Our ongoing struggle with theodicy

There is a branch of systematic theology that specifically deals with the mystery of how evil and sin can co-exist with a God who is all loving and present to his creation.  This mystery is not something that is solely for the intellectual pursuits of theologoumenon, but it is something that almost all of us ponder over ever so often, especially when we encounter episodes where evil and sin are present and seem to be waxing in the face of our faith and what we know about God being all loving.

Apart from the fact that God gives us all the amazing gift of our free wills which when used for selfish reason often give rise to the prolongation of sin and evil in the world, it is also tremendously helpful when we find strength and gain courage from the word of God in sacred scripture to aid us in the living out of our faith.  When we come up against the quagmire of evil versus good, or sin versus holiness in life, or when page after page of the daily paper has nothing but stories of human preponderance of injustice and inhuman behavior towards our fellow man and woman, when natural catastrophes occur or when airplanes carrying hundreds of passengers fall out of the sky and crash.  We deal with these calamities when they are contrasted against the hope and goodness that our faith and religion reveal to us that God is good and that he has a great salvific plan for us.  At times like these, it does us well to go to a place in scripture that emboldens our belief that when evil seems to prevail, that God is not absent.  I often go to Rom 8:28 not only for solace, but also strength, confidence and hope.

What Romans 8:28 tells us very clearly is this – “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose”.  There is an abbreviated form of this in Latin, which is ‘omnia in bonum’, and it was a dictum, which St Josemaria Escriva believed and lived by.

We struggle with the phrase ‘all things’ in many ways, don’t we?  What we often want is ‘good things’.  We delight in the ways in which things turn out well for us in life, and find very little problem with praising God when things go our way.   I am quite certain that many of the people who have come up to me for a blessing, be it a blessing of themselves, or their house or apartments, their cars, and their many sacramentals like medals, holy cards and statues, have generally one idea in their minds – that a blessing should impart goodness and wellness on all levels.  But is that all that a blessing bestows?  As a priest and a theologian at heart, I have a far greater appreciation of what a blessing is, and hope that the theologian in every person of faith expands their understanding of a blessing.

The phrase ‘all things’ was not written by St Paul as something that was unintentional or casual.  If we truly believe that the Word of God is something alive and active (Heb 4:12), then nothing that is in scripture is frivolous, vain or vapid.  Indeed, St Paul was fully aware of how God had been powerful and present in his life in both good times as well as times when he faced great persecution, was whipped, imprisoned, been shipwrecked and endured hunger and thirst.  Despite these, he never faltered in his belief and love of God who loved him beyond all telling.  How is it that these trying situations that St Paul found himself in didn’t cause him to flinch from his faith?  How is it that when we go through similar or even less trials in life easily doubt if God is even ‘there’?  (Wherever you think this ‘there’ is).  Perhaps it shows that we are far more ‘fair-weather’ Christians than we think we are, and it shows that our faith is far more conditional that we claim it is.

A blessing is not, for sure, an incantation that imparts good fortune and excellent health.  Of course, being prosperous in life and experiencing good health are in themselves great blessings, but what a blessing does and is has to encompass far more than this.  It strengthens our faith to continue to be steadfast in our belief in a God who loves us despite our not experiencing these.  Isn’t this what St Paul referring to when he wrote that ‘all things’ work together for good?  ‘All things’ have to mean good things as well as bad things. 

If in marriage we vow to love one another in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, should we not extend this to all areas of life as well?  How is it that we compartmentalize life and have a strange notion that that kind of inclusiveness should not extend to all areas of our lives?  What St Paul emphasizes also is that both the seemingly good and bad things work together for good. 

We don’t want the ‘together’ bit, and we certainly are uncomfortable with ‘all things’, aren’t we?  We much prefer ‘good’ things, and only the good things.  What a blessing imparts is a broadening of our vision of God and his plan, so that we can like Mary truly say ‘let it be done to me according to your will’ when faced with challenges and events that show little of God’s mercy, presence and bestowal of peace. 

Of course, we can only live this way if the third and most important part of the statement is apparent and real – and that is the love of God.  Not God’s love for us, but our love for him.  Rom 8:28 emphasizes ‘for those who love him’.  Perhaps the real problem for many is that there is a lack of love of God in their hearts and in their lives.  When the love of God is conditional and fear-based, so too will our ability to see him in ‘all things’. 

