An End

I’m ceasing blogging daily. I don’t feel that there have been or will be any significant changes regarding my Wellbutrin/Fluoxetine. I may pick up in a few days after I see the new psychiatrist – if he adjusts my medications – particularly if he increases the Wellbutrin.

[Random Tangent]

Many, especially those who were around for my college days, know that I struggle deeply with the evangelical conception of a literal, eternal hell. I affirm the tenets of orthodox evangelical theology and yet I also feel torn apart by the concept. There are two reasons I struggle with it so deeply and constantly:

1. Its implications for the character of God. I believe God is perfectly Good and Loving and Just and I have a hard time reconciling an eternal hell with these concepts (and yes, I’ve read all the arguments explaining why it is just).

2. Because I have spent so much of my life in hell and I’ve barely survived. I can’t imagine an existence of pain like that without end, without hope. I’ve only survived the last few months with the hope that there will be a day when the darkness will dissipate and the sun will again shine upon me.

To remain orthodox all I can do is fall back upon the goodness and self-sacrifice of God as demonstrated upon the cross. It is tempting at times to believe that God might be a sadist (enjoy inflicting pain upon His creation) but I don’t ever think that He is a masochist (enjoys inflicting pain upon Himself).¹Yes, I suppose this is a completely arbitrary distinction. There is no fundamental reason to say that God might be a sadist and not a masochist. I think I say this b/c I see the struggle to understand a God who at times seems sadistic in Scripture…whereas I do not see anyone arguing that God is masochistic (though, now that I think about it, one could make an interesting case…but I’m not one for intellectual daydreams that I don’t believe connect with reality…).

If this is true, and He lived among us for thirty years and put up with our crap and didn’t destroy the world out of frustration. And He loved to the end those who didn’t deserve Him, downright betrayed Him. And hung upon a cross, bloody, bruised, and begging for forgiveness for His murderers…and more than anything else to me, if He bore the psychological weight of all sin past, present, and future and the agony of choosing to suffer when escape was available…²I do not fear physical pain as much as I fear and dread psychological suffering. if His blood pooled on the ground…then I know that God is good.

Hell makes me want to retch. I can’t stand it. Don’t think about it. That is easy enough to say, nigh impossible for someone with OCD to accomplish…so I sit at the cross and look into His eyes, I look at His heaving chest, I see the absolute angst that overwhelms over atom of his being – and I trust, even though I cannot understand.