Confessions of some of my philosophical struggles

There is ample evidence to support the truthfulness of Christianity, ranging from prophetic fulfillment to ancient documents, historical evidence, cosmological evidence, and logical evidence, which enables us to discern what is true and to trust God entirely.

Not only do we rely on external evidence, but we must also trust the testimony of the Holy Spirit and the God who gave us our senses and abilities to reason through the laws of logic, guiding us toward truth in this confusing, fallen world.

We also have written testimonies, changed lives, and creation itself to testify to us the profile of our creator, His personality, and His heart for mankind.

However…

Satan has come to kill, steal, and destroy. There are many ways Satan will attack us: physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. For each Christian, it can vary what tactic works best. All of us have ‘tendencies’ that render us weak or vulnerable to ceratin lies, temptations, and behaviors.

For me, my biggest battles have been within my mind. When I tell my husband what some of my battles are, sometimes he will understand… other times, he will say, “yeah, I have never struggled with that.” It doesn’t leave me feeling lonely, but understanding that I am vulnerable and weak in areas he may not be, and vice versa. What I am about to tell you as being some of my greatest struggles in my Christian walk may help you feel seen (because you struggle this way as well), or you may think, “Wow! That’s weird.” (Haha)

When I was 15 years old, I had a very bad ‘trip’ on mushrooms. If you do not know what mushrooms are or how they affect you (I am assuming here we all do, but I will explain), then you may not understand what a ‘bad trip’ is. Eating certain mushrooms releases poison in the body and causes hallucinations. People will recreationally use this drug to get a ‘body buzz’ as well as go on an adventure of hallucinating until the poison is processed through the liver. Certain cultures will also use hallucinagins for religious practices, believing that the hallucinations expand their understanding and knowledge (ref. Gen 3 ‘the fall’ on that one). The hallucinations are called ‘tripping’ as far as a street name is concerned.

A ‘bad trip’, however, is like being in a bad dream, stuck hallucinating dreadful visuals or horrific thoughts until the drug wears off. For me, I never hallucinated visually when taking mushrooms or smoking weed (yes, marijuana is considered a hallucinagen), but my mind definitely went haywire. I felt like I was being bombarded with philsophical questions I could not answer and it tail spun me into philosophical (mental) terror and paranoia.

This particular ‘bad trip’ did not wear off when the drug wore off. I couldn’t just wait it out. My mind had now been exposed to an evil I had never considered before, which were devilish philosophical questions that I could not answer.

I will say this, at the time, I was not a believer. I had no spiritual direction and was taken to a psychiatrist to be placed on meds. Eventually, I was able to settle down after having severe panic attacks and not getting any sleep for about a month. (Kids, don’t do drugs.) This is partly why I believe drugs open our mind up to the demonic. Hallucinagens in particular.

So for me, Satan saw an open door to torment me - asking me deep philosophical questions that I could not confront with until I was a Christian adult.

The enemy will lure us into trying to answer questions that only an infinite mind can answer.

I will get to that in a moment, but first, let me also explain why these questions were so tempting for me.

Personally, I have had a very difficult time with wanting to control my environment and surrendering to the reality that I cannot control everything, nor can I have a full scope of all aspects of life (knowing everyting) in order to feel in control.

Whether I struggle with this because of past trauma or just sin in my flesh, (not willing or not wanting to feel vulnerable in this world) it doesn’t always matter why, but craving to know everything (always looking over my shoulder, paradoid, etc) and desiring control is something I have struggle immensely to surrender. Letting go of ‘not knowing everything’ is terrifying to someone who believes the unknown will hurt you.

Wanting to thoroughly understand everything can be a gift of sorts, but can often lead to frustration when it is impossible to completely comprehend it all.

In regard to faith, there must be a point at which we accept our finite mind and ability to perceive and to step on the bridge of trust. Paul, in his great revelation and wisdom, reminded us, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

I have noticed within my own mind, Satan, the great deceiver, has tempted me to answer philosophical questions that only an infinite mind can answer.

