I recently engaged two friends on an issue which has been occupying my mind for some time - connecting the dots of life.

The loss of a baby, loss of a loved one, a major illness, a debilitating handicap, a loss of a job, a financial crisis, a broken relationship, a trust betrayed - when confronted with unexpected disappointments in life, or when circumstances in life turn out vastly different from what we had been taught it would or expected it to be,
how do we reconcile that with our Christian faith ?  Can we connect the dots and see a divine purpose in the circumstances ?

One friend said that "we may never [ connect the dots ]".  The other said that taking religion out of equation would resolve all issues (which is a view I can almost agree with, because the harsh alternative reality that we are left with - that the dots in life are and life itself would be totally random - does not strike me as meaningful.)

And this perceived silence or absence of God as humans struggle to connect the dots, I had posted recently on Facebook after watching Immortals and Clash of the Titans, certainly seems to be on the mind of our generation.

I had to confess to my friends that I also struggle to connect the dots.  To say anything else would be dishonest.
But I added that

"Even if we don’t manage to connect the dots, whether sometime or in our lifetime, we won’t be the first.  Job and Habakkuk never did - I read those books and till today can’t figure out why God allowed whatever happened, to happen to them.  (Habakkuk had it worse - he wasn’t even ‘compensated’ for his faith). 

It is in this that I find a straw of faith to cling to - that men of God have struggled before, received no satisfactory answers in this lifetime, yet clung on to faith.  We know, because the Bible as inspired by God celebrates this faith, reminding us that God saw their struggles just as He sees ours, and that God will not forget His people even if He decides not to answer them immediately."

If I may generalise - every religion including Christianty as preached in certain churches tells us that it has the answer to everything.  So I find it pretty amazing that God would be so brutally honest in Job and Habakkuk, because it is from there that we learn that God did not always give a direct answer to life’s difficult questions.  And it is also there that we are reminded - from Job’s and Habakkuk’s response - that our response to negative events need not be a loss of faith or a rejection of God (or the existence of God).  That even when we don’t have all the answers, it can be perfectly reasonable to cling on to faith, a faith which God remembers and honours.

*** ***

I have yet to connect many of the dots in my personal life.  One painful experience would be the death of my father.  While I was not particularly close to him, I struggle with why he - as a pretty good man - had to suffer and die from cancer instead of (what in my mind I perceived to be) other less perfect people in my father’s / family’s circle of acquaintances.

About a year after my dad passed away, a friend at the workplace discovered his father had been diagnosed with a similar disease.  The disease - multiple myeloma - is relatively rare, so when the friend first mentioned his dad felt unwell and the symptoms, I wanted to suggest checking for multiple myeloma.  Events overtook me.  The diagnosis from a test conducted a day later confirmed that it was indeed that dreaded disease.

So when the friend disclosed the bad news to me I had something to share with him - the experience which my family and I went through, and helped put him in touch with a pastor who also suffered from and survived multiple myeloma.

What are the odds of two persons with parents suffering from the same rare disease ending up as colleagues in the same department?  Pretty low I guess.  So even while I struggle with why my father had to suffer as he did, I acknowledge that it may have served a possible divine purpose - that if I had not gone through the experience of my dad’s disease, I would not be able to identify with and offer encouragement to others who are confronted with similar circumstances, and particularly that friend.

*** ***

So is this then the painful answer to connecting the dots, the Theory of Everything that has eluded me thus far?That sometimes God allows us to go through negative experiences so that we might be better able to identify with, and offer encouragement to those who go through the same circumstances ?

While I do not think this is in itself the Theory of Everything, the possibility that it may be true sometimes strikes me as cruel.  But contemplating Jesus’ death on the cross, I realise that God Himself had to pay a cruel and terrible price, as an answer to mankind’s sin.  The simple message when we step into church is that forgiveness is free, and a short prayer away.  But the underlying reality is that a terrible price - full of anguish, pain or suffering - had to be paid on the cross for this.

In this world where cancer strikes about as many Christians as non-Christians, and where the tragedy of death strikes all, I do not think it is God’s intention to spare all Christians from all pain and suffering (even if certain churches appear to preach this).  Christians may experience instances of miraculous healing or solutions to problems.  But the world is too broken - I think - for Christians to be spared all pain and suffering.

So what we have now is the example of Christ who, despite "being in very nature God … made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man … humbled Himself, and became obedient to death - even death on the cross !"  (Philippians 2 : 6 - 8).  So that, having immersed Himself in the full gamut of human experience, He would be able to sympathise with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4 : 15).

Perhaps then, in connecting the dots, while we are not always in control of our circumstances, or of our immediate feelings towards our circumstances, we are being asked to and can control our immediate and longer term responses to our feelings and circumstances.

