It depends on me?

When I was just a kid, probably no more than 10 years old, I asked one of my adult brothers this question: "Do ghosts really exist?" To my disappointment, his answer didn't really help me overcome my fear. He said that ghosts existed if you believed they did, and that they didn't exist if you didn't believe. Even back then, I thought that was a non-answer, that he really didn't know, but that at least he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. 

To say someone's or something's existence depends on my belief was and still is a dumb answer. Not only is it illogical, it is surprisingly self-absorbed, like saying the world revolves around me. Today we have fancy terms like relativism to label this ego-centric belief system. Let's just call it for what it is. In conversations about 'spirituality' and 'self-actualization', I find it is next to impossible to pinpoint exactly what many people believe. Their relativism--that is extremely self-centric orientation--causes them to constantly re-interpret and re-define normal words on their own terms; we can hardly communicate meaningfully.

Either ghosts exist or they don't. Either God exists or He doesn't. Even a simple "I don't know" is better than saying "It depends on you"!

The pursuit of happiness

Being around my two nephews when they were just tender younglings created many happy memories for me. One time I was having dinner with them when a silly idea came over me. I chewed my food real fine and then out of the blue I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue to show my half-chewed meal. When they saw that, they gave out such priceless expressions that I remember them to this day. First came their look of shock (they were old enough to know this was not normal adult behaviour), then their eyes sparkled with delight, after that came big grins, and before I knew it, they were trying to one up me with their own displays of partially chewed dinner. We laughed so hard; I felt like I was the coolest aunt on earth!

When I look back on many happy moments in the past, they often happened when I was the least conscious about pursuing happiness. Usually my attention was on someone else--for example, while looking after my nephews--or when I was part of some cause with like-minded people trying to achieve a common goal. The point is, happy feelings almost never came as a direct result of my pursuit of it; they were by-products of focusing on something else so much that any self-interest of mine was diverted.

We live in an age and culture where the pursuit of happiness is the common and acceptable raison d'etre. We choose schools, careers, spouses, friends, places to live, all for the purpose of making ourselves happy. The irony is that happiness still eludes many despite their best efforts and even 'having arrived'. 

Christians should know better than to follow this path. The Bible never tells us to pursue happiness; instead we are to seek God, His righteousness, His Kingdom. There is no promise that we will be happy by pursuing these (in eternity for sure, but not necessarily in the day to day), but we can know that we're not wasting our lives grasping for something that can never be obtained by direct pursuit.

The devil is powerless

Last night I had a freakish dream. In it, the devil (who was faceless) asked me a series of questions, the last of which was, "where are you?" After surveying my surrounding I answered that I was in a cemetery. As soon as the answer came out, I felt a force pushing me down into the ground and I saw the shadow of my body in the soil--I was being buried. My mind knew that my body was asleep in a dream, I also knew that the only way to get rid of this demonic nuisance was to call out loud the name of Jesus. And that was a problem, because I was asleep; I had to wake my body up. That I did, and even with my weak groggy voice, the slight whisper of Jesus' name made the devil disappear.

This isn't the first time I've been harassed this way in my sleep. Every now and then dark spirits enter my dreams. Sometimes they taunt my insecurities; sometimes they threaten my safety. But mostly all they can accomplish is just sleep deprivation. After many experiences like this, I realize one thing--the devil and demons are powerless, the most that they can do to me is wreck my night's sleep. They can't harm me physically; they lack physical substance. They are a vapour. 

No wonder the devil loves this specific deception so much--that is, the lie that our bodies are bad. And no wonder the devil must tempt people to do wrong and use people as agents of evil deeds; on its own the devil has no power to conquer physicality. 

