theblackdostoyevsky

Father,

            Is this it? Is it happening before our eyes and within our hearts, even, without detection? It’s a peculiar thing, quitting, because it does not consult or justify itself. It curries no favor for its cause but walks off the set, almost defiantly, like a suicide. Perhaps it leaves a note, but most often it does not. And when it does, the note is cryptic and self-pitying, a riddle. Not anything like the humble reflections of the Japanese death poem, which bears within it a communal aspect and love for mankind in that it seeks to open a window into the most horrifying and mysterious unknown of this precarious existence and lay it upon a bed of roses. Contrary to softening the fear, the death poem is meant to compel a comforting tenderness from a most terrifying apprehension. This need for comfort before entering into the blackness of darkness is the reason death row inmates are given the opportunity to enjoy a last meal or share final words before the trigger is flipped and the awful mixture of synthetic drugs is set flowing to poison their blood to death.

            The suicide note is not a riddle, though. In the rare cases it exists, it often carries a poetic aspect. It is as if the murderer of self longs to persuade the reader of the nobility of his actions, the selflessness of them, and so make himself beyond reproach before those who will call him selfish and cruel and immature.

“Perhaps there was a touch of God in him when he wrote this,” we may think, he hopes, “and he is not burning in hell after all. How else could a dying man stir up such deep and virtuous perfections?”

But they never do read this way, do they? Instead, they come off as embittered, and weak, and childish, like a bawling toddler pointing over the toy another has claimed before him. Or like a male suitor who has been bested by his rival and so marries a whore in his self-pity, to lacerate himself in his arrogant despair.

            “ . . . for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first . . .” (2 Thessalonians 2:3).

            “Once saved, always saved,” right? When the very mention of the word “apostasy” in The Book demands that the once saved may at some point become unsaved. And by what means? And in what manner? And how quickly? And what will be the demeanor of such an abandonment? Will he seek to legitimize his faithlessness with scientific proofs and vain philosophies? Will he blame the hypocrite for defiling his faith? Will he side with the heretic in some minutiae of doctrine that leads him down a road of doubt and confusion, each ancient rebuttal unraveling one thread of belief at a time until the whole tapestry of faith lies in a bundle of frayed scribble upon the earth? Will pleasure seduce him into a measured and moderate indulgence of the flesh, so that he disciplines his lust from attacking his greater faculties and so makes it possible to enjoy iniquity without fear of the consequences of overindulgence? Perhaps he, reading the Holy Spirit to renew his mind, will stumble upon a seeming contradiction that he cannot reconcile, perhaps a missing name in a genealogy or a change in phrasing between two gospels, and so he breaks trust in the whole, having found an error in inerrancy. Perhaps he will be so bombarded with lies from a church so spotted and blemished that he can perceive no difference between it and the profit-hungry, poverty-inducing, soul-polluting corporation; lucre-loving masked as altruism. Or, perhaps, and most likely, he will simply walk away, noiselessly, thoughtlessly, and without counsel, into the ranks of the reprobate.

            Nihilism is a scourge akin to divorce, and it is of the same nature. It divides the man in two and makes him choose. The flesh or the Spirit? And trained only in empiricism, totally ignorant of invisible matters, he becomes staunchly materialist and conservative, an abider of time and sufferer of the image of others, seeking always to retire into oblivion though obligated to contribute to the upkeep of the whole through his daily occupation. Can’t serve God and money. Oh, but don’t we try.

            Have you seen these new parties? Whole crowds of people with headphones on and earbuds in, every one marching to the beat of his own pleasure, cursorily interacting with the world beyond himself whilst steeped in the enticement of his own desire? He is not comforted by the community, by connection, by love; he is comforted by the broad road, by the fact that, though so diverse in pleasure and disconnected in emotion and thought, wherever we are going at least we are all going together. Truly, misery loves company, especially when misery masks as joy. It is no wonder the adversary masks as an angel of light, when we judge at face value. It is the spectacle of community without purpose, the veneer of service without largesse. Our communion is a tree planted upside-down.  

            This is where we are, not going. We have arrived and take great pleasure in our arrival at this wicked place. Nobody is listening, though everybody is speaking. Nobody is giving, though everyone is taking. Though everyone is awake, nobody sees. Though all have thoughts, nobody ponders. We do not realize that we are “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.” Or perhaps we do; but we don’t want it to be exposed. Perhaps we do, we just don’t care. But that, too, is faith.