Learning to love

I have always felt an emptiness within me. I blamed B for not loving me the way I wanted him to. I then blamed J for the same reason. Praying about it to God today, I realise that my desperate need to be loved cannot come from anything of the world. My need for unconditional love can only be met by God, because it was my departure from Him, that put it there.

Today, I tried to break up with J. I have been struggling with our relationship for months. Wondering whether I really loved him, thinking about ending it whenever the going got rough. I never did, until today. Blinded by a whole host of expectations and notions about what "love" should be, I branded our relationship as un-worthy.

Losing J brought up old memories of B, and made me feel that I was unworthy of love. I asked myself what was wrong with me, that both men couldn't sustain their love for me. It was then, when I was on my knees crying out to God, that I realised how my fear of being unworthy of love manifested itself in my relationships - it made the man that I am with feel inadequate, and burdened.

Love is a gift. I have been so selfish in my attempts at love. I demanded to be loved, so that I could feel secure. But I never gave myself to love. Never tried to give my heart as a gift, without expecting anything in return. I saw my love as a transaction, I exchanged it for security. That isn't love. Little wonder I felt like a fraud saying it.

Realising the above, my heart stilled and I realised that I have something good with J. It's not love yet. However this time, instead of asking someone to give me love, I am secure enough to volunteer the potential of it. Thanks for giving me a chance.

Homo Hystericus

From Milan Kundera's Immortality -

"It is part of the definition of feeling that it is born in us without our will, often against our will. As soon as we want to feel (decide to feel, just as Don quixote decided to love Dulcinea), feeing is no longer feeling but an imitation of feeling, a show of feeling. This is commonly called hysteria. That's why homo sentimentalis (a person who has raised feeling to a value) is in reality identical to homo hystericus.

This is not to say that a person who imitates feeling does not feel. An actor playing the role of old King Lear stands on the stage and faces the audience full of the real sadness of betrayal, but that sadness evaporates the moment the performance is over. That is why homo sentimentalis shames us with his great feelings only to amaze us a moment later with his inexplicable indifference."

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My church back home is a mega church. Coloured lights, a 3D screen, a choir of backup singers and an arsenal of musical instruments accompany worship and praise. People speak in tongues, cry, raise their hands up to God and kneel in supplication. The air is charged with yearning, the prayers and the beats driving the energy up towards an undefined peak. At 7pm sharp, the pastor signals the musicians to stop playing, says a closing prayer and the lights come on. In the seconds it takes for our pupils to constrict and dilate, normalcy is restored.

I always feel a tinge of betrayal at 7pm on Saturday nights back home. The ability for hysteria, or religious fervor to be controlled with such precision makes me doubt the authenticity of it. It frustrates me to watch my neighbours put down their arms, wipe the tears off their face, and then offer suggestions about dinner. Borrowing Kundera's words, their great emotionality during worship shames my lack thereof, and the abrupt shift into indifference amazes me.

Kundera in the above passage has captured perfectly the ambiguity of feeling. Feeling, based on its etiology, when coloured by the force of will, changes in its composition. I do believe that for a large percentage of us, the religious fervor ignited in us during worship and praise is real. I believe that in our brains; dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine and a whole host of other neurotransmitters are firing at rates different from baseline levels. The feelings that we experience in church are real. They exist.

We go into church every Saturday or Sunday wanting to feel God’s presence. We pray at night, begging him to respond to us. Our worship leaders, our pastors, and spiritual authority want us to be touched by the Holy Spirit. We want to feel Him. There is so much desire to feel, such yearning, that it changes the substance of feeling into hysteria; the act of conscious want modifies irrevocably, the original feeling. I would not go so far to call the emotion, which arises in our bodies at the appropriate times during church - a show. It is though, an imitation; a lackluster substitute for the substance that arises in us, untouched by our will – pure feeling.