Overcoming fear

In a crazy evil sort of way Col. Qaddafi is a very smart man. He is an expert on words that invoke fear; from his murderous threats to his own people on Libya's state television "we will find you house by house, door by door, we will find you in your closets..." to his reaction on the US as they began airstrikes on his military strongholds "You will regret intervening in our internal affairs. You are helping people on the wrong side...it will be a long war". His calculated words are spoken always with the objective of paralyzing people with fear. When people are afraid, they will fail to act, and thereby concede to his control. Qaddafi is a master manipulator who uses the Devil's fear tactics to exert power.

Although we do not fall under evil leadership like that here in the West, we are not free from the Devil's fear tactics. We too succumb to thoughts and whispers of smaller fears in our minds, rendering us inactive at just the time action is needed to right wrongs. When we standby while witnessing bullying in schools and work places, or shun certain individuals because of peer pressure and gossip we concede power to the Devil. 

Whether it is petty fear or great fear, scare tactics work as long as we are concerned only for ourselves. Fear stems from our basic instinct for self-preservation. So how can we overcome this basic instinct? Christians have this admonishment from Jesus: "If you try to hang on to your life, you will loose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it." (Matthew 16:25)  These are paradoxical words that tells us to save our lives by giving it up. Jesus himself demonstrated it by dying on the cross. His subsequent resurrection is proof that we too will have eternal life no matter what happens to our current body. Therefore we can afford to risk safety for the benefit of others--and gain enormous power over fear and those who would use it against us.

Acts of God

In the wake of Japan's calamity last weekend, some have expressed their dismay at God for authorizing such devastation. Others attempt to defend God's goodness by attributing all natural catastrophes to the sin and subsequent fall of man--suggesting that God isn't really involved in the world at all. While its important to think about such things, it is slightly beside the point...really, is anyone of us in the place to judge God? Is he so small (are we so big) that he needs our defence?

I doubt that anyone who has experienced the terror of an earthquake or a ten-meter wave or a tornado wants to get into an argument about God's goodness. Indeed, having faced such enormous disasters, our insignificance becomes obvious.  How small we are.

Christians don't need to defend God because he clearly owns up to his deeds with these words, "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disasters; I, the Lord, do all these things." (Isaiah 45: 7)

Instead of making judgement about acts of God, isn't it more productive to mull over acts of men?  For example, what happened to all the media coverage over Libya's ongoing man-made and preventable disaster?

What's in a prayer?

Our pastor has been preaching on the topic of prayer this month. This week he quoted celebrities like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, who Twittered their prayers for Japan as it grapples with the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquakes and tsunami over the past weekend.

I am not a Justin Bieber fan, but out of curiosity I looked online and found that he actually wrote a song entitled 'Pray'. When I read the lyrics I became impressed; this 17 year-old got something right about prayer that most religious people miss. He sings repeatedly in the song "...tell me how I can make a change". He didn't write "do something God" or "why is this happening God?". No, he wrote something God would be pleased to hear: "How can I do something about this?"

I have heard--and prayed myself--so many pie-in-the-sky prayers treating God like a magical Sugar-Daddy that it's hard to believe a wise God would answer those prayers. I'm not saying we shouldn't make requests to God--the Bible tells us to do so(!)--but when we pray we often stop right after we've off-loaded our burdens onto God and fail to listen to him for answers, for direction--for his heart. 

Prayer is two-way communication where we should expect God to speak. His most powerful answers come in the form of internal changes that transform our attitude and behaviour towards the situation or  person that we are troubled by, thereby affecting an outcome to our situation. Changes like these are so profound that when we experience them we know God's Spirit is at work inside us, answering prayer. Of course, God can answer prayer outside of our influence entirely. But we need to be mindful that he is apparently more interested in changing us (and others) than he is in changing our circumstances. 

We often mistake prayer to be the means through which we solicit divine help to fulfill our agenda, quite the contrary, it is more appropriately the means through which God fulfills his agenda through us. 

Fair weather friends

A fair weather friend is someone who is warm when the friendship benefits them and cold when it does not. This oscillation between hot and cold may not be intentional; the fair weather friend may not even know that they're so fickle and utilitarian. We all know people like this in our circle. And, if we're able to see ourselves clearly, we probably notice that we sometimes behave this way towards others too.

