Detachment

It has been a while (about 7 years) since I last wrote a post on this blog, so much has happened since in my life and in the world. I actually started a new blog named "Redeeming the Faith" which, to me, seems like a very dark place. I wrote about the way that Christians have handled the Covid-19 crisis and the Capitol insurrection that took place on January 6, 2021. My posts were full of anger and disappointment with the Christian community. Actually I have been shut in at home for almost two years now and it looks like I will be here for a lot longer. It has been an incredible experience, I started out ecstatic to recover the solitude that introverts crave - I did not realize how much I craved this and how much peace it gave me. And now it has become a burden too much for me to bear. How did it change from light to darkness? It's a very simple answer I have OCD and my experience of solitude has allowed my endless rumination and fear to take over most of my thoughts. What bothers me most is that I feel this is trying to strip away my faith, I have spend most of my time reading Christian books and listening to podcasts in the goal of attaining the joy I had when I was younger and closer to God. I craved it, I wanted to feel enveloped by His goodness and love. I felt and still feel that this is what I really want to be. But the more I pursued it the more I felt a tug to doubt and avoid the Lord. I felt as if my OCD ruminations were merging with my quest, that my sincere faith was corrupted by this disease and now it is almost impossible to separate the two. My faith became morbid, it became an addiction, I felt that I was only doing things for the "high" and secure feelings that I received. 

When I first met the Lord I felt He forbid me to do some things that were part of the joy I felt in Him. There were books and experiences that were off-limits to me, no matter how I thought that these would bring me closer to Him. I think I finally understand why, or I finally accepted why: I was not meant to be so close because my psychological makeup would not be able to tolerate it. It would give me secure feelings but would actually eat at my faith until nothing would be left. At the same time I truly feel that I should not abandon my heart's desire, that the way to Him is through detachment from "religious" things. That the more normal I am, the more my life is simple and "shallow" the better I would be at being in His presence. I should not think or seek so deeply, just be and live every day. I feel that the seeking was destroying me. God help me, this is what I truly need. 

To Survive Depression

It has been a few months since my last post, something significant has happened since then: for some reason or another I found my way out of severe depression that has crippled me for the last 5 years. How it happened is another story, but what I wanted to talk about is what it feels like to be a survivor of something I felt would go on to the end of my life. I feel strangely cautious, protective of my self as I face life with an open heart. I am grateful and silently amazed, I feel guilty to make it through and know that many do not. The strange thing is I felt safe in my depressed state, miserable but safe. It was a cocoon. Now  that I am out I feel the possibilities and joy that a normal existence offers would change me into something different. I felt I found my true core when I was depressed, at least when i was unravelling the bonds and close to freedom. Amazing times indeed, The weight is finally off my shoulders, the bitterness has left. 

Painful

I have struggled with an event in my life that has brought me a lot inner pain for about five years now and it has come to a head this past week. It has to do with a situation where I was in a position to give and accomplish much and it lead to some friends and acquaintances scrambling to take away any benefit gained from my efforts. I gave away the rights to my work and another person gained all the benefits from my accomplishments. At first this person was grateful and I willingly gave my support and then, once my help was no longer needed, this person removed me from my place and slowly started persecuting me.

My father warned me about my pride and he was on target, the thing that hurts most is an insult to my pride, my accomplishment, my sense of self worth. I know people who have no ego and would have been able to take my experience in stride and not feel much pain. But it has caused me to age prematurely and my health to progressively get worse.  

I don't quite know how will resolve and close this post because the hurt keeps going, I only hope and pray that I make it through and refrain from taking any form of vengeance or retribution, I hope I can continue to let this pain shape me to be a better person.

Biblish

Biblish is a word that means the type of English you find in literal Bible translations. When it comes to translating the Bible there are two different philosophies or approaches used: formal equivalence or dynamic equivalence (also called functional equivalence). Formal equivalence translates as close to the original Greek or Hebrew as possible, preserving the word order found in the source text. Dynamic equivalence is aimed at translating the thoughts of the original, included in this is clearing up idioms that are foreign to the modern reader. Most conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists prefer the formal equivalence approach because of the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration, this claims that every word of the original autographs is inspired by God. Because of this we should never tamper with the text handed to us. It sounds good but there is a simple flaw found at the heart of this line of reasoning: the original Biblical languages are not English and therefore do not have the same word order as English. If we really respect the Scriptures then we would translate it in the best possible manner so that the people who read and hear it can understand and relate to its message. 