I do believe in the existence of pure feeling in worship and praise. I know that it is almost unchristian to call the desire to feel God's presence a pollutant of true feeling. However, the human desire to feel spritual fervour has a different etiology from the desire to be in God's presence. Wanting to feel a sense of transcendence is different from surrendering to god and the emotions that follow. I admit that it is difficult to draw the distinction. The intense desire to feel God's presence can easily be misdirected into a desire to feel hysteria as a means of satisfaction or cognitive dissonance. I just want pure feeling. I want to be able to remove from my emotions - my will, and the will of others. I want to squash my desire to feel for the sake of feeling. Perhaps then pure feeling ignited by God, will burst forth from my heart. 

Ironically, in this elevation of pure feeling, I am raising feeling to a value, which would make me a member of the homo hystericus.

- On a side note, I wonder what this would mean for cognitive restructuring in psychology. Everything about cognitive psychology involves reaching into our thoughts (which lead to feelings) and manipulating them to become more positive, or reinforcing. I cannot deny its good treatment outcomes. However, as anecdotal evidence form someone that practices cognitive restructuring a lot, I do feel that my manipulated emotions are similar to hysteria. There is forced quality to it, that when pushed to become real, crosses that boundary into oversaturation. I would think that for someone suffering as a result of negative cognitions, even hysteria would be better for their functioning than the genuine authentic feelings dragging them down. 

Cookie Cutter Christian

I want to be a Cookie Cutter Christian.

When I was 13 going on 14, I had a crush on a girl named Jasmine. She was soft-spoken, kind, and a badminton player. Jasmine wasn't particularly pretty, but there was something about her that made me deeply desire her attention and admiration. Jasmine was the first person to invite me to a church event. It was an outreach by the beach on the other side of the island. I remember that I felt awkward, and in my eagerness to prove myself to Jasmine, made several false starts in a running game.

Jasmine's basic info on FB consists only of one line: Religious Views - Christian.

Jasmine could be viewed as my teenage dabble in homosexuality, or she could be seen as the first in my pattern of cookie cutter christians.

While other girls went through their phases of being attracted to bad boys, I was drawn irresistibly to the good ones. The ones that shone with a loving gentleness, the ones in whose lives god is inextricable. I put on a pedestal the ones who grew up in loving Christian families and were conditioned from a very young age with premium christian values. They knew how to speak Christian-nese, they knew what was right and wrong, they knew without a doubt that god exists. Their worlds were painted black and white, their moralities taught to them and they knew everyone at church. The attraction wasn't exactly romantic, it was admiration with a power differential.

I have a theory about my admiration. I do not possess naivete or an easy smile. Happiness, ease and contentment do not come easily to me. I am over analytical, morally ambiguous and a sensualist. Even as a child, I was hypercritical, anxious and negative. All these aside, there has always been in me a longing for good, for lightness. I became and stayed a Christian because of the heart wrenching goodness of god. Salvation, eternal life... these are concepts that I am deeply grateful for, but have never quite resonated in me. I believe that it is the contrast that draws me to these cookie cutter types. They have what I do not and because of that, I desire intensely their approval.

The problem with my attraction is that the closer I get to these cookie cutter types, the more the proximity highlights my darkness relative to their light and my moral ambiguity in contrast to their black and white worlds. I begin to feel overly critical, I start to resent my moderate christian line, I start to panic as to why I don't seem to want the right things, or say the right things, or possess the right values. I don't even listen to the proper music or read the right books! Being in church is difficult.

I want to be a cookie cutter christian. I wish I was conditioned when my mind was malleable and impressionable to believe that god exists. I wish sunday school taught me Christian-nese and told me exactly what to do and what not to do. I wish I was conditioned to want and seek happiness, to embrace positivity and love. I wish I was less analytical, less critical and more accepting. I wish my world was clearly split into black and white for me by a spiritual youth group leader. I wish I was Cookie Cutter Christian enough.

Yes. It is obvious that I struggle with feelings of inadequacy that should not have a place in the heart of a child of God. I want to be more loving, I want to possess a spirit of gentleness and servitude. I want to love god and his people more. I know that there are other non cookie cutter ways to go about it, but sometimes I just wish things were easier, that I would not have to struggle so much with my faith. I want to be there already. However, we all have our unique challenges in God. I believe that the God that placed me in a non-christian household, that gave me my critical mind and slightly neurotic personality did so with complete control and divine intent. I trust in the one purely good entity. I long for a different path, but I know that it is not my road to take.