How do we deal with people who treat us like this? Do we avoid them like most self-help gurus would suggest? Are they really 'toxic'? Are we all 'toxic'?  

Jesus was a magnet for fair weather friends. He was very popular when he miraculously healed diseases and fed masses of people, but when persecution came, everyone including his closest friends deserted him. I find it interesting that Jesus was not surprised by this abandonment. He knew all along that his disciples--the very ones he chose--didn't have the wherewithal to stick with him through trouble (Matthew 26:31-25, 41; John 2:24-25).

And yet their failure as friends didn't seem to bother him. Why not? Probably because his life objective was to benefit others to begin with (John 10:10). If we adopt Jesus's objective in our lives, fair weather friends won't bother us so much either.  Who knows, they may even become less fickle--in the end the disciples accepted death rather than betray Jesus... 

Use it or lose it

There was a time in my distant past when I could play music by Beethoven, Chopin and Haydn on the piano. My fingers danced on the keyboard; after enough practice, my digits would go on auto-pilot, setting my mind free to fully enjoy the beauty of those melodies. Later on, having gotten bored with piano, I dreamed of being a dancer and willingly put my body through multiple hours of daily practice in the studio. After three years, my body was so fit and agile that doing jetés, pirouettes, and rond de jambe en l'air was as easy as taking a stroll. In both cases, practice was the key to proficiency and enjoyment.

I can't make such boasts any more. Neither my body nor my fingers dance these days for one simple reason: the lack of practice during the years that have slipped by. I have proven the unfortunate 'use it or loose it' saying. Recently, scientific research has empirically affirmed what we all know. Studies on muscle mass, bone density and brain plasticity indicate, generally speaking, lack of use diminishes function over time. 

Knowing all this I found these words from Jesus surprisingly fresh and relevant, even though he spoke them two thousand years ago: "To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away." (Matthew 25:29)

Who doesn't have a blind spot?

We have all heard of the illustration of five blind men and an elephant. With each man only able to touch one part of the animal--one feeling the trunk, another a tusk, a different man touching a foot, etc.--they each gather a completely different experience and form different beliefs about what an elephant actually is. Some people use this to 'explain' the differences between all religions concluding that all paths lead to the same truth; while all the men describe something completely different, there is just one elephant. 

This sounds open-minded and accepting...except that proponents of this view (and it is just another point of view) assume that they are not blind and can see the whole elephant at once. This assumption of being all-seeing is in fact a similarly close minded view to the ones they critique while being, ironically, the most arrogant position of all religious views(!)

Richard Wurmbrand once wrote that every perspective has a blind spot. For example, when we look to the ceiling, we will not see the floor, when we look down on the floor, the ceiling exits our view. Therefore the more we fixate on one point of view, the more we will miss other vantage points. In this case, if we fixate on neutralizing differences, ironically, we nullify the legitimacy of each perspective.

The way to work out differences isn't to pretend they are not there. Instead we are much better off acknowledging that we, finite human beings, have blinds spots and working to understand other people's points of view.

Soaring like eagles

Once in a very long while, I see an eagle or two soaring in the downtown sky outside my window. That's right, beautiful bald eagles cruising over the city. When they appear, it is a treat that commands my undivided attention. Unlike seagulls, crows or other common birds, they rarely flap their wings during flight. They simply expand their wings and glide. Naturalists tell us that eagles depend on thermals (rising hot air from the earth) to fly; because their wingspan is so wide, flapping is extremely inefficient for them and it tires them out quickly. On the other hand, those same large wings allow them to soar over long distances and at great heights, as long as the thermal air condition is right. Eagles look for thermals before taking flight to avoid undue exhaustion.

