Firstly – if you want to comment on this post, and I’m sure you will, either post a comment on the blog or email me drchaotica (at) optusnet.com.au – Please don’t call me, or try to contact me in any other way.

Okay, regular readers of this blog (both of them) will know that I’ve been thru a lot in the past year or so. From having “everything”; employment, living independently from my family, having a computer, motorbike and all that, friends who seem to actually care; to losing it all.

Sure, I still legally own a motorbike, but has been unreliable/broken/unavailable since August, plus my new computer was ordered yesterday…. Still, I now have no job, I’m living at home, I have no prospects for much of anything.

So…. I’ve been doing some contemplating, some self examining, who am I? Or more importantly, who should I be? What sections of my life “fit”? What, if anything, needs to be discarded or changed? How do I feel about myself? How should I feel? What is truth? Should I drink Pepsi or Coke? The usual existential questions….

Now, my mind is known for being pessimistic, depressive, and when asked whether the glass is half empty or half full, usually ignores the volume of liquid and wonders if the drink is poisoned. So I’ve been exercising for hours a day, hoping to keep those endorphins up, to try and keep myself in what I’d call “happy” – although my happy is more of a not depressed than anything positive. Still, I’ve been contemplating my future from the best place I could be at emotionally, and having nothing to do all day from a responsibility point of view has given me time to do all this thinking.

Which leads us to the inevitable point where I lay out my “big plans”, or at least my general direction, but such things can’t be done until the basic question is answered…. Not the “who am I” question, but the “where am I” question.

Of course, I don’t mean my physical location, but my metaphysical location…. What is the universe? The Great Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything…. 0x2A and such.

This where the band grinds to a halt, and everyone looks at me in confusion…. And asks: Don’t you know the answer? Weren’t you employed to tell other people the answer?

Well…. Yes, I guess I did know the answer, but I didn’t know the answer. Or at least, the existential questions from a few paragraphs above were being asked because I am now at point where I didn’t know the answer.

So, to understand this, I had to go back to how I arrived at the previous answer. This is a very complicated thing to understand, I even remember writing around 9 pages to explain it all to someone, or at least to explain a lot of the circumstances. I no longer have that explanation…. But it basically boils down to a couple of main ideas.

I was in a very bad place, the most depressed I’ve ever been, and was searching desperately for something, anything, to make life meaningful. Basically, I was totally emo (although emo didn’t exist back then), in my first year of uni, and wanting to find where I fit. A lot of the reason for being depressed was being single – completely, totally, utterly single. Not having met anyone who found me attractive in a romantic way.

Of course, there was this girl who did have that meaning thing worked out, and since I’d reached a point where I’d already tried to end it all, the only option I could see was to investigate her idea of what life was about.

Which is what I did, and what I found was something that made at least some rational sense. The Bible, or at least main points of the gospel as defined by various evangelical tracts did seem to fit reality. Or at least Total Depravity seemed to click with my pessimistic worldview, but what really sold it for me was the idea of the Sovereignty of God – the concept that there is a god who is in control of everything was very attractive to someone who sees nothing but chaos in the world.

So I went “all in”, I wholeheartedly embraced God, Jesus, the Bible and everything that came with it. I bought all the books, wore all the t-shirts, played all the songs, attended all the conferences. I did everything that was asked, and then some. I was the model convert.

But I wasn’t.

You know it.

I know it.

I was still depressed, my life still lacked a real meaning and purpose; sure I had an intellectual understanding of the various theological concepts that were supposed to provide meaning, but I never really felt it emotionally. I’d hear people talking about a God-shaped-hole in their lives that only Jesus could fill, but I still seemed to have that hole.

I prayed, and prayed. I read the Bible. I learnt all the theology.

The whole time I was hoping I’d discover whatever it was that was missing, I even joined up to work with SL – hoping that everything would come together. We’re all supposed to have doubts right? The feelings are the carriages that are pulled by the train of fact and faith right?

Of course, joining up was a bad idea…. If you have been paying attention you’d realise that the Sovereignty of God was the concept that my faith was driven by. Which of course leads us to the problem with joining SL, from that point on I was fully reliant on the Sovereignty of God. God was supposed to provide all my financial needs…. I even had 4 days of training in which that idea was drilled into me – If God wants you to work with SL he’ll provide the money…. Support raising is how God “chooses” people for ministry….

It is at this point in the story where the Sovereignty of God is tested, and found to be wanting. There was no provision, or at least only enough to put me in some kind of part-time limbo. The limbo worked, and it could even be justified and theologically rationalised by those who wanted me in SL. But, I had this nagging doubt that my failure to raise the money was purely due to my (lack of) sales skills.

The limbo went on, it seemed to even be a viable situation from a financial point of view once other income was considered. Until I was kicked out that is.

The official press release might say something different along the lines of me taking time off to find more people to give me money, but at the time it felt like the SL idea of no support means God doesn’t want you in SL was being enacted.

Even all this didn’t bring me all the way to my existential quandary, I still believed that God was refining me, or had other plans for me…. But now I’m at a point where these plans seem to involve playing PS2 all day. It has been around 8 months, and still no job. Plus in that time my bike has had a recurring electrical fault – and I crashed it and broke my wrist – and I can no longer afford it, my computer died, my nan died, my friendships have died….

So…. The existential stuff…. This is the bit where I’m supposed to be all Job-like and still Praise God and give thanks.

But I can’t. All my nagging doubts have caught up with me; I can no longer call myself an Evangelical Christian. That theology doesn’t fit. I wish I could provide a detailed, rational argument, but I can’t. Despite what everyone seems to think I’m not wired that way. I’m ruled by my emotions – and my emotions say that God has fucked me over and without a belief in the Sovereignty of God continuing to be an Evangelical Christian is just being a hypocrite.

So, where to go? What to be? I wanted to drift into somewhere else in Christendom…. But I just can’t. Liberal Christianity is an even worse fit, it disregards both reality and the Bible. Other religions are all about rituals, superstitions and other mystical crap that goes against reality.

Which of course means that I’m back where I started…. Nowhere. I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Some say to Fear God and keep his commandments, but fearing a God who fails is nothing but folly.

To those who will inevitably try to save me – “it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened”. I know full well that if I am wrong that I am damned – “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” And that “it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.”

My conscience is captive to reason and my emotions. I neither can nor will make any retraction, since it is neither safe nor honourable to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other.

As I said at the start if you want to comment on this post, and I’m sure you will, either post a comment on the blog or email me drchaotica (at) optusnet.com.au – Please don’t call me, or try to contact me in any other way. I won’t respond.

I will post something soon aboot the future and such, but I need to be in a writing mood, and I have to wrap my head around the issues before a post is made.