War With Self

Some people have asked me why I consider it necessary to view my own life as a war with myself. The anonymous have claimed it was disturbing. Some have thought it over the top. Many have not had the faintest idea what I mean by, "War With Self". Now I normally don't like to answer questions- and so usually I just shrug and remain silent. This night, however, I choose to speak. It is not that many would listen- and the ones who ask and complain and object are the least likely to listen to what I have to say here. The truth of the matter is that I spent most of my life with a self-loathing that some would find hard to believe. People didn't understand. People didn't even usually see it. I would think to myself, "they just don't understand because they have led better lives than I have. They have not screwed up the way I have. Some of them probably don't even really know what regret is." Now I may know better now (a bit, anyways), but that was then and then is never now.

With the dismal view of myself that I had, it was easy for me to accept that I could never reach God on my own. The Christian view of humanity fit perfectly with my own experience. When I read, "In Adam's fall, we sinned all," I felt a chord struck inside deep down. I knew what that meant. When I first heard the term, "total depravity" I thought, "what an apt description of my own miserable self."

This miserable self had zero recourse available in its noetic structure to fall back upon from within. And that which you hate is usually your enemy- and enemies must be slain in war. If they are not, you, yourself will be slain. And what did I hate more than anything else? What did I hate more than my dead father, more than the pain, more than the hostile cruel joke of a world? What did I hate more than the evil without? I hated the evil within. I transferred the evil within to be all of me- and so I hated myself. And something had to give. Something had to go. Only blood would bring peace.

But while I took total depravity to be something other than it was- namely that I was as bad as I could be, or that I was all bad, I was partly right, and it is very hard to shake a lie that is mostly true. I believed myself to be worthless, depraved and destitute of value. I was a fatalist long before I ever heard the name of John Calvin- and no amount of arminian-handwaving-bullshit would ever shake the error out of me. The vacuousness of the whole system (if you can even call it that) was ineffective in instilling anything but terror in my young mind (and you should know that it was only a thorough study of the doctrine of predestination that began to shake the fatalistic hopeless lies). The extent of the fall was not clear to me, but I had this hope (inconsistent though it was): though I could not reach God at all in this life, yet when I died or He returned He would make things right and fix what was broken. I awaited the second coming as one awaits air support when pinned down in battle. I had no hope for this life- I expected only suffering and misery. And this was deserved- as if all of life was a long purgatory. I was guilty of believing everything that Nietzsche claimed Christians believed. And I am sure I was not alone.

In this structure of belief, the idea of war is of course apt. All is bad; all must be destroyed. In the end it will be set right- until then you will fight to the death. Of course I was at war with myself. The full extent of the gospel was not yet clear to me (not to imply that I have arrived now, but...).

I was not, however, all bad. This life is not a lost cause. It did not turn out to be true that hope was only for the "after-life". And yet I still hang on to this imagery of warring with myself.

The truth is that it is a serious thing to deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow Jesus. I cannot demand metaphors of others. I do, however, choose my own. I may have good things, I may not have lost out for this life, but that does not mean that I am in no need of crucifixtion. I still sin. I still see darkly. I still rage against the right. I am still at war. I am at war with myself.