Is it not abundantly clear by now?
You certainly feel it. I feel it, and I’m not any smarter than you. Probably dumber, ever since I converted 90% of the time I used to spend reading into YouTube watching. So if I have a sense of what is happening here, you do too. The only difference between you and I, perhaps, is that I have rid myself of the mental constipation that stands between me and the answer.
Which is God.
Does reading that make you think that this is a certain type of post? That I am a certain type of person? Do you think that I go to church, pray before meals, or confess my sins? I do not do any of those things. I am simply someone who has yielded to God. I am also someone who has come to find that the only tenable position in this historical moment is to do so. You must fall to your knees, look to the sky, and scream your submission to the heavens.
You must submit to God.
What an odd position I find myself in; a sort of theistic recruiter for no religion in particular. I would say that I am Christian, but only insofar as that is the word that I was raised on and I consider myself “culturally Catholic” (a thing that exists more than the snickering, tongue-in-cheek way it is usually presented). I think religion is syncretic, or at least I do right now, and find belief in God to be the most holy of mandates I can muster given my beliefs. I hope you find God, no matter how you refer to it.
God is everything, all around us, inside of us, we are made of God, we ARE God (in as much as we are parts of the whole universe which is what God is). To yield to this seems more difficult for people of my age group - somewhere between Millenial and Gen X. We are fundamental atheists at our cores, fashioned by the misery of the early 2000s that made us think that quips and comebacks were a replacement for belief in the transcendant. We paved the way for the death of god in the social mind, and have now quickly found that the vacuum left in the place of a god is unable to be filled with the things we thought could fill it.
Ask yourself, do you really think there is a humanistic reason to be a good person? Do you really think that this life is all there is? Do you honestly believe that we were summoned here from nothing and will return to nothing? Are you actually satisfied with the smarminess of a Richard Dawkins or the casual cruelty of a Christopher Hitchens? Has your “courage” to eliminate the belief in God from your life made you feel whole, true, real, honest, or empowered? Or are you just a little prince crossing your arms on the top of a pile of roasting arguments, each of which you have summarily put down by using words like “post hoc ergo propter hoc” and “tu quoque” and “burden of proof.”
Do you feel good, little Prince? Does it feel like your life is complete now that you don’t have to waste your time believing in that silly little story about the bearded man in the sky? Or have you, like me, come to the stunning realization that a God-less world will never be on inhabited by truth and love and care, but only with desperation, pettiness, confusion, and “efficiency.”
Believe in God. Today. Stop working so hard to be right. Your arguments are meaningless.
Look at this world. Look at how we treat each other. Look at how we spy on each other, ridicule each other, castigate, suffocate, judge, snipe, discourage, diminish, and shun one another. We shun one another so easily now, so quick to find the evil in others so that we do not have to submit to the horror that the evil lives in us too. Did you think that a “good argument” and “sound logic” could remove the human stain from your soul?
If this short essay made you want to “prove me wrong,” then unsubscribe. You are too choked up to ever purge your filth. I pray for you, that you will have a moment of clarity that humbles you.
If this short essay troubles you, if you feel like you want to believe but cannot, that you wish to worship but you are afraid of what your family and friends and job will think - just stat doing it on your own. Make it your private thing and see how it feels.
If you liked this essay, subscribe. We have much to do in 2024.
I'm rooting for you H. P. De Veer!
I've been thinking the same thing --
https://fatrabbitiron.substack.com/p/secede-church-fathers