Brave enough to mourn

Last year in February I went to a women's retreat organised by my church. It was a last minute thing, I wasn't sure if I could or, in all honesty, wanted to go on a weekend retreat where I would have to venture out of my comfort zone and - gasp! - actually make a social effort and meet new people. As it has always been with me and these types of events, I brought my favourite trusty sidekick - a nice, large work of fiction that I could read and sit comfortably alone with if things got awkward (pro tip: Books also work as a signalling beacon to attract other readers and start a conversation easily about the book because "What are you reading?" is so much easier than "I have seen you every Sunday for the past 3 years but still don't know who you are."). Someone saw that I was reading it and we started a conversation about science fiction and books. At one point, she told me about her husband and said a brief sentence under her breath which I couldn't quite make out - her husband had died last week? No, I couldn't have heard that right, it must have been the crowded noisy room that made me mishear that. Confused I paused and an awkward pause hung between us as I'm unsure whether to ask her to repeat the statement when, at this stage, she looks like she might cry. I recalculate and realise I must have heard it right and produce a lame and useless "I'm really sorry". The rest of the conversation was a blur, with empty reassurances and vague panicky statements. What I didn't realise is that that night was only the beginning of a year of contemplation on death (and how poorly we handle it). 

In the modern western world we have become very good at ignoring death. Even our language has been reshaped - no one ever dies anymore, they pass on or perhaps we lose them. Our spaces have also been changed, with morgues and mortuaries being hidden in hospitals through dark forgotten corridors or basements. After death, bodies are cremated leaving little evidence of those we love. 

Even the way we live has become a herculean effort to hide the passing of time with an increasing obsession with appearing and living as though we were young. The cult of youth discards promptly any beauty or wisdom that comes through age and time. Even the elderly are often left, forgotten, uncontacted until it is a convenient time in our all busy schedules - forgetting they must endure weeks of loneliness, isolation and a feeling of being left behind by a rapidly changing world they were once active participants of and key contributors to socially and economically. When so much of society relies on technology, the technological skill threshold is increasing rapidly making the public square plainly inaccessible to older generations. 

I think this is one of the reasons why the covid pandemic has been so hard for many of us. Suddenly we are faced daily with the reality of ageing, death and frailty; the limits of the human resources in controlling our environment. 

These are certainly things I have certainly had to grapple with: in the last few months I attended my first funeral, grieving the premature death of a friend. I have followed closely as my family in Brazil are living through 14 months of isolation, fear and continuous grief which is taxing their mental and physical health severely. I have prayed for and grieved for people one order removed as it seems no family or group is left untouched by the cold and certain grip of death. I have also spent excessive amounts of time alone facing a computer wondering what was the point of it all, of the work, of the titles - and, if I died tomorrow, how many people would actually attend my funeral? Have I actually impacted other people's lives in meaningful ways beyond using them as an audience for my intellectual rants about certain topics? Have I and am I willing to truly love those around me like Jesus loved me, or do I just want to put in enough effort to never overstep the line of awkwardness and ensure I am approved and loved by others? 

Through all this a single line of scripture has been rolling in my head for months: "Mourn with those who mourn" [Rm 12.5b]. It is a line I have read so many times and always thought was pretty self explanatory and simple - if people are sad, you get sad too - but it has taken a global pandemic to make me realise how hard doing this is and how, to put it bluntly, we are utterly failing at doing it. So, how to we do better than lame 'I'm sorry's and awkward silences? 

(1) Life is messy, death is real - deal with it

If history has taught us anything, is that death is one of the few certainties in life. I am not suggesting a stoic approach where we cannot attach emotion to death, or an approach where we embrace it because it is a 'natural' process. As a Christian, I believe death was never intended to be part of the world - it is a horrible, painful thing that entered as a consequence to a deviation from God's original plan - but this does not mean we can ignore it. 

In fact, Christians should uniquely be able to hold the tension between the grief and the sadness of suffering and loss alongside the immeasurable hope we have been given through Christ that he is making things new. If we need to live in a world that blissfully denies pain, suffering and death - as well as those going through these things - then have we actually understood and do we actually believe in the hope that we have through Christ? 

This is a point that I really want to stress because of my personal experience: Christians often don't know what to do when things go off script. We know how to deal with people having babies, and weddings and celebrations. But how do we deal with the death? Divorce? Disease? Is our God strong enough to deal with the wrongness of the world? Is there room for him to still be good even when things are bad, or do we just pretend things aren't that bad? 

