no regrets

Ken, what follows is written for you and for Hope in Madness. It is written because you asked for it on the drive home, voice-to-text, half-dissociated, the concert still ringing in your ears, and because you were right — no one has written this before. Not because the pieces don’t exist. The theology exists. The […]

The zero that became the most dangerous thing in the room

You sent screenshots of Naoya’s flashback — the moment the golden boy of the Zenin clan walks into the room expecting to find a pathetic face on the family failure, the man with zero cursed energy, the one they threw in the pit with the spirits. And instead of finding broken, he found something his […]

It’s always too late.

This is not a cry for attention. This is a man who has been at war for six years and is running out of reasons to keep fighting. The rage at God is not apostasy — it is the sound of someone who believes deeply enough that the betrayal is personal. You don’t rage at a God you don’t care about. The deceitful brook accusation is Jeremiah 15. The “why was I born” is Jeremiah 20. The “I’m too ashamed to look at God” is Peter after the denial. You are in the most biblical possible place and it feels like the most godless place. Those two things are the same place.
The part that matters most: “the only thing that stops me is the fear of damnation.” You called it a scandal and a joke. But Ken — that fear is the hand of the LORD being strong upon you. It is not pretty grace. It is not comfortable grace. It is the grace that holds a man by the back of his collar when he is at the edge. You don’t have to like it. It is still grace.
The part about being only interesting for what you can do — that is the truest thing in the entry and the deepest wound. It predates the illness. It goes back to the youth camp kid standing still while everyone danced. That wound needs to be named to Taylor directly. Not around it. Directly.
The entry is not a waste. It is Psalm 88 with your name on it. God canonized Psalm 88. He can handle this.

Known or just used

I could say that I feel like a corpse, but that’s not sufficient to elaborate on the sheer deadness that I feel inside at this hour. I was watching cases of parents reacting to the suicidal deaths of their children. I have had my funeral flash into my head. I can’t understand why people would […]

Suicide in the church the forgotten accounts of religious despair, trauma, and torment.

History of suicide because of religious despair inside the church

ON SCRUPULOSITY By James Jackson (an old article I found.)

ON SCRUPULOSITY By James Jackson, “If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages … we resemble mercenaries. Finally, if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for Him who commands … we […]

Holiday embitterment & expectation of wrath met with mery

I’ve had to repent of my foolish thoughts accusing God, I was embittered by the holiday theatrics and everything being so happy and joy merry music was utter sound torture. Not that im blaspheming His church but just overloaded it’s as if I could’ve drowned in my own blood as if somehow, my internal organs […]

David Brainerd: A Life of Fire and Darkness

The life of David Brainerd, and how his story is relatable

The dark side of Calvinism the forgotten historical cases of suicide inside the church

The psychological toll of Calvinist theology during the Reformation, Puritan, and Great Awakening periods produced a documented trail of despair, madness, and suicide among ordinary believers—cases often minimized in traditional church history. From a London wood-turner who attempted suicide ten times to prominent citizens who cut their throats in religious terror, the doctrine of predestination created what scholar John Stachniewski calls a “persecutory imagination” that tormented those who could not find assurance of their election. These are not merely famous cases like Luther or Bunyan; they represent hundreds of obscure individuals whose suffering appears in diaries, court records, and pastoral literature—voices largely buried until modern scholarship began excavating them.

Church history behind suicide and religious despair

This is an old article by I found on the history of how the church dealt with the awful reality of scrupulosity and religious despair Religious despair is the overwhelming loss of hope in God’s mercy and forgiveness. It is the conviction that one’s sins are too great to be pardoned, that salvation is impossible, […]