What Next?

What do you do if you graduate college with a degree in religion and yet are totally disillusioned with all God has to offer? That's where I'm currently stuck. My degree is essentially worthless at this point. So what do I do?

Since I've been back home I've been slowly applying to various jobs, many of them clerical in nature. I'm mostly just looking for something to keep me busy and help me save some money for a car. But what about an actual career? To do that I would probably need to go back to school, but at this point I have no drive whatsoever. What happened? I used to be so into school and learning, and now I just want to sit on my butt and do nothing. And yet I'm bored. It's a twisted trap I'm in: I hate doing anything, but I'm bored beyond belief just sitting here. I don't want to exert any effort to better myself, but I hate where I'm at. I'm just stuck.

I don't think this is how life is supposed to be. Aren't you supposed to want to spend your life doing something? Aren't you supposed to have some sort of passion? At this point, anything requiring skill scares me and everything else seems boring. What happened to me? How am I supposed to go on living like this? At least when I was blinded by religion, I had something to be passionate about. Now what? Is it better to be blind but happy or to see the holes in your beliefs and feel miserable about it? How do I regain a semblance of purpose when all I believed in is currently hanging on by a thread? I just don't know anymore.

Pursuit of Happiness

I remember once hearing a quote from C. S. Lewis that "God doesn't much care if we are happy." (Though I may have made that up... I can't find it online...) This thought has continued to haunt me since I first encountered it my freshman year of college. Does following God mean I will have to live with unhappiness? Are Christians doomed to fight through a life of sadness? Are we simply to "consider it pure joy" when we "face trials of many kinds" (James 1:2)?

I have spent the last two years being extremely unhappy. If being a Christian doesn't change any of that, why should I bother? To be completely honest with myself (which took me quite a while to do), I just want to be happy. I don't want to be afraid that I'm sinning all the time any more! I don't want to be weighed down by guilt! Where is the liberty that supposedly comes with the "spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3:17)?