We will always be facing this issue of theodicy when thorny and difficult issues confront our lives, but given the right spiritual tools to broach them, the thorns will not be that much of a bother when we realise that like life, the rose bush that produces the beautiful bloom somehow also necessarily exists with the thorns in its existence.

How Christ's entering into darkness gives us light

As a blood cancer patient who has been in slow recovery, I have been recruited by the Bone Marrow Donor Programme here in Singapore as a frequent spokesperson to speak about the pressing need for more people to sign up and be on the list of potential bone marrow or stem cell donors so that a life can be saved – a life which is being threatened by a blood disease somewhere in the world.  In this effort, I have also been interviewed quite a few times by various organizations and asked about my own experience of this whole process of getting ill, being told of the grim prognosis, going through the chemotherapies, and finally being told of the impossibly good news that a perfectly matching donor had been found, albeit from half a world away. 

These interviews often also ask me about how I felt about being told that I was standing at death’s door and I always marvel (even now) at just how calm and almost placid I was when I was told that I had a life-threatening illness.  After all, I have ministered to so many cancer patients who had no intentions of displaying signs of disbelief, anger, shock and denial, which makes my own quick and calm acceptance nothing short of a great grace.  Being a Christian doesn’t automatically give one the inner strength needed to stop from being afraid and anxious.  But perhaps being a person who has very often meditated on the agony of Jesus in the garden of Gethsamane gave me a precious insight into how I was saved by Jesus’ willingness to go through a suffering so innocently for my sake and the sake of the world was what brought me a light that was so needed in that time of sudden darkness.

I often ask myself how it was that Jesus, when he entered into that emptiness of the garden before his brutal execution, experienced and handled that foreboding terror before him.  We are told in the gospels that he agonised in that garden.  This God-man Jesus, who was so often deep in prayer and communicated with his Father, the master of creation and almighty, was actually in some sort of agony over what lay in front of him.  We read in some translations that he was ‘deeply distressed’ but if one were to go to the original Greek text, one would see the world ekthambeisthai, which more accurately translates into something that causes one to be in an intense and emotional state resulting from a great surprise or perplexity.  The question remains – how could this man who was in such a deep and real relationship with his father, the Lord of all, be reduced to a becoming a fearful and surprised person?  But isn’t it also true then – that if this relationship that was so real that it was holding him up and gave him all that he needed and existed for in life, then it was the entering into a state which was devoid of this that was going to be hellish and truly agonizing. 

This must be what hell is – that there is no semblance at all of godliness, and goodness and no divine presence at all.  Jesus was entering into godlessness, and it was beyond staggering.  We say it all the time in church language – that Jesus took on the ‘sin of the world’ on himself, but we hardly spend much time expanding on what it truly means.  Doing this cannot be just the work of reflective theologians trying to gain some impressive scores in the academic world writing theses to attain their degrees.  Doing this is something that all of us who are the disciples of the Lord need to do and do it often.  One very good and meaningful day to do this is before the Altar of Repose in the evening of Holy Thursday.  Coming to some deeper understanding of what it means to ‘take the sin of the world’ on oneself gives one the ability to encounter the smaller deaths that we do each day in our own encounters with people in situations that cause us to enter into the little hells that we often go through. 

What is godlessness like?  It must be something akin to not knowing God.  Imagine having a very good friend, a loving spouse or someone who knows and relates with you on a very deep level.  Imagine then waking up one morning and suddenly have that person no longer in your life to talk with, to share with, and to be in the presence of.  A void, much more than just a lacuna in life, will be experienced.  This will undoubtedly cause much pain.  Jesus was in a great relationship with his father – Our Father.  It sustained him, it empowered him, and it defined his very being.  Having that deep bond taken away on the very next day had to be a pain that goes way beyond what a spouse would feel if the other was taken away, or a friend leaving one’s life for whatever reason.  That pain of separation or disappointment that we would feel would pale in comparison to what Jesus was about to go through.  Our human emptiness is only a drop in the ocean of agony compared to a divine emptiness that Jesus must have seen coming.  In that garden on that night before Good Friday, he saw how he was about to be in a state of godlessness, which for us, should be the ultimate horror, since our lives (body and soul) are made for his love and presence. 

