I never
cried much growing up. In fact, I never quite understood why girls cry and shed
tears so often and over
somewhat trivial things, from receiving a sinister comment, wanting what she
did not have, manipulating emotions of others to get what she wanted, to
generally, wasting tears over guys. I remember attending my dad's funeral at
the age of 8 and not having shed a single tear but stood silently beside my
weeping mother, holding her hands in mine and hearing so called adults saying
that I am too young to understand what is going on, all the while wishing I
will hold it all together and wondering why no one understands the hurricane
hurling inside my heart. But as I grew older, the flood gates to my tears
seemed to have loosened or lost their strength. Either that or the lacrimal
glands of my tears have become a lot more active.
Needless
to say that not many ever saw my tears as I always try to hide them and almost never
cry in front of people, other than my parents. Almost. Embarrassingly,
tears rolled off my cheeks two days ago over a lovely dinner with a dear friend
for no reason when a question triggered so much of what I still do not
understand.
Da
Vinci once said, "tears come from the heart and not from the brain." As an anonymous writer puts it and paints a more personal picture:
"sometimes, memories sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks."
So perhaps, tears are how our heart speaks when our lips can't nor can the heart bear? Or perhaps, tears are the words our hearts express
when our heads do not yet understand?
A
simple and single most powerful moment in John's gospel is that "Jesus
wept." (John 11:35). This famous verse occurs in John's narrative of the
death of Lazarus, a follower of Jesus, as a prelude to Jesus' own death and
resurrection in the later part of John's gospel in the New Testament of the bible.
Lazarus' sisters sent word to Jesus of their brother's illness and impending
death, but Jesus arrived four days after Lazarus died. After talking to the
grieving sisters and seeing Lazarus' friends weeping, Jesus was deeply moved in spirit
and troubled. When others asked "could not he who opened the eyes
of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" (John 11:37, RSV), Jesus came to the tomb of Lazarus and said "Did I not tell that if
you would believe, you would see the glory of God?" (John 11:40, RSV) and
brought Lazarus back to life. There is much said and written about the Lazarus
of Bethany outside of the scripture, including in medieval Islamic tradition in
which he was honoured as a pious companion of Jesus. These days, the name has
connotation in science and popular culture as a literary term that is far from
the theological view that as the subject of a prominent miracle of Jesus in the
gospel of John, Lazarus points to the death and resurrection of Christ from the cross or as we know it, Jesus' crucifixion.
Yet, knowing that he can resurrect Lazarus, why did Jesus shed his tears? In contrast to most translated versions of our bible, the biblical Greek is perhaps the most moving in its encapsulation of emotions through a description of an action that "Jesus, he shed tears" (ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς). What that action embodies is extremely profound. The shortest verse in the bible for all its simplicity is perhaps packed with emotional complexity. Some scholars say that one reason for Jesus' tears is the deep compassion that he felt for those who were suffering, and as "the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15, RSV), in Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, we get a glimpse of how the Father feels over the affliction and grief the children of God experience. Linked to that is the origin of sin. Sin grieves God deeply, and so do the wages of sin, death (Romans 6:23, RSV). Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden eastward in Eden, God, not just mankind, had endured sin's or men's horrific destruction and relentless rebellion, from the early murder of Abel by Cain in Genesis, through raising heroes to their rise and eventual downfall in Judges and to the demise of kings including the best of them in 1 & 2 Kings. Death had consumed almost all human beings that God had created.
Yet, knowing that he can resurrect Lazarus, why did Jesus shed his tears? In contrast to most translated versions of our bible, the biblical Greek is perhaps the most moving in its encapsulation of emotions through a description of an action that "Jesus, he shed tears" (ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς). What that action embodies is extremely profound. The shortest verse in the bible for all its simplicity is perhaps packed with emotional complexity. Some scholars say that one reason for Jesus' tears is the deep compassion that he felt for those who were suffering, and as "the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15, RSV), in Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, we get a glimpse of how the Father feels over the affliction and grief the children of God experience. Linked to that is the origin of sin. Sin grieves God deeply, and so do the wages of sin, death (Romans 6:23, RSV). Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden eastward in Eden, God, not just mankind, had endured sin's or men's horrific destruction and relentless rebellion, from the early murder of Abel by Cain in Genesis, through raising heroes to their rise and eventual downfall in Judges and to the demise of kings including the best of them in 1 & 2 Kings. Death had consumed almost all human beings that God had created.