Treasure

One of my favorite verses on the Christian life is Matthew 6:19-21:

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[g] consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust[h] consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

This is one of the hard sayings of Jesus, and I have lately found it to be a comfort instead of a burden. It is easy to be enamored with material things: clothes, electronics, automobiles, houses etc. They gave me as sense of being someone, a sense of wholeness. I have found lately that the lack of these things has only sharpened me, leading me to the real pleasures in life. the lack of these things has also made my walk with Christ somewhat easier because I had nothing to lose in following him, I was light and had no baggage slowing me down, it was easy for me to be nimble in things of faith.

But there is another side to self denial, and that is something I sense in me especially because I have ocd. That is I am afraid of taking care of myself and I see myself as lower than most people. I feel unworthy of the simplest things. I do not think Jesus was this way with himself, he allowed a jar of very, very expensive perfume be broken for him, saying that it was for his burial. He was worthy of expensive things because he was a person whose value was much more than any expensive thing in this world (of course Jesus was the Son of God so it is even infinitely higher than this!). So we are also to value ourselves, take care of ourselves, nourish ourselves as he implied in another parable. And we are worthy of expensive, great things because we are precious. Once in a while that is..

Seeing the Same Thing Part 6

The previous post on my spiritual journey was about philosophy and thinking deeper about God. I became a serious evangelical at this period of my life, I returned to my roots and filled my life with reading C.S. Lewis and listening to evangelical teachers. At this point in my life my obsessive compulsive disorder hit me full swing, I was working at nights and my disorder kept me from working effectively. At this point I could only produce so much and I knew I was practically useless at work. I was driving with a friend one weekend and had an accident, I totaled my car and took a week vacation just to sort things out with insurance and figure out what I was going to do at this point. It just happened to be Holy Week. I was totally devastated by the car wreck, and pretty much stuck at home. They were showing the TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth directed by Franco Zeffirelli the whole week, an hour each night for the whole week. I watched segments, and I found myself drawn to the series. It was not that the show was religious, it was that Jesus was so alien to me. I had spent so much time reading the Bible and learning Theology but the Jesus I watched was a stranger. There is a scene in the series where Jesus was eating a fruit (a pomegranate or something else) and reclining while teaching His parables, this was so strange and refreshing to me. I could let down my guard and just relax, like He did. I was drawn to the character of Jesus, He was mesmerizing! I found myself in this story I was watching and I was a pharisee, I was one of His enemies! Something changed deep inside me in this week, I saw the deficiency in my faith and I was determined to change it at all costs. I resolved to "unlearn" the theology I learned from books, I resolved to only read the Gospels for as long as it took to get a better picture of Jesus. I had learned so much from philosophy and Lewis but here was something greater than all that, I would not rest until I was part of this!

So this is probably the last chapter of my spiritual journey, everything else that followed were just footnotes to these events in my life. I slowly overcame my obsessive compulsive 

disorder to the point that I could function normally and actually do a good job. I encountered other writers: Frederick Buechner, G.K. Chesterton, Brennan Manning. The next few years after this period were the best in my life, I did not have much but I had friends who loved me and I was free to be myself. I still live from the steam generated by those days.

Seeing the Same Things Part 5: philosophy

I last left off with my discovery of C.S. Lewis, this was back in the late 1980's and Lewis was not popular. In the current time, Lewis is immensely popular among Evangelical Christians, back then I thought I was the only one reading him. Lewis taught me that it was okay, even holy, to open up my imagination. It was okay to love science fiction, to think and ponder, to dream and know that God is greater than my biggest dreams and pleasures (these dreams and pleasures could actually be God speaking to me). I learned to love literature and argument, at this time I took more Philosophy classes and we were studying the early Greek philosophers, I excelled because I saw hints of what I read from Lewis in their ideas. This was another class where a very tough teacher saw potential in me, I remember her returning my essay saying wistfully that I wrote so well. I was grinning from ear-to-ear, this was probably the greatest compliment I ever received in my life! I felt then that there was hope for me to do something good in the world, that I had found my calling. I was actually good for something!

So a new world opened up before me, the title of these posts say that life for me is a matter of seeing. Lewis reconnected me to the wonder I had as a child, that there could be something more going on behind the scenes of the reality we live through each day. He taught me to look deeper and gave me hope. For this I am eternally grateful.