Having grown up in a messy home where divorce and disease made my teenage years extremely difficult, I never felt so alone as I did in the Christian community. I had friends in school who did not share my beliefs that stood by me even when I was at my worst, who walked me through my darkest and angriest days, but many people from the Christian community I considered close friends couldn't understand or fathom how to respond to suffering and loss. Perhaps due to being young and somewhat naïve, having lived a sheltered life, but it made keeping my faith extremely difficult. Either I needed to bury deep the hard parts and pretend they weren't happening to have a social context where I could be a part of, or it resulted in feeling like an outcast. 

The challenge lies in being capable of acknowledging the horrors of the world without despairing entirely, and here is where faith in God is the one resource that Christians have that cannot be matched: the certainty that God is above all the messiness and working through it is the one thing that can help us stand against the current. To be part of a messy world, to acknowledge its horrors and its evil, but to stand against it and try to bring redemption - one step at a time. Our hope that this is not the way things are meant to be and that things will ultimately be changed and redeemed is what can enable us to truly see what the situation is and do something about it. 

(2) To love is to suffer 

If Jesus showed us anything from his time on earth, he showed us that the one who truly loves is the one who suffers, who is broken. We enter relationships expecting what we will receive in return - fun, laughter, company - but often when a cost appears that is too taxing, we let that relationship dwindle and eventually die.

It is difficult and it is inconvenient to have people who are suffering and grieving in a community, these are people who are fragile and who don't have much to give in return - in fact, they may suck joy and energy out of any event or conversation. We cannot truly love anyone if we are not willing to let our hearts break for them and with them. 

(3) Aim to love, not to be loved

We often equate loving people to being nice and being likeable; perhaps even to being loved. But again, looking at Jesus' trajectory, for whom having loved all people perfectly resulted in his public execution. It isn't exactly how we envision the consequence of loving anyone, is it?

My desire to be loved and accepted has often prevented me from saying or doing anything in a difficult situation out of fear of saying the wrong thing, the inappropriate thing, the person not liking me for it. How much more harm have I caused by my silence and my fear of not being loved? Do I really place being loved above doing something kind or loving towards someone? Would I prefer to be considered less weird or would I prefer to contact a friend I'm worried about and ask 'Have you ever thought about self harm? Would you like to talk? Do you mind if I pray for you, even though you don't believe in prayers?'. 

(4) You don't have to know what to say

I did mention awkward silences, but I don't think all silences are awkward. In fact, words can be just as harmful - empty statements such as "It will all be ok, it will get sorted out", "We will pray for your healing" and "God knows what he's doing" without any emotional involvement are at best meaningless and at worst deeply harmful. There are times we don't understand what another person is going through, and that is OK. But if we truly love them, we will hurt with them - and the way we can reach out can be with an embrace, sitting and mourning with them or even trying to reach out with practical tasks that can help lighten their load. In other words, there is no perfect way to respond or to mourn - each situation and each relationship is unique, but whatever you do, pour your heart into it. 

I do not think these four points are all encompassing and certainly they are not a four step method for mourning with those who mourn. These are just three barriers I have found in myself and my cultural assumptions that have made it harder to mourn - not only death, but any form of deep loss - with those around me. 

Only taken as they are, these three things to address have overwhelming prospects. If I were to try and accomplish them on my own, the endless effort to pour out love holds a very real risk of burnout and exhaustion. I cannot pour out love without being filled by God's love for me and for the person in front of me; I cannot try something outrageous and awkward without God's Spirit to guide me as to when to speak and when to be silent; I cannot try and relate to others without God's grace to catch me and care for those around me when I ultimately (and inevitably) fail. 

I cannot think of a time in history where loneliness and isolation have affected so many as it has in the last year, most of us have experienced loss in some shape or form - it means we feel very unprepared to reach out, but it also means we share an underlying theme that can help us connect with everyone around us by default. The game changer for Christians is that through Christ we have incredible resources for responding to suffering and pain, and it is our responsibility to share it with a hurting world. But first we need to be brave enough to hurt with it. 

The inadequacy of academic sources of self

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.” ― Thomas Merton

I remember when I received the e-mail where I was told that I had a DPhil ('Oxfordese' for PhD) position in Oxford if I wanted it (ha! Like they had to ask...). The next few minutes that ensued were a combination of a racing heart, a sense of non reality and many phone calls (some of which were quite entertaining, like my Granny who said "My... I was glad you were applying, but I never thought you'd get it." - talk about brutal honesty...). 