Questions such as, “How do you know you are real? How do you know you are not in a dream? How do you know you are not being deceived by God?”

Clinically, someone who begins to feel disconnected because of these questions would be diagnosed with a dissasociative disorder called ‘derealization’ or ‘depersonalization’ or possibly even ‘OCD.’ These questions haunted me for years, because they are questions I, quite frankly, with all intellectual honesty, cannot answer, on the basis of full comprehension.

All the answers to these questions required a level of trust in someone greater than me: Christ. I could choose to drive myself crazy by trying to answer it and continue to chase the satan rabbit down the rabbit hole… or I could trust Christ like a vulnerable child and refuse to entertain it.

The Lord has given me the philosophical way out of these entrapments—

(1) I am not all-knowing or all-comprehending to account for existence, especially my own. I can only trust the account given to me in scripture and trust that the senses I have are given to me by a God who is Good and desires that I perceive truth.

(2) I cannot factually answer if I am in a dream or not, since I am not omniscient. However, I can only trust that God is Good and would not leave me as an orphan alone in a dream state. Scripture testifies to God’s desire for connection, not disconnection. Since we are created in His image, we are also created for connection, not disconnection. Therefore, it would be out of alignment with God’s Goodness for all of life to be in an isolated dream. God is also not a deceiver, to trick us – that would be Satan. Therefore, it is far more likely that I am being tricked by Satan to believe I am isolated in a dream than it would be that God is tricking me.

(3) I did not create myself to account for my own existence, and it takes walking in humility to accept that. Part of our sin nature is to ‘want to be like God’ as Satan said in his own heart when he fell from heaven (Isaiah 14:13). However, wanting to be ‘like God’ is pleasing to the flesh in the moment, but leads to torment in the end, due to our finite nature. We cannot answer infinite questions, except based on trusting what the infinite has to say about it.

(4) I do not know every aspect of God. To know everything about God would mean to be God Himself. When I begin to foolishly attempt to answer these questions with absolute certainty, it is a prideful pursuit at best, and I become frustrated and spin out philosophically without resting in Christ.

Basically, the antidote to my deepest philosophical struggles was to not entertain questions that only an infinite mind can answer…and trust the infinite mind to be Good, loves us, and withholds no good thing from us — who is our Father.

Often, we feel like every philosophical or existential doubt that crosses our minds are true simply because they can exist in our minds. If they can truly exist, how are they untrue?

…because demonic suggestion is not truth. When I opened my mind to those questions after using hallucination- induced drugs, I exposed my mind to questions that I was never intended to contend with. However, God will STILL use it for my good and for His glory. He always does.

Let’s take it a step deeper.

The fall happened when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fall occurred when they became acquainted with—or were intimate with—evil. They took it in, they experienced it – in the same way Adam ‘knew’ his wife and she conceived (Gen. 4:1), they ‘knew’ evil and fell.  

Shame set in. Terror filled their hearts. We were not created to be intimate with evil, but with God. God, in His wisdom, has allowed us to know evil for a time. He has allowed this so that when He returns and throws sin and all causes of sin into the lake of fire, we will experience a relief that is unlike anything in all of creation. The objects of His mercy will rejoice unlike any angel in heaven. We will know Him as Redeemer, Savior, and Friend… unlike any being in heaven.

Tolkien, creator of The Lord of the Rings, said there will be a day when God makes “every sad thing untrue.” But how can this be if it, the sad thing, actually happened? It is possible that God, in His power and eternal abilities beyond the dimension of time, will undo all evil and sin in a way that it is as if we were never affected by it, and yet still know Him as Redeemer. Only God can know how to do that. This will be our glorified state, where nothing will hinder our worship of God, nor our connection with each other. When this happens, we will all rejoice in the greatest Joy to ever enter our hearts or minds, and say to each other, “This is what we are made for!”

Yes, we are made for Christ – for our Joy and His. (Colossians 1:16)

Yes, the redemption we wait for is beyond anything we could ever imagine.

“But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—1 Corinthians 2:9