I want to be a cookie cutter christian, but I do not want to become one.

His Robes for Mine

Today at church, we sang for the first time the most wonderful hymn. The lyrics just so beautifully reflected the graciousness and all-encompassing quality of the Lord's love for us; that he would sacrifice the life of his perfect son in exchange for  our unworthy lives. 

His robes for mine: O wonderful exchange!
Clothed in my sin, Christ suffered ‘neath God’s rage.
Draped in His righteousness, I’m justified.
In Christ I live, for in my place He died.

Chorus:

I cling to Christ, and marvel at the cost:
Jesus forsaken, God estranged from God.
Bought by such love, my life is not my own.
My praise-my all-shall be for Christ alone.

His robes for mine: what cause have I for dread?
God’s daunting Law Christ mastered in my stead.
Faultless I stand with righteous works not mine,
Saved by my Lord’s vicarious death and life.

His robes for mine: God’s justice is appeased.
Jesus is crushed, and thus the Father’s pleased.
Christ drank God’s wrath on sin, then cried “‘Tis done!”
Sin’s wage is paid; propitiation won.

His robes for mine: such anguish none can know.
Christ, God’s beloved, condemned as though His foe.
He, as though I, accursed and left alone;
I, as though He, embraced and welcomed home. 

--Chris Anderson/words --Greg Habegger/music

Alive and Functioning

I am a highly functioning individual.

Every battle that we fight teaches us something about ourselves. In my case, I have learnt that fear, anxiety, tears, breakdowns and obsession cannot keep me from accomplishing what I set out to do. For the past 2 weeks I have seen myself commit hundreds of pages to memory through a film of tears. I have dragged myself to class despite waking up to a feeling of dread. I have held on white knuckled to my priorities even when everything was falling apart. I function.

I function because of an infinitely loving God who gave me the strength, who heard my prayers and answered them. Thank you.

---> Alive and Functioning

Encompassing God

From Thomas Nagel - What does it all mean?

The appeal to a religious meaning of life is a bit different. If you believe that the meaning of your life comes from fulfilling the purpose of god who loves you, and seeing him in eternity, then it does not seem appropriate to ask, "And what is the point of that?" It's supposed to be something which is its own point, and can't have a purpose outside itself. But for this very reason it has its own problems.

The idea of god seems to be the idea of something that can explain everything else, without having to be explained itself. But its very hard to understand how there could be such a thing. If we ask the question, "Why is the world like this?' and are offered a religious answer, how can we be prevented from asking again, "And why is that true?" What kind of answer would bring all our "Why?" questions to a stop, once and for all? And if they can stop there, why couldn't they have stopped earlier?

The same problem seems to arise if God and His purposes are offered as the ultimate explanation of the value and the meaning of our lives. The idea that our lives fulfill God's purpose is supposed to give them their point, in a way that doesn't require or admit of any further point. One isn't supposed to ask "What is the point of God?" any more than one is supposed to ask, "What is the explanation of God?"

But my problem here, as with the role of God as ultimate explanation, is that I'm not sure I understand the idea. Can something really be something which gives a point to everything else by encompassing it, but couldn't have, or need, any point itself? Something whose point cannot be questioned from the outside because there is no outside?

If God is supposed to give our lives a meaning that we can't understand, it's not much of a consolation. God as ultimate justification, like God as ultimate explanation, may be an incomprehensible answer to a question that we can't get rid of. On the other hand, maybe that's the whole point, and maybe I am just failing to understand religious ideas. Perhaps the belief in God is the belief that the universe is intelligible, but not to us.

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I just thought the above excerpt was a wonderfully eloquent piece of writing that so accurately captures the kind of struggle Christians have with appropriate questioning. By which I mean it seems as if every question and every dilemma has but one end and one answer, for God is all encompassing and in being so, ultimately restrictive.

Understanding God

I read something the other day, which made me think of what some of the premises a Christian life is based on. It is difficult to provide the full context of the excerpt. However it is basically said by a young intellectual who is dealt a death sentence from chronic consumption. He argues against the teachings of humility and obedience for their futility against his inevitable end.

