vita brevis

Without Excuse

2005-08-10T22:07:00.000+08:00

I recently procured The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and have till to this very moment struggle to finish the book due to my short attention span. Notwithstanding, when William of Baskerville, a Francisan, elucidated his philosophy behind unravelling the mystery of Brunellus, the abbot's horse which went missing, to the Benedictine novice Adso he quoted the following...

Alanus de Insulis, 1128 - 1202:

"omnis mundi creatura

quasi liber et pictura

nobis est in speculum"

William was, in other words, illustrating the marvels of God's Creation and based his sleuth work on the aesthetics of nature. However this led me to think about...

Epistle to the Romans, chapter one verses nineteen to twenty one:

"Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened."

The most disconcerting thing is that for those who feel most akin or reconciled to creation may not have a no clue at all who the Creator is! It is a tragic irony that one recognises or acknowledges the design behind the splendours, but is oblivious or ignorant of the Designer.

Skill To Fabricate Himself?

2005-08-10T14:02:00.000+08:00

"Can any praise be worthy of the Lord's majesty? How magnificent his strength! How inscrutable his wisdom! Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud. But still, since he is part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.

[...]

Those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise of him, because all who look for him shall find him, and when they find him they will praise him. I shall look for you, Lord, by praying to you and as I pray I shall believe in you, because we have had preachers to tell us about you. It is my faith that calls to you, Lord, the faith which you gave me and made to live in me through the merits of your Son, who became man, and through ministry of your preacher.

But, dust and ashes though I am, let me appeal to your pity, since it is to you in your mercy that I speak, not to a man, who would simply laugh at me. Perhaps you too may laugh at me, but you will relent and have pity on me. For all I want to tell you, Lord, is that I do not know where I came from when I was born into this life which leads to death - or should I say, this death which leads to life? This much is hidden from me. But, although I do not remember it all myself, I know that when I came into the world all the comforts which your mercy provides were there ready for me. This I was told by my parents, the father who begat me and the mother who conceived me, the two from whose bodies you formed me in the limits of time. So it was that I was given the comfort of woman's milk.

[...]

I do acknowledge you, Lord of heaven and earth, and I praise you for my first beginnings, although I cannot remember them. But you have allowed men to discover these things about themselves by watching other babies, and also to learn much from what women have to tell. I know that I was a living person even at that age, and as I came towards the end of infancy I tried to find signs to convey my feelings to others. Where could such a living creature come from if not from you, O Lord? Can it be that any man has skill to fabricate himself? Or can there be some channel by which we derive our life and our very existence from some other source than you? Surely we can only derive them from our Maker, from you, Lord, to whom living and being are not different things, since infinite life and infinite being are one and the same. For you are infinite and never change. In you 'today' never comes to an end: and yet our 'today' does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'. The countless days of our lives and of our forefathers' lives have passed by within your 'today'. From it they have received their due measure of duration and their very existence. And so it will be with all the other days which are still to come. But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in you 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before.

Need it concern me if some people cannot understand this? Let them ask what it means, and be glad to ask: but they may content themselves with the question alone. For it is better for them to find you and leave the question unanswered than to find the answer without finding you."

Saint Augustine, AD 354 - 430
Confessions of a Sinner
translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin

Reasonable Probability

2005-08-02T19:20:00.000+08:00

Recently Ernest and I were sharing our views about life and naturally and inevitably the focus shifted to the existence of God. Nowadays people demand empirical evidence so much. Whatever happened to trust? Colin once told me that trust was based on past experiences. However Saint Paul, in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians chapter five verse seven, reminds us that:

"For we walk by faith, not by sight."

Although the aforementioned Biblical verse is meant for the Christians, I think it means just as much for those outside the Fold. Matthew Henry wrote in his Concise Commentary that faith is for this world, and sight is reserved for the other world; and it is our duty and will be our interest to walk by faith till we come to live by sight.

Being the self proclaimed amateur apologist that I am, I have this pocket sized analogy about faith [which I told Alec about]... Let us pretend that humanity is like a blind man who wishes to cross the road. Then comes along a helpful stranger who lends a helping hand. The blind man has never acquainted with this stranger before and deprived of sight, he is even more inclined to resist the aid offered. But despite the doubts that beset him, the blind man still allows himself to be led by the stranger across the road; and this stranger is God.

