My Heart Will Condemn Me

Things have been really quiet around here. Too quiet. I'm house sitting at the moment, and it wasn't long ago that I would have rejoiced in the peace and quiet. Not that I particularly enjoyed being alone, but this time last year I had no real exposure to any grand purpose. My outlets were anything but healthy, and they only offered momentary, fleeting solutions.

I guess you could say I have the habits of an introvert and the soul of a people person. When you've been generally misunderstood your whole life, certain survival instincts kick in to counteract the self-hatred that forms over time. The snapshot recap is this: after repeatedly hearing that you don't matter, you start to believe it so you can at least align yourself with those who seem pit against you. You become a figurative enemy of a practical problem, yourself. Your mind somehow skews the situation so you see yourself in two different lights: first, as an object, the source of the hatred you feel, and second as an esoteric agent that sets itself against the object. This is a complex problem that I could hardly describe in proper detail, and it might just be my interpretation of a much larger and more dangerous machine, but that's how I would describe my pre-Christian days. This being the season that it is, I've been feeling a lot of old sentiments lately, and it's scary.

First of all, I don't think it the fault of any person or people that, for the last week, I've probably spent an average of 20+ hours per day by myself. Most of it was at home with little chance for human interaction. It happened that way, and that's probably all there is to it on the surface of things. At this point, I couldn't say with confidence whether I think my present rut is based on spiritual warfare, chemical imbalance, my own cowardice, or a slew of other possibilities, but I think this four-step breakdown does a fair job at summarizing my state of mind:

1. About a week ago, when my time of "confinement" started, I asked God to rebuke some seriously dangerous patterns of thought.

2. When He didn't, I asked Him again.

3. This turned into me cursing Him for not doing it.

4. Eventually, I started to wonder whether I've just been a total fool based on the following: If God were real, wouldn't He want to help me with putting off negative thinking? I understand that He doesn't want all the things for me that I do, but surely He can't ever condone destructive thoughts. So if God isn't real, doesn't that make me an absurd person for thinking myself an "intellectual"? Of course, by consequence, there's no devil either, so all my sinister thoughts are of my own creation.

I could easily argue how enough time alone at home could spawn these thoughts. In fact, I think I could make a seriously compelling case against the doctrine of hell, or at least eternal damnation. This is where my mind has been-- yeah, not good, right?

(By the way, anyone have, off the top of his or her head, any Biblical verse(s) suggesting that hell is an eternal punishment? I know about the wailing and gnashing teeth and junk, but where does this concept of eternity in hell come from? Why would we refer to heaven as "eternal life" if there were eternal life in hell? Wouldn't Christ have called it "eternal bliss," or some such thing?)

Actually, that aside/question probably does more to describe my state of mind than I could accomplish in a 100-page essay.

(From several days ago. Unposted because I didn't want to discuss it any further.)