As
someone with artistic interests and tendency, sometimes we have to start afresh
with certain mistakes on a canvass. And what may come of it may never be the
same as the original work in a moment of inspiration. So an artist would
understand the frustration of a serious mistake that ruins hours of work,
especially water colour or acrylic where there is no recourse or remedy other than to start afresh because there is
no painting over it or erasing a pencil stroke. From time to time, it may
pain the artist to do this, knowing the work output will never be the same but
the best way forward is a clean canvass. So I read the flood in Genesis with a
saddened heart because it is a poignant act of God who had little choice.
Somewhere along the line in His creation, by giving free will and choice to
man, created in His image out of an abundance of love, something went terribly
wrong that everything is irreversible except to wipe away creation clean and start
again. It pains me personally to read that "The Lord saw how great man's
wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that He had made
man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, 'I will
wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth - men and
animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air - for I
am grieved that I have made them.' " (Genesis 6:5-7, NIV).
If all
things evil and their temptation are embodied by the biblical reference to
"Satan", we recently wandered from the book of Revelations during our
bible study discussions and wondered why God allowed this. Why did God not
defeat Satan in the very beginning? Jonathan D. Sarfati's view on why Satan was
"created" by God in Genesis and why God did not destroy Satan
immediately comes back somewhat to love. The reason is the power of contrary
choice in the way God created and allowed that in Adam and Eve where they were
made in His image and in the image of each other. This power of choice
or voluntary will is good or as Sarfati puts it, not actual evil, but the
possibility of evil exists in temptation. It is out of love that God said to
Adam "you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
for when you eat of it you will surely die." So in a world of
perfect paradise with an abundance of fruits and all other goodness, Adam and
Eve chose not to believe in God but the words of the serpent instead perhaps,
and in so doing, disobeyed God that led to the fall of man and the origin of
sin. Yet, the true wisdom of God appears in that, though His creation and
creatures fall, God is still able to achieve His original purpose through the redemption
which is in Jesus. And it is through the covenant with a good man Noah
after the flood, that God said in his heart "Never again will I curse the
ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from
childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and
winter, day and night will never cease." (Genesis 8:21-22). So the related
question of why God did not destroy Satan is, according to Sarfati, because it isn't that "Satan will ever repent, but that if God were to immediately destroy evil,
He would destroy all of us as well, with perfect justice." This makes
perfect sense to me personally at least as Satan can be a simple voice in our head
that does not align with words of God.
So this
is the biblical creation story that culminated in God sending his only son,
Jesus Christ, into this world to die for our sins. This is in stark contrast to other
myths of creation, for example and even the grandest of all, Greek mythology
that, as beautifully written by Stephen Fry in Mythos, originated from Chaos then
"peopled as it was by primal deities whose whole energy and purpose seem to have been directed towards reproduction" and stories of epic dramas filled with "murderous, cruel, rapacious and
destructive" Gods and later demi Gods as "where divine blood fell, life
could not help to spring forth from the earth". Nothing compares to the story of God's perfect creation and the gospel of Jesus Christ who
simply wept at the reality of this world knowing what it was meant to be.
Someone
once said to me that feelings are like temperature which you can test or measure even
if they do not tell of why or the underlying reasons. Yet, feelings can be
controlled but tears never lie. So perhaps in tears, we know that we have a
heart and love is in that heart. And there is nothing greater than God's love
for us.
All
moral rights belong to the author except other works quoted or referred to.
So Beautiful ❤️
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