It’s far worse though. I can’t stand/love myself due to my own incompetence and hypocritically I get furious with other peoples incompetence both in morality and in just general life.
I can’t even look outside and find peace in the world. When I look out into the world all I think is the parasites, the viruses, the sadism of animal and man. The fact that the supposed “miracle of life” had been the greatest killer of women for millenniums, and the fact that God specifically pointed out that its our fault that this happens. What kind of world is this if I can’t even find peace thinking of the unborn? These so called innocent lives that God allows to die within weeks of conception through miscarriage, or worse attach to the wrong place and become little more than a PARASITE that will kill its mother.
The only place I get any comfort is from my family, and even then I still know that when my parents die God will see fit to send them to Hell for their cradle Catholic attitude. Can you not see why agnosticism is so appealing when God provides nothing too you and only takes away?!
Uriah, if the world and this life is all that there is, then you and I would be in total agreement.
If God exists, but is only a God of justice, then we will all be in hell, and you and I would be in total agreement.
If God exists, but God is only a God of mercy, and everyone gets into heaven only to continue an unrepentant eternal life of immorality there, then you and I are in total agreement.
But God is a God of mercy
and justice. Imagine, if you will, a process by which every soul that has demonstrated at least
some capacity for goodness on earth, that they get the opportunity to realize who Christ is, and see the pain their sinfulness caused him (eg. the diary of St. Faustina), and imagine that this opportunity could cause them to completely abandon attachments to every immoral and ungodly thing that they had on earth (a very painful process), so that they may *completely embrace and thank Christ for the suffering he went through on their behalf *and that they might, for example, only ultimately and forever consist of the goodness they cultivated (my interpretation) —
… Well, this a bit embellished but close to what the Church teaches, because this is the essence of what has been
revealed to her. It doesn’t matter if you can’t believe it, it is what has been revealed; maybe not to the vast majority of us, but to some chosen by God to deliver the message to us over the centuries. Suffering and sorrow and death are still with us, but they lose their finality, and their meaning. Face it, Jesus
appeared after his death (!!!), and his disciples who witnessed it were given the understanding that it did not apply to Jesus alone, but to them also, and they accepted martyr’s deaths (save John) spreading this news. Now it is up to you to prove that this
doesn’t apply to you, and your family, and all the women who died in childbirth, and innocent lives, and any of us sinners who don’t want to be sinners anymore!
Uriah, this IS what the good news is all about. You say you can’t stand your own incompetence (your self-criticism, but I don’t believe it for a millisecond – that’s another post). But assuming it is accurate, God’s love for you is so great that you may as well love your “incompetence”, and inadequacies, and weaknesses, and faults, because they pale in the presence of him, who made you exactly as you are. Don’t you understand? If you were a father of two young boys, and one was getting the hang of T-ball and the other tried and tried but just couldn’t manage to hit it, how great would be your love for the one who tried?
You are a good man, Uriah, and you, like me and all of us, are in the fight of our lives. Again, thanks for being here.
