2025-03-16

A lot of layers are being stripped off today. In life, career, and relationships. I just had this epiphany of before we arrive at Truth, a necessary false version of truth must be encountered. It is a test of discernment. Doubt is an internal struggle. An encounter of these falsehoods must be the cause of doubt. This is Descartes's method.

I am only ruminating on this idea because of the pastor's preaching this morning. While I am convinced that his approach to spiritual truth is true, I am concerned with how people are receiving his interpretation of the scriptures. In pursuing intellectual exercises of thinking about thought itself, I have become my own devil's advocate. There exists in me another being whose sole purpose is to contradict everything I am thinking: the interlocutor of doubt. So, while I was listening, the devil's advocate is active and I am surprised at how the same argument of the pastor can be made for malicious intent. Maybe "malicious" is not the right term but for those who are unaware that they are pursuing a falsehood of truth, its distortion is becoming their unwavering driving force to antagonize others. It is a process, and a difficult one, to strip yourself away from the worldly passions, especially in untangling yourself from your own worldly image. It is a path of rigorous self-analysis, criticism, and doubt. The only way to complete this process is an entire self-denial and a complete resignation that you are nothing. You are nothing because up until this realization, you are made by the world.

This is a tough task and it is a task that can only be accomplished when one surrenders to the internal struggle. To willingly face the conflicts head on with a mind that is prepared and has at least foreseen the levels of struggle required, lest one will walk away with pure disappointment. I want to know if the people I was with during that congregation is thinking the same thoughts as me. I want to understand how they make sense of the struggle required to walk the path of Christian discipleship. Doing it for yourself is hard enough. I wonder, what do others think of now that the premise of denying their selves is in doing it for God. This is still the ideas that I have been grappling with.