Sometimes attempts to convince people of the existence of God can be like the frantic run of a headless chicken, not to say the least it is futile. With the heart unchanged, a changed mind does not make much of a difference but while God changes the heart, it is mandated that children of God ought to do their best to change the minds of men. This afternoon I was surfing the Net when I chanced upon an essay The Presumptuousness of Atheism by Paul Copan. I have tweezed out certain portions:

"... Moreover, the theist can muster credible reasons for belief in God. For example, one can argue that the contingency of the universe — in light of Big Bang cosmology, the expanding universe, and the second law of thermodynamics (which implies that the universe has been "wound up" and will eventually die a heat death) — demonstrates that the cosmos has not always been here. It could not have popped into existence uncaused, out of absolutely nothing, because we know that whatever begins to exist has a cause. A powerful First Cause like the God of theism plausibly answers the question of the universe’s origin. Also, the fine-tunedness of the universe — with complexly balanced conditions that seem tailored for life — points to the existence of an intelligent Designer.

The existence of objective morality provides further evidence for belief in God. If widow-burning or genocide is really wrong and not just cultural, then it is difficult to account for this universally binding morality, with its sense of "oughtness," on strictly naturalistic terms. (Most people can be convinced that the difference between Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa is not simply cultural.) These and other reasons demonstrate that the believer is being quite rational — not presumptuous — in embracing belief in God."

I was chatting with Yong Feng via MSN Messenger this afternoon and he presented quite a bleak view of life. I wonder if he believes in a God, though not necessarily that of the Old and New Testaments; Yong Feng confided that he was beginning to suspect life was meaningless. Atheism does not hold water, only agnosticism does. This is what Paul Copan has to say in The Presumptuousness of Atheism:

"...in the absence of evidence for God’s existence, agnosticism, not atheism, is the logical presumption. Even if arguments for God’s existence do not persuade, atheism should not be presumed because atheism is not neutral; pure agnosticism is. Atheism is justified only if there is sufficient evidence against God’s existence."

I shall let John Blanchard, author of Does God Believe in Atheists?, to have the last word:

"Facing any issue [in this case the Existence of God] in which diametrically opposed views seem to have both strengths and weaknesses, we need to examine the data with an open mind (or at least a readiness to listen to what both sides are saying) and then come to conclusion based either on what becomes satisfying evidence, or failing such evidence, reasonable probability. In other words, when we can get no clear answer to the question, 'What does this PROVE?', we should ask, 'Where does it POINT?"

Preprogrammed

2005-07-31T17:08:00.000+08:00

This is an email titled Food for Thought that I sent to two colleagues in the Army on 11th June 2005, Saturday.

We can talk about human beings as moral creatures. Man has Conscience. But where does this Conscience come from?

For an Evolutionist, the Conscience is genetically generated through millions of years and is part of the survival-of-the-fittest instinct. The Conscience is being trained and nurtured over time to be a guide and ruler for life - how the Evolutionist ought to behave and think and feel in order to sustain his life in the community. The Evolutionist's Conscience will give him a clue how to cooperate with others and preserve himself. The Conscience is crafted and moulded as a tool to ensure the survival of the Evolutionist.

For the Modern Day Man, the Conscience is basically also a guide and ruler for life, quite similar to the Conscience of the Evolutionist. The Conscience reminds the Modern Day Man on how he ought to behave and think and feel. But the Modern Day Man will say that the Conscience is a general consensus of the Society. Over time, Civilisations have their own moral codes and the Modern Day Man will say that the Conscience is determined by what the Society decides at that particular era. Ethical standards may differ and vary from one nation to another, and thus the Conscience may also differ and vary from one nation to another. Of course I am speaking this generally. The moral absolutes like murder and theft may still be universally true but ethical issues like premarital sex and capital punishment are open to disagreement. Modern Day Man will say that the new born infant is like an empty moral vessel and ethically he is filled by upbringing at home, education from school, and societal norms.

Now, how about the Christian? The Christian will proclaim that Man has a preprogrammed Conscience that naturally reacts and can distinguish right from wrong. Of course after Adam and Eve fell, the entire human race fell with them. Thus the Fallen Man's heart is hardened and his Conscience is now therefore faulty. The Fallen Man or Sinner has no Light in his heart and thus his Conscience is unreliable as a moral/ethical guide and ruler for life. Notice that I mentioned "unreliable" and not "incapable" or "useless". The Sinner's Conscience is not perfect but is still operating.

Okay, I have finally reached the climax of this email!

