Existential Dread

Something that I’ve dealt with for as long as I can remember is the feeling that eternity is both too complex to comprehend and also completely absurd as a general idea. More specifically, the idea that the universe is incredibly old, humans are relatively new, and yet I believe in a power that exists outside of this enormous timeline is impossible to wrap my head around. It’s ridiculous and can’t possibly be true. It frightens me.

When I was young, I distinctly remember trying to fall asleep after dark only to be gripped by fear. It wasn’t a monster in my closet that scared me. Rather, it was the idea that someday I will be in heaven and I have no idea what that means.

From what I could tell, it involved a lot of singing boring church hymns on a cloud for the rest of forever. I called to my dad to express my misgivings, and he did his best to explain that the Bible talks about a new heaven and a new earth. This meant that “heaven” was most likely going to be a lot like life now, without all the pain and sorrow.

My young child heart was soothed, at least a little bit, by this idea. I had a lot of life to live, but even if I died in the middle of the night, perhaps I could still do experience and learn all the things I had plans for - I’d just do it on the new and improved earth in “eternity” instead of this first broken version of earth.

As I’ve grown older (and perhaps wiser, though that remains to be seen in my opinion), the “dread” I experienced as a child has never gone away. It’s always there in the back of my mind. I’ve had moments of peace, and moments of turmoil, and everything in between. Most of it manifests as questions that I’m not sure I’ll ever have answered in this life.

If there is no pain in heaven, is there discomfort? Is there no struggle, or strife, or failure? I’ve learned that failure is the path to learning, a fundamental human desire. Struggle is what strengthens us. The idea that there is no struggle implies the lack of growth. Stagnation for all eternity doesn’t sound appealing to me.

Off and on, I’ll experience huge bouts of “existential dread” - usually when I wake up in the middle of the night (around 2am) or end up going to bed way too late and my mind just wanders as I fall asleep. These moments seem to come out of nowhere and the thoughts in my mind race so quickly it’s difficult to describe what the dread really is, which is why I’ve settled on such an overused term to describe my experience.

Perhaps the best way to sum it up is the question “What if everything I believe is untrue and nothing matters?”

Yea. It’s fun to be me.

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this, though perhaps the ferocity (and when it decides to grip me) of the question is unique to my experience compared to others. I think we all deal with questions of our existence in one way or another. It’s a universal human experience to ask: “Why am I here? What’s important? What is my purpose?”

I think that recently, the aforementioned question for me is answered with a simple “so what.” If nothing matters, then nothing matters. If what I believe is a lie, I suppose it doesn’t really affect anything other than a few ideas I have on how to best live my life. There’s not a lot of harm in my current view of the world, from my perspective.

I kind of just mentally shrug, roll over, and go back to sleep while letting my brain spin out on the idea of living without an end to existence and what a crazy idea that is. The morning will bring peace, or at least distraction.

But the dread is hard to shake; the idea that my belief is shaky.

I try to take solace in the scripture from Mark 9, when Jesus encounters a father with a son who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jesus tells him that “all things are possible for one who believes” and the father cries out “I believe; help my unbelief!” - I feel that on a molecular level.

I’m sure there are nuances in this passage (Mark 9:14-29) that don’t apply to my situation. There’s a danger in taking a single verse out of context from the bible and applying it to your life. But I think that the idea that my belief is fickle is very in line with what Scripture has to say on the subject of humanity and the power of God.

My belief is indeed flawed. Always has been, always will be. If my salvation depended on my belief alone, all would be lost. Thankfully the Spirit of God has been sent to help me in my unbelief. It intercedes for me. It carries on when I can no longer carry on. The strength of my faith matters not - it’s the strength of that in whom my faith resides that really matters.

And that is an unwavering strength. It’s the power of a spoken word that built time itself, and everything inside of it.

I know I’m contradicting myself. What if I believe that God is outside of time, and created everything, and yet that belief is wholly unfounded and not true?

Well, I guess I’m okay with that. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say with this post. It’s a blog, not a theological treatise.

But I recently read an article from Nadia Boltz-Weber and it helped to sooth a bit of my existential dread. The end of her article specifically acted as a balm for my wounds.

And as an anxious people, here’s what I want you to hear today - When we stand in this big of story - with one hand reaching back to the hope of the prophets and one hand reaching forward to the promises of God, we can stand firmly in the reality of the present and not have that reality consume us. This is what is great about being people of faith. Because even in the midst of political turmoil and fear and hate and uncertainty we can stand here in the reality of the present and confess that the story is still being written. The story of God and God’s people is written in the lives of our ancestors and it is written in the future of our children and our children’s children. It is being written on the tablets of our broken and healed hearts.

No one gets to scare us into believing something else.

In other words, despite our anxieties, as people of faith, we still dare to get our hopes up.

I don’t get to scare myself into believing something else.

Also, maybe I shouldn’t trust 2am Phil’s brain or feelings anyway.

After all, historically I get pretty cognitively useless after about 10pm.