What I Did
A few days ago, I grieved both my kids’ birthday. I still don’t know where they are, and nobody connected to Tori or the kids has given any information whatsoever. I’m starting to get worried if they’re still okay, since all I have is a cryptically-worded email sent to me mid-September from Frontier Church saying they left Des Moines and absolutely zero cooperation from them.
Upon reflection of the events that have transpired, it’s clear that the facts that happened and what is perceived are certainly different among the people in contact with Tori. I have peace in knowing that God sees it all, and He designed us to want the truth to be screamed from the rooftops.
In some ways, the experience I have right now is worse than if they had died. The uncertainty provides a complete absence of closure, and it has now been long enough that any conjecture over Tori’s motivations or circumstances are gone. She could be safely living out a routine of waiting until a designated date, bouncing between women’s shelters with the kids, or they could have simply been abducted. I’m legally forbidden from searching out answers to this.
Life has carried onward, though. Two essays worth reading:
- An expansion of my non-systematic theology
- A breakdown of all possible philosophies under Christianity
What I Learned
My last post was the complete refutation of Stoicism as a viable way to live. This one is about the lurking companion philosophy I’ve held for longer than my Stoicism. By God’s grace, I hope Tori learns or has learned of the facts I’m about to present before any more damage is done.
I will, like the other post, parse this to keep it interesting. This will be a long ride as well.
Part 1: What We Mean By Meaning
Human existence is filled with a perpetually present sense of meaning: it’s how we go about doing, well, anything really. Not having meaning is the equivalent of pulling an engine out of a car or the brain out of a lizard. The necessary parts are technically there to do something, but there’s something so necessary to its existence that we hesitate to use the noun in its place without an adjective that diminishes its state.
The implicit intrinsic presence of meaning, though, veils the true philosophical crisis that represents itself for the dysfunctional people who were not raised to believe that they were of any innate worth. Tori and I both share that background, and I write this here because I know others do as well who may run across this.
The self-directed journey of meaning is entailed in responsibility, and I write more on that in this essay. But, the TL;DR is that “responsibility” means:
- Having the capacity to make decisions…
- …which create actions, which may simply be thoughts…
- …which accomplish a purpose directed toward an object.
- We’ve predicted the purpose will create value for a living thing, either directly or indirectly.
- We believe our decision changed the consequence.
- The decision we made should have prevented a potential loss or suffering, or possibly increased satisfaction.
To parse this, imagine having a meaningful low-ranking job at a rubber glove factory’s marketing department. This would represent as:
- You can decide things (like the ratio of colors on the convention fliers)…
- …that you then do something with (like hit the print button)…
- …that accomplish more rubber glove sales.
- You predicted the company will find value in what you do.
- You believe your convention fliers make more people buy your company’s rubber gloves.
- Your decisions made the company more money.
This is all fine and good, but it only narrowly defines one form of meaning. If things we did were the only thing to define meaning, we would basically not matter at the moment we couldn’t do anything anymore. It would mean someone in a coma or a mentally disabled person has no human worth.
And, if you take away the above-stated Christian Stoicism and define meaning strictly upon responsibility, you will find there really is no meaning as soon as responsibility disappears. The five-dollar college word for “nothing has meaning” is “nihilism”.
Part 2: Nothing (But This Statement) Matters
Now, to be clear, pure nihilism is a paradox, in the same spirit of pure moral relativism:
- Someone may say that morals are entirely relative, but they’ll have a moral problem if you kill their dog. For some reason, even if you can get 3 other people to democratically vote to kill that guy’s dog, he won’t like it. That moral relativist likes their actions to have no true consequence, but they’d never be okay with how the turntables.
- Someone may say that there is no true meaning. They say that with meaning. For some reason, that information was more important than saying that the sun is hot, or that Wisconsin has cheese. That nihilist finds meaning in the assertion that there is no meaning.
Stoicism is a defective philosophy as a full-on discipline, but can exist in a parasitic form by merging Christianity into it. The Stoic’s self-will to become a strong and self-controlled person will crush them into a bitter husk or narcissist under the absence of reliable feedback, but Christian Stoics can expect God to bless them for their bitterness someday!
The story of nihilism runs the same. Nihilism is the cold and depressing acceptance that nothing truly matters, but Christian nihilism is the idea that nothing truly matters, but God controls everything, so we can self-soothe as we wait for the sweet embrace of death.
Part 3: A Seemingly Unrelated Topic
My Stoic liberation has given me a very emphatic reality that prevents us from curling up in a ball to learn the art of thumb sucking, and it has to do with Christian doctrine. But, I’ll simply present this idea, and we’ll get back to nihilism in a minute.