C S Lewis offers this anecdote. When an Atheist sees a drowning man in the raging sea, two thoughts will instantly pop in his head. The first is the Evolutionary thought. In the Atheist's mind, he will be selfish and probably be thinking that it is not worth the trouble saving the drowning man. The sea is rough and the wind is strong - why risk losing his own life in order to save another? The perils of saving this drowning man intuitively made him to preserve and protect his own self interests. This is the Evolutionary thought that runs through his head. Then there is second thought that pops in his head. This is the Modern Day thought. The Atheist has learnt at home and in school that courage is a virtue. Society praises kindness. Thus the Atheist will be pressured to follow what he has been taught so far and will like to practise it.

C S Lewis then adds that [this is a very important point so pay attention!] this is where the God-given Conscience comes in. The Atheist will have to decide to either follow his Evolutionary intuitions or to obey his Modern Day instincts. In other words, although on the micro level, there are two conflicting consciences [Evolutionary versus Modern Day] that the Atheist has to cope with, there is a higher Conscience that transcends both. On the higher plane, this Conscience is the one that the Atheist uses to help him resolve whether to protect his welfare [and let the drowning man die because this is a survival-of-the-fittest situation] or to risk his life to save that drowning man [which is a good thing].

Remember I said that the Christian's Conscience, though faulty, can still be used to distinguish right and wrong? So in this case, the Atheist though he does not believe in God, unawares to him, the Atheist is actually using a God-given Conscience as a guide and ruler for him to choose either to follow the Evolutionary intuition [which is deemed wrong] or to obey the Modern Day instinct [which is considered to be right].

What do you reckon?

Thaminator

Will You Help Me?

2005-07-31T16:44:00.000+08:00

This is an email titled Somewhere in Between the Middle that I sent to a colleague in the Army on 14th March 2005, Monday.

Colin!

I am trying to string together a few propositions from various sources to complement what "The Middle" was all about and it is my wish that this email's contents are as concise and lucid as possibly can be.

Well, as I have mentioned to you while on the MRT just now, Bertrand Russell stated that he was an Agnostic, and refused to be labelled an Atheist. Before I commence, I shall say a bit about Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970). He was a thinker, philosopher, mathematician, educational innovator and champion of intellectual, social and sexual freedom, campaigner for peace and for civil and human rights. My brother [who is an Atheist too] possesses a copy of Bertrand Russell's Autobiography whereas I own his History of Western Philosophy so in a way you can say both of us are fans of him!

Betrand Russell actually wrote a book titled Why I Am Not A Christian. I have not read what he wrote but the text is widely available on the Internet and an inquiry in any search engines should gratify your curiosity. [By the way, I think that the conversation between Bertrand Russell and Father Copleston was incredibly intellectual and I do not think I am adequately mentally equipped to appreciate and comprehend everything that was being discussed] However, I have perused a portion of a transcript of a debate between Bertrand Russell and Father Copleston regarding the Existence of God, and I shall briefly list down noteworthy points brought up by both parties. Father Copleston was a Jesuit Catholic priest and he was the author of a series of books called A History of Philosophy.

When Father Copleston asked, "would you say that the non-existence of God can be proved?", Bertrand Russell replied, "No, I should not say that: my position is agnostic."

Ravi Zacharias, a Christian apologist, gave a seminar titled Why I Am Not An Atheist, as a response to Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not A Christian. Ravi Zacharias commented that if you are in a class of foundational philosophy, you will realise that Atheism is illogical, irrational, and thus impossible. Atheism, in original Greek, meant alpha-theo which refers to No God, a negative absolute or absolute negative. It is self defeating, a self contradiction to affirm the non-existence of God because unless you have unlimited knowledge of the Universe, you cannot deny the existence of God who has infinite knowledge.

Ravi Zacharias, hence, commented that Bertrand Russell understood that and thus he was discerning enough to adopt an Agnostic position, rather than an Atheistic one. But what is an Agnostic?

I shall allow www.dictionary.com to enlighten us:

n.
One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.
adj : uncertain of all claims to knowledge [syn: agnostical] n : a person who doubts truth of religion [syn: doubter]

www.dictionary.com then gives us a Word History and the following is an extract:

"An agnostic does not deny the existence of God and heaven but holds that one cannot know for certain whether or not they exist. The term agnostic was fittingly coined by the 19th-century British scientist Thomas H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact knowledge. He made up the word from the prefix a-, meaning “without, not,” as in amoral, and the noun Gnostic. Gnostic is related to the Greek word gnsis, “knowledge,” which was used by early Christian writers to mean “higher, esoteric knowledge of spiritual things” hence, Gnostic referred to those with such knowledge."

Okay, let's move on! Ravi Zacharias said that there is such a person as a Soft Honest Agnostic who is defined as "I am open to the evidence [of the existence of God], so will you help me?" and I certainly hope that you will be receptive enough for that. Of course, indeed, I have no doubt that you are receptive because you have been so tolerant and patient and obliging to me all this while! And whether you are eventually convinced is totally beyond my control but nevertheless, I shall endeavour to persuade you with the time and energy and opportunities I am granted.

