There’s a relatively simple list of things that most people want. We want to feel important to our world. We want to be good, kind people – people who aren’t the bad guy, people who deserve good.

We want the freedom to choose what makes us happy, and to find things that make us feel fulfilled. We want to be able to choose the things that fill our souls to the brim.

Conflict

But the people around us don’t always want those things for us. They want us to work in their best interests, and they sometimes get hurt when we instead do what we want or need. When they get hurt, they try to control us into changing. They try to make us feel bad (or good) until we do change, until we do things that don’t make us happy or things that will hurt us – and if that doesn’t work, they decide that we must be an enemy and they begin to treat us accordingly.

Resolution

False Realities

I (Josh) didn’t like reality. Reality kept showing me that people may not always react favorably to the things I want or need – and I was scared of what might happen if I continued to fight for my right to those things. Ultimately, I was scared that they might leave if I continued to take care of myself.

I didn’t value my own soul enough to believe that it was worth taking care of, except…I kind of did. So in response, as a way to feel justified in fighting for my soul, I created alternate versions of people. I made people into monsters – monsters who manipulated me for their own selfish purposes. I saw them as willing to destroy me in order to get what they wanted. And since they were evil, I didn’t have to do what they said – I had the right to take care of myself, and I also had the right to control them into being not evil.

False Realities Believe in the Right to Protect Myself

Some of these people were not trying to manipulate me. I would see people as evil who were just trying to help me face my fears – deeply hidden, pressed down, and blocked away – and I would see people as evil who would shove me at God when I didn’t want to do that.

But…some of the people I turned into monsters were trying to manipulate me. These people weren’t evil though, they were just…afraid. They were afraid of the same thing I was, actually, that if they couldn’t control me or our relationship, I would leave. In their fear, they were trying to destroy me, but sort of as a…byproduct. They tried to destroy me to make me safe for them to love.

What I struggled with was the simple fact that I’m supposed to do what protects my soul, what nourishes and cares for it, and what keeps it whole so that it can serve God to the best of its ability. I don’t actually need to see evil motives in other people in order to do so.

I don’t need to see evil motives in other people in order to protect my soul.

Three Realities

I realized that I believed in at least three realities:

1. the utopia, a perfect place, without fear or risk, that I had long ago lost all hope of getting to. I was angry at God, because I assumed he was choosing to keep me away- so really it was his fault that I couldn’t get there.
2. the horror, where the people I loved were evil and trying to destroy me, and where nothing would ever ever be good – where not even God could fix things.
3. actual reality, where things were mostly good, but not my previous understanding of ideal.

If life was intended to be the utopia, then I had seriously messed something up at some point, despite always trying as hard I could to do and be what God wanted from me. If life was the horror, I thought I could (and should) seize control from God and set my own destiny – but it turns out that seizing control from God never works. I tried, and tried, and tried with all my soul and strength to take control and make the horror world less awful. It was a terrible process, but I realized, eventually, that it was impossible. Also, thankfully, that it wasn’t even reality.

That left only actual reality – and if actual reality was all that was available for me to work with, I was really scared that my life would never be what I wanted it to be.

Oh good, not just me then…

We realized that other people do this too – we saw it happening, we had it happen to us as the objects, and we were confused and hurt when people saw us as demons or monsters out to destroy them. But…then we realized that these people were just really scared. They wanted to control us into doing the things that would make them feel less scared – which we weren’t willing to do. The inability to control us made them more scared, which led to more attempts at control, and…

Scared people do crazy things.

It gave us a lot of new empathy actually. We realized that most of the people who ever did a bad thing to another person…they probably just created a false reality. Every mugger was just keeping himself fed and giving himself the life he deserved – it was only fair, only what he deserved from the people and world around him. Every despot was just preserving freedom or safety for his people – whatever meager amount could be eked out from this cold, dark world. “Because even meager safety in my kingdom is better than the horror of living under their regime.”

At this point, we’re pretty sure that even truly evil people create their own moral justification via false realities. Hitler believed in what he was doing so hard that he convinced thousands of people that he was right – his opinions were awful, and fueled by fear. But he was convincing. He was sure.

Scared people do crazy things.

What’s the answer?

What’s always the answer?

Faith. Trust.

I had to learn all over again how to trust. I had to trust that God loves me – and while he disciplines, he does not punish. I have already been forgiven, so…there isn’t anything to punish.

I had to be willing to see the people I loved, which I had been avoiding in case I was about to see them walk away from me. Once I saw them, I knew that they were not trying to destroy me – or if they were, I didn’t have to let them.

Once I could trust God, and remember that he loves me and wasn’t trying to punish me, it was clear(er) that the utopia probably didn’t exist. And once I could see the people I loved again, and I trusted that they were not trying to destroy me, it was clear(er) that the horror probably didn’t exist either. That left learning how to exist in actual reality, which…is an entirely other blog post.