How My Soul Broke the Dawn

             Amid a Marxist pipedream, all power seemed to be illegitimate. I had reached a state of critical enlightenment (i.e. Critical Theory). The world’s resources, I thought, were not being distributed directly. Not only that, but the world’s leaders were corrupt and willing to kill the populace (e.g. 9/11). No cultural institution or extant religion made sense in this world, after scorching the earth with critical theory’s corrosive acid. I had to find or build something new, but no direction to even start could be established. I started to lose the feeling of cohesiveness in my intellectual and pseudo-spiritual journey. Trusting anything started to become less and less possible, while the plot became evermore Kafkaesque. The term dark night of the soul was fitting for this time. The meaninglessness and aimlessness of the situation started to make my psychedelic sessions unbearable. I couldn’t handle the existential dread and emptiness, especially vis-à-vis the mainstream culture. It felt like there was less and less of a chance of regaining that sense of cohesive direction on my path that I once had and took for granted.

            The allegory of the cave is exceptionally potent at analyzing my situation then. Briefly, it’s Plato’s story about men shackled in a dark cave, staring at a wall with shadows projected on them. The imprisoned men could see nothing else- they couldn’t even look behind them. Plato tells us that for some vague reason, one of the men is unshackled. After he arises to his feet, he notices a fire emanating from behind the other men, where he had previously sat. Infront of the fire are silhouette puppets being held up to create the shadows. These were silhouettes of generic forms from nature (e.g. animals, plants, scenes, etc.) held up by unknown people- all cloaked. As he starts to walk in the direction of the flame, it becomes apparent that there is a passage leading out of the cavern. Taking the chance to leave everything that is familiar, he walks out of the cave. Immediately blinded by the sun, his vision slowly started to tell apart forms from the light. What he saw was the actual natural forms that the silhouette puppets only imitated. The enormity of the situation was immensely appreciated and enjoyed; a sense of enlightenment overcame him.

            When I started my journey of criticality, I only knew the preceding story up until that point. I wasn’t aware that there was more. The allegory’s potent wisdom is aptly expressed by the connection between the rest of the story, and my descent into meaninglessness and paranoia after my critical enlightenment. Plato concludes the story with the man reentering the cave to help the others come to see the world as it really is. Surprisingly (perhaps only to the naïve), none of the others wanted anything to do with him. I learned that the shackled men would compete over who can spot the shadows the fastest and celebrated those they deemed as champions. Because the enlightened man could not see the shadows like he previously once had, participating in their society was extremely difficult. Given his apparent dysfunction for life as they knew it, none of the others considered the ostensibly strange and dysfunctional man’s ideas about some world beyond theirs. Afterward, Plato tells us the man was killed, given the others would rather die than change their society. Although they had shackles, they didn’t feel like slaves. Plato tells us that the duty of the enlightened is to gain the knowledge of the transcendent (the world outside the cave) but also return to the world (the cave) and relearn the society’s ways, to share their troubles and their honors- whether they are worth having or not.

            I had reached the world outside of the culture, but I had forgotten how to interact within it. Moreover, my paranoia, from a lack of trust, wouldn’t allow me to reenter. Society was too evil and broken to return to. Plato didn’t live in my time of empty consumerism and an absence of virtue. He wouldn’t have thought about returning to this society, I’d figured. These lines of reasoning kept me from integrating. It felt like giving up. As the existential despair engulfed my inner life (relegating most of my psychic energies to it), my social relationships began to decay. Why be around those who didn’t understand critical theory? They would only hold me back from truth, I thought. The role of romantic relations was also strained, as the nature of the dyad was always questioned and doubted, via the overemphasis of its cultural and ad-hoc dimensions. It comes at no surprise that my lack of tolerance for culture and society led to a humorless and paranoid attitude. My GF at the time exited the relation due to the isolation. I felt like the isolation was a bless and a curse. On one hand, the outsider perspective seemed like the best position from which to be critical of society and culture. Yet, on the other hand, I had become a recluse who constantly doubted why they’re an isolate. This tension was seeded from my ignorance of the allegory’s conclusion. I didn’t know following truth according to critical theory would leave me so insulated from human contact. Freedom as isolation from the world wasn’t what I expected. Still, I didn’t want to give up on pursuing the truth and enlightenment.

