Yesterday I returned from Lahti, where I had attended a friend’s varpajaiset—a Finnish celebration held by a new father and his friends after the birth of a baby. His son was born in early July, and he had invited around twenty friends, about half of whom were ultimately able to attend. My friend had decided to celebrate the new arrival with a sauna party at Nosturi in Lahti, which has a rather splendid sauna complex: a panoramic sauna with a magnificent view of Teivas Harbour, a smoke sauna, a conventional sauna, a lakeside sauna, and even a tent sauna.

I also stayed overnight at my friend’s home, as I had done in 2023. I would never have met this Christian brother in the faith either, had it not been for my literary calling. In 2019, he had read my first published book, the Finnish-language Joka ei ollut saapa kuninkaan arvoa – Antikristus paljastettu?, an earlier Finnish counterpart to my more extensive 2022 English book, To Whom the Majesty of Kingship Has Not Been Conferred? The Antichrist Revealed?, and ever since then he had praised it to the skies, even using words such as “revolutionary” to describe it.

At the beginning of our sauna evening, we briefly went around the group, with each person introducing himself and explaining what he did for a living. Once again, I noticed that I was presenting myself in an almost apologetic manner: “These are the subjects I have studied and written books about, but I am not a dogmatic person. I may also have been mistaken, because I am just as fallible as anyone else.”

Because I constantly observe myself almost as if through someone else’s eyes, I found myself reflecting on this afterwards. It may not project a particularly confident image of an author if every unusual claim to which he has devoted much of his life must be framed by some kind of disclaimer:

“Study my ideas, but at your own risk.”

I discussed this with AI yesterday and realised that, ever since early childhood, I have grown up under a kind of conflicting pressure between how we believers see ourselves and how outsiders see us. Perhaps this tension has partly reinforced my tendency towards intense self-monitoring.

When I introduce the subjects of my books, for example, I do not think only about what I myself know after decades of studying them. At the same time, a question is constantly circling in my mind: how does all of this sound to someone who knows nothing about the subject?

A considerable amount of my cognitive energy is therefore already spent trying to work out how to present my work without sounding like a lunatic who has escaped from an institution.

Experience has also taught me that this concern is not entirely a product of my imagination. When I paid for the first Facebook advertisement for my book in 2019, almost everyone who commented on its promotional text reacted by asking whether I was a troll or had perhaps escaped from some institution. The comments struck me as partly malicious and partly amusing, yet at the same time I could understand them. After all, I am capable of looking at my own research topic from an outsider’s point of view.

That experience has made me feel ashamed of my work in some way.

By shame, I do not mean that I regard my years of research as pointless, or that I myself consider my subject ridiculous. The shame has more to do with the image I know the subject can create in someone’s mind before that person has read a single one of my arguments.

In a sense, I am ashamed of the caricature to which I can be reduced: a man who writes hundreds of pages about whether King Charles might be the Antichrist of the Bible.

When the matter is condensed into one sentence, stripped of all the historical, exegetical, and eschatological background on which my research rests, I can readily understand why someone’s first reaction might be:

“What the hell?”

I may indeed wish that my work had greater visibility, but I do not want just any kind of visibility. I do not want to become known as some Finnish clown of an author whom people can laugh at without ever having to read his books.

I would like my ideas to be taken seriously enough, at least, that they could also be criticised on their own terms. I would find a thorough ten-page rebuttal from someone who had genuinely studied my arguments far more meaningful than a thousand Facebook reactions from people who had formed their opinion of me on the basis of a book cover and a few advertising slogans.

Perhaps this is precisely why I have learned to build a kind of intellectual safety buffer around my ideas:

“This is a hypothesis.”

“I may be wrong.”

“I am not a prophet.”

“I am merely a fallible human being.”

All these statements are true in themselves, and I still consider them important. I have spoken a great deal about the importance of epistemic humility—that is, the need to treat the validity of our own conclusions with caution as well.

The problem arises only if I begin using these statements more to protect my social reputation than to express genuine uncertainty: anything to prevent anyone from labelling me a wild-eyed religious fanatic or a lunatic who has escaped from an institution.

When taken too far, epistemic humility can easily begin to sound like an apology. It is as if I were telling the listener, before he has even had time to form any opinion of me:

“I know this sounds crazy. Just please don’t think I am crazy.”

And because I constantly observe myself through an outsider’s eyes, afterwards I begin analysing this as well: did I sound too uncertain? Did I undermine the credibility of my own research while trying to assure others that I do not consider myself infallible?

It creates an almost comical double bind.

If I speak confidently about my research, I may fear that I sound like a fanatic. If, on the other hand, I constantly emphasise my uncertainty, I fear that I sound like a researcher who does not himself believe what he writes.

Yet amid all this, there is one fact I easily forget.

If I had never begun writing about these subjects, I would never have met this Christian brother from Lahti either. I would never have found myself at his celebration, introducing myself to people who had come from different parts of Finland, some believers and some non-believers. My social networks would probably have remained even smaller than they have been during my fourteen-year literary career.

Without my literary work, I might have stayed at home more, avoided people, and felt ashamed that I had no occupational title other than “unemployed.”

I do not even know for certain whether I would still be alive.

Prolonged shame, a sense of purposelessness, and the feeling that one is worthless can take a person to very dark places. I also know what the ultimate end point of mental health problems can be in the worst case, because my beloved elder brother Mikael took his own life in December 2020 after only six months of severe depression.

That is why I no longer assess the value of my literary work primarily by whether all my predictions come true or all my interpretations prove correct. Nor even by whether my work ever receives the kind of serious public attention I might hope for.

I consider it valuable also because of people such as this friend from Lahti, whom I have had the opportunity to know through my literary work.

I consider it valuable because it has opened doors for me that would otherwise never have opened.

I consider it valuable because it has given my life direction and meaning.

And if it has had a positive effect on even one other person’s life, that is not entirely insignificant either.

Perhaps this is precisely why following one’s calling is so important. Not because we can always be certain of success, of being right, or of receiving the approval of others, but because we cannot know in advance where all those small steps will ultimately lead.

There will always be voices around us trying to discourage us before we have even begun. More difficult still are the voices we have learned over the years to carry within ourselves.

“What will other people think?”

“What if I am wrong?”

“What if I embarrass myself?”

“What if no one takes me seriously?”

One can listen to these questions for an entire lifetime and never do anything.

Following one’s calling does not mean never doubting oneself. Perhaps it means, more than anything, refusing to let doubt make the final decision on one’s behalf.

For sometimes it is only years later that we realise how much we would have lost if, at the beginning, we had listened to the voices urging us to be ashamed, remain silent, or give up.

The road may indeed be rocky. It may often mean enduring loneliness and ridicule. But as David wrote in the Psalms:

Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. (Psalm 126:5)