A Journey Through the Desert - a mirage

I was reading a preview of a book on acedia, and in it I read that one's relationship with God - and / or perhaps it was Christianity as a whole - was much like a journey through the desert.

I'm probably butchering it, but I found the general metaphor to be apt.

It may be that God is happy that I said I would spite him. There was a time when I claimed to not believe in Him at all. One can choose not to believe in the existence of something, and one can spite something, but one cannot do both.

And as I've thought more, I realize the tremendous hypocrisy I committed. Do I believe I am at fault, or do I not? Is God to blame, or am I? In the same way that one can only disbelieve or spite, it can only be one or the other.

After some intermittent thinking I've come to the conclusion that my original intuition is right. I am the problem. God has every right to deny me what I don't deserve. I'm too shallow and self-centered, and what business would God have in actively perpetuating sin by way of reward? It would be irresponsible of him to do anything but what he has done.

Am I supposed to learn the lesson of Cain? That a sacrifice is no sacrifice at all if it is made with the aim of benefiting oneself instead of others? That the error may not lay in what one does, but rather in where one's heart is placed? Does my error rest in my motivations? In the "why"?

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Even when all my friends tonight, for a moment, unexpectedly in unison turned their backs on me and attacked me for being a supposed homophobe, obsolete, an ignorant-this, a disrespectful-that, God does not turn his back on me. Even when I turn my back to him. Or when I face him in pathetic wrath. The moment I feel alone is the moment I am alone no longer.

Even as it becomes clearer that this world and society along with it are moving more and more toward a state that I despise, that I cannot live in, and as I am more and more alienated and hated and shouted-down in attempts to silence me for wrong-think, God does not leave. God understands. And so it is that what I identified as His one critical weakness, is in fact his greatest strength. And I am fortunate enough to be the beneficiary of His divine grace.

Do I need to heed the wisdom of Erwin Rommel? "You don't need to think that you were abandoned by the world. The world never took you before." Because I certainly feel abandoned by my naive faith in the reason of men, and shaken by the reminder that even the support of friends is not unfailing.

I guess I shouldn't be so shocked. This social justice, a double-speak perversion of the latter word, has infected many and will use them to poison and warp the world. I was no exception; I bought the sales-pitch like any other fool. Only the greatest of minds didn't. Now the false messiah of the marginalized and oppressed seeks to marginalize and oppress, dwindle and destroy all that it categorizes in cold ironic calculation as a threat to its empty promise of utopia.

It's easy to get people to commit the greatest injustices by putting them to the music of compassion. As they say, "Don't cut yourself on that edge." The sword of compassion is double-edged, after all. It's great until your head is on the chopping block.

"Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.
Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint;
heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.
My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?

Turn, Lord, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.
Among the dead no one proclaims your name.
Who praises you from the grave?

I am worn out from my groaning.
All night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.
My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.

Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the Lord has heard my weeping.
The Lord has heard my cry for mercy;
the Lord accepts my prayer.

All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish;
they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame."

-Psalm 6