Dodging Bullets And Catching Strays

“I should either be dead or in prison serving many years” is a common admission you will likely hear people in a typical twelve step meeting say. I find this sentiment very relatable as I can think of a number of occasions where I should have gotten what I deserved, but didn’t. I don’t say this to brag or to try and claim that I’m an expert at evading “bullets” like Neo from The Matrix. Recognition of this fact helps tether me both to my sense of purpose and reality itself, by acknowledging that if I were to continue tempting fate I would almost certainly crash and burn. If anything, I am a stumbling baffoon who walked through a valley of landmines with a blindfold on and took it off on the other side only to ask myself “Hey, what were those loud noised behind me all about?”, then I would turn around and see the many holes and craters left behind me that could have and honestly should have ruined me, indefinitely.

In my day to day life I don’t always reflect on this fact mostly because I’ve always got something going on that distracts me. Yet, there will be and are periods of time when my mind flashes back to a particular decision I made in the past and my eyes widen as greater clarity arrives, like a waiter serving up a plate of dogshit and reminding me how close I could’ve come to eating it. Then I go through periods when all I’m able to think about are the things I did in my past and worrying if my actions have consequences yet to be seen, which are being queued up and I don’t even know about it yet! It’s a scary thought and sometimes it motivates me to be proactive in getting things done, like school work. Other times, I fall victim to the “What is the point of doing anything if it could all be taken away?” mindset. It seems to depend on the day, how much stress I’m experiencing and so on.

I tend to be someone who values pattern recognition over anything else, seeing many coincidences as actually being representative of a greater, overarching storyline and not something to be skimmed over or taken lightly. Basically that is to say that I look at synchronicities as being a form of spiritual foreshadowing, possibly hinting at the direction that my life is headed in. Even small details sometimes take on a meaning that I may obsess over or fixate on. My belief system is not logically consistent; on one hand I believe in the concept of predestination, on the other I do believe that our choices are our own and sometimes complicate “The Plan”. The only thing that even makes these two opposing ideas somewhat compatible with one another is that while the end of life’s journey has a particular conclusion, the details of how we arrive there may change depending on our choices.

I don’t feel that spirituality or the belief in a higher power are bound to the rules and understanding that humans have. The rules of religion, God and the afterlife transcend over any barrier or limitation that we can perceive. The Omnipotence Paradox is just a joke and a waste of time to me. Though it can be fun to try to rationalize it with our finite human minds, even though no attempt at coming up with a logical answer to those contradictions will yield any intellectually satisfying results. I can remember once being confronted about my inconsistent belief structure and not really knowing how to respond. I can see and comprehend the frustrations that someone might have in making the infinite and mysterious, digestible and simplified but all of the same I think there is so much we are not meant to know. And that is the basis of Faith; not having clear cut answers that make perfect sense or are easy to understand, but simply values whose only goals are the intention to guide us in a way that aligns with our own sense of morality, whether that be in a secular, spiritual, religious or just philosophical sense.

To me “dodging bullets” means a higher power maneuvering me from harm, but “catching strays” are the silent, deadly thoughts which serve as reminders of what could have been, had I not received divine help. “Catching Strays” to me also means occasionally I “get hit” with something I don’t deserve; maybe a false accusation or getting blamed for something I didn’t actually do, or I end up as collateral for something; while I still will feel frustration, there’s a part of me that goes “Okay, but how many things did you manage to avoid that actually were your fault and yet here you still are, untouched?”. Almost like looking at things from a Karmatic perspective-that God as I understand him isn’t “punishing me” per say, but trying to open my eyes to how unfair some of my past actions were and providing clear examples of how those actions either did or may have impacted others. At least that’s my reasoning, but I’m actually not as understanding and emotionally mature enough to fully accept the consequences of that explanation and belief system for circumstances that have affected me negatively. Specifically, ones that weren’t my fault and genuinely were out of my control.

My Religious Background & Spiritual Journey

My Grandmother on my biological father’s side was a devout Catholic who attended church and religious events at least five days out of the week. My adoptive parents Dan and Kerry however, were Presbyterian Christians. My Grandmother thought it was important that I continue to attend church every week for the rest of my life but my parents believed they should and could only agree to enforce that until I became a legal adult at age eighteen, which they did. For the majority of my life I always considered myself “Christian” but in a very passive sense; more like a label that only ever meant anything during the moments that I found myself in an especially difficult situation that was scary or potentially dangerous. On those occasions I was a strong believer in my faith, but otherwise I didn’t care for church or “religious talk” and found it generally uncomfortable to talk about such things, especially with my parents.

Contrast that with today where I’m able to have open conversations about faith in God with my mother and find it helpful and reassuring. I’m not sure when that change took place but at some point in my life, I began to fully open up to my parents and matured to the point where I was no longer isolating myself from my family emotionally. It took many years to get there but my relationship with my parents have improved quite dramatically as a result of me finally opening up about my faith, thoughts, ideas, beliefs and feelings in regards to many other topics, not just religion or anything “Jesus related”. Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous both fully opened up the floodgates for me to have a more active belief system and begin developing and evolving beyond just having a passive philosophy towards spirituality, though I don’t attend church or practice my religion in traditional sense. I am stuck somewhere between trusting the traditions of the bible versus simply finding my own personal meaning in my relationship with God by interpreting various events and circumstances of my life as they play out.