Perhaps there was a group I hadn’t found yet, that would understand and accept me, consequently allowing for my pursuit of critical enlightenment to become a team effort. But years were passing, and my isolation only grew. After her exit, I had too much free time on my hands. Not being a consumer of entertainment, I strived to find something to watch that would occupy the meaningless passing hours of my day. Given I knew about and advocated for 9/11 truth (and I still do, because the evidence is overwhelming), it was used as a litmus test, for who I was able to tolerate listening to regularly. There was one person who would be on for 3+ hours a day, who also knew 9/11 was an inside job: Alex Jones. Sure, I thought that he was too right-wing. That view was formed after watching an interview between Jones and the creator of the Zeitgeist documentary, Peter Joseph (pseudonym), where Jones’s aggression obscured his points. The only proper economic system for a critical theorist is collectivist. Zeitgeist the documentary series endorsed a sort of futuristic communism, where AI would collate the world’s resources, and distribute them according to people’s needs. Such a system is purported to allow humans to pursue their actual interests, while their material needs are met by the AI. This wasn’t communist- it was new and sexy because it was based on twenty-first century ideas of technology. Of course, I felt this was why the other forms of collectivism seemed to fail, they didn’t have an AI.

Jones, for me then, was on point about the false flags, but he was too right-wing. Yet, he was ostracized by the mainstream, therefore was palatable enough for me to include in my daily isolated routine. An additional reason for listening to his radio show was that it was live. Listening to live podcasts was a way to mitigate the sense of isolation. I didn’t feel completely alone, because what I was watching was happening currently somewhere in the world. The world would become like a large room or studio that I shared with the speaker(s). Listening to these live podcasts would be often accompanied by a scene where I’d be laid out on my bed or chair, dozing in and out of sleep or distracted by learning something interesting, and hearing Jones fill the room with his voice and ideas. Although the aim was to dampen my feelings of isolation, I started to tell apart reoccurring ideas while listening to Jones.  He spoke of the country’s founders in a way I never understood before. From the critical point of view, this country’s founding was an act of dominance like the rest of history.

By listening to him over the weeks and months, the actual picture of tyranny’s relation toward negative vs. positive liberty was clearing up. Back then, I knew of both kinds of liberty. I’d argue that both are needed- how else would a person be able to exercise freedom if they didn’t know they were free? Or if they were sick? These questions led me to conclude the state ought to provide universal education and healthcare (among other entitlements). At the time, I didn’t see the contradiction of guaranteeing the provision of services while protecting people from coercive power. Jones helped me understand why government shouldn’t provide us with material resources: it makes us subservient to their dominance; that’s the opposite of freedom. He accomplished this by introducing me to basic conservative and libertarian talking points. Although I had supported Ron Paul’s political candidacy a few years prior, it was only due to his stance on ending the drug war that he earned my support. In hindsight, I feel lucky to have heard those points from someone like Jones. If I had heard them from some conservative or Fox News pundit, it would have been misinterpreted by my former predisposition for societal antagonism. Jones being vilified by legacy media allowed me to trust him enough to listen openly. Then after, I started becoming more accepting of society. The society and culture began to garner my sympathy, due to it being a bastardization of what our founder’s intended. We were not living free, the left is corrupted by control and the right are sell-outs, lukewarm, or apathetic toward conserving this culture (conserving their bank accounts is a different story).

Contemplating those initial realizations encouraged me to explore our founding documents such as the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers-including the refutations from the Anti-Federalists faction. Our constitution was forged from debate and controversy, over concerns and questions raised today. Revisiting these issues is not a result of a deficient and irrelevant Constitution. Instead, this is due to our cultural amnesia concerning what the Framers truly intended. Collective forgetfulness about these fundamental defining topics of civil society aren’t an accident or coincidence. Soon thereafter, my view of society transformed from a meaningless distribution of dominance over time and space, to an underused tool which does not reflect the interests of anti-competition elites. Hence, their fervent attempts to promote critical theory, which encourages apathy toward politics via the dispersion of false beliefs. Two of the most endorsed falsehoods are that any political effort is a lost cause and prioritizing the maintenance of comfort as the sole legitimate concern for protecting freedom. On a smaller scale, those inherent sex/gender differences, that were supposedly a result of dominator culture, were essential after all. Acknowledging this fundamental difference played a key role in my transformation out of critical theory’s false enlightenment.

