Confessios: Ch. IX - Conservatism as Resistance

I briefly mentioned college in my last chapter as a bad time in my life.
That's a soft way of putting it; it was the worst time of my life.

It was also when the Culture War of America got particularly nasty.
Conservatives really hated Liberals and vice versa.

Even though I was quite screwed up with my conception of God, I still knew right from wrong and saw a lot of wrong around me.
What kind of a world are we living in when it's considered evil to say a prayer in public, but not to kill one's own unborn baby?
This is total madness and it enraged me.

Now consider the fact that I went to one of the most liberal colleges in the country, where the teachers didn't so much teach but spent each day attempting to brainwash their students into believing in a godless world and that Godly people were equivalent to Hitler.
Add onto that the fact that a lot of my insecurities that fueled my depression were based on not being "cool" like all of the other kids who enjoyed wild and carnal times.

I suppose, while I was depressed, I wanted to be like these people and didn't like the fact I was anchored by traditional values.
Perhaps my hatred for myself was not for being a loser, but for clinging onto that killjoy known as God.

Thankfully, such foolish thoughts evaporated after being harshly woken up and born again.
I saw the world to be as upside-down as it was. I no longer desired to be like the heathen Liberal culture.
It justified my hatred for college and my resentment towards my teachers.

It was the beginning of my Right-Winged Conservatism.

Remember, that I was always conservative ever since I was Mugged by Reality.
Hence even as I wanted to live the liberal life style, I couldn't because I still had enough faith in Conservative ways.
This created a strange love-hate relationship with the concept of a godless world that was quite ambiguous but became crystal clear black and white when I was born again.

You see, it was the foolish ways of liberal hedonism that nearly killed me.
I will no longer be friends with that!

I embraced hearty Conservatism as a resistance to all the things I now realized was causing pain in my life: not judgment of the world, but propaganda of the world.
It was when I really realized that Satan is indeed in charge of this world. But he has fooled us into believing his ways will bring happiness when instead it brings death and misery.

Everything about Conservatism always made sense to me, but now I was proud of it; I enjoyed being a conservative, where before I was ashamed of it.

I also came to realize that God wasn't a "killjoy" but a "kill-death": everything He tells us to do is not simply to deny us fun, but to caution us from trouble.
I learned that the hard way: do not hold ill feelings against God, do not be prideful, do not drink heavily...I nearly died from such thoughts.
God wasn't preventing me from having fun, He was warning me.

Suddenly, traditional values were less of just old ways that must be maintained, but like an instruction manual to how to operate an electronic device.
It tells us how to use ourselves properly, to avoid damage and problems down the road.
These values matched up perfectly with Conservatism.

This is why I felt it necessary to get personal in telling the story of Wasted Efforts: you have to understand how and why I think certain ways to get the full story.
This is not going to be a rebuke of my conservatism, but a clarification. I will hint that this attitude will eventually grow into a terribly bad mentality, not so much for the policies I favor, but for the ways I felt about those who opposed.
For the years that followed my Born Again experience would show exponential growth in my right-winged zeal which you'll find out got out of control.