On Pain and Suffering

In tribute to a great man of substance who endured and confronted suffering with silent dignity yet hid all the pain of this world in his heart with a stern smile, when life was far less than worth living for; and in praise to God for His wonder, grace and mercy to let this great man go...

This is a place in the world where palliative care is at rock bottom for the terminally ill. The sociocultural history of this place sees death as a taboo where people rarely speak about it or should 'politely' avoid to speak of it as a matter of etiquette. At this place, there is a surprising tendency for people to believe, however abstractly, that life is inherently better than death and it is therefore better to live one more day instead of giving up the ghost of our bodies prematurely a day too early. At its worst, this place can spawn twisted sense of filial piety.

The Hindu view of pain and suffering sees everything as part of karma. It is the state an individual is supposed to be in, as part of the unfolding of events based on a person's current and previous lives. What would be left to deal with are 'acceptance' and 'detachment' - acceptance of suffering as a natural consequence of karma along with the realisation that suffering is temporary and not solely negative, in order to concentrate on its so called god. Buddhism regards pain (rendered as illness, sorrow, turmoil and suffering) as a defining characteristic of human life. Pain is a part of life, as well as a physical-emotional-mental-spiritual complex that defines the nature of human existence. If a person experiences pain calmly, without becoming emotionally distressed, he or she can attain greater states of 'being'. The so called Noble Truths of pain and suffering include birth, the aging process, sickness and death. It is viewed as a power, unwanted but existent, that comes from a barrier in the last life, the cause and the effect. To 'end' the path of pain and suffering with the 'right' view, intention and act includes to see, understand and realise the Noble Truths of suffering as they really are, to reunciate and resist feelings of aversion, and to abstain from 'false' speech or action. To a certain degree, the truth in Buddhism about suffering is that it exists. Atheists, well, they when faced with pain and suffering may perhaps take pride in personal integrity, perhaps intellectual honesty, perhaps a sense of Stoicism or perhaps anything that goes.

The scriptural narrative of the bible opens with a beautiful creation story where God crafts a world of unfathomable goodness that pulsates with order, harmony, wholeness and life. Then, as eloquently put by Matt Smethurst, suffering is woven, with perplexity and pain, into the fabric of human experience since the ancient revolt in the short-lived garden of paradise. So we live and move and have our being amid Eden's wreckage and against God's creation plagued by sin, and along with it, pain and suffering. Yet, Christians can see in Christ's pain and suffering the evidence that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit care about our pain and suffering as Christ has taken it upon himself the weight of this world to suffer on behalf of us and die for the sins of others. "The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer but their sufferings might be like His" - George MacDonald. Yet, C.S. Lewis opens his book The Four Loves with a simple quote from St John that "God is Love" and a key message that there is a Gift-love which comes by Grace called Charity. In the somewhat bleak and worldly analogy/example given by C.S. Lewis of this Gift-love, it would be the love that "moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing".

So let this speak of love and sometimes, letting go is the greatest love that there is.

This piece is not founded on research or facts. Better still, take it as fictional. All moral rights (including copyright) subsisting in the work belong to the author (except to the extent quoted, referred to or otherwise subsistig in other works referred to in this piece). 

Christmas 2019

This is a tribute to the annual jazz service at St Marks Darling Point on the eve of every Christmas. In fact, it is one of my favourite services if not the favourite (although our beer and carols service in the lead up to Christmas comes close for those who may not like carols as much as beer, myself included). After this year's jazz service, a few kind individuals approached just to compliment the prayers on that night. It is fascinating to find that a new approach to prayer writing can produce quite an interesting effect. Instead of drawing on the passion for current affairs and good cause which affect us and our world daily, I decided to switch off the news and switch on some spirit. With more focus on the message of Christmas, the prayers stayed closer to the scripture and truer to the gospel (and for the first time, further away from contemporary events of this world in a very different style).

A beautiful lady from that night said it was "the most comprehensive and beautiful prayer" she has "ever heard", and I remember myself being lost in a memorable image of her silhouette as she departs, her beautiful brunette hair against the backdrop of the night with moonlight washing upon herself and her baby in her hands (and our church cat following them closely to be part of that magical moment) forever imprinted on my mind. Guess we find and see beauty in different ways.

So here you go, a copy of the prayers, in tribute to a blue night with thanks to our professional bands who jammed away in jazz and stopped time in our own moments.

P.s. And as a reminder in post scriptum, "Christmas" is short for "Christ's mass", recorded in Middle English as Crīstesmæsse and in Old English as Cristes-messe. Crīst is from the Greek word of Khrīstos (Χριστός), a translation of the Hebrew word Māšîaḥ (מָשִׁיחַ), meaning "anointed" and mæsse is from the Latin word missa, the celebration of the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion. I once thought "Xmas" is a modern bastardisation of the word "Christmas" as we have strayed so far away from the true meaning of the gospel in our modern concoction of seasonal silliness, but turns out "X" was regularly used to represent the first letter of the Greek word for Christ and popular during Roman times. Who are we to judge. Only human moments will bring out in us so much love in whatever shape or form as we live and learn, in glory to God.

In response to Luke 2:1–14 and Titus 3:1–7 and the sermon available at: https://stmarksdp.org/sermons/.  