Jones had oriented me toward the right- which is right for a reason. I started to understand and duly appreciate the purpose and dire necessity of limited government, negative liberty, and free markets. It’s about allowing the maximization of individual choice and lessening dominion of individuals by government or private citizens. Clearly, guaranteeing services or products requires labor. If there isn’t enough voluntary labor available, then a decision must be made between providing positive liberty, and respecting negative liberty. Consequently, both forms of liberty cannot reasonably coexist. For instance, if not enough people want to be sewage cleaners, but the state prioritizes guaranteed sewage maintenance, then someone will have to be forced to perform the role (after the authorities determine they display the necessary competencies for the job- how magnanimous of the state).    

After the preceding insights and realizations, the cohesion and meaning started to come back to me. I could start to see the dawning rays of the sun that wasn’t directly visible, yet. However, there was a void still left. While the origins of the nation and its reasons for government were agreeable, there was no transformation internally. My soul started seeing glimpses of the dawn’s twilight. But akin to the pre-dawn sky, the source of the light wasn’t available to me yet. The issue of how these conceptions of just government are justified by mere pragmatism, via its beneficence for easing our searching and maintenance for comfort, left my void as it was. My then current social media feeds would exalt these liberties and the importance of protecting freedom. But, this void inside remained. Yes, I knew how government should be, and how inter-personal ethics function. I understood how to take care of myself and be healthy (I’m in debt to Joe Rogan’s podcast for my knowledge of nutrition and exercise, which have greatly impacted my life in the half-decade since). Despite the intra- and interpersonal guidelines, the void endured- albeit, quietly.

The late author and public speaker Ravi Zacharias used an analogy that illustrates the profile of this void: conceiving individuals as a ship at sea, there are three classes of ethics relevant to sailing. First, there are ethics about maintaining one’s own ship. These are a guide to help ensure the ship doesn’t sink and is able to sail and carry its cargo/crew without malaise. Second, there are ethics over how one ship ought to interact with another ship. Guidance from this set of ethics would be preoccupied with peaceful interactions for friendly ships, while remaining vigilant for threats from hostile ships. Plainly, the first two sets of ethics would correspond to my view of how a just society is ordered and how to best keep myself reasonably healthy. As for the third set of ethics, they simply determine how best to travel to a given destination. Taking care of the ship and civilly interacting with others will not provide me with a destination, or purpose, for sailing.

The result of Jones acclimating me to a classical liberal and libertarian perspective, had resulted in the advent of a mildly libertine attitude. As I began to listen to him less often and with less enthusiasm (due to the lack of novelty; not surprising given my attitude then), I started to pursue my more hedonistic proclivities. Using the society and culture for those ends, I learned enough contemporary culture to interact in society. During that time, all the societal institutions and practices I had ostentatiously criticized, were instead embraced pragmatically. This included earning more money, spending it on frivolities, engaging in casual relations, being sociable with others (e.g. sharing drinks), consuming mainstream media (to an extent; there wasn’t much I found interesting or bearable), reducing the time I spent researching, etc.. As quiet as that void was (rarely stirring any effort or anxiety in mind) there was an ambient sense of life being ultimately pointless. Distractions were an effective means to quell any sense I had of existential dread. However, living in such an atmosphere indirectly allows cynicism to color everything, despite the aptitude for projecting a convincing and pleasant veneer, that assures others everything is just fine. One can dwell in this state indefinitely. My chances of indefinitely dwelling there were high, given my stubbornness and hedonism. Although I ultimately exited that frame of mind, my intentions then were to remain pursuing those pleasures, while attempting to stay out of the way of others (the same as any other practical classical liberal or libertarian, of course).