I am sympathetic to the view that the religious space in many societies appears to be increasingly squeezed out by proponents who try to draw a bright line between "private" religious and "public" secular space.  In the US, for example, there are heated debates and lawsuits over whether the display of the Ten Commandments in certain public buildings (such as courtrooms) are a mere reminder of its Christian historical roots, or a breach of the constitutional rule demanding separation of church and state.  However, I would have very much preferred if the Roman Catholics took issue with more a substantive question of their religious rights, than over women wearing nuns’ habits in a disrespectful way or over a secular function being held in a former chapel.

My other somewhat irreverent thought is this : would Jesus have protested similarly, and angrily crashed the party in the same way that he overturned the moneychangers’ and merchants’ tables in the temple ?  Or would He have attended the party and changed the water into wine ?

What troubles me is that non-Christians may be reading into this incident the following subliminal message : that if you don’t meet some minimum "religious" standard whether in terms of how you dress or conduct yourself - if you are in anyway tainted by scandal - you’re not good enough to mingle with the community of Christians, and you’re not good enough for the church.  Equally troubling is the possibility that Christians may unintentionally be broadcasting such a subliminal message.

But this is not message taught by the Jesus I know. 

In Luke 7 is an account of how a "sinful woman" - possibly a prostitute - enters the home of a Pharisee - a religious leader - when he is having dinner with Jesus and his fellow religious leaders.  She then proceeds to pour an alabaster jar of expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet, kiss it, and wipe it with her hair.  The other religious leaders who were present are scandalised.  (I am scandalised - nothing even half as erotic goes on in my bedroom.  The only feet-wiping we have going on is the wiping of our children’s feet after their bath, and only with towels).  So they whisper amongst themselves -

"If this man [ Jesus ] were a prophet, He would know who is touching Him and what kind of woman she is - that she is a sinner".

But Jesus does not chase the woman away or rebuke her.  Instead, sensing her broken and repentant spirit, He tells her "your sins are forgiven".

This account would never have been recorded in the Bible if Jesus, like many Christians today, pre-judged people who do not look like the conventional church-going Christian.  If conventional Christians disassociate themselves from people who dress differently (or even scandalously), or who are struggling with "scandalous" issues in life, such as maybe adultery or addiction to drink, gambling, pornography or sex - if people are refused entry into the church or fellowship because of the church’s self-imposed barriers, or if people are made to feel unwelcome because they are intimidated by the barriers imposed by the church -then the story of their redemption will never be told.

A final word on the "sinful woman".  I’ve always wondered why she didn’t just wash Jesus’ feet with a basin of water, and perhaps a piece of cloth.  Why wipe His feet with her hair ?  Why waste that jar of expensive perfume on a pair of feet ?  And if she wanted forgiveness, why didn’t she just go the temple and sacrifice a couple of doves ?  Surely that would be cheaper than a jar of perfume.  Why show contrition in such a totally shameless and scandalous way ?

I won’t claim to be an authority on this topic, but two possibilities come to mind.  The first is that maybe no one would let the sinful woman within even a hundred metres of the temple.  She was just too sinful.  Hence she had to look for God in another venue (and where else but a dinner party!).

The second possibility is that the sinful woman may have been showing contrition in the only way she knew.  Sure she must have heard of all the high liturgical rituals which the self-righteous Pharisees complied with before they worshipped God, but as a prostitute, all she had was a little bottle of perfume, her tears and her hair. That was good enough for Jesus.  And what an amazing fragrance must have permeated the dining room that night, when she poured the perfume on Jesus’ feet!

So what does this mean for us ?

For the church, this is a cautionary tale against self-righteousness and pre-judging non-believers.  It is also a reminder of how Jesus’ love and grace is a lot larger and more generous than we may comfortably think it to be, and how redemptive power is found in Jesus’ love and grace, rather than in the Pharisees’ condemnation of and aversion to people who were not like them.

For non-believers, the message is that there is no one who is so scandalous or bad, that he / she will be rejected by Jesus.  In this connection, a passage in Psalms reads that "a broken and contrite heart … [ God ] will not despise" (51:17).

That sleep
That fitful sleep
Was it simple sleep
of fatigue
induced by a half mug of beer ?

Or sleep
a fitful sleep
not so simple sleep
of fatigue
induced by the despair within ?

Asleep but
aware if
awake your
Hyde will
take no quarter

Or sleep
the kind of sleep
to remove a rib
not fatigue
induced by heaven to save you ?

Undecided
You accuse Him
His heavy hand
despite your groaning

This is grace
the sleep that saved you
from temptation
more than you can bear

This is grace
though you should curse Him
no condemnation
for He knows what you cannot bear

"This is what the elder brother in the parable should have done; this is what a true elder brother would have done.  He would have said, ‘Father, my younger brother has been a fool, and now his life is in ruins.  But I will go look for him and bring him home.  And if the inheritance is gone - as I expect - I’ll bring him back into the family at my expense’."

