It is a vicious circle I think I'm an apostate so there is no hope and reading the Word only condemns me, praying makes me feel like I'm a hypocrite whose lips are close to God but the heart is far.
I agree, it's a horrible and vicious circle. It has to be, if you condemn yourself to the point where you think there is no return. I've dealt with fear enough to know how it works, especially in Christianity. I'm not talking about the good kind of fear, where we snap to our senses or where we treat God with reverence. I'm talking about a fear that only eats you inside, and always demands what we don't have and what we can't find in ourselves. That fear won't have you look at Christ as your savior, but as your tormentor. It only wants us to constantly look into our own sin and nothing else. And when that fear rules, we don't do what we should do. We should take it to the cross with all our unworthiness and sin, and find rest. The cross should be our refuge. But when fear rules, the cross becomes a terrifying thing. That's what fear like this does, it turns everything upside down.
When we take forgiveness off the table, based on what we are or how we feel, we don't treat Christ as a savior and we certainly don't think of God as a loving Father who cares for us and reconciles His creation to Him through His Son. No, we're thinking of God as someone who throws a ball for a confused, imperfect creature, and if that creature drops the ball then all is lost. Of course that creature drops the ball. We always drop the ball. But that is not the God I believe in. God knows what we are. He knows how messed up we can be. He gave us His Son, not because we deserved it any way, not because we were holy, but because such is His care for us. He gives Himself to the ungodly.
In a weird way it can become about us taking Christ down from the cross, and we're trying to replace Him on that cross, in a vain hope and effort to be perfect, or at least a lot more better. We want to be better, yet we know we really aren't. We desperately want to be holier and more righteous, but we know that in ourselves we aren't. But let's not stay there. Let us not listen to despair any longer, and let's look at Christ as a savior who comes to free us from all of this. He is the one on the cross, because He is the only one who can do it. When we try to take that burden on ourselves, we can't bear the weight. It's awful and we can't do it. It's too heavy, my sin and my weakness is too much for me. There is no relief when we try to desperately carry what we could never carry in the first place. If I take that burden on myself (which I do, it's a trap I often fall into), I will get reminded that it's an impossible task. I will get crushed and I will come to the end of myself, and I will find out that my own strength and holiness is nothing.
Self-reliance, staring at our sin and living a constant performance test will not bear any good fruit. It will only drain me of hope. It will not make me love my God, it will not make me love my neighbor as I'm too busy trying to fix myself (or if I'm deluded enough and I think that I don't have sin anymore, I will be busy judging my neighbor). There is no peace, only fear, confusion and exhaustion. This is where I tell my feelings to **** off and I grab Christ with faith. It's faith then, when I go against my fearful instincts, bypassing the labyrinth of dogma, and I grab Him with imperfect, even weak faith. It's not the strength of my faith, it's the strength of Him who my faith grasps. It's that childlike hope that God is love, and He won't let anyone fall away who wants His help and grace, and Jesus will have me because of what He did for me, instead of what I did for Him. Here is my relief and my hope. Fear would have me to only stare at myself and condemn myself to no end. Fear would rob me of Christ, telling me that I have to deserve Him first. Fear would give me no second, third, fourth or (insert your favorite high number) chances. Fear is about relying on myself, demanding from me everything I don't have, in order to get what I cannot get. Fear is about a desperate effort to climb to Christ with the abilities we don't have, but love is about Christ coming down to us, no matter how down we are. Fear is about a desperate need to elevate ourselves, love comes down to the lowly place where we are. Love is about forgiveness, reconciliation, God sacrificing Himself on our behalf, buying us with holy blood so that we would have everlasting hope, not because of what we are but because of what He is to us, what He has done for us according to His own heart and good will. It gets so much easier to love our neighbor then, when we're not doing it out of fear. We're doing it out of relief. He wants us to love with the same kind of love He loves us with. He doesn't want us to look for faults in one another, as He has covered ours with His blood. When we think of God in terms of love, we can understand Him far better. We can understand the finished work of the cross better, we can understand His heart for us, instead of getting stuck in some weird technicalities, as if God was a machine, trapped inside of His own cogs.