I will like to quote more from the debate between Father Copleston and Bertrand Russell but I think my body is whining from exhaustion so I shall just type a couple more paragraphs and I will be done. Of course, perhaps, it will be premature for me to write so much stuff down so I guess it is beneficial to wait for your answer before proceeding on with more arguments. So to conclude this email, here are some very simple but not any less valid perspectives.

A. We all have desires. We all desire something to satisfy us. We desire for perfect truth, life, and love; truth without error, life without death, and love without hatred. Yet, we do not find these things since we find imperfect truth, life, and love in the world. Therefore there has to be Perfect Truth, Life, and Love, which is transcendent. Perfect Truth, Life, and Love is what we call God. If there is nothing to Satisfy, why do we have Desires?

B. We all make judgments such as right and wrong. We condemn evil and praise good. However, we could not condemn such an act as evil unless there is an objective standard which everyone follows. A moral law presupposes a moral Lawgiver just as a constitution presupposes Constitutors. This Moral Lawgiver is what we call God.

All right. Fine! I confess and admit that I am very long winded. There is no sign of me stopping. But I simply cannot resist typing the following down! I promise, I shall halt straight after what I have written this:

Remember Norman Geisler? I mentioned him once in my "The Middle" email and Norman Geisler is a Christian philosopher. He claims a Ten Step To Prove That God Exists.

1. Some things undeniably exist.
2. My non-existence is possible.
3. Whatever has this possibility not to exist is currently caused to exist by another.
4. There cannot be an infinite regress of current causes of existence.
5. Therefore, a first Uncaused Cause of my current existence exists.
6. This Uncaused Cause must be infinite, unchanging, all powerful, all knowing, and all perfect.
7. This infinite being is appropriately called God.
8. Therefore God exists.
9. This God who exists is identical to the God described in the Christian Scriptures.
10. Therefore the God described in the Bible exists.

I hope the above is not too naive for your taste!

Good night.

Yours,
Thaminator

Life That Has Lost Its Focus

2005-07-28T23:05:00.000+08:00

Nigel told me about this yesterday. Doctor Ravi Zacharias would be giving a talk titled "Life That Has Lost Its Focus" this evening and I attended it with him and his sister Ailene. Here is an account of what transpired as well as the contents of the talk which may the Lord grant me the scruples, wisdom and diligence to faithfully retell.

Preceding the talk was an introduction of Ravi Zacharias by a spokesman for Eagles Ministries which was the organiser for the night's event. He shared his personal encounters with and impressions of Ravi Zacharias and one of the statements by Ravi Zacharias that stayed indelible in his mind was that evangelism is making dead people live.

After some light hearted humour, Ravi Zacharias embarked on his speech by reiterating the painfully obvious - that we are living in uncertain times. [He himself was giving a talk in Oxford University on the very morning that those terrorist bombs went off in London!] It is tough for a Christian to navigate with absolutes in a relative world but the fundamentals of the Holy Bible is able to answer the deepest questions of humanity. Ravi Zacharias also adds that it is no job for a Christian to determine a person's salvation and whether the grace of redemption has been bestowed upon him... for there will be wheat and tare in the field till the Lord divides the harvest.

Ravi Zacharias then referred us to the Scriptural reference for the talk which were chapters twenty one and twenty two of the Second Book of Kings, where he juxtaposed Manasseh and Josiah as two Jewish monarchs whose lives were drastically unlike because the former had lost the focus in his life whereas the latter had focus in his.

What is History? Ravi Zacharias asked, and how to define it? History is not just merely the documentation of the power of kings and demagogues; for instance, Saddam Hussein was known to harbour aspirations to emulate the construction of Nebuchadnezzar's empire. History in Karl Marx's eyes was the sheer realism and pragmatism of economic theories and philosophies. And then for Hegel, who believed that it was not economics that interwine but ideas, History is about convolution of concepts. Thesis will spawn antithesis and both will merge to form synthesis and so on in their cyclical vortex.

For the Christian, the Holy Bible opens with the words "In the beginning God..." and Ravi Zacharias commented History is His Story.

And indeed it is so; Ravi Zacharias declared that History is the essence of innumerable biographies. Since bios means life whereas graphe means to write, biography simply implies life written out, a legacy left behind that makes the difference.