Noting there was a scant chance for something like that to occur, would be framing the situation very mildly. Although my hedonistic imperative was efficient at deflating any attention of that void. Realizing that attitude of soft libertinism would eventually lead to greater depths of despair was slowly dawning on me. Plainly, there is nowhere to hide from that void, when all distractions have been either exhausted or proved inadequate. Ultimately, one returns to a more profound sense of existential dread. Yet, I approached that issue as a bridge to cross, only after I’ve gotten to it. Clearly, this was merely an expression of my severe procrastination. Perhaps it was due to my ignorance of the consequences. A definite factor was that void; I had to fill it somehow, even if that meant eventual destruction.

The scant chance of seeing it. During this classical liberal phase, I become acquainted with an activist in the broadly anti-feminism movement. He was something like a D-list internet celebrity (he’s not a bad guy; he is just not relatively popular). Nevertheless, I was delighted at the fact. Little did I know how important our mutual following on Twitter was for my future, in conscious eternity. Preluding that scant point, it had been several months to a year since I’ve seen a post from him, and as far as I remembered then, he was an atheist. Scrolling through my busy Twitter feed- lending several milliseconds to each post, as usual- the scant chance I saw that tweet, from him. Furthermore, this scant chance was made less likely by the post being a colorless photo of some old man, from what seemed like the Victorian era, compounded by two blocks of solid text. Under virtually any other circumstance, at that point in my life, I would’ve continued scrolling. Given how much and often content comes up on my Twitter feed, I wouldn’t had devoted any length of time to read two dense paragraphs. To be honest, I didn’t want to read the post. However, a sense of obligation began to arise in me. I mused on the small chance that any grade of public person would follow me back. Then, my musings became a polemic to read the tweet- I did. I took that scant chance.

An argument for God was what I least expected from that tweet. It was strange to see such a radical departure from my most recent conception of him, as an atheist. Surprising as it initially was, that feeling quickly shifted to an underwhelming sense of equal parts pity and cynicism. I figured that another person had become trapped by religion. Before reading the first several sentences, I speculated of what emotional and non-logical events must had brought him to that seemingly intellectually destitute position. Whenever I heard about others becoming Christian, I would attribute it as a pragmatic way of dealing with their emotional incontinence, at the threat of death. Still, I continued to read. Upon reaching the middle, a faint but distinct sense of anxiety arose. Previously, I had never been introduced for this argument for God, let alone the fact that there are such arguments for theism. Embarrassingly, I have no recollection of what that first argument I read was. What followed afterward- approximately eighteen months of intense study- likely overshadowed that initial exposure to the argument. Beyond the predictable sense of curiosity and wonder, from acclimating to a novel and exciting field of inquiry, an anger started to form.

Inversely proportional to my increasing knowledge (what I came to eventually know as natural theology), was this anger. It was the result of understanding that I had been lied to about God. These lies, such as the belief there is a lack of empirical or rational evidence for God’s existence, are adopted by vast swaths of the public. Who lied? Society and culture did, in the broad sense; specifically, certain endemic institutions like the media, schools, and government are the sources and spreaders of these lies. Whether by distortion, obfuscation, deception, or omission, these lies are spread. Common misconceptions due to these lies, especially among young people, include Jesus Christ as a mythical figure (or as mere human, devoid of a divine nature), that the concept of God is self-contradictory (e.g. moral inconsistency), or that science has more explanatory power than what’s currently possible or probable (e.g. supposed robust explanations of: the big bang’s fine-tuning; the origin and mechanism of life’s beginning; the connection between phenomenal first-person mental states and the brain’s dynamic neuronal structure, processes, and interface with the body and world; etc.). Fortunately, the joy of discovering Truth tempered my anger at being lied to.

During those eighteen-months of in-depth study, I began with learning and grasping twenty classic philosophical arguments for God, compiled by the philosopher Peter Kreeft. My initial doubt about those reasons being too removed from the physical world was shortly placated by the subject of natural theology; it is the study of how nature, not scripture, gives us reason and evidence for God’s existence. I was thrilled by this understanding and began to subscribe to a deist notion of God. I would express the notion of God as a cosmic dead-beat daddy, who doesn’t stay around to help the offspring- the universe- “grow up”, with a tone signaling both facetiousness and cynicism. Even with this somewhat nihilistic attitude, I was joyed to learn the Truth was actual and knowable. Nevertheless, natural theology eventually led me toward classic monotheism, primarily by contemplating the existence of evil in the world. Evil led me to a morally perfect God.

