That might be too harsh. If you top an exam without giving your best, that may mean you have mastered the material already. Your mediocre effort, in this case, was good enough on an objective level, so take that W with gratitude. But on the flipside, it’s hard to really give your best and fail an exam. Failing an exam is a good time to reevaluate your time management. Who are you to tell God not only what He may give you, but when? The use of good things in life now, rather than before, is perhaps you will not take them as idols. It’s okay to enjoy the gifts God offers us, if we do not worship them instead of the giver. God does not attack us with greed, or lead us in circles. The letter from James talks about this, about what is from God, and about being double minded. In the Old Testament, the book of Job talks about suffering, and Ecclesiastes says I turned away and thought about all the kinds of oppression being done under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, And they had no one to comfort them. The power was on the side of the oppressors, and they had no one to comfort them. So I considered the dead happier, because they were already dead, than the living, who must still live their lives; but happier than either of them is the one who has not yet been born, because he has not yet seen the evil things that are done under the sun (Ecc. 4:1-3, CJB). But the teacher in this book finds a way to hope and purpose. A lot of it is about how you feel, not how life is. Quit porn, get normal hormones reestablished while you learn to deal with the slings & arrows of outrageous fortune without resorting to fantasies. That will stabilize your body. Meantime, you can read philosophy, but understand the whole time that your perspective is warped. In the beginning of “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen, the Devil makes a mirror that twists the image reflected in it. Beautiful things look ugly. It sort of shows the way things are, but a cynical presentation of it. He wants to show his mirror to God in heaven, so he has three demons tow it up into the sky, but the atmospheric pressure changes and the mirror breaks. The shards fly into a million pieces, blown about in the wind, and a tiny needle lodges in a young boy’s eye. It changes how he sees things. He sees truth, but without kindness. He becomes clever but cruel. Eventually that shard works its way through his eye, burrowing deep to freeze his heart. It’s just a story, but I find it an apt description for how intelligence combined with cynicism can be self-harm. Be careful. Stay realistic, but don’t indulge in bitterness. You’ll be okay.