Manessah went against the reformation of his father Hezekiah to bring the Israelites back to God. Ravi Zacharias then turned our attention to the Book of Deuteronomy, which apparently seemed to suggest was Jesus Christ's favourite book because He quoted it the most when He was troubled. Ravi Zacharias mentioned a threefold description that I could not quite trace its origin from because I must have either been daydreaming or dozing off but here it was anyway:
1. Humility
2. Spirituality
3. Faith

Suddenly it was time to flip to the Gospel of Saint Matthew chapter twenty two and I found myself hearing Ravi Zacharias saying that it chronicled a profound discussion between Jesus Christ and the Pharisees. We all knew the answer:

"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."

Then Ravi Zacharias' voice boomed, "So in whose image are you made in? Give yourself to Him." God has invested intrinsic worth in each and every one of us, a worth that is not contrived but essential since we are fashioned in the image of God. This was an exhortation to the Christians and Ravi Zacharias mentioned this because of the negative example of Manessah whose rebellion accelerated the entry and progress of Paganism. Manessah turned his back to God and turned his face away from Truth. Ravi Zacharias aptly quoted G K Chesterton:

"There is only one angle to stand, but so many angles to fall."

Take Truth away, people will not believe in nothing - they will believe in anything! Therein lies a void or vacuum, this emptiness that is reminiscent of the grave warning of Jesus Christ in chapter twelve of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, verses forty three to forty five:

"When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation."

The Atheist gayly claims that he is dancing on the grave of Christendom... but he does not know there is nobody in it. Ravi Zacharias hastily plunged into the exploration of how just one man can lead millions into untold evil, as Manessah had via his infanticide, religious persecution and total abolition and abandonment of the Truth. Joseph Stalin was another fine example. Stalin was an apostate; punching the air with a fist, out of sheer defiance to Heaven, the ex-seminary student slaughtered millions of his own people. This carnage was the outcome of Stalin's desire to be God.

It was at this juncture that Ravi Zacharias appealed to all youths to learn to think well, to think reasonably, and to think rationally. He then proposed the following:
1. Objective moral values only exist if God exists
2. Objective moral values do exist, thus God exists
There are points of references or yardsticks for moral values; in other words, there are ethical absolutes or benchmarks whether you believe them or not.

A nation has reached its lowest ebb when it victimises itself, when it abuses its own children, mused Ravi Zacharias. We cannot desecrate life without paying a heavy and bitter price. Life at its very core is sacred. Again G K Chesterton popped up for a scintillating and stimulating thought:

"Everytime you remove a fence, always ask why it was there in the first place."

Ravi Zacharias added that the Moral Law was established for a reason. He then shared with us about his son's teeball games and this led on to the thought that games are not played to protect the rules but the rules are meant to protect the game... if you violate the rules, you cannot play the game well.

According to Ravi Zacharias, the term worship held three meanings:
1. to prostrate oneself
2. service with one's hands
3. piety and propriety
Which entails the trinitarian chain of reverence, work and ceremony, a string or strand that runs through Life. Martin Luther did not come to do away with the priesthood, but the laity. Whether you are a coalminer, a teacher, or a pilot, your vocation is sacred. Worship is coexistent with life.

Ravi Zacharias raised three bizarrely unique aspects of God:
1. He is our conviction of safety
2. He brings a bout of change in us
3. He relieves us from the tyranny of the immediate
In conclusion, we were reminded that History is a story of innumerable biographies. Manessah lost his focus in life and lost his soul; Josiah found his focus in life and found God.

Ravi Zacharias' closing prayer ended with, "God, rescue us from the tyranny of the immediate for we are made to live for eternity."

Such a Song and Dance

2005-07-27T07:12:00.000+08:00

A lovely, poignant dialogue between a youth and an elderly below; it serves to illustrate marvellously what is profound is actually simple - and even if the intellect acquiesces, it is the heart that the LORD needs to bend and break.

An excerpt from Does God Believe in Atheists? by John Blanchard; also mentioned in my email titled 2nd Episode to Leon:

"Young Man: I am an atheist. There is no God.
Old Man: Then would you please give me the great privilege of shaking your hand?
Young Man: You can certainly shake my hand, but I don't see why you should think that's a privilege.
Old Man: But it is! You have no idea how excited I am. If you would allow me to shake your hand I would remember this day for the rest of my life.
Young Man: Why on earth do you say that?
Old Man: Because you are by far the most remarkable and outstanding person I have ever met.
Young Man: This is becoming ridiculous. There is nothing unusual about me. I am just an ordinary person, convinced that God does not exist. Why are you making such a song and dance about that?
Old Man: Because I have never met anyone who has been alive throughout all time, visited every spot in universe and knows every single that is possible for a human being to know.
Young Man: Well, you still haven't.
Old Man: Then let me ask you some questions. If you have not been alive throughout all time, won't you accept that it is possible that God does exist, but that he revealed himself to humanity at some point before you were born? If you have not been everywhere in the universe, won't you accept that it is possible that God does exist, but that he is somewhere in the universe that you have never visited? And as you admit that you don't know everything it is possible to know, won't you admit that there may be evidence of God's existence within that body of knowledge you don't possess?"

