THE CHRONICLES Book Seven The Lifeless deconstructed Preacher

XV. Depart From Me
The Devil was done remembering. He was back in the garage, in the present, in
the blue glow of three monitors and a ring light, and he was well pleased.
The man was still there, still alive, still working. On the left screen, a new video
was rendering: “Five Bible Verses Your Pastor Hopes You Never Read.” It would
go up at seven the next morning, when engagement was highest.
The Devil went to the shelf on the far wall of the studio. There, wedged between
a ring of cables and a box of unsold merch, was an old Bible with a leather cover
that had once been black and was now gray at the edges. It had the man’s name
stamped on the front in gold. His parents had given it to him the day he was
baptized. Nobody had opened it in years.
The Devil, who cannot touch holy things with comfort, opened it anyway. It hurt
him. He did not care. He turned to Matthew, the seventh chapter, and found the
verse he knew too well.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?
and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful
works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye
that work iniquity.
He read it twice. And then he laughed, a real laugh this time, loud in the empty
garage, at the part about casting out devils.
“Cast out devils,” he said. “This one? This fool? This tool of mine? He could not
even cast out the weakest of my servants. I had to make it play dead for him.”
He closed the book.

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No answers received nor I can give

I can reach for any vanity; gaming, music, content creation, reading, writing, and concerning prayer and spiritual matters it’s these times I have no unction nor desire to pray to God or read words that are to me cold orthodoxy and utterly insufferable.
God forbid you have access to Him and His Word and what do you get? Darkness, despair and incurable emotional and mental pain along with mental crucifixion.
The True God of the universe if I wasn’t such a coward and the fear of damnation I would utterly off myself I would make it to where the body couldn’t be found so there’s no ashes and further money wasted for any burial and my request would have no open wake because me probably being in hell would probably rage all the more that now I’m “missed” when on my time alive here on earth I couldn’t understand why anyone in the absolute hell would want me here.
I’m not worth loving nor do I understand it and my core being is the object of such affront and sin to creation itself that devils laugh when I’m awake and angels mourn.
Yea such is the case in my reasoning.

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Out of the Temple of Aphrodite: Corinthian Shame Culture, Ancient Idolatry, and the Modern Debased Mind

To understand the weight of Paul’s words to the Corinthian church, you have to understand what Corinth actually was. This was not an ordinary Greco-Roman city with an ordinary amount of vice. Corinth had a reputation across the entire ancient Mediterranean world — the Greek verb korinthiazomai, “to Corinthianize,” literally meant to fornicate, to live debauched. That’s not a modern reading imposed backward onto the text; that’s a word that existed in the common vocabulary of the ancient world before Paul ever set foot there. Aristophanes used it centuries earlier. A city had become synonymous with sexual excess so thoroughly that its name turned into a verb for it.

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Resentment

(Entry from yesterday.) If there was no hell I’d blow myself up, along with nobody with me. The only casualty is me and it’s not actually a casualty just a liability that’s been severed from this earth. If my experience with God is such so I don’t want heaven with him im not worthy in the first place and the thought of hell I can’t bear the work. Just let me die already

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Mockery of the disabled {rage} [tears] and standing up for the afflicted

There was a case I remember — this woman who had multiple different ailments, and people would shun her for her appearance. She’s actually a well-known speaker, and I think she has books published, but people called her the ugliest woman alive. And when I heard her story, and heard how she couldn’t find even one comment defending her on the post I couldn’t stop weeping. I couldn’t stop crying. It’s just unthinkable to me. And I yearn for people to be saved. I want anyone with ailments, with all my heart, to be able to look forward to the resurrection. God above with all my soul I say this….

just like Jesus asking Mary about Lazarus, and her saying, “I know I will see him in the resurrection,” and then the Carpenter himself wept — not because he couldn’t raise Lazarus from the dead, but because of the fact that this world, this is the product of what was not meant to be. Death was never part of the plan.

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bitter while called & the scroll of lamentation mourning and woe

“The scroll demands the eater’s blood.” The reader’s own formulation is sound
biblical theology. To eat the scroll is to consent to be changed by it — to let a message of
lament become the substance of one’s inner life. The prophet who eats qinim va-hegeh
va-hi becomes a man who moans and wails; he is conformed to what he carries. This is
why Ezekiel’s very body becomes the message in the sign-acts: the internalization is so
total that the word is enacted in his flesh. The one who carries lament pays for it in his
own person — in sleeplessness, in bitterness, in the seven days of appalled silence,
ultimately (for the prophets and for Christ) in blood. The message of the cross is that
God Himself finally eats this scroll to the dregs: the Word made flesh consumes the full
bitterness of judgment in His own body on the tree. Every under-messenger who bleeds
for the word he carries is conformed to that pattern, not inventing a new one

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Case Study: Conditional Existence

Preface
The first case in this series examined an entry written from inside acute scrupulous torment, where the affliction attached itself to doctrine. This entry is different in kind, and the difference is the reason it merits its own study.
Here the subject is not primarily doubting his salvation. He is calculating his worth. The theological anxiety has not disappeared — it runs underneath everything — but it has been displaced by something more concrete and, in its own way, more dangerous: a wager in which continued existence is made contingent on a vocational outcome.
This case is offered because the pattern is common, under-recognized, and easily mistaken for something admirable. In Christian settings especially, the language it uses — resolve, calling, counting the cost, failure is not an option — sounds like devotion. It is worth learning to hear the difference.

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