I'm an atheist, and I have been for several years. Ever since I was a teenager, in fact, I've been anti-religion. Before you ask: yes, I did go through an edgy phase a la TJ Kirk and some of the other early internet atheist notables despite not knowing about them until years later. Thankfully, I am no longer at that stage in my atheism. I like to think that I have mellowed out as the years have progressed, that I have shed the angst and rancor so prevalent to the pubescence of so many in middle America.
By now, dear reader, you are almost undoubtedly wondering what a self-proclaimed atheist is doing entitling one of his blog posts, "Pre-Lent Thoughts." Surely, you reason, a man who has been a self-proclaimed atheist since his schoolboy days would not choose for a title something even remotely Christian, much less a well-known Christian holiday such as Lent. The answer will be revealed in this blog post; yet there is required a little backstory to preview the main content of this post. I'm going to bare before you, dear reader, some very intimate things. I am not a very "intimate" person, generally speaking, so this is a rarity for me. I feel as though I must bring my heart before you,
contritum quasi cinis, if I am to express fully what I mean.
As I said before, I'm an atheist. Yet my father was a minister, and I was raised in a very Christian (that is, Evangelical) household. I went to services every Sunday, to Bible Study every Wednesday, and even attended Church Camp every year in the summer for a few weeks (and it was hellish, in retrospect.) I had aspirations of being a man of God myself: I imagined becoming a vicar or a priest, and taking my place among the saints, apologists, and theologians whose names have adorned the pantheon of Western classics and columns of Good Books for the past millennium and a half. I wanted to take my place with Aquinas, Augustine, Anselm, Chesterton, Lewis, and many others. These were men I looked up to as men of great wisdom. I even went so far as to study my father's old Greek and Latin textbooks from when he was in seminary so that I could read the
Confessions or letters of the Church Fathers in their original tongues.
As I got older, I began to read the Bible more closely. That is, I read the entire book cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation. Not all at once, mind you, but over a period of months, weeks, etc. Whenever I had down time and there was nothing else to do, I would crack it open, leaf through the concordance a bit, then read and read and read until it was time for dinner, then go and read something else once the meal was over. As I read, however, I kept getting older. At some point I started entering puberty, and started to feel those fleshly desires to which all teenagers succumb at some point (and of which nobody really ought to be ashamed), but against which the Bible had strongly cautioned me. I also realized, by degrees, that I felt same-sex attraction; that I found other males my age attractive; that there was a possibility that I could be bisexual or, dare I say it,
gay.
It was at this point that I realized, with much denial and resistance, that I could never be the man of God that I had aspired to be. I would never be able to take my place among the greats because I was cursed with same-sex desire. My heart and soul were irrevocably tainted with a fleshly lust unlike the others which I had been told to avoid. It tore at me.
De profundis animae meae clamavi. Yet for all this clamoring, the only answer I received was a warped reshaping of my own words. I thought, "Why am I so cursed?" and in response I would hear only, "You are so cursed." It was like Echo trying to call to Narcissus, the poor nymph being able only to repeat the last few words which the boy said as he gazed into the pool, and twist them into something else. "Why have you done this to me, Lord?" "You have done this to me."
So it went. As I grew older and began to experience these lusts of the flesh, I began to give up any chance, however small or slim, of getting into the Church and becoming a learned man. And so, when I witnessed my father assault my stepmother and run out the front door like a coward, my hopes and aspirations were shattered entirely. The bridge was crossed then and there: I would never be a man of God. The rank of Doctor of the Church was not mine, nor would I ever sit amongst those aforementioned theologians whom I once treasured.
Thereafter I resigned myself to being an atheist. It seemed like a good enough default. I didn't have to tell anyone, and at this point I wasn't being required to attend services any longer. I was a teenager dying to explore myself and the world on my own terms. I finally got an internet connection when I was fifteen, and got my laptop around the same time. I cut loose. I indulged in all the fleshly itches I was told to avoid as a young boy. I joyously rebelled, a gleeful adolescent Lucifer soaring high over the crowds of nameless damned in my own little dominion.
Let's fast-forward to the present time. I am now twenty years old. I'm in college, and most recently I declared myself to be a Classics major. I am studying Latin, Greek, Philosophy, Rhetoric, and other subjects connected with antiquity. I plan to become a Professor of Classics, for my goal is to teach these same ideas and Great Works to future young people, in the hopes that I can inspire them to produce things of real value.
I'm still an atheist, as I mentioned before; yet within myself I feel a connection to some of these old rituals and ideas prevalent not only in Christianity, but in Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism as well. This is the part of the post where--at long last!--I explain the title of this post, "Pre-Lent Thoughts."
At the time of writing, it is the 5th of March, 2019. Today is Shrove Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, depending on where you're from and whatnot. Tomorrow will be Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Lenten season. For forty days and forty nights until Easter Sunday, the devout give up something to which they are attached, to symbolize the forty days and forty nights which Jesus Christ spent wandering in the desert, fasting, and avoiding temptation. Many Christians fast in addition to giving up luxuries.
It is my intention, this year, to follow in the spirit or idea of Lent, despite not being a Christian. I find, despite my aforementioned reasons for no longer being a Christian, that there is some smidgen of value in the notion of a celebration like Lent. Lent is all about self-denial and self-control, in my view. It is about not letting yourself succumb to temptation or to indulge in something unnecessary or unhealthy.
What, you may ask, will I then surrender or renounce for Lent? I have chosen something that has plagued me for years. It is something that has fed on me for years, something which has taken over more of my life than I would allow it to, and which has interfered with my personal health to a degree. To be frank with you, dear reader, I am talking about my porn habit. I'm giving up pornography and masturbating to it for Lent. I am ashamed of how often I consume porn. I'm not a puritan, and I recognize that there are many good and decent people in the world who make a good and decent living from filming and distributing porno flicks. Good for them, I say, and may they keep doing what they like so long as it doesn't harm anyone.
However, I realize that for years, due to my extremely introverted nature and my perennial inability to make lasting friendships that aren't online over a forum, via Discord, etc, I have masturbated to porn as a means of replicating the physical intimacy I should normally be receiving from a loved one or close friend. I thought I could just ignore it when I was a teen, but slowly my habit grew on me, as vices are wont to do. I realize that this surfeit of adult material, a good deal of which is professionally staged and targeted at fantasy rather than reality, was not being consumed by me in a moderate amount. I was using it like a high, in a sense. It's taken a toll on my physical and sexual health. I can still get hard and maintain an erection, but I find that my penis is fatigued from having choked the chicken too frequently (if you'll pardon the vulgar euphemism), so it doesn't have as much stamina (I hope that's the right word) as I would assume a normal man's penis has.
Because of all these things, I have decided to give up porn and masturbation for Lent. In addition, I'm planning on meditating every morning to inspire within myself a sense of calm. I also plan to exercise at least three times a week at the gym, burning calories on the treadmill, the exercise bike, or the rowing machine. That way, I can start losing more weight, getting into shape, and working towards the body that I want to see in the mirror. Finally, I plan to get more writing done. I'm working on a Gothic short story right now, and I gotta say, ten handwritten pages is nothing to sneeze at.
These are my Pre-Lent Thoughts. I'll be sure to update as frequently as I can with progress as to my masturbation break, my exercises, and my writing. :-)
Dear reader, I hope that you found this post interesting if a bit lengthy. If you enjoyed it, do leave a comment detailing your thoughts. If you'd like to see more long-form posts, you can always suggest a subject for me to write about, and I'll consider it.
Valete!
Caleb