Light That Lasts Longer

2005-07-26T10:18:00.000+08:00

Book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter one verses ten and eleven:

"And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."

With today's secular worldview that beyond the End lies Nothing is a Satanic lie that has chained us all for ages with its nonchalant nihilism. To proclaim that after death is null of life, to shrug off an inevitable Armaggedon fundamentally robs existence of its meaning and mocks the Creator and undermines His sovereignty. It is escapism, delusion masqueraded as obstinate oblivion of the presence of God.

C S Lewis gives us two instances of how the world views the Promised Return of Jesus Christ in his essay The World's Last Night:

"The harsher form would run, in the mouth of an atheist, something like this: 'You see that, after all, your vaunted Jesus was really the same sort of crank or charlatan as all the other writers of apocalyptic.'"

"The gentler form, used more probably by a modernist, would be like this: 'Every great man is partly of his own age and partly for all time. What matters in his work is always that which transcends his age, not that which he shared with a thousand forgotten contemporaries. We value Shakespeare for the glory of his language and his knowledge of the human heart, which were his own; not for the belief in witches or the divine right of kings, or his failure to take a daily bath. So with Jesus. His belief in a speedy and catastrophic end to history belongs to him not as a great teacher but as a first century Palestinian peasant. It was one of his inevitable limitations, best forgotten. We must concentrate on what distinguished him from other first-century Palestinian peasants, on his moral and social teaching.'"

C S Lewis then reveals to us how the New Testament throws a monkey wrench into the clockwork gears of modern / postmodern thought regarding the concept of Second Coming and how cynicism of the Apocalypse is overthrown by the Word of God:

"But there is worse to come. 'Say what you like,' we shall be told, 'the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the second coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, "this generation shall not pass till all these things be done." And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.'"

"It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within fourteen words of it should come the statement 'But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.' The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side. That they stood thus in the mouth of Jesus himself, and were not merely placed thus by the reporter, we surely need not doubt. Unless the reporter were perfectly honest he would never have recorded the confession of ignorance at all; he could have had no motive for doing so except a desire to tell the whole truth."

I shall at this point truncate this entry lest the length be repulsive but notwithstanding I must conclude with what C S Lewis has summed the status quo as:

"The doctrine of the second coming is deeply uncongenial to the whole evolutionary or developmental character of modern thought. We have been taught to think of the world as something that grows slowly towards perfection, something that 'progresses' or 'evolves'. Christian apocalyptic offers us no such hope. It does not even foretell (which would be more tolerable to our habits of thought)a gradual decay. It foretells a sudden, violent end imposed from without: an extinguisher popped on to the candle, a brick flung at the gramophone, a curtain rung down on the play - 'Halt!'"

"The doctrine of the second coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph. This seems to some people intolerably frustrating. So many things would be interrupted. Perhaps you were going to get married next month, perhaps you were going to get a raise next week: you may be on the verge of a great scientific discovery; you may be maturing great societal and political reforms. Surely no good and wise God would be so very unreasonable as to cut all this short? Not now of all moments!"

"But we think thus because we keep on assuming that we know the play. We do not know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V... But we, never seeing the play from outside, never meeting any characters except the tiny minority who are 'on' in the same scenes as ourselves, wholly ignorant of the future and very imperfectly informed about the past, cannot tell at what moment the end ought to come. That it will come when it ought, we may be sure; but we waste our time in guessing when that will be. That it has a meaning we may be sure, but we cannot see it... We are led to expect that the Author will have something to say to each of us on the part that each of us has played. The playing it well is what matters infinitely."

"The doctrine of the second coming, then, is not to be rejected because it conflicts with our favourite modern mythology. It is, for the very reason, to be the more valued and made more frequently the subject of meditation. It is the medicine our condition especially needs."