There is a lesson we can learn from these creatures. From time to time, we feel tired as if we're running in place, going no where.  The Bible tells us that we have a thermal system we can rely upon; the words go like this: "...but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." (Isaiah 40:30-31)

Feeling fatigued and tired of life? It's time to set our hopes on God; he is able to carry us to further and higher destinations than mere flapping of our wings will ever take us.

Who's the alpha dog?

My younger brother just got a white terrier pup--Healey--named after his beloved car project, a vintage Austin Healey. This new addition to their family is one hyper pup; she jumps, licks and paws you the moment you enter her territory. Apparently such canine behaviour is not about her trying to be cute; she's establishing her status. The more attention you give her, the more alpha she gets, to the point where you get the impression you are her pup and that she feels responsible for your well-being. That does not sound so bad except when you leave the dog for a few hours it worries itself sick, like a nervous mother, and starts barking non-stop, driving the neighbours insane. That's happened to other friends of mine, who evidently had become their dogs' subjects. 

The best way to establish your status with a dog is to ignore them sometimes, not catering to their every whim. It isn't always easy to do, but establishing this proper status, where you're the parent rather than the other way around, actually relieves the dog of burdens that they can't carry. Being an alpha comes with responsibility. 

I wonder if that's why sometimes God seems to ignore us when we pray. Shopping list prayers where we just ask for things or where we direct how things should happen can be a little like Healey grasping for alpha status. Sure, we are being faithful by praying a lot and often, but if all we do is dictate what we want in prayer, that's just a subtle way of taking control over our Master. 

Instead of praying that way we can let it be a means of re-aligning our loyalty and subjection to our Master. And with this attitude we will find relief from the burdens God lovingly purposes to carry for us. 

The choice is yours

Some years ago when one of my nephews was nine years old, I took him shopping for a pair of shorts. He had a $20 bill and paid for his $15 purchase with cash. The cashier must have had a bad or crazy day  because he gave back a handful of coins that added up to at least $10 in change. When my nephew saw how much he was getting back, he just stared at the coins in his hand without moving for a good 10 seconds. Here was a picture of a 9 year-old being tempted by greed, and I will never forget the intensity of that moment. I pretended not to notice and waited to see what he would do.

My nephew did not succumb to greed that time. He returned the extra cash on his own accord even though it took some serious decision making on his part. After the mini-drama, I put my arm around him and expressed how proud I was of him; his face was beaming all the way home as though he won a million bucks. 

We run into similar dilemmas, not just as kids but throughout our entire lives. Usually there isn't anyone to build us up when we make a selfless decision, but you know inside it was the right thing--and that feels good; it's freeing. On the other hand, I have a theory that if a person goes the opposite way, giving in to temptation, continuously make morally bad choices, their conscience will become so callous and insensitive that eventually they lose touch with reality. I think we're watching this at work in the soon-to-be ex-leader of Libya, Col. Qaddafi. After decades of nursing his own greed, he has clearly gone off the deep end, so to speak.

Greed disguised as virtue

In a dream last night I saw someone from my life who personifies greed; she was locked in a room, contorted on her bed as she whispered "it's only $250..." The vision of her bondage to greed was so terrifying that it woke me up. 

In my waking life, I think nothing of someone who works very hard for money. Our society considers being industrious to be a virtue. We rightfully think it irresponsible to work little or none at all, expecting to live on other people's charity. Sloth is a bad thing.

But what if we already have plenty for what we need? Many people who have enough can't stop working solely because they can't let go of the monetary opportunity. Working hard fortifies our sense of entitlement; it justifies self-indulgence. Greed works in subtle ways, it wears virtuous disguises--like being called 'industrious'--as it drains our sense of self away by enlarging our quest for more. The idea of 'I have enough' never enters the enslaved mind. Though when it comes to drumming up reasons to keep on accumulating wealth or status, the enslaved mind exhibits great creativity. 

Let the dream serve as a warning for the perils of greed. Someone whose whole being is consumed by one desire--'wanting more'--is not a pretty sight. At the end of this life, what part of such a being will be left to bring to the new life on the other side of death?