Yet, the antithesis of this is what atheists seem to be wanting to declare - that there is no God, and that this life is something that had happened by ‘chance’, and that the god that we worship is a fabrication and doesn’t sustain us at all.  No, they believe that we are our own existence and that at the end of life, it all turns black (actually, black is something and not nothing, but that would be a matter of another discussion).

The hell that awaits true atheists has to be the fulfillment of their deepest desire – that they will enter at the end of their earthly lives, an eternity of being so distanced, so disconnected and so empty of the one who sustains everything.  Jesus was about to enter into that state, and it more than surprised and ‘deeply distressed’ him.  Yet, he chose to do this albeit much difficulty so that when we now enter into our own pains and struggles where we think we are devoid of God’s presence and power, we are able to do it with a confidence that can only be provided when we know that Jesus came out the other end with more than flying colours. 

I perhaps can say now in hindsight that this must have been going in my mind when the doctor told me that I was facing an impending death with the leukaemia diagnosis.  How could I say to myself ‘it’s ok, it’s only cancer’?  It came from the strength of someone who had entered into Gethsamane, and took on hell not just for me, but for the whole creation.  What is one person’s impending death and suffering (mine) when someone took on the world’s?  My being a little selfless at that time was nothing if not for Jesus’ suffering for the world.

I could never put these thoughts in a précis form for my interlocutors at interviews about my illness and recovery.  I can only give glimpses or snippets of this which gave me that strength when the doctor gave me the news of a cancer.  It never is a full revelation and perhaps can never be, because it is like trying to give someone an experience of something only by using words and phrases.  Words can only convey that much, no matter how great a wordsmith one is.  Words never convey or provide a full picture.  At best, it can help to provide a screenshot. 

Perhaps it is because of this that now I don’t sweat ‘the small stuff’ easily.  It still surprises me how I find it easier to forgive people who may be prejudiced against me for whatever reasons.  And when I face disappointments, when I am maligned in my character, when I am wrongly accused, when I am thought of much less than I know myself to be, or when others think that they need to make me small so that they feel great.  These are never easy things to do, but these darknesses in life are made light (pun definitely intended) because Jesus chose to enter into a much darker and emptier state for us all to bring us a new and everlasting light.

Someone remarked recently that my reflections have taken on a somewhat more somber tone after my illness and recovery, and that I don’t write about lighter and happier matters.  I guess this is a natural result of having had this near-death experience, and also of encountering the incredible benevolence of my stem cell donor (that’s you, Peter Mui).  Happy stuff can find them in abundance in the social media.  They are not hard to find.  But I do have the need to give others who have a great difficulty in finding hope and strength in their own Gethsamane moments.  It could be someone who has just been told that they are seriously ill, or who has tremendous difficulty with the knowledge that their marriage is on the rocks, or when one’s secure world of possessions and riches has been suddenly and greatly reduced.  I believe this reflection serves to help them see some light in the dark tunnel that they find themselves facing in life. 

It’s not that I have become stoic and lost my sense of humour.  In fact, it is because I don’t ‘sweat the small stuff’ that I can genuinely smile at so many other things in life. 

Getting God out of our minds

Featured in one of last week’s liturgies, the gospel text provided us with a very short but profound insight into the spiritual life.  It came Mark 3:21-22.  It consists of only two sentences, the second of which reveals that the relatives of Jesus were convinced that he was out of his mind. 

This was said in the context of him having healed so many people such that his life seemed to be so overwhelmed with people who were in need of a touch of the divine.  This obviously concerned Jesus’ relatives to the point of their thinking that there was something not quite right about him, causing them to make this remark about his being out of his mind.

Is this not the essence of true spirituality - where one is no longer merely a logic-centered and empirically controlled person, but is able to look beyond what lies before one in life?  Coming hot on the heels of the previous gospel texts in the days before was the term ‘repentance’.  This English term is a very poor translation of the Greek ‘metanoia’ which has a much deeper implication than being sorry for one’s transgressions.  ‘Metanoia’ or ‘metanoiete’ calls for one to go beyond the mind, or to enter into another platform of realization, where one not only grasps truth and reality in a new way, but rather that one allows oneself to be grasped by truth and reality.  No longer just the work of the mind, it is encounter with the eternity of the divine. 