Picture the Genesis 1 account for a minute. God created everything in 6 days and rested on the 7th.
Now, if God had made the first 5 days and stopped, He’d have a really cool terrarium of neat stuff and be able to show it off to the rest of His creation:
- “Hey, check this out! It’s a beetle.”
- lol woah im gagged thas rad Lord!
- IJBOL is GOAT
- green flag, my new Roman Empire
- (and so on, glossary because I’m fire)
My bussin’ hipness aside, God obviously didn’t stop there, and went on to take an equivalent amount of effort to create man as all the rest of the fauna. Then, He rested on the 7th day.
While it’s a bit woo-woo to imply much of it, each of the 6 days say “And there was evening and there was morning – the Nth day.”, but it doesn’t say that for the 7th day, and there’s an implication that we are still “in” that 7th day in a sense. Interesting omission in Scripture nonetheless.
Either way, the entire purpose for God even making stuff like the rock badger or gravity was literally for a relationship with us!
This means a lot of implications:
- Those math things with the numbers and absurd amount of order? That was designed by God for us to grasp and use, and grow in a collective understanding of the God of order.
- Rocks and beaches and mountains and swamps? They’re not just captivating because we make silly patterns in our brains about them. They were actually designed for us to enjoy them!
- That weird bug that lives under Antarctica, or the weird deep-sea fish that look like something you find under the kitchen sink cleaning supplies? That was placed there for mankind’s weirdest nerds to discover it and grow in their relationship with God.
This can go onward. It doesn’t merely mean that God designed stuff, then thought of man. It means that any metaphysically present thing has the subordinate purpose involving God and man.
Now, to avoid any haters here, I want to clarify my words. I’m not saying that mankind is the center of the universe, and I’m actually veering away from saying God alone is the purpose of it all. I’m defining specifically the distinctive connected relationship between God and created man as the purpose for the universe: not man, nor God, but that connection between the two things that makes all the difference.
Part 4: A Sticky Stick in the Spokes Spoken
So, here’s the problem with these two things, when we place them side by side, then think with the tinfoiley angle that ASD and a few decades of screwy experience provides:
- There is no implicit meaning as soon as we stop finding something to be responsible for, but there is meaning when we’re responsible for things.
- God designed the universe and us in it for the purpose of having a relationship with Him.
- Our relationship with God was designed to be a never-ending productive experience, walking in ever-increasing knowledge and action.
- Our fallen state has severely taken away from the potential knowledge and action we could do, with the clock ticking down on each of us until the final end of utility, if death doesn’t take us first.
- Given this paradigm, the relationship with God will slowly diminish until we develop increasing utility in some way, which may mean becoming more prayerful or more meditative as we lose our other bodily faculties.
This doesn’t “feel” right, right? That’s because it isn’t. The synthesis between the Creator’s master design and our utterly fallen state only alludes to a potential future state where God finds joy in us (once we’re made perfect), but can’t persist in this life. The absurdity of this situation grows if you consider Liebniz’
“best of all possible worlds” conjecture, since the fallen state we live in can only disgust a God of order and effectiveness.
This is compounded by the fullness and timing of Jesus’ sacrifice. If Jesus truly died to save us from all our sins, and it was already understood what you’d do before you do it (i.e., your sins were counted and paid for with a precise amount of grace), then what onus of responsibility is truly left for the Christian?
The knee-jerk Christianese response would be to say, “well, obviously, Jesus had a better life without sin! Go and sin no more! God destined you for a great life. Etcetera!”
Right, that makes sense…sorta. What if I wanted to simply sin a lot and reap the awful consequences of that life of sinfulness? Maybe I’m weak and can’t break through my vices, for example.
“Well, you wouldn’t want to! God would instill a new heart in you. You’re a new creation. You’re called to love. And more etcetera.”
That’s not the point I’m getting at. Something is directly wrong with the following logical statements:
- All meaning is built around responsibility.
- God designed the universe for a relationship with you.
- Christ died for all your sins, making you no longer responsible to do anything with them anymore except to not do them anymore.
- To live lovingly is to act toward others’ well-being, and there really isn’t any intrinsic responsibility if it’s selfless (since we’d want what’s best for them, which may include doing nothing).
Before I go on, I want you to chew on those 4 axioms and figure out which one is wrong. There’s a prize waiting at the end for anyone who can figure it out or read on.