"It is hard for us to realise this today, but when Christianity first arose in the world it was not called a religion.  It was the non-religion.  Imagine the neighbours of early Christians asking them about their faith.  ‘Where’s your temple?’ they’d ask.  The Christians would reply that they didn’t have a temple.  ‘But how could that be?  Where do your priests labour?’  The Christians would have replied that they didn’t have priests.  ‘But … but,’ the neighbours would have sputtered, ‘where are the sacrifices made to please your gods?’  The Christians would have responded that they did not make sacrifices anymore.  Jesus Himself was the temple to end all temples, the priest to end all priests, and the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

No one had heard anything like this.  So the Romans called them ‘atheists’, because what the Christians were saying about spiritual reality was unqiue and could not be classified with the other religions of the world.  This parable [ The Prodigal Son ] explains why they were absolutely right to call them atheists.

The irony of this should not be lost on us, standing as we do in the midst of the modern culture wars.  To most people in our society, Christianity is religion and moralism.  The only alternative to it (besides some other world religion) is pluralistic secularism.  But from the beginning it was not so.  Christianity was recognised as a tertium quid, something else entirely.

The crucial point here is that, in general, religiously observant people were offended by Jesus, but those estranged from religious and moral observance were intrigued and attracted to Him.  We see this throughout the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ life.  In every case where Jesus meets a religious person and a sexual outcast (as in Luke 7) or a religious person and a racial outcast (as in John 3 - 4) or a religious person and a political outcast (as in Luke 19), the outcast is the one who connects with Jesus and the elder-brother type does not.  Jesus says to the respectable religious leaders ‘the tax collectors and the prostitutes enter the kingdom before you.’ (Matthew 21:31)

Jesus’ teachings consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day.  However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect.  The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avante garde ones.  We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people.  The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church.  That can only mean one thing.  If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.  If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think."

See also my previous post on The Prodigal Son.

Her question left me stumped for a while.  Partly because I could not remember what I had written 5 years ago.  And partly because - when I finally got to my Bible and computer - after reading and re-reading the Bible passage on which my post was based, and reading and re-reading my post, I could not for the life of me see anything in Hagar that was worth loving.

To draw an analogy to the current debate in Singapore on the (humane) treatment of our foreign domestic helpers or maids, Hagar the Horrible was pretty much the maid from hell.  There would be absolutely no reason for any employer to feel compassion for her.

Still, God had divine compassion for her.  Such a stark reminder of grace !  That just as God had compassion for Hagar, He is able to look at and beyond our imperfections, and accept and love us despite all that !

*** Sunday.  1400 hours.  ***

I run into a friend, who unexpectedly launches into a diatribe against how her church had paid for the medical bills of a foreign national. 

I listen quietly.  Quietly appalled.  My friend is not very coherent.

"She fell sick because of her own ambition.  She isn’t showing any promise.  She’s not improving her behaviour.  Why does she deserve help ?"

"But that’s the whole point of God’s love, isn’t it?" I say. "It’s unconditional.  It doesn’t depend on how deserving you are.  None of us really deserve any help."

But this is not a debate I’m ready or need to fight.  Not today.  I end the conversation there.

*** Tuesday.  1200 hours.  ***

Lunch with a friend.  We have not met for months.  After the usual updates on the more mundane aspects of our lives we venture into spiritual and more personal territory.

He leans back.  Surprised I think by what he hears.  He gives me a slightly disbelieving, how-does-anyone-live-like-that-look.

"I struggle too," I tell him frankly, "but I think I’ve come to terms with it."

As we talk more it dawns on me that we approach life from two fundamentally different perspectives.  From what I sense is my friend’s principally Buddhist worldview, suffering is part of karma, an unavoidable curse which he has resigned himself to, and which he can only try to make the best of.

From my Christian worldview, God unconditionally loves us for who we are, warts and other imperfections included.  Some life experiences are unpleasant, and we don’t always emerge from such experiences heroes; in fact quite often we emerge as failures.  But there’s a security in knowing you’re always loved for who you are and despite what you’ve done, just like the kid who just failed his maths test knows that his parents continue to love him, even though he will be grounded for not working hard enough.

*** Sunday.  2000 hours.  ***

A close friend WhatsApps me.  "I think my relationship is over.  U free to talk ?"

*** Monday.  0900 hours.  ***

The beauty of technology.  I don’t get the message till now.  I’m horrified at myself.

"I’m so so sorry I didn’t see this msg till this morning.  Hope you’re doing ok.  I’m free for lunch … let me know …"

*** Monday. 2200 hours. ***

We don’t actually meet till way past dinnertime, for dinner.  I sit quietly and listen to his confession.  Not quite sure of what to say, I’m surprised but not appalled, painfully aware that if I were in a similar time and place I might have made the same mistakes.