Even prior to this series of events, I understood that without a lawgiver, there cannot exist objective moral law and duties. Of course, one can subjectively determine the golden rule and apply that to our interactions. However, in this way, morality merely amounts to nothing more or less than what one can get away with doing. If one doesn’t get caught, why should they allow themselves to feel guilty? The Skull and Bones secret society has an initiation ritual were the candidate is shown three sets of bones and are then asked to determine which set belong to the wise man, the beggar, and the fool. Plainly, this trick question is supposed to illustrate the fact, that no matter what one does in life, all people end up in the same place. Hence, this view reflects the adage, morality is whatever one can get away with: the hallmark of a subjectively based and justified ethical system. Only an objective lawgiving and genuine authority could establish a standard, not only to inform the value of our behavior, but more importantly, to guarantee we face the legitimate consequences of our actions.

Euthyphro’s dilemma, dating back to ancient Greece, essentially posits a question, how does God establish moral law? Does he arbitrarily decide them, or does he learn them from elsewhere? Simply stated, as important and pressing this question may be, it’s a false dilemma; there’s another option. God’s own nature is the standard of morality. To use an analogy, God’s nature would be akin to a live music performance, while the moral law precepts would be a recording of that live musical performance. Much like rating a record’s quality based on its level of fidelity to the original recording (how well does it convincingly reproduce the live music), moral precepts and actions are judge by how well they reflect the nature of God’s character. Without God, evil wouldn’t be significantly any different than an unsavory fashion statement. Given it’s self-evident that some actions are evil in all possible situations (no exceptions), objective evil must exist, thereby, morality is objective. The hideousness and immediacy of evil are too potent for most to ignore. Without God, there wouldn’t be any objective evil or good.   

Arriving at theism, my intentions started to become snagged by repeated mentions of the historical evidence for Jesus Christ, his crucifixion, and resurrection. The weight of self-evident moral wrong had allowed me to reconsider this story I grew up with, yet never really understood. This nescience was not due to a lack of knowledge. Rather, it was due to a lack of interest frankly. During my survey of world religions (mostly eastern), I never considered Christianity. Since I grew up in a post-Christian culture, the evangelical rhetoric was all too familiar and elicited a faint resentment. There was nothing to discover in the Bible, I thought. While surveying religions, the closest I came to Christianity was via the Hermetic tradition of Rosicrucianism. Students of the Rosy Cross (as their called) believe Jesus to be more like Buddha, in the sense that he hadn’t come into flesh to forgive our sins; instead, his purpose is merely to provide humans with a guidelines that help one reach enlightenment. Naturally, my obsession with becoming enlightened drove me to learn about this pseudo-Christian tradition. Since that was the closest I had ventured toward Christianity, it’s fair to state I knew nothing about the Bible. Without the slightest conception of where learning about the historicity of Jesus would bring me, I started to learn.

Anxieties about my proclivities being deemed sin were drowned out by this warm feeling in my midst, accompanied by the excitement of learning the Truth. I understand why convincing someone they’re wrong can upset them, but I’ve always felt that sense of inadequacy for being wrong can be subdued by rejoicing in knowing the Truth, rather than a lie. Like Jesus said: know the truth and the truth will set you free. Learning is an ongoing shedding of misconceptions. That is, at least initially, one must be wrong to learn. Maybe that warm feeling while learning was the Holy Spirit. Still, I had no conception of how learning about Christianity would affect my life. My curiosity and drive for learning the Truth was an intrinsic goal. Philomaths, like myself, purely love learning. Most of what I have learned in my life would only apply as a conversation piece during a cocktail hour- and that was the point really. Therefore, my foray into learning Christianity was a continuation of my idle curiosity and propensity as a philomath. Up till then, each realization was experienced as a pleasurable contemplation (at the consistency & coherence of Truth); none of it was applied to my behavior, beyond talking about it.

