The Divine Playwright.
Sep. 24th, 2006 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackofallgeeksSo I was talking to Cindy today. And at one point she mentioned having a discussion about depression with one of her other friends, and her friends said, "you know why you get depressed? Because you're not doing God's Will. Because there's something you should be doing and you're not." And Cindy's reply was, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Duh."
And I was thinking, "No. No it doesn't."
And this highlights a significant difference between myself and a good number of the people who go to Steubenville and Christendom and the like. Put simply, I don't have 'practical' faith, for lack of a better word. Maybe 'trust in God,' is better. I believe in God and Jesus and the Resurrection, Heaven and Hell and salvation. I believe that God has made us for a purpose and generally has our best in mind.
But from there I get a bit Deistic. At the end of the day, it's what you do with your life that matters. I don't believe God has every day of our lives, yet alone every action, scripted out from here until eternity. I don't even believe that God will guarantee your life will be as it ought to be: people fail. People are miserable. It happens.
What I really don't like about the above, "you get depressed because you aren't doung God's Will," it that t leads itself so easily to being over-scrupulous about things. How can you know God's Will? Can can you be sure you're doing it? If you're depressed, but you've been doing everything 'right,' then what?
I do believe in God, and that we have a purpose, and I'm even pretty sure that he does take a hand in things now and again -- I don't think he's just watching his clockwork reality wind down. But I also don't think we're meant to run like robots according to some divine script we aren't allowed to read. You get depressed because there are sad things you can't get over, or because stress is tearing at you, or because you're biologic chemistry is off. Life is ambiguous. The best you can do is to do the best you know. To be a good person and do what's right, as well as you can with what you have and know.
As for my lack of faith, which I do think is a failing in certain respects, we can discuss that another time.
And I was thinking, "No. No it doesn't."
And this highlights a significant difference between myself and a good number of the people who go to Steubenville and Christendom and the like. Put simply, I don't have 'practical' faith, for lack of a better word. Maybe 'trust in God,' is better. I believe in God and Jesus and the Resurrection, Heaven and Hell and salvation. I believe that God has made us for a purpose and generally has our best in mind.
But from there I get a bit Deistic. At the end of the day, it's what you do with your life that matters. I don't believe God has every day of our lives, yet alone every action, scripted out from here until eternity. I don't even believe that God will guarantee your life will be as it ought to be: people fail. People are miserable. It happens.
What I really don't like about the above, "you get depressed because you aren't doung God's Will," it that t leads itself so easily to being over-scrupulous about things. How can you know God's Will? Can can you be sure you're doing it? If you're depressed, but you've been doing everything 'right,' then what?
I do believe in God, and that we have a purpose, and I'm even pretty sure that he does take a hand in things now and again -- I don't think he's just watching his clockwork reality wind down. But I also don't think we're meant to run like robots according to some divine script we aren't allowed to read. You get depressed because there are sad things you can't get over, or because stress is tearing at you, or because you're biologic chemistry is off. Life is ambiguous. The best you can do is to do the best you know. To be a good person and do what's right, as well as you can with what you have and know.
As for my lack of faith, which I do think is a failing in certain respects, we can discuss that another time.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-25 04:17 pm (UTC)For some reason that sentence is really really beautiful to me right now.
What I believe is this: we can not define the undefinable (and to me, this whole cosmic mishmosh is just that) but we can have a damned good time with the pieces we DO manage to decipher, even if we're wrong.
And even though I'm closer to what we might call a skeptical agnostic (or perhaps an open-minded atheist), sometimes everything does seem a bit too beautiful to be happy coincidence. Then again, perhaps that is exactly why the world is so heartbreakingly beautiful.