and yet I am made new in Christ.

So I am a Christian. And I am not a Christian, not an American Christian, at least. I no longer know who or what I belong to in terms of human groupings, and I no longer care, either. I feel cut loose from all connection to this life and this earth, from this world and from all others. I am, in a way, biding time until I die, and I long for that day to come, my depression notwithstanding.

Let the bombs fall; may Christ return.
Let the diseases spread; may Christ return.
Let destruction gain; may Christ return.
Let chaos reign; may Christ return.

My battle for mental health

I was diagnosed with depression as an adolescent, and was prescribed meds in my late teens for the first time. It's been a battle ever since, although there have been long periods of stability thanks to the meds and the work of good therapists.

In the past year, depression has hit a new low for me. Triggered apparently by a year of Interferon therapy (for melanoma), the meds that had worked no longer did so, leading to suicidal depths on an ongoing basis. We finally got this thing mostly stabilized, but there are still periods of paranoid despair to be contended with. At least it's no longer a constant.

I thank God for the work of good doctors, for the drugs that are literally saving my life, for a good therapist I'm working with now, for every moment of clarity I get. I thank God for the strength to get up in the morning and do it all over again, and for the patience to see it through even when that's the last thing I want. I thank God for sticking with me, even when I abandon Him, ignore His Spirit's leading and comfort, question my faith, all of it. I thank God for having mercy for one more otherwise lost soul.

Naked before God

It can be a terrifying thought, and was to me for so long: Standing naked before God, as we always are. He sees all. Knowing this, I long believed, meant that I simply could not believe He could love me, even within Christ. How could God love this guy, the one with wicked thoughts, the one with misanthropic tendencies, the one whose faith faltered at all the wrong times, this sinner?

To be sure, God doesn't love me because I'm a sinner. He loves me anyway, in spite of my sins. He loved me so much He rescued me from my life of destruction, dragging me into His kingdom for His own good pleasure. Because He loved me.

And yes, He surely sees me in Christ now, sees me in terms of what Christ did for even me. But He loves me naked and alone, too, even though I am never truly alone; at my worst, on my face (having fallen there), cold and alone because of my foolish choices ... Yet He is there, not to judge me (even though I am braced for it), but to surprise me anew with His love and mercy.

Of course I don't deserve the least of it. But I receive it gladly, all the more knowing that He who gives love and mercy so freely does so boundlessly because He is able to love what I cannot: even me.