"I do not find that pictures of physical catastrophe - that sign in the clouds, those heavens rolled up like a scroll - help one so much as the naked idea of judgement. We cannot always be excited. We can, perhaps, train ourselves to ask more and more often how the thing which we are saying or doing (or failing to do) at each moment will look when the irresistable light streams in upon it; that light which is so different from the light of this world - and yet, even now, we know just enough of it to take it into account. Women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by artificial light how a dress will look by daylight. That is very like the problem of all of us: to dress our souls not for the electric lights of the present world but for the daylight of the next. The good dress is the one that will face that light. For that light will last longer."

Amen.

Circumspection and Virgins

2005-07-24T18:07:00.000+08:00

My debut entry for this online journal was about Time and it is no mere coincidence that today's sermon by Pastor Paul Chong was regarding Time, albeit in a different context. Vita brevis, tempus fugit and hence Psalm ninety verse twelve exhorts us:

"So teach us to number our days, that we apply our hearts unto wisdom."

Pastor Paul Chong's choice of Scriptural reference for this Sabbath was from the Epistle of Ephesians, chapter five verses fifteen to seventeen:

"See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is."

What particularly struck me is that both of the above Bible quotations highlight the prudence of wisdom. It pleases our Heavenly Father to be good stewards of Time, which is a gift from His loving hands and has been bestowed upon us for our employment for His Glory within the bounds of Christian liberty He has set for us.

The world today, just like it was in Noah's time, scratches its head and inquires with a sneer, "What's the haste? Why the hurry?" And the Church must then whip out the Gospel of Saint Matthew and cry out the Parable of the Ten Virgins [chapter twenty five, verses one to thirteen]:

"Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.

Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh."

The Apocalypse or the Second Coming will occur when our guard is down, in the most clandestine of times. If Jesus Christ returns, the world has nothing to gain and everything to lose.

Carpe diem.

Desires

2005-07-24T00:47:00.000+08:00

Clive Staples Lewis is currently one of my most favourite Christian authors. Here is a Harper Collins publishing house description of C S Lewis:

"Clive Staple Lewis (1898 - 1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential writer of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English literature at Oxford University until 1954 when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than 30 books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include The Chronicles of Narnia, The Cosmic Trilogy, The Four Loves, The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity."

Alec,

Regarding our MSN Messenger conversation about Time and Eternity and the Afterlife, here is a marvellous quote from C S Lewis. Not sure if it is intellectually and rationally convincing to you, but I certainly hope it at the very least sets you thinking...

Taken from Mere Christianity:

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exist. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find myself a desire which no experience in the world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

Speaking of desires, I will like to extract a snippet of an email titled Somewhere In Between The Middle that I typed to a colleague of mine Colin:

"We all have desires. We all desire something to satisfy us. We desire for perfect truth, life, and love; truth without error, life without death, and love without hatred. Yet, we do not find these things since we find imperfect truth, life, and love in the world. Therefore there has to be Perfect Truth, Life, and Love, which is transcendent. Perfect Truth, Life, and Love is what we call God. If there is nothing to Satisfy, why do we have Desires?"

I suspect the aforementioned has been inadequate in pushing for my case but we shall visit this topic again, shall we not?

Parable of Existence

2005-07-23T23:55:00.000+08:00

Joe Boot is the executive director of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) in Canada. He has the following to proffer in the Summer/Spring 2005 edition of the Triannual Communiqué of RZIM regarding the futility and senselessness of an atheistic worldview.

"Once upon a point of infinite density. Nothing that was Something went 'Boom!' Then there was Everything. Everything eventually named Something 'Matter,' the tragic character in our story. Sadly, Matter had no mind, yet this makes our tale all the more amazing!

Now Matter had only one companion, the hero of our fable, a mysterious stranger of unknown origin called Chance. Chance, though blind, was a brilliant artist. Chance taught mindless Matter to paint and paint our pupil did. Matter painted a universe from centre to rim on the canvas of a vacuum. And lo, innumerable galaxies emerged filled with infinite wonders, beauty, order, and life. The inspired brush strokes of ignorant Master, guided by the hands of blind Chance, created together a cosmic masterpiece. But as Matter and Chance were working away they failed to spot out the villian called Time. Time crept in unnoticed back at the Boom and was extremely wound up about being stirred from his sleep. Time determined there and then to wind down again and thus rub the masterpiece out - as soon as he got hold of that Chance! Chance, being blind, did not see Time coming and mindless Matter was helpless to intervene.

Now, Time ruins the painting little by little and brags that by Chance it's just a Matter of Time before the canvas is blank and the Boom will swoon and Everything that was Something will be Nothing again, once more upon a pointless point of infinite nothingness, with no Time for Chance to Matter anymore."