The problem with most of humanity is that it is often purely centered on the mind and nothing else.  One can look back in history and blame it on the advent of the modern philosophy with the work of Rene Descartes and friends, but in truth, I believe that it is something that has been somewhat hardwired in our broken humanity.  We are ‘rational animals’, as Aristotle is often quoted as saying, and he was not wrong.  Neither was he fully right.  He got it half right.

It is a common saying that the longest journey that anyone can make is that from the head to the heart.  Some do not even begin to make that long journey, and prefer to stay on the level of the mind, trying to figure out God and conceptualize God as one being among other beings, instead of the one who is the ground of our very being.  Problems will obviously ensue when we see God as just another being (though with much more power and strength) as he will be constantly competing against other beings that we deal with in life.  This erroneous and diminished view of God weakens our sense of him in his very being, and so, many of us end up looking for ways to give God our time, outside of what other items of our lives demand of our time and energy.  So, for instance, giving God time in prayer can end up being something that we do when we are doing nothing else that is considered profane or worldly, as if God is not in the world. 

Of course, the danger of writing about this is that one can just exonerate oneself from the very act of praying by saying that one is now doing everything with a heightened awareness of God’s pervasive presence in all things.  The temptation would then be to say that there is thus no need to give God dedicated tine in prayer.  Unfortunately, this may well be an indication that one has missed the point of the spiritual life. 

In fact, knowing that God is ever-present and the ground of our very being requires of us a much deeper response to his invitation to be in union with him in prayer, surrendering ourselves more and more, to be soaked deeper and deeper in his pool of divine love.  This will enable us to be more aware of how God can be encountered in our normal everyday activities.  An analogy of this would be how so many people tend to say that as long as they live justly and honestly, that there is no need to be people who worship and pray to God and be religious. 

Timothy Keller, an author whose book I am currently reading, gives a very good response to this, and gives an image of a widow having a son whom she raises and puts through good schools and a good university at great sacrifice to herself, as she is a woman of slender means.  As he grows, his mother imparts wise advice, reminding him to always tell the truth, work hard, and be sensitive to the poor.  This man graduates from his studies and goes on to establish his career and life, but hardly spends time with his mother, hardly even giving her one phone call a month.  If asked about his relationship with his mother, this man would say, “I don’t have anything to do with her personally, but I always tell the truth, I work hard, I have a keen sense of right and wrong, and I do care for the poor.”  In essence, he is saying that he is living a good life (like many atheists do) and would argue that that is all that matters.  Or is it?

The obvious truth is that there is a lack in this man’s life and approach to life, which goes beyond his living a mere moral life that his mother set in his conscience.  This man in actual fact owes his mother far more than just living a ‘good life’.  He owes his mother his love, and his loyalty, and a dedicated relationship with her.

So too for us, when we want to find some good reason to be faithful in prayer, difficult and inconvenient though it may be.  We owe it to God who is the very ground of our being, and to always put him in the centre of our very lives.  This is not a case of logic, which is mind-centered, but a case of the heart, which is being-centered.  Where God is concerned, perhaps we need to be ‘out of our minds’ too.

The truth is, not only was Jesus truly ‘out of his mind’, but that we as Christ’s brothers and sisters, also need to learn how to live ‘out of our minds’ and make that long but oh so necessary journey to the heart.  Only a true metanoia allows us to begin this journey, which I am quite sure doesn’t ever end, even after our physical deaths. 

Back from silence

Having spent almost two years in semi-hibernation as I convalesced at home and in the hospital, with the grace of God I was able to spend about 12 days away to be by myself for some ‘me time’, which explains my two week hiatus from my weekly blog posts.  Somehow, when one has been given a new lease of life from something as amazing as a stem-cell transplant, one becomes very much more appreciative for even the smallest thing in life.  In those days away from home, each day brought about a new gratitude for the new vistas before me, the daily dramatic sunsets and sun rises, and a new thankfulness for the wonder of life itself.