I don’t pray often but I used to not pray at all. For me prayer usually takes the form of quiet contemplation with music as a soundtrack in the background. It’s more performative in the sense that if I feel I’ve experienced something spiritually significant, I am likely to pray as well as pace around in a deep and thoughful meditative state while I try to process and comprehend the meaning of things after they’ve occured, trying to extract a lesson that might help me move forward or at least make sense of what I am experiencing.

Agnostic Paradox: Confronting My Own Hypocrisy

Despite having a spiritual foundation from which I gain much comfort, one of the my weak spots is facing what the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous calls “Moments Of Fleeting Atheism”, meaning that like a cellular signal; sometimes it’s there sometimes it’s not. On one hand I believe there’s a God who has a greater purpose for me than what I can understand, on the other if I am facing a situation which I find overwhelming and emotionally challenging, I can lose faith on the spot at the drop of a hat. This contradiction sometimes causes me to question my own faith and how much of a believer I truly am, which greatly conflicts with my own identity and sense of who I am. It sometimes leads to questions like “What is the difference between who I am versus who I believe I am and what is the size of that gap in between those two realities?”.

I am often afraid to answer that question because I don’t know if I could handle the truth and if I could figure it out, what could even be reasonably done about it? It works the same way that I intutively answer questions that I ask myself; I believe I already know the truth deep inside but something about those truths is very difficult to face. It’s easier to shut down any oppositional voice inside of our own minds, but I believe the things that continue to bother us often contain some level of truth and that only by being brave enough to answer our own questions honestly, can we begin to take back power from the version of ourselves that keeps stealing it away.

Navigating Religious Trauma & Finding Redemption Despite Condemnation

One of the most impactful memories I have from attending youth church services as a child was remembering a speech that my youth pastor Nathan S. gave towards the end of one particular Sunday service. “The gates of heaven are narrow and not everyone will make it through them!” he had said. Those words have stuck with me for many years as a haunting reminder. Religious trauma is something that I believe has driven many people away from organized religion. Most people, especially as children, have the instinct to trust their adult counterparts and believe that they will be protected- that their elders have all of the answers and should be trusted and respected.

So when God, the ultimate father of us all whom we are supposed to trust also happens to be the one who could condemn us to eternal Hellfire for misstepping, how are we supposed to navigate that? Unfortunately, there’s no clear or easy answer to reconcile such a tough question and so with a lifetime of not knowing and being left to speculate this on our own, so many Christians turn away from the faith, unable to handle the fear of dying and the possible spiritual consequences that may follow afterwards. It seems irrational afterall, to somehow “love” someone who is holding us at gunpoint, making demands of us. It was in fact Nathan S. himself who also once said “You might be able to hold a gun to somebody’s head and force them to do what you want, but that doesn’t mean you’ve actually changed their mind or their heart”.

There is not much room for negotiation here, especially since the being which you would bargain with can’t be spoken to and therefore cannot be reasoned with. Like an invisable psychopath who is waiting to strike down the guilty and the innocent indiscriminately, unless you happen to be lucky enough to guess exactly what is expected of you and follow it to a satisfactory degree. An impossible task that is more likely to inspire resentment and rebellion rather than cooperation! Yes, there’s a religious text but there are many versions of it, each one seemingly written a Shakesperian style that nobody can relate to, because nobody really talks like that. Plus the translations would leave any reasonable person confused and frustrated.

I am willing to admit that I don’t have answers to these rebuttles, they are logically sound but much like I’ve already established in this post, it is the very irrational belief system I hold to which contends that regardless of what the bible itself says, there must be a reason to have hope anyway despite the fear of Hell that still creeps in from time to time. I can’t imagine God would create me just to burn me, especially since I am at least trying to follow a path of Recovery from drugs and alcohol based on a twelve step model which emphasizes adherence to God’s will over one’s own will. Even that one tenet being as confusing as it is (How do we know what “God’s Will” for us is each day, let alone for our whole lives?), I still trust my intuitive powers to do the guiding for me, as it goes beyond the rational which only serves to betray and mislead me on my spiritual journey.

The Purpose Behind “Being Saved”

I personally believe that I was rescued from the harsher consequences of my addiction and some of my past actions because there is something I am supposed to do that fits into a larger picture. In place of trying to read lengthy translated religious texts, I believe I have natural God Given talents and hobbies that I trend towards naturally (like blogging for instance), which will in some way, somehow, prove to be useful in a bigger picture that I will never be able to fully comprehend for as long as I live. I may someday scrape the surface of how and why engaging in my interests like writing, being involved in Twelve Step Recovery programs or going to school to eventually become a counselor will be significant, but ultimately it is not my purpose to know, only to do and to be.

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