For some peculiar reason, I had the seemingly default belief that the Bible we possess today was inaccurate. Maybe the belief came from an unconscious inference, about how books are passed from one generation to the next. Yet, I never thought the same about any of the other literature in philosophy. I had never questioned if my copy of Plato’s Republic was accurate. But I had a selective default position on the Bible’s accuracy. That bias was another lie fed to me by this society. Contrary to the idea that our Bible today is a result of something resembling the telephone game, the Bible is the most accurate depiction of a historical text from antiquity, due to the number and variety of manuscripts available. The original text was copied several times, and each copy would also be copied multiple times. Thankfully, no one possess them currently. If the originals were in someone’s possession, then they would have a chance to distort it. God’s wisdom is infinite. Therefore, the copies (or manuscripts) move both down the timeline, and across space at each point in time. Because of this radiating of manuscripts across time and space, scholars can compare them across each other (within a single point in time). Doing so can allow us to identify grammatical and copy errors, allowing a very accurate picture of the original writings.

A set of minimal facts, that are historically verifiable (as attested by a near consensus of secular and religious scholars), cannot be reasonably explained using the assumptions of naturalism (i.e. only physical nature exists). The number can vary from three to over a half-dozen. The facts with the most evidence are: (1) Jesus was killed by crucifixion; (2) Jesus was placed in a tomb, which was later found empty (missing a dead body); (3) the conviction of those who saw the resurrected Jesus (for weeks) and their willingness to be put in danger for sharing their faith in him as Lord. Many naturalistic theories have attempted to explain these three facts. None of them, viz. conspiracy, hallucination, swooned Jesus, theft of Jesus’s body, the wrong tomb was visited, Jesus had a secret identical twin brother (the last one would be like a Hail Mary pass in football, but for Biblical scholars), have been able to sufficiently explain those three facts. Straightforwardly, the bodily resurrection of a divine Jesus Christ is the best way to fully explain those facts.

If you thought that, upon realizing the evidence strongly suggested the Truth of Jesus Christ’s bodily resurrection, I would’ve dropped to my knees- asking for forgiveness and proclaiming Him as my savior, I don’t blame you for being wrong. Our culture tells us that is the proper response, yet I didn’t express it. Bluntly, the fact washed over me like the others I had learned so far. I don’t remember thinking much of it for a while. But after several days, something unexpected happened. Whenever that day was exactly, it was like any other usual day. Only later did something happen, which I remember with utmost clarity.

I was driving to the bank on a familiar route via side streets (I don’t like traffic lights), when suddenly, a Bible verse I had heard a few times before had surprisingly announced itself in my mind. Then, the verse took on a new meaning. Prior, I had seen the verse in a superficial way. But now, replacing a heart of stone for one of flesh had a meaning which resonated with my own life. A heart of stone, I thought to myself, is a metaphor for cynicism. God knows how cynical I’ve become. He knows I don’t let anything touch my heart, anymore. In that verse, He is telling me that he wants to remove my jadedness and allow me to love again. Never had any piece of literature presented itself to me like that, and directly affected me on such a personal level before. Sure, I had trippy or influential ideas, philosophies, or worldviews that would be fun or useful at times. But none of them ever spoke to me directly, on such a personal level. Prior, the idea with the most influence on my life was that we are a divine being, that has dreamed up this reality and forgotten itself to better be immersed in it, all for the thrill of going far out. It made sense to me and helped give some consistent (but not robust) model/theory of metaphysics but failed to give any comfort during suffering (wondering why I couldn’t just wake up from it). The idea was a major contribution to my cynical attitude, because there’s little overall purpose in an illusory reality created for just a thrill. Although the dream didn’t ultimately matter, I couldn’t wake up from it (without suicide), despite supposedly creating it for a thrill. Subscribing to that idea slowly became something of a cosmic irony, which mocked my misanthropy and resentment toward society. Needleless to say, such an idea contributed to the emptiness of that void.

