Desiring Annihilation?

The first Scriptures that came to mind were the ones where Job and Jeremiah wish they’d never been born, but both of them were under exceptional adverse circumstances, and it doesn’t seem to line up with what you’re describing. They seem to be in anguish over an abundance of caring, and what you’re describing sounds like not-caring—apathy.

So the second Scripture passage that comes to mind is Romans 1, the phrase, “neither were they thankful.” I think for moral and spiritual purposes, a failure to be grateful should be treated as gravely or nearly as gravely as direct opposition to God. We see the moral problems with ingratitude when we feel a sense of indignation at a spoiled child oblivious to what his parents have done for him, the prep school kid unaware of his privilege, or the sense of unreflective entitlement in a lot of Americans. So what I’m aiming at is, Do you see apathy as something that needs to be actively repented of? Not just a practical problem to get around, but something to repent… Nor am I singling you out in this; I think we all generally need to repent of this regularly.

The third Scripture passage that comes to mind is “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” Taking your post at face value, you know you’re not where you should be, but at least want to be where you should be. You should be encouraged that God answers this kind of prayer. Ask, seek, knock. Knock. Knock. Don’t stop knocking. The one who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11). After the initial repentance, you may face a good deal of work. But in light of the fact that Christ has done all the work to gain your access to God (the message of Hebrews generally), you can drawn near and hold fast with confidence. You can confess your apathy three times a day and know it will be forgiven for Christ’s sake.

The last thought that came to mind is an insight from Lewis about the atrophied soul, that if you’re closed in on yourself, focused on yourself, not loving others, your soul tends to shrivel. I think active participation for the good of others, loving others on God’s behalf, can help combat apathy.

I hope this helps. I will pray for you.

My advice may not be worth too much, but I’ll give it a try. My family and I recently went through an extraordinarily difficult time, which culminated with me resigning from the Pastorate and moving my family across the country back home to Washington State. I went from being a full-time Pastor in the Mid-West to arriving back in Washington State, with my family in tow, in 17 days.

I was burnt out and very angry, not at God, but at the situation and at the evil people who had made life so miserable. I was angry at the pain they’d caused other people. I was angry about the pain they’d caused my family. i was angry that we’d given up so much to serve at that church, and we were repaid with evil. In short, I was angry.

This is what we did:

1. We found a new church in Washington State.
2. We stopped doing anything in church. We just attended, like normal people. We didn’t volunteer, didn’t sign up for events, didn’t say a lot, and didn’t really do anything - we just went to church like normal people.
3. I spoke to my new Pastor, explained everything that went on, and told him we just wanted to be normal people while we healed from the wounds inflicted by the evil place we’d just fled from
4. I started reading the Bible more.
5. I started being much more consistent with family devotions. We walk through a particular book of the Bible together, as a family, and I allow my kids to ask questions.
6. I took the time to think about and ponder deep things in Scripture I hadn’t had time to do before. For me, that meant I spent a lot of time doing self-assigned Greek translation projects. It was therapeutic for me.
7. We prayed that God would help us get over our bitterness and be normal people again
8. We did all this, and we waited for time to pass.
9. Eventually, things got better.

So, in a nutshell, my advice would be to stop trying to do so much, immediately quit what you need to, and simply hit the brakes on everything while you focus on your relationship with the Lord. The school and your credits aren’t going anywhere. Talk to and get input from your Pastor, dive deeper into God’s word, and cling closer to the network of support God gave you in your local church. This isn’t a time for you to serve others - it is a time for them to help you, instead. Pray and ask the Lord to give you joy again. Through it all, wait for time to pass and trust in the Lord’s promises.

I will pray for you.

You said: “[in] the last few months, I’ve wanted to be annihilated”

Consider Jonah:

• “And he said to them, ‘Pick me up and throw me into the sea’” (1:12)
• “Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!” (4:3)
• “the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for himself, and said, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’” (4:8)

Briefly because I don’t want this to be about “me”:

