(no subject)
I was taught that once one accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the only path through which peace can be made with the Father, that salvation is irrevocable; if conversion and acceptance is true, the soul is transmuted by the understanding such that the covenant remade is inviolate. Once saved, always saved, as it was said. Thus, once salvation is accepted, there is nowhere else to go and nothing else to do.
I was taught that works mean nothing; a hypocrite can praise the name and path to God as easily as a saved man, and while a person can make educated guesses as to the nature of someone's saved-state (emulation lawl), you cannot truly -know-. In the end times, good works will see crowns on the heads of the doers, but what matters honors and a crown from God when you are in his direct presence and equally treasured just as any other? Thus, works are epistemically (mentally, cognitively) no different from prayer, and if prayer leaves one cold, why pray? Why perform works if they are meaningless?
I was taught that those who did not have a true chance to hear the Gospels would be treated kindly by the Father in the End Times. If they are not calmly and empathetically presented with these Apparent Truths, in a way that they can truly understand what they mean, they may suffer briefly-- but they will not be cast away from God's presence for lack of opportunity to hear and understand. Thus, if I cannot communicate it to others, there is no need to worry for their Immortal Souls; mercy will be extended to them in due time as it was to me.
I was taught that the Earth is corrupt, and not truly worth the spit it would take to show one's distaste for it. I was taught that we each factor differently into God's plans, with our own blessings and purpose. What does it matter if I cannot compel others to reexamine their lives by force of presence and recitation of scripture, if that was never my function to begin? Thus, one's experiences on Earth are generally meaningless when they are not teleologically (to the express intention) of achieving salvation-- which, as mentioned above, is a finite, solvable game with a definite ending.
QED: Once you're saved, you're pretty much done with Earth and everything on it if you can't contribute to the salvation of others.
But wait. If you're done with the Earth and everything on it post-salvation, why aren't ALL Christians on direct missions to and through the developing world? Even given the need for infrastructure to support that many missions, that's still a metric FUCKton of people who aren't doing anything at all but going to a church that may or may not be reinforcing a salvation that DOESN'T NEED REINFORCING. (A church that, if my young non-church-going mind understood correctly through popular culture, doesn't actually enthuse most of the people who DO go.)
"Why are we still doing these things?" I wondered. (I think I was a little existentialist bastard even back then, though I did not know what that would mean until much later.) "Why," I asked of myself, "don't we just KILL ourselves so we can directly experience God's presence all the time, forever beyond time? What keeps people alive and doing these generally-irrelevant things when sublime experiences beyond our mortal minds' capacity to fathom are just a turned steering wheel away?"
Prayer yielded no answers, nor did scripture. My belief did not make me eloquent enough to explain this question to those who might understand, much to my consternation and against the purportedly Direct Recorded Experience of those who survived Christ to spread the Good News. My faith/religion, which was supposed to offer me peace and a sense of how to understand the world, left me completely bewildered as to what to do with a world that I neither needed nor should desire anything from.
Thus, perhaps, an explanation for my listlessness, my indifference, my confusion, my anger directed inwards. Nothing meaningful to do, why do anything? Nothing meaningful to care about, why care about anything? If there's nothing to do, nothing to care about, why does everyone persist? What are other people seeing that I am not? And what's WRONG with me that I can't see what must CLEARLY be obvious to everyone else?
...were I to meet myself of those years, and he capable/inclined of compelling me (or found me inclined) to answer these questions, I think I would/might say/do two things. The first would be this: nine of every ten people you see and think, "Wow, they've got it together," actually don't. The second would be a pat on the shoulder and a knowing, amused smirk at my expense as I moved right along, because something I desperately needed back then was a stiff cot for a friend who was willing to drag me along every once in a while but had no interest in actually taking care of me.
Thank God, he said with tongue planted firmly in cheek, that I was lucky enough that one found me.