Unlike the consequences of my previous worldviews, after accepting the resurrection of Jesus, Bible verses would randomly pop into my mind. They would immediately become a prominent feature of my attention, unmistakably presented with an obvious and potent meaning that address my most personal sentiments. Developing as a result of these experiences was an ever-growing capacity to know and share the love of God. The emotional element of Christianity was emerging and displacing my existential void. Another Bible verse where Jesus tells us, know the world hated me before it hated you, spoke directly to my social exclusion throughout life. Again, other ideas would give some meaning, lift my mood, distracts me, etc., yet none of them spoke directly to me and my situation. It’s as if the previous ideas were just tools to use. Rather, the Bible wasn’t a tool for me to get what I want. The Bible was about what God had done for me, instead of what I can do for myself. I classify those other religions as being either in the first- or third-person point of view. First-person religions are about yourself escaping suffering, like Buddhism. On the other hand, third-person religions are about following strict and arbitrary orders, like Islam.

The bible has a distinctly second-person point of view. These verses didn’t give me what I wanted. They informed me of my dire situation: the fact that my selfishness (known as sin) continually corrupts me, negatively affecting my actions and peace of mind, and the good news (the Gospel) that God has given me a way out of this situation. The Bible says I was created with free will, to have a selfless loving relationship with God and others. All that God requests of me is to love Him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength, while loving others as I’d love myself. Christianity is in the second person, because it’s about a relationship; it’s about love. However, because my selfishness prioritizes myself before others, a selfless character doesn’t develop without God’s help. In a way, God had bailed me out, by saving me from myself. He just wants what’s best for me- what I was made for. Why wouldn’t anyone follow the manufacturer’s instructions?

Needless to mention, but my heart grew over the latter parts of those eighteen months. Eventually, I was confident enough to proclaim my faith to others (within reason, of course). Coming back to Alex Jones, something fascinating was happening during those eighteen months. When I started listening to Jones, he would barely bring up God or prayer. When he would, it seemed out of a habit due to growing up in a Christian culture, there in Texas. Yet, as my heart grew toward God, the same thing was working in parallel with Jones. Interestingly, he began to speak more about God and pray on-air, while I was learning to love God more. Before one begins to suspect this as a literary device to bring this prose full-circle, I’d like to concede that. Nevertheless, it’s demonstrably the case he speaks more about the True God than before. The True God revealed in and by Jesus Christ.

Since being transformed by the Word of God (rather than conforming to the world), my focus has been on the ongoing spiritual/cultural battle we face. The enshrinement of God’s rights in the Constitution revealed a semi-Divine inspiration for my nation, compelling me to defend them from radical ideologies that aim for their removal, like critical theory. Unfortunately, this battle has left any semblance of decent culture a relic of some bygone era, which entails the ideologies are succeeding. We need virtue and rule of just laws (constitutional republicanism- as our founders intended) to have the capacity for self-governance. In response to social and cultural decline, I have been absorbed into Apologetics (the rational defense of Christianity) and am immensely joyed that it has a rich and applicable body of knowledge. Therefore, I spend my Christian life in a holistic manner, by learning further about my faith, understanding criticisms and their counter-arguments, telling everyone I know about the Gospel (at the appropriate time and attempted with kindness and respect), and  always keeping up with the enemy’s strategy and capacity to corrupt souls. All Christians ought to be engaged in this spiritual/cultural battle, by first and foremost, learning about and knowing the enemy. A vital place to start is learning a more accurate sense of who Jesus was, according to the scripture.

Reflecting on this prose (a meta-reflection, if you will), the scant chance encounter and engagement of that initial tweeted meme can evoke the same kind of anxious relief experienced after dodging something like a bullet. Although, such a feeling is absolutely warranted in this case, I’m starting to see it as another expression of God’s wisdom in redirecting (like Aikido) any negative energy in the world (generated by the free will of fallen men and demons). In this case, the scant chance of missing out on that tweet, and thereby the Truth and Love of God, is a constant reminder to never, ever (ever), take my salvation for granted. It’s an entirely another scant chance that Alex Jones would have continued to do his radio show, considering offers for lucrative gigs that would cost him his integrity. I thank Jones for that and coming on the air every day, teaching me to love and defend the constitution, and inspiring me to not give up against the enemy, despite the odds. I thank the Lord overall for creating Jones and allowing his fate to manifest as it has. Thank you, God, for everything. I thank God for the good in my life and ask for his help during my struggles.

 

To end with a prayer, I ask God to help me better delight myself in Him.

Amen