Notes

Life and Such. Aug 2014

There have been times in my life when I would claim that the only reason I was alive was God. That the only thing that had stopped me from jumping off the edge or overdosing on pills was the fear of the punishment for those that commit suicide: eternal hell. For a long time I believed this, and lived in constant resentment of this law, grumbling that if we were placed on this earth without our free will, we should at least be allowed to end the life we didn't ask for. If someone turns on a movie that we don't want to watch, why shouldn't we be allowed to turn the TV off when we reach a point where we feel that we're just wasting our time and there is no point in watching further?
And I tell you now: The only way I would ever kill myself is if I lost faith in God. Because if there's no God, there's no consequence for suicide. And although that makes it sound like the only thing keeping me from it right now is that fear, the reality is, the moment I would be convinced that God doesn't exist, I would no longer have a reason to live. But BECAUSE He exists, each and every one of us has a purpose, a destiny and a part in His great plan. Some would say that this shows a truly selfish personality, that faith in a deity is the only thing keeping a person alive, and without it they would disregard the feelings of all the people in their life and kill themselves. I believe this to be a false accusation. Imagine for a second that there was no God. That we really did evolve from non-intelligent molecules and everything that happens today is simply a product of natural laws and chemistry. So if I killed myself, that would simply be a reaction of a disfunction in my brain that caused a certain emotion or reaction that through a chain of events led up to the defiance of natural human instinct; self-destruction. It would mean ultimately, it wasn't my free will or choice to die, but the result of a series of clicks in my brain that told me to make the decision to do so. Therefore no one could call me selfish or cowardly for ending my existence and "taking the easy way out." Furthermore, I could not be blamed for anything that happened AFTER my death because the effect it might have on people would also be just a reaction to hormones in the brain that caused certain emotions. And it's all just a part of the circle of life anyways; even if it caused a chain reaction and millions of people that are, say, struggling with depression or other mental disorders, ended their lives, the world would simply repopulate, and (according to natural selection) the weaker variations of the human species would be out of the gene pool, meaning only healthy, stable minds would be left to dominate, and further mutations or harmful variations would be rare, seeing as how genetically, some people are more suspectable to falling into depression. Summing it up, my death would not be significant and suicide in general shouldn't be a concern. After all, human morales and emotions would all just be products of evolution and civilization. But in our day to day lives this kind of logic never comes up when we are choosing whether or not to get into a relationship, have children or to devote ourselves to helping save lives. See, if there was no God, no Creator, and everything was purely scientific, our lives would just be insignificant specks of dust on the timeline of the universe's history. Our worth as living beings would be measured by how big of an impact we leave on not just humanity but on the earth as a whole and how it affects the future. If there was no God, the Holocaust would not be important, because scientifically speaking, a small percentage of our species population was removed by artificial selection within the species. The armed nazis had the power to completely or partially wipe out the Jews and by natural law, they did. Survival of the fittest. However, most people would disagree, quite passionately, that the Holocaust can simply be excused by the principles of Darwinism. So these standards of right and wrong, of where actions excusable by science end and unethical behavior begins, are after all, ingrained in our minds, EVEN IF not all people feel the obligation to follow them. These moral laws mean that not everything can simply be filed under another example of nature at work. Depression, suicide and various mental disorders are more than genetic flaws. It means more than nature's way of getting rid of the weaker individuals in a species. The unnatural death of a human, caused by the intentional actions of the human himself, is more than just a part of the circle of life. There IS a spiritual world out there, whether we are conscious of it or not, whether we believe in it or not, it effects all of us. And with this spiritual world comes the Creator of it all. The God that created spirits, created the physical world as well. He created EVERYTHING with a purpose. No grain of sand goes uncounted, NO HAIR ON YOUR HEAD will fall without His will. If He goes to such precision as to control the very hairs on your head, He certainly must have created you with a purpose. No potter pays attention to the littlest details on something he's making if he doesn't plan on using it for anything. And with God, that purpose was planned out before He even had the clay in His hands. He has a plan for each of us, and if we would listen to Him, we would be able to look back and see that all along, His idea had been better than what we would normally choose. Of course, we have free will, complete choice whether to listen to His guidance, but just like every single choice, ours will have consequences, whether they be good or bad.
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And finally, the answer. Why SHOULD we put up with this pointless movie we're being forced to watch? Because the one who started it isn't just trying to waste our time. He's not keeping us there just to torture us with some weird and tragic reality show. He turned it on for a reason, but we may never know what he wanted us to get out of it if we turn it off when it starts to get unbearable. He's been here before it all began, he's seen countless variations of the same story, and he's showing us because he knows what's best for us, and we have to sit through the bad parts to get to the final scene, which will make it all worth it in the end. Parallel to our lives, we were put here for a reason. We are more than a composition of cells and chemistry. Each of our lives has a purpose, but if we end it when we get tired of the way things are going, we forever lose the opportunity to fulfill it, as well as the honor of being with the author of our life at the end of it all. So sit tight my friend. The movie's getting hard to watch. But don't close your eyes, don't turn it off. Theres a reason for all this, and you just need to keep watching to the end.