Fear would not have us even think of such love, as fear would only keep us in a perpetual performance test where we always fail. For that reason alone, such fear belongs in the trash. No matter how often it came back to beat us down with the lies of despair, it belongs in the trashcan. So time and time again, people like you and me have to drag that nagging bastard into the dumpster (and then set the dumpster on fire just out of spite).
You said you can't help others. Simply not true. Look at this fearful thinking at work, sister. We don't help others by elevating ourselves first. Helping is not so much about the helpers, it's more about the ones who need it. It's God's gracious will for us to love and help each other. His will is both for us and our neighbor. Sometimes we need that help, sometimes we can give it. We don't have to be anything in ourselves to help someone. If I thought I had to be X amount of holy to be able to help anyone, I would never do it because I have no holiness of my own. You will meet people who need your help. You will find them, you don't even have to look. They will come. You will be in the position to be there for them. You don't have to solve all their problems magically, you don't have to know many things better than them. In all things, you can be worse than they are. But you can help in many ways, I promise. Love is not a performance test, and you don't have to be anything to be able to love and help. It's not about our perceived holiness or even about feeling. Love is only concerned about another fellow creature, it has nothing to do with our status. If I were there, fallen on my face and bleeding, you would be perfectly able to help me up. You wouldn't have to prove yourself to me in any way, I would simply be grateful for your help. But we don't think highly of simple acts of love like that, do we? For whatever reason we don't embrace simplicity. But Christ was surrounded by simple people, lowly and sinful people even. We're all sinful. But some of us tend to think we are beyond redemption, as if our sin has power over God's glorious grace, or as if we can topple down the cross because of a technicality. Because our sin must be special, and our weakness must be so strong that not even God can do anything about it. This strange wallowing in our sin is a hindrance. Not for God, He already bought us and paid the price, but it's a hindrance for us. We just have to let go, no matter how it may collide with our ego. We don't have to wallow endlessly in a downward spiral. We are sinners, Christ came for sinners, all glory to Him, and now we can all go on about our day no matter how weak we still are.
I wonder what "honest repentance" means to you, since you seem to think you don't have it. What does it mean? Does it mean you have to feel a certain amount of grief? How much pain would suffice? Would you even know how much is enough? Or does it mean you'd have to achieve the state of not being sinful? I haven't met such people. Does it mean you'd have to achieve perfection in one area of your life? Does it mean you have to have perfect faith, never corrupted by our fallen nature? Our fallen nature is exactly what the words describe; we're fallen, and it's also in our nature to be that way. I would think it's impossible for a fallen creature to repent perfectly. If we think of such a thing as perfect repentance, how would we know when it's perfect? Is it perfect when we, absolutely imperfect creatures, are satisfied with our own repentance? Repentance should be about us turning to God in our weakness, not about us turning inward to ourselves. We easily think of it as purity rite, as something we can do perfectly. Another thing we think we must do perfectly for an angry God, instead of thinking repentance and turning comes from Him, a loving God, no matter how imperfectly we go about it. But you are clearly repenting, you just don't know it, because for whatever reason you think repentance is an obstacle and a performance test. You have this turning and this yearning for God already. It's a blessed thing. But whenever we listen to our despair and fear, good things start to look awful.
Also about being a hypocrite. Welcome to our sinful nature. We don't go to the cross as righteous people. We go there as beggars. We can fool ourselves into thinking we must present ourselves to God in a very good light. We can think we must be "this good" in order to pray, in order to partake in communion, in order to love one another. But no, we go as sinners, hypocrites, unfaithful, with all of this burden and corruption. We go to the cross as wayward children who need their Father. We go as we are. Being truthful is good. Just don't let the truth of our nature beat you down too much. Because the truth of His nature is that He loves you, forgives you and cares for you, and Jesus Christ gave Himself to you. Sincerely, a fellow sinner.
God bless you and keep you, you are loved.