Dostoevsky's - The Idiot

"At the same time, no matter how hard I tried, I could never imagine that there was no future life or providence. Most probably it all does exist, but we understand nothing of that future life, nor anything of the laws that govern it. But if it is so difficult, even absolutely impossible, to comprehend, how could I be held responsible for failing to makes sense of the incomprehensible? Of course they tell me, and the prince along with them, naturally, that this is where obedience comes in, one must obey without question, out of pure decorum, and for this meekness of mine I will most certainly be rewarded in the next world. We greatly demean providence if we ascribe our conceptions to it out of pique that we can't understand its workings. But then again, if it's impossible to understand, then I repeat, it is hard if we have to answer for what man is not equipped to comprehend. And if so, how am I to be judged for not being able to understand the true will and laws of providence? No, best leave religion out of this."

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As Christians we are often told of the "eternal perspective" that god has and that we as mere mortals, specks in the timeline of this universe cannot possibly comprehend God's plan. We are told to be obedient and that in his time, he will reveal what little we are ready for. So much of our lives is waiting, trying to listen, waiting and obeying, all whilst trying to plaster the giant question mark ahead with faith.

Ippolit says "if it's impossible to understand, then I repeat, it is hard if we have to answer for what man is not equipped to comprehend." To a certain extent, I do see where he is coming from. We don't know what is up ahead. It is because of this question mark that the need for words like "eternal perspective" and "in his time" exist. It is because of this question mark that we cling to faith like a lifebuoy. We are obedient, we are humble, we follow meekly, and we do all these based on what? The mystery of god's infinite plan, the rough sketch we get of providence? Despite all the lack of understanding and frenetic plastering of holes with faith, we still face judgment. Judgment for a world that we don't quite understand. Judgment for the sin that we were born into (should we choose to turn away from god), Judgment from a god that we cannot wholly comprehend.

It just seems like too much sometimes.

Organised religion and Choice

In Barry Schwartz "The Paradox of Choice", I came upon an extremely interesting passage detailing how choices have affected the American view of religious activities.

"Whereas most of us inherit the religious affiliations of our parents, we are remarkable free to choose exactly the "flavor" of that affiliation that suits us. We are unwilling to regard religious teachings as commandments, about which we have no choice, rather than suggestions, about which we are the ultimate arbiters. We look upon participation in a religious community as an opportunity to choose just the form of community that gives us what we want out of religion. Some of us may be seeking emotional fulfillment. Some may be seeking social connection. Some may be seeking ethical guidance and assistance with specific problems in our lives. Religious institutions then become a market for comfort, tranquility, spirituality, and ethical reflection, and we "religion consumers" shop in that market until we find what we like.

It may seem odd to talk about religious institutions in these kinds of shopping-mall terms, but I think such descriptions reflect what many people want and expect from their religious activities and affiliations. This is not surprising, given the dominance of individual choice and personal satisfaction as values in our culture. Even when people join communities of faith and expect to participate in the life of these communities and embrace (at least some of) the practices of these communities, they simultaneously expect the communities to be responsive to their needs, their tastes and their desires."

I guess this passage hit a spot with me, not merely because of its incredible accuracy, but because ever since I came to HK, I've been using "shopping for churches" as an excuse to be lazy and sleep in on Sundays. Every church that I go to is never the "perfect" one for me.

A spiritual calling

I feel like I'm always clutching at straws, trying to feed the various needs that I have.

Christians term that gaping hole we have within us the "God-shaped hole". They say that the emptiness we feel so poignantly can only be filled by god. Perhaps that is true. I guess for non Christians they would rather not call it a god-shaped hole. I believe its a spiritual calling.

As human beings we are always trying to paint the colours of the wind, to attain deep satisfaction from a cup of coffee, to feel something buried in the core of us. Something we cannot grasp physically but we just know exists, that search, that is what makes us different from animals. We turn to religion, to music, to literature in search for that spirituality. Some surface seemingly contented, others bubble with dissatisfaction and pronounced yearning.

Spiritual beings... I like that we are spiritual beings.

Sin

The word “sin” as in “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is a translation of a Hebrew word, het, that means “to miss the mark.”