• I broke my neck 29½ years ago and was paralyzed for a time before being able to “ambulate” (get around with crutches). See “I walk like Frankenstein”
• I can honestly tell you that I really, really wanted to die and if there were a “red button” kill button I would have pressed it. At that point, if there were such a button, I couldn’t have pushed it anyway!
• I’ve had other periods of deep depression. For me, the book of Job and the Psalms were most helpful!
• This year I was diagnosed with cancer and despite surgery, it has spread beyond the diseased organ (I have Stage III prostate cancer). Radiation treatment is likely next
• In my 47 year journey of faith (I was saved in 1969), this latest has been like a bucket of ice water or a slap in the face.
• I can tell you, that I really really WANT to live longer
• I pray for you that soon, perhaps coinciding with this Advent season, that God grants you this same emotion
• Re your comment: “I’m in college to get a degree that will let me serve others, which I’m doing even though I abhor school… The last couple of days, I’ve been debating if I’m making a mistake with school”. Take a break from school! Get your head and heart together before you restart. Abstain from drink and drugs! And eschew debt. They will really depress you!
• Connect with a friend who will encourage you! Someone(s) love and care about you!
• Since annihilation is not an option (something that is both theologically true and acknowledged by you in your 1st post above, you’ve got to get a handle on this
• If you have any suicidal thoughts - get help right away! National Suicide Prevention Lifeline . I’m probably the 2nd to the worse counselor, but if you PM me with your phone # I will call you

This has been an extraordinarily difficult year for me as well. I think the biggest thing that is helping, honestly, was that I realized that I don’t actually know God all that well and had been spending a massive amount of time doing-doing-doing (like a good Catholic stocking up on works) for God. We can know all kinds of things about God and not know God, which is kind of the entire point of being a Christian

I quit Bible reading for a time, stopped praying, and basically wanted nothing to do with God or Christians. I went to a new church because it was the ‘right’ thing to do and because my wife needed it, but not because I wanted to. There were a few Sundays where I essentially isolated myself at church because I didn’t want to talk with Christians at all.

Some wounds take time - a lot of time - to heal. I’d encourage you to simply hang in there, and keep fighting to believe that God is not done with you and has so much more for believers than any fictions we believe about what would be best.

If you want to talk, PM me and I’ll give you my number…even if all you want to do is vent.

A song that has been incredibly helpful to me is the song ‘Though You Slay Me’ that is available from the Ask Pastor John podcast here or on YouTube.

Although I’d agree that many of our issues are tied to our spiritual well-being, the first thing I recommend is to make sure your symptoms aren’t rooted in a physical problem. The body constantly struggles to maintain equilibrium, and sometimes we aren’t doing anything to help it out. Adequate sleep, nutrition, and exercise are key components that are often taken for granted or neglected altogether. And low levels of neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine have a significant impact on mood and perception. Your body plays a role in taking care of your mind. Don’t neglect it.

Feelings aren’t reliable measures of the state of our lives. Sometimes your logical mind has to tell the rest of you how to think and feel. After a time of breathing in and out and putting one foot in front of the other, something may come along that will touch your heart and get your feelings where they need to be.

Being a part of the world and doing the right things does have a cost—we don’t get to have the good stuff without the bad. There’s always a price to pay—physical, mental, and emotional—to be a contributing member of society, and fulfill our spiritual purpose on earth. There are also consequences if you try to ‘remove’ yourself from the world with isolation and ‘paying’ someone else to take your place, as it were.

There will come a time when you will either pull yourself up by your bootstraps to be a purposeful and productive person, or you will shrivel up into an emotional raisin. Either way, it will cost you. Which one are you going to be happy with 10, 20 years from now? Because that’s about the time when the true consequences of your decisions will emerge.

I’ve been thinking of you and praying for you. This morning at my church, we sang:

* Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art; Thou my best Thought, by day or by night, Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
* Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word; I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord; Thou my great Father, I Thy true son; Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.
* Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight; Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight; Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tow’r: Raise Thou me heav’nward, O Pow’r of my pow’r.
* Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise, Thou mine Inheritance, now and always: Thou and Thou only, first in my heart, High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.
* High King of Heaven, my victory won, May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heav’n’s Sun! Heart of my own heart, whate’er befall, Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

I wondered if you feel God as your delight, like a loving father you long to be more close to. If He is your treasure, the heart of your own heart. If you feel His presence as your light. I myself admit that I do not live with a mindset of joy in Christ. Yet I found myself moved to tears as I thought of your admission that you feel very little of that.

I don’t want you to go into a closet and sing this until you feel close to God, as though we can work up the right feelings by force of will. Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones says that neither the will nor the emotions should be approached directly. I believe he’s right. However, good music can and should resonate with the position of our heart and mind. Perhaps you should sing this in your closet car and ask yourself if you don’t already at least long for God to be your vision, joy, shelter, and loving father.