Vita Brevis

2005-07-23T16:08:00.000+08:00

I have christened my blog Vita Brevis and it means Life is Short in Latin. Indeed, the Holy Bible tells us in the Epistle of James, chapter four verse fourteen that:

"Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

Time is finite and though I do not comprehend all the scientific and mathematical implications of Time, I do understand its transience. It is fleeting and elusive. It slips out of your grasp like water, like sand, like air.

I was reading an article this afternoon and its author was Joe Boot, the executive director of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) in Canada. It was in the Spring/Summer 2005 edition of the Triannual Communiqué of RZIM. I will like to share what Joe Boot wrote as well as some of my own contemplations.

Time is an enigma. However there are scientists and philosophers who believe (as in fact, Scripture teaches) that the space-time universe came into being in the finite past at the moment of creation. This whole field of study is still today a matter of great controversy. What is time and what is its relationship to eternity? What is the infinite and what relationship does it sustain to the finite? These questions have shown themselves thus far to be insoluble for the finite mind of human beings.

Indeed, this is what the wisdom literature of the Christian Scriptures leads us to expect because we are dealing with the mysteries that belong to the LORD. The infinite, transcendent creator God of the Holy Bible is beyond mortal intellection. Look at the Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter three verse eleven:

"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end."

The Book of Ecclesiastes tells us of the existential reality of passing moments. These moments come to us all. We have all been born and will one day die. And death is labelled as the "trauma of transience" by Alister McGrath. Nobody can escape death, but yet as an illustration in God's Truth Made Simple by Mrs Paul Friederichsen depicted, death is not a dead end!

On average, the following occurs within the unit of measurement we call "second":
1. 4.5 cars are manufactured
2. 2000 metres of forest is wiped out
3. 3 people are born
4. 1.5 people die
5. 12.6 million cubic metres of water fall as precipitation (3.2 million of that fall on dry land)
6. 2.4 million red blood cells are produced in our bone marrow
7. 4 billion impulses are exchanged between the cortical hemispheres in our brain

Saint Augustine once commented, "What is time? If no one asks me I know; but if any person should require me to tell him, I cannot." I deem myself absolutely ignorant of Physics but I am informed that Time cannot be summed up with an equation while Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity has not brought the expected breakthrough. The Big Bang hypothesis, which, though popular, is fraught with mathematical problems solved by invoking hypothetical entities has no explanatory power to tell us how the space-time continuum could come into existence from nothing, by blind random processes. All the laws of our Physics are said to break down at the "quantum singularity".

Yet, the origin of time is deeply significant to us all because only as we come to understand its origin can we contemplate the meaning and purpose of Time and how we should use it. If all is random, irrational, and finally meaningless as some suppose, then we may just kill and waste time, for this is what time is doing to us.

From the observations of everyday life, in our "naïve" realism we notice that from nothing comes nothing and effects are not greater than their cause. If we apply this line of thought to our Universe and to Time, does it not suggest that all space-time reality was brought into existence by one who is outside time, that is, timeless?

Book of Genesis chapter one verse one says:

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

This Scriptural quote has an alternative reading and according to Joe Boot, it says, "In the beginning was infinite information calling the space-time continuum into existence." Time on this basis is not an eternal cycle; it has a beginning, and it will have an end. The same is true of this world that we live in. Things are running down; we call this principle "entropy". Yet at the same time the Creation around us reveals something of its incredible Designer: the intricacy, beauty, order, complexity, and diversity of life.

The New International Version of God's Word puts it very well indeed - Gospel of Saint Matthew, chapter six verse twenty seven:

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"

We cannot extend the time we have but we can use it foolishly or wisely. Jesus Christ taught that we can invest our time in eternity (where Time has no meaning).

Time and tide waits for no man. Much of our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time that we rush through our lives trying to save. And when we soberly look at the question of time, our lack of it is foremost in our thoughts.

Time is a gift from God. Two implications apply:
1. Our Time has real significance and meaning despite physical death
2. Time has a new destination: eternity

When I was a Humanities student in Hwa Chong Junior College, one of the Advanced Levels English Literature texts was Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Rosencrantz had a hilarious line and it was "Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?" God is not bound by the space-time universe. He has made, so terms like "past"and "present" and "future" lose their meaning where God dwells. There is no "there" and "then" with God, only here and now. God is outside our time axis and sees the rolling ages at a single glance; Book of Revelations, chapter twenty two verse thirteen:

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last."

As Joe Boot mentioned in his article, "If God is indeed the Lord of all time, then it has a real unity of meaning. Time has a teleology, or goal in mind." Our time is endowed with real purpose because of the plan and will of the sovereign infinite God.

After all, preachers and theologians love to say History is His Story.