I look at him.  I see a reflection of myself.  I see a picture of Dorian Gray.  Beautiful but flawed.

She calls him and our dinner ends.  I’ll walk home he tells me.  I tell him not to self-destruct.  We hug and go our separate ways.

Back home I send him a message.  "I believe that God loves us unconditionally.  At times of deepest disappointment or when I feel the most insecure or unloved, this hope has kept me from total self-destruction …"

*** Tuesday.  0500 hours. ***

I wake up for my daily run.  The night before seemed like a surreal, Dr Bill Harford-like experience.

I run and run, and survey the last, vast untamed, unconquered and unsurrendered territory.  My thoughts return to O-level Shakespeare, to Romeo and Juliet.

"Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs—grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant."

God save me.

*** Tuesday. 0800 hours. ***

Still dissecting events the night before while on the train to work, I ask myself if I have been too sympathetic.  I poll a good friend.

"I should have slapped him for being such an idiot - you think ?"

"Aren’t Christians supposed to empathise and be compassionate ?"

"You’re radical", I message back.

"Isn’t my view very Biblical and therefore standard ?"

"The compassionate bit is standard.  In theory.  The empathy bit I think is very difficult to accept in reality."

"If you think about it, we are all the same …" was the reply.

*** Tuesday. 0830 hours. ***

I’m more assured.  Still on the train, Forgiven by Reliant K unexpectedly takes its turn on my mobile.  The Yaw Shin Leong saga - that’s when this track - what previously seemed to be nothing more than a cacophony of sounds - suddenly made sense to me.  Amidst all the self-righteous outrage at Yaw Shin Leong’s infidelity and the political posturing and manoeuvring by the ruling and opposition political parties, I felt very sorry for this man who I feel wasn’t given a fair chance to keep his marriage together.

"Cause we’re all guilty of the same things
We think the thoughts whether or not we see them through
And I know that I have been forgiven
And I just hope you can forgive me too
…
Sometimes we live for no one but ourselves

And what we’ve been striving for
Has turned into nothing more
Than bodies limp on the floor
Victims of falling short
We kiss goodbye the cheek of our true love"

This song speaks to me on so many levels.  I forward the Youtube link to Dorian Gray.

"Hope it speaks to you as it did for me.  Whatever the outcome, I hope you’ll be good from now on."

When writing The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde projected his hedonistic aspirations onto the character of the same name.  In Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde imagined a man who was as handsome and witty, but who would never age or suffer the physical consequences of his hedonism, except that each immoral act of Dorian Gray would disfigure a portrait which Dorian made of himself and hidden away.

Interestingly, at the end of the novel, Dorian Gray finds that he can no longer bear the ugliness of the portrait, disfigured by all his evil, and plunges a knife into it.  And this is how Oscar Wilde kills off his Dorian — in stabbing the portrait, Dorian stabs himself, and his servants later find him dead with a knife through his heart, old and disfigured, but the portrait restored to its original beauty.

Did Oscar Wilde write such a "conventional" ending in which immorality is judged, because that is what his readers in Victorian society demanded ?  Or did he do so in recognition that there was an emptiness in hedonism that he found unfulfilling ?

I do not know.  I am only aware as a matter of fact that Oscar Wilde sought (to find) some solace in religion while in prison, asking for access to a Bible and books by Christians writers such as St Augustine.  He also reflected, while in prison, that -

"… I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world … And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom."

Some speculate that Oscar Wilde returned to Catholicism just before his death.  Again, I do not know.  I am only aware, and I write this without the benefit of having read Wilde’s entire Ballad of Reading Gaol, that he had written -

"How else but through a broken heart,
May Lord Christ enter in ?"

Reflecting on the short life of Oscar Wilde I am reminded of Soloman’s experiences as recorded in Ecclesiastes 2 : 10 - 11 :

"I denied myself nothing my eyes desired
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my work,
and this was the reward for all my labour.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieved,
everything was meaningless,
a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun."

and a life that could have been better lived.  Wilde’s contemporary GK Chesterton commented that -

"The same lesson [of hedonism] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw".

In addition to his humorously irreverent novels and poetry and plays, Oscar Wilde wrote some really great fairy tales, all of which (if I recall correctly) had a redemptive theme in them. 

Perhaps, like many of us, Oscar Wilde was also looking for a deeper meaning in life and for redemption.

Is it because
I do not sleep
or bleed or weep
yell

Unmovable and
unmoved

***

Not alone but alone
the thirty-sixth was
like the twenty-first

The latter day
blindfolded and bundled into my room
you took out a melted cake
and kidnapped my heart

The former day
home past midnight after my flight no light
no hi no cake no hug
no gauze for my heart

***

Today again you drove away
when I needed the ride the most

Sometimes I need flowers too.