I chose to be incommunicado for those 12 days just to be able to be as cut off as I could from the world.  Not that I have any disdain for it, but like any retreat or chosen period of silence and reflection, it is often after that experience that one gets a refreshed look at all that is presented before one’s horizon in life.  I suppose this is especially true when one gets the rare opportunity to have a new scene unfold each day being on a ship at sea.

I had the opportunity to do quite a lot of reading on my time away, and took a few books with me, some of which were precious Christmas gifts from well meaning friends.  I was delightfully re-introduced to the late Henri Nouwen’s writings.  The one I read with much interest emerged as a result of his seven months spent in a monastery where he was a temporary monk.  This privilege is hardly given to people, as the Christian monastic life is a life-long commitment.  But I suppose that Nouwen being who he was in the spiritual literary and academia circle was given a rare privilege of experiencing life as a temporary monk.  It is indeed a blessing for all of us that he had put into the written word his many and varied experiences of those months in silence. 

Strange as it may seem, my chosen time of a short two weeks of silence saw me reading about someone’s experience of seven months of spiritual silence, where he delved deeper into himself and struggled to understand his own psyche.  Ever the person who wants to truly know himself as much as he could, unveiling all the falseness that he was so ready to face and uncover with unabashed courage and directness, Nouwen does a fine job in inviting his readers not just to do the same, but to want to do this with a fresh willingness, and without the fear that many would associate with such an audacious idea.  He revealed himself to be someone who constantly seemed to struggle with a hidden and unhealthy sense of self importance weighted against knowing how much each of us needs to live in humility and strive for egolessness and selflessness which is so necessary for one who is serious about holiness and eventual sainthood.

It made me very aware that my time of convalescence had in actual fact mellowed and tempered my spirit in ways that I would not have had thought about without the gift and opportunity of my illness and its slow but steady recovery.  I can fully appreciate the frustrations and anxieties which Nouwen experienced in his daily monotonous work of washing huge amounts of raisins each day and greasing the unending line of baking tins for the bread which the monastery made for its means of income. 

One of the most refreshing and yet poignant things that he writes about unabashedly was his struggle to accept that happiness has to be an inside job that begins when one dares to face the reality of the uselessness of recognition, fame, the inflated ego, and a false sense of self importance.  That a notable cleric and academician like Nouwen at many times longed and ached to be noticed, appreciated and acknowledged challenges any reader to humbly admit that there are shades of this in all of us, and that our sense of stability and happiness, or lack of it, is often the root of so many of our problems in life. 

Nouwen struggled much with prayer.  I do not think that I am off the mark when I say that many people think that priests and monks have it easy when they pray.  We do not.  But what plagues us a lot is identifying the difference between praying and talking or writing about prayer.  It is so tempting for one to have a spiritual agenda when praying, to gain insights, to get fresh ideas, to piece together items for a talk or a presentation, to formulate a structured homily or sermon, so much so that one doesn’t really end up praying.  That emptiness that one so desperately needs to grow in the spiritual life then becomes avoided in a very hidden way, and one can even end up comforting oneself that one has prayed, when one has actually been formulating ideas about prayer.  If a spiritual giant like Nouwen could be so frank about his spiritual foibles and personal weaknesses, it gives so many of us so much hope that when we confront ourselves with our own issues of self-worth and hunger for some sort of validation in life, we can begin to identify these stumbling blocks (with a self deprecating honesty) towards real spiritual growth and maturity.  One never really reaches a point where one is fully grown in the spiritual life – one is always merely on the way.

I did meet quite a few people during my time away, people whom I had never met before, and were somehow very interested in my life.  Interestingly, when I revealed that I was a priest, they were intrigued.  But when I said that I was a cancer patient in recovery, they were fascinated, especially when I shared with them just how miraculous my stem cell transplant came about with an anonymous donation of a bag of perfectly matching stem cells from a generous stranger from halfway round the world. 

I returned from my hiatus with a sense of being recharged, and slightly heavier from some weight that I managed to gain from eating in unfamiliar surroundings.  What is more important is that I return to life with a new and fuller appreciation of not just what it can do for me, but what I can further contribute to life.