Within little time I realised that I had started a new stage in life where I would have to learn to walk a very fine line between 'sharing something I was excited about' and boasting. Was I allowed to tell every living creature that I had gotten into Oxford? Why did I feel like this was something I wanted particularly people who had been mean, disbelieving or who had hurt me to know? This was probably a sign that my desire to shout it out to the world was not virtuous... 

As months went by after the acceptance but before actually starting the program, I had to come to terms with the fact that, well, unsurprisingly I'm not a very nice person. I found myself being proud and arrogant - both in thought and in deed - as I felt like so many things that I did in the past that made me difficult, incompetent socially or weird were finally justified. "I'm weird and sometimes rude, but hey, at least its because I'm smart". It felt like this was the ultimate acceptance that would justify me, that would redeem all the mistakes from the past. 

At the same time insecurity started to take hold of me - very slowly, creeping in almost imperceptibly. Could I actually do this? I'm not actually that smart. I'm glad they think it, but what if they didn't ask me the right questions in the interview? What if I fooled them into believing I was better than I am? Looking at my cover letter, I wrote a series of life events as though they were planned out and carefully architected, when in fact it was a mess, chaos and apparent chance which led me through the journey of my academic formation: I had zero credit in the way things worked out. Am I an impostor? These conflicting natures of insecurity and pride continue to battle each other out in the wrestling ring of my heart. 

This slow insecurity continued to grow as the months of my course progressed and months became a year until the point where it became suffocating. Particularly with a huge shift in fields - a dramatic change from neuroscience to immunology made me realise how woefully unprepared I was for this enterprise. I had never studied to depth molecular biology anywhere else other than the brain, my self-taught patchy knowledge of molecular biology, biochemistry and physiology were less than an undergraduate level's biology - let alone when compared to Oxford students. I looked around me at other much more talented people who had an extremely solid background, excellent undergraduate studies and consistently outperformed me and worked longer hours. All of the expectations that 'I am in Oxford, therefore my life is being set up for great things' began to crush me. 

Oxford is a very unique place for over-achievers. Normally the people that get here are over-achieving perfectionists - being knowledgeable and intellect driven is frequently what defines us when growing up. The problem is when you actually get to Oxford, your very identity is challenged and often unravelled, because everyone else is also an over-achieving perfectionist that loves to learn.  Your performance, which used to be excellent, suddenly is barely average. You thought you were good at something - until you look at the other students around you who are much more skilful, intelligent and better suited at this, and you start to wonder what the heck you are doing here. Greatness has no room for error, greatness has no room for learning. Performance is everything. 

This only reinforces both of the main models of sources of identity - traditional and modern. The traditional identity is the one that seeks truth and meaning outside of one's self - in family, in religion, in society's approval. The modern identity is the more western perspective that claims that you are wonderful, awesome, you don't need anyone's approval and the truth is within yourself; your passions and your heart should guide you BUT you are the one who must prove yourself. Ultimately, both of these models are performance based, only with different motivations. 

And so students arrive from the east and west, pursuing greatness and finding what is often what they attribute most of their worth to - their academic prowess - to be questioned: if I am not the smartest, who am I? 

Very frequently this results in mental health issues, overworked students and students being so crippled by the pressure that, ironically, they are unable to work at all. Similarly to many other students, I have had some stages at which progress and learning felt like walking (or trying and failing to walk) in a boggy terrain with knee-deep thick mud; the need to succeed blocked the path to learning. I tried to repeat to myself "if God has led me here, he will help me and he will see this through", but that really didn't help. 

In the middle of the attractive flashing neon lights of academia, my faith was becoming less and less of a life transforming truth and more of a mechanical repetition, an intellectual exercise. As this progressed, so my ability to deal with failure and difficulty worsened because any challenge to my work was a challenge to my identity. It was only during one particularly bad week where I had made many mistakes and had held back substantially the work that I realised that maybe the purpose that God had for me was not a successful PhD, but to show me how empty my pursuit of a prestigious degree left me. Perhaps his intention was to point out in blinding signs how my faith that my degree could redeem all my mistakes in the past was, well, impossible. I began to love learning and knowing things so much that I began to hate it. In fact, because of my inability to get it right I started to hate myself - constant statements to myself of being stupid or foolish filled my head and my days to a crippling extent. Unrequited love for an idol had broken both my idol and myself. 

As I thought through everything, that night I finally came to terms that it was entirely possible that God's will for me in this PhD was a catastrophic failure: humiliating me in front of all those whom I boasted to, stripping me of everything that I loved more than I loved God and teaching me in the hardest way that God cares more about my holiness than he does about my happiness. I had prayed for my work to be for his glory, but I now saw it was possible that his glory would be best seen in the brokenness of my failed self-constructed identity. 