An online forum isn’t a great place for counseling.

Your struggle doesn’t mean you are lost.
You’re struggling. Keep struggling. Find a friend that you can confide in and grow with in person. Do you have such a friend?

Here is an excellent list of books on all areas of Bible study, compiled by the faculty at Maranatha Baptist Seminary (aka the best Seminary in the world).

Here is another list by the folks at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary.

In you’re interested in study for personal benefit, I’d consider Maranatha’s MA in English Bible (virtual/online format), or perhaps Dr. Paul Henebury’s school, Telos Biblical Institute (much cheaper)!

I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t think that complicating your life by adding schooling to the mix will help you right now, so that is probably a blessing from God, even if you don’t think it is.

I’m reading a book on emotional health right now that is helping me process a lot of junk that has accumulated in my life. Here’s some quotes that might be helpful to you:

“God often uses pain to get us to change. My experience working with people as a pastor over the last twenty years has convinced me that unless there is sufficient pain and anguish, most will not do the hard work to take a deep, honest look inside. This seems especially to apply to men and women in midlife. It has been rightly said, ‘We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.
Through pain, we often develop a hunger for change. We say, ‘I must have it. Something must break through in my life. I cannot continue [pretending that everything is OK when it’s not] “…

Jesus had a full sense of what He was about. On the evening before His arrest, He took the role of slave and began washing the twelve disciples’ feet, even Judas’s. The apostle John notes, ‘Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God’ (John 13:3). He was deeply aware of who He was and what He was doing. This enabled Him to break from the expectations of his family, friends, disciples, and wider religious culture and to follow God’s unique plan for His life. In the same way, a deep awareness of what we are feeling and doing gives us the courage to begin doing life differently (and hopefully more in line with God’s will) and developing new, healthier relational patterns.

Scripture portrays Jesus as one who had intense, raw, emotional experiences and was able to express His emotions in unashamed, unembarrassed freedom to others. He did not repress or project His feelings onto others. Instead, we read of Jesus responsibly experiencing the full range of human emotion throughout His earthly ministry.”

That’s from “The Emotionally Healthy Church”, by Peter Scazzero, and frankly, I wish I had taken a class on this in college or seminary.

There may be some other resources that you would be interested at his website (www.emotionallyhealthy.org), if you are interested in reading a little more.

Can you tell me how he makes this conclusion, from scripture?

“Scripture portrays Jesus as one who had intense, raw, emotional experiences and was able to express His emotions in unashamed, unembarrassed freedom to others. He did not repress or project His feelings onto others.”

I can’t reproduce the whole chapter, but here’s the list that he brings up immediately following the cited section (from p. 76), with a little more afterwards that might be helpful:

• [Jesus] was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved (John 11:33)
• He wept at the gravesite of Lazarus and over the city of Jerusalem (John 11:33-36, Luke 19:41)
• He was angry with his disciples (Mark 10:14)
• He was furious at the crass commercialism in the temple (John 2:13-17)
• He showed astonishment (Matthew 8:10)
• He had an emotional longing to be with the twelve apostles (Luke 22:15)
• He had compassion for widows, lepers, and blind men (Matt. 20:34, Mark 1:41, Luke 7:13)

Jesus lived that way with himself but also with others. Readers can observe countless incidents in the Gospels of Jesus’ discerning what was below the surface of people’s actions and then acting accordingly. For example, after cleaning the temple early in his ministry, Jesus did not entrust himself to those believing in him for his miracles (John 2:23-24) because he knew what was in the iceberg of their hearts. We consistently see Jesus seeking to take people, especially his small community of twelve, below the surface in order to transform them from the inside out.

I’m not sure that I agree with his remark about Jesus ‘not projecting himself onto others’, but it does make sense that Jesus isn’t going to ‘shift’ his sinful tendencies onto another simply because Jesus had no sin.

I think one of the pitfalls that we can stumble into as preachers/teachers is that we are so busy chopping up the Gospels for the next teaching/preaching session that we lose the organic whole. I know all the stories that Scazzero references, but I don’t think that I’ve ever thought hard about the holistic unit of Jesus’ humanity. It’s been a long time since Systematic Theology for me… :)

I hope that’s helpful. Like I said before, if you want to talk, shoot me a PM and we’ll set up a time to chat.

Having said that the last thing that you need is more academics…let me mention that the author has a book titled “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” that is available in Kindle format for $1.99. I picked it up yesterday but haven’t read it yet.