"Dearest Heavenly Father

Tonight, we celebrate the reality of your presence in our lives. Thank you for reminding us the true meaning of Christmas against the backdrop, in our age, of convenience, commercialisation and broken connections. As you unite us in this moment, we celebrate your birth, your life and what you lead us towards through your death and resurrection with joy and peace in our hearts. May we be awed by the miracle of your life, be filled with the faith of Mary, be encouraged by the obedience of Joseph, be inspired by the change in the shepherds to trust and follow, be challenged by the wisdom of the magi, be lifted by the joy of the angels to rejoice and be forever grateful to you for your most humble birth into our world.

Our world at this temporal point, in history as shown through the passage of time, and no doubt in the time to come, is far from perfect, because of what we do and what we are prone to do. We are frail, flawed and fragile. But God, thank you for reminding us to place our trust and to have faith in your glorious creation and careful order for this world and the life eternal, in both the good times and the bad times. Father, please continue to work in us and help us understand our role and our place in this world and be guided by your loving will that is both personal and sovereign. Show us and help us to show your boundless love, grace and mercy with thanks giving in our hearts. Please work in our lives as we can be foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by the passions and pleasures of this world, yes, even the best of us. God, protect us from this world that is sometimes filled with envy, malice and hatred. It is this earthly world that you have sent your only son to walk amongst us and to walk with us, and to show us the grace and generosity of a saviour through human hardships when you are God of the impossible. 

So our Lord, Jesus Christ, the light of this world, as we celebrate your birth, may we see this world in the light of understanding that you give us. May you guide us as we’ve read tonight, to be obedient and ready for good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarrelling, to be gentle and to show every courtesy to everyone. As you choose the lowly outcast and the poor to receive the greatest news of our world, may we remember those less fortunate in this season. We pray for your blessings to all people and may there be bread for the hungry, love for the broken, healing for the sick and the elderly, protection for the weak, wisdom for our youth, courage for our fire fighters, more rain for this drought and more miracles for this world. We pray for your forgiveness, for our growth in faith and for the abundant life in our Lord Jesus Christ. 

May you fill our hearts with your love, power and the Holy Spirit. Amen."

Giving this for free with no assertion of moral rights (including copyright) so feel free to infringe away.

Time in Creation, Creation in Time or Creation and Time?

"Every moment of the day, we confront phenomena that are not reducible to present factors: history is not a simple problem of arithmetic, life is not the product solely of chemical combinations, the genius is something other and more than the child of his time, and every personality is an original." The how, why, when, where and so what of this world are perplexing questions of the mind. The creation story of the bible is no different as it presents more questions than answers which can often tie our thinking into knots through some serious mental gymnastics. Having rationalised and reconciled our modern day science and theories of the likes of evolution, entropy and quantum theory, with Genesis earlier on in my Christian journey, this piece is the fruit of a new found fascination with the concept of time and the temporal dimension of our world, in this case, in the story of creation.

To start, let's have a look at an interesting translation problem of Genesis 1:1-3. Some scholars believe that the creation story in this passage actually proceeded from an original, uncreated chaos. They argue that  בְּרֵאשִׁית (in the beginning) is in the construct state so they can translate the verses as “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless … and then God said “let there be light” and there was light." But according to Bavinck, this translation is not acceptable. The sentence acquires the length of a period which is rare in Hebrew. It is not expected immediately at the beginning and in the style of Genesis 1 and it also puts too strong an accent on the creation of light. The construct state of  בְּרֵאשִׁית (in the beginning) does not require this translation because it also occurs in the same form without suffix or genitive in Isaiah 46:10. Interestingly, unlike the NIV and Holman Christian Standard Bible, the King James version proffers some thoughts on this as it simply translates the first three verses of our bible without temporal dimension as "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

You may recall (if you are a church goer) the confessions repeated time and time again on a Sunday, along the lines of "I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." By creation, it means that act of God through which, by his sovereign will, he brought the entire world out of nonbeing into being that is distinct from his own being. This is, in fact, the teaching of the scripture and the spirit of the creation narrative, without any unintended suggestion that God created the world from something rather than nothing. 

Indeed, Bavinck puts it simply that Elohim (אֱלֹהִים ) is not presented in Genesis 1 as a cosmic sculptor who, in human fashion, with pre-existing material, produces a work of art, but rather as One who by uttering a word of power, calls all things into being. "And with that view, the whole of Scripture chimes in." Augustine of Hippo who authored the City of God in early 5th century AD has said that the world was not made in time but along with time (as did Plato, Philo and Tertullian). "Time is the necessary form of the existence of the finite. It is not a separate creation but something automatically given with the world, cocreated with it like space...The truth is that eternity is the immutable centre that sends out its rays to the entire circumference of time. To the limited eye of the creature, it successively unfolds its infinite content in the breadth of space and the length of time, so that we might understand something of the unsearchable greatness of God. So the teaching of creation out of nothing maintains that there is a distinction between God and the world. "The creation does not exist as a result of a passage of the world from being in God to being outside of God, nor from being without God to being by God, but from nonexistence into existence."  

Your head is hurting? Good. 

This blog is a snap shot of Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics. All moral rights (including copyright) remain in the author, editor and translator of the book, volume 2: God and Creation. The blog does not and does not intend to infringe any such moral rights in any way. I am just laxed about citation but if anything, take this as a promo and an encouragement to go read his works!