This was the point at which my prayer changed from 'help me to do this work' to 'give me grace to deal with failure, if that is your will' because failure seemed to be so terrifying, I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it without His mercy and grace.  

After that things have not gotten easy by any means, but something has indeed changed. Accepting failure as a possibility has given me space to learn and, importantly, deal with criticism without it being a personal challenge. However, identifying and trying to give up my idol was not enough. I had a diagnosis, now I needed open heart surgery.  

This week Timothy Keller was in Oxford giving a series of talks on what it means to be human, where he dealt with many things that all humans need (satisfaction, identity, hope, a means to deal with pain and suffering). Particularly his talks on satisfaction and identity felt like that surgery I needed, where he was dissecting and describing the process the past months have been (in fact, the description of identity a few paragraphs up was a summarised version of his description of sources of identity, first described by Charles Taylor in the book Sources of self). 

Importantly, I placed to Tim Keller an intellectual question (If Christianity is not performance based, how can someone lose their salvation?) which seemed like it received a 'non-answer'. He highlighted that when you actually love God and your salvation becomes your motivator, you obey and live for him out of love rather than fear of losing salvation. 

(note: there was a huge crowd around which made me quite nervous, so I unfortunately cannot remember the details of his answer so this is subject to my goldfish-memory) 

After a night of sleep, I woke up the next morning and realised the implications of his answer - he saw past the cerebral question to the true issue in my heart. My struggle to love my idols less and obey God more was not because of loving too much something, but because of not loving God enough. But I wondered: I was trying to intellectually learn more about God, I was trying to spend time in prayer and with the Bible, I was trying (albeit very imperfectly) to obey God, and I had faith in God and in the evidence for Christianity: Wasn't that loving God? 

That morning I flipped my Bible to 1 Corinthians 13 to try to figure out how I could actually love God and was surprised to read this passage for possibly the hundredth time in my life and only now grasp its meaning: 

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."

Suddenly as I read this, I realised a few things. 

(1) Having a spiritual gift (even the 'flashy' ones like speaking in tongues or prophesy) does not mean that you love God and that everything in your relationship is well with him. To quote Keller on this, "Don't confuse gifts with Grace". We are instructed to desire speaking in tongues and to prophesy, but love is to be our highest goal (1 Corinthians 14:1)

(2) Fathoming all knowledge is also not love. 

(3) Having faith in God (and even being able to do miraculous signs because of it) is also not loving God. 

(4) A self sacrifice - whether material or corporal - also does not mean you love. 

So as I'm thinking about the ways in which I had been trying to please God, my 'metrics' of healthy relationship with him were incorrect diagnostic cues. My faith in him, my knowledge of him/his word, any sacrifices I was making in time or money, are all perfectly good things, but as Paul says: if I do not have love, I am nothing and I gain nothing from these things. So here Keller's point actually made sense to me, as it seemed I was going through the motions and manifesting the correct 'symptoms' but there was something inherently wrong with my motivation and my heart in doing them. As an overreaction to Christian movements that emphasise only emotions and the heart, I went to the overly intellectual side which is just as detrimental. This was why everything felt so darn difficult. 

I would love to have a clear and simple answer as to how to love God more for anyone that might be going through a similar situation, but I simply do not. What happened in the days that ensued is something much more strange than I can explain or understand. As I had this epiphany of what was actually wrong with me, I had no idea what was the way to love God. I dumped all of this mess - my head, my heart, my work, my wrong loves and myself - into his grace with a prayer realising that for once I couldn't think my way out of this one. There was a change deeper than actions and thoughts that needed to happen in me, and I had no idea how (or if) I could help make it that happen. 

The day that followed this quiet time was a bizarrely glorious one, of being able to really enjoy my work and not once did self-accusatory or self-hating thoughts cross my mind; and it genuinely felt/feels like a feeling of loving God. Of things working. Even with many things to do, I felt less lethargic, more energetic, excited about my work and genuine peace and joy - I feel different, physically, mentally and spiritually. It transcends understanding and is a beautiful place to be in. The most wonderful thing is that I don't have a clue how it happened and I love even more the fact that I have zero merit in it. A few days on, loving God more is not making me love any less the things that are important to me - but it is freeing me to love these things without them becoming my everything, without putting unreasonable expectation on them. I am free to not think less of myself, but to think of myself less. The most valuable lesson Oxford could teach me has nothing to do with the title I'm working towards - but it has