Part 5: A Corrected Problem
The answer, plainly, is the first axiom presented. As I’ve alluded to a little earlier, meaning is not built strictly on responsibility.
Meaning can be built on responsibility, and the only way we can find meaning is through responsibility. That is the domain we can control.
What we can’t control, though, is how much (or little) we “mean” to others. The domain of “how others see us” was intentionally carved out by God, for God.
Therefore, you will find true and lasting meaning in the structure built right into you, and it comes through the conduit of essence, not utility or purpose.
This creates a ripple that subtly and profoundly alters the framework of our existence:
- There is implicit meaning simply because God loves us.
- God designed the universe and us in it for the purpose of having a relationship with Him.
- Our relationship with God was designed to be a never-ending experience, walking in ever-increasing knowledge, action, rest, peace, and enjoyment.
- Our fallen state has severely taken away from the potential knowledge and action we could do, with the clock ticking down on each of us until the final end of utility, but it doesn’t take away from the connection and love He has for us, and opens us to increasingly more opportunities to share with His essence.
- Given this paradigm, the relationship with God will slowly grow as we learn to recondition ourselves from doing into becoming more prayerful or meditative, with the presence of God growing within our souls even as we lose our other bodily faculties.
The essence of the basic Christian theological things I’ve articulated here makes our closeness with God utterly and unfathomably inconsistent with any feelings of meaninglessness or hopelessness. If the universe, down to its quantum elements, was designed for us, that is a tremendous amount of love wired right into our essence. That love was even more expressed through His decision to die for us.
God’s sacrifice was twice over: once in our fearfully and wonderfully made design, and again in choosing to become one of us with the intent to die in our place. It’s something that makes it impossibly illogical to believe that there is no meaning to speak of: we are that meaning, simply for existing.
Further, there is tremendous evil in associating aptitude. The devil was the highest-rank angel, and certainly imagined his dominance had significance in the celestial hierarchy, but his efforts haven’t been aligned with anything good.
And that prize I stated above? The prize is peace: undying, unflinching peace that transcends all human understanding. It’s worth the sacrifice.
What I’m Feeling
I have basically lived the following flow chart my entire adult life:
- Can I do something about things?
- If so, CHRISTIAN STOICISM GO
- If not, CHRISTIAN NIHILISM GO
- If confused or exhausted, go to sleep and ask 1 again.
This effectively made me radically successful in my self-development, but has salted the earth for any peace or satisfaction that may have grown.
I can happily say that, for the first time in my entire existence, I have found peace and comfort, more deeply than I could have ever conceived, and in a way that can follow me for the rest of my existence.
I conducted a unique experiment recently by making a list of the following events that happened throughout my lifetime:
- Any time an easy opportunity that was an obvious slam dunk blew up on me.
- Every ridiculously unlikely event that worked to change the course of where things were going.
When I did that, I realized that God has been leading me to this place for a long time. He, therefore, will finish this season in His timing, and this is not the end of my story.
I also have realized the scope of why so much has gone wrong. My particular talents, mixed with me falling short of God’s grace to make room for the idols of Stoicism and nihilism, would have caused tremendous damage to the Body of Christ (Hebrews 12:15, Deuteronomy 29:18).
The ultimate irony was that I was entirely unaware of them. Back in the days of yore, you found idols in a temple or buy one at Idol Depot or whatever, but ever since the togamen of Greece started with their brain philosophy things, the idols got more abstract, and now they’re freaking everywhere.
Contrary to what you may think, though, I also feel tremendous sorrow over this discovery, specifically for Tori.
While God has been faithful to mitigate damage by shielding me from the rest of any healthy Christian culture, Tori has been within my zone of influence. I trained her to it, and I wish I could untrain her, but I’d literally go to jail if I were to start looking for her to tell her this.
So, I sit here, with peace that God is going to do His work on her like He has for me, but with unease until I know where her head is at and how our kids are doing.
What I’m Doing Now
I’m still waiting for most beautiful woman I’ve known to reappear with the two amazing children we share.
- If she does, she’ll have to summon the courage to directly reach out to the Polk County Clerk of Court, either by calling or walking in, to have the NCO removed.
- She would need to reach out to Des Moines Fellowship if she needed any support, assuming Frontier Church wouldn’t help her again.
I’m presently unemployed right now, but currently looking to pursue a driver role.
For the first time in my life, I’m actually trusting God, which means my most significant task right now is to learn patience and peace in my ever-changing uncertainties. I’m not doing nothing these days, but the to-do list gets rather small when you’re unemployed and not sure what tomorrow brings.