Amounts

As my winter break couldn't have been more than I'd hoped, I am facing another monster of a semester at Ambrose again. I thank all the people that took any amount of time out for me because there is no way this break could have happened without you.

I am sorry that everything I have blogged about recently have all been quite angry. I think that I have just been taken advantage of by the things that have been going on in my life as of lately. Sometimes, I'll be incredibly upset but don't even know what I am upset about.

The problem that I have been having is that I am having trouble finding any purpose or point to life. "Why?" is the question that I've asked a ton of, only to not get any answers that I would like. It's so strange because not too long ago, my mindset was basically this: life is good, have a ton of fun and don't hold back on who you are.

Now, my thinking changes constantly, but it runs something along the lines of: life is f*cked up and pointless - what is the point of living and why can't God just end it all right now? What the heck is He waiting for?

Some of my thinking stems from reading "Love Wins," actually. Since I last wrote about it, I haven't made any progress; but I think it was what I had read up to that point that really got me thinking with a very pessimistic attitude. We're always told that, "oh yeah, life will be good in the future;" "when we're in heaven, all the pain will be gone and all the shit that we suffer on earth won't mean a thing." On and on it goes.

Coming back to a song by DC Talk entitled "What If I Stumble" there is a little intro thing where the narrator says "the single greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christian[ity]..." So, what if I told you that I had considered giving up my faith. Whether it was a serious consideration or not is left for me to know because that could skew the way you think about what I just wrote.

Don't get me wrong though, I will never deny the existence of God; I've experienced far too much to experience how alive and working God is. The problem that I have is with this whole Christian story. God wrote this thing and he put us on earth so we could experience his love and all that stuff; but because of sin, we experience separation and suffering.

If I was hearing this story for the first time, my reaction would be quite simple: what the f*ck? And then I would go on asking some questions that I will be asking God even as a completely dedicated Christian when all is said and done. The whole idea of our Christian faith banks on this idea of "hope" and how it is a future that we look forward to. With the state that the world is in now, it's easy to ask "well, what about now?" or "you're telling me that when this life is done, all the crap I've endured, all the highs that I've been through, everything I've earned, don't mean anything?"

Well, why don't I just end it right now? Nothing amounts to anything except for all these "treasures in heaven"... Whatever that means. If God is all loving, why does he make us go through all these things? So we can experience his love when it's all said and done? Bullshit. If he's as loving and as powerful as he's supposed to be, why did he have to make things this way? Why did he have to create the possibility of sin? Why couldn't everything just have been made perfect and stayed perfect; we can still experience his love that way. Well, if God wanted this whole theme of redemption, I guess that's what he'll do and I guess that's what he's done.

Okay, look. I'm obviously taking some of these things way too far out of context and exaggerating the stances that I take; but the fact of the matter is that these are the things that I've been thinking about recently because I am struggling. And tons of people do think this way, so it's not too farfetched to ask them.

At the end of the day, the point is that I am just not happy that I have to leave Edmonton yet again. This is getting rather old, having to be separated from the people that I care about. Well, when I wake up tomorrow, I'm going to have breakfast and load up and make the drive back to campus. From then on, I'll go until Reading Week where I make a brief trip back to Edmonton, then go for the rest of the term.

Ridiculous how life works - I don't like it. I'm not giving up my faith, and I'm not giving up on my life; but I don't agree with the way God does things (and I'm sure almost all of us won't agree with everything); but I can't change the way things are, so I am left here grasping for air and begging that all this stuff I'm experiencing amounts to something useful in this life and the next.

As for my Christmas break, it was a getaway for me. Now, I'm going to come crashing back down. Let's see how I handle it.

/longpost