Perfect Chaos

Hello everyone,

I have spent a long time obsessing over spiritual matters in my adulthood, because I take the warnings about Judgement Day and hell found in the Bible and the Qur’an very seriously. It has been a real challenge for me trying to reconcile my love for Jesus and the Bible with the Qur’an, which I believe to be a divine revelation.

I come from a broken family. My father has stuggled with an attraction to Science, while also being a regular church-goer who considers himself to be a Christian. His relationship with my mother broke down during my childhood and she went through a cancer ordeal that ended her life at the age of 55.

After my mother died, I was tormented by the suffering she had gone through, which was also a form of suffering for me. I was understandably terrified of getting cancer myself and began exploring spirituality at a relatively young age as I felt that I needed a deeper understanding of reality in order to be happy.

I began by exploring Eastern spirituality, with meditation and the quest for enlightenment being a key focus. I struggled a lot with insecurities and ongoing problems in my family and social life and I was always very isolated.

I experienced a life crisis after attending a shaking meditation retreat with the Indian spiritual leader Ratu Bagus, and I was overcome with a depression and confusion that plagued my time at university and the early years of my career.

This period of great spiritual turbulence taught me a great deal about the mind and emotions and the links between physical disease and abuse, and I experienced a major turning point in my life when at the age of 23 I reached out to a psychotherapist having been recommended to him by a close friend.

What followed was an intense period of learning, growing, and understanding. Psychotherapy was truly healing in many respects – I released a lot of emotion that was trapped in my body and learned how to strengthen the egoic aspect of my mind and how to resist emotional pressure from others, protect my mind and body, and become independent. It was in some ways my transition from childhood into adulthood, though I continued to experience spiritual unrest.

In 2007, at the age of 25, I experienced a few months of strange, absorbing, fantastical spiritual and psychological experiences and wild behaviour that culminated in being sectioned under the Mental Health Act and taken into a secure psychiatric ward, where I was prescribed antispychotic medication, with doctors arguing I had experienced an episode of ‘psychosis’. During my time on the ward, I read the Bible for the first time and became a Christian.

In the years that followed, I experienced periods of creativity, study, and religious piety, but also found myself having further seasons of wild experiences and depression, and repeatedly ended up in psychiatric hospital after the way I acted either pushed the boundaries of the law, or it was decided by mental health professionals that I posed a danger to myself or others.

All of these experiences meant that I had long periods out of work and I found myself living in ‘supported housing’ within the mental health system in London, which proved to be a challenge for my peace and wellbeing, as despite periods of relative peace and stability, I suffered the consuming impact of living with others going through mental turbulence, even when my own mental health was sound. It was too great a hurdle for me to begin work while in this situation and I was focused on my walk as a Christian, getting baptised and engaging vigorously in church life.

A significant event in my life came around 2020 when I prayed to God about whether or not I should read the Qur’an and He guided me to do so. I was deeply moved and impacted by the Qur’an and felt assured that it was a divine revelation that must be taken seriously. Reading the Qur’an caused a spiritual crisis for me, because of the conflict it caused with my Christian faith.

I tried to pray my way through this spiritual crisis, believing as I do in the existence of one God, who is the creator, sustainer, and animator of all that exists, but I found myself confused about seemingly competing truth claims in the Bible and the Qur’an.

At the same time, I continued to have intense psychological and spiritual experiences that left me with an overwhelming identity crisis. I was under intense spiritual attack in 2022 with my neighbours in the vicinity and strained family relationships being central to a loss of spiritual peace that resulted in me attempting to take my own life. I placed a Bible on my chest and cut my wrists and throat.

During a period in intensive care following my suicide attempt, I experienced the worst suffering of my life. The doctors attempted to kill me over and over again, out of compassion, perhaps, but I did not die. I experienced an intense drama in my mind during this time which I am still processing and coming to terms with. It was a re-engagement with Jesus Christ that allowed me to pray to God for mercy and make a recovery, over a period of a few weeks, that meant I could be discharged from hospital.

I am now in a season of struggling with my identity as I try to understand God’s will for my life in light of the power of my prayers in the name of Jesus to bring me back to a place of peace and recovery, while also believing the Qur’an is a divine revelation which speaks of Jesus as a prophet in contrast with the doctrine of the Trinity which describes Jesus as God.

I am believing in God to work everything out and Jesus has my heart.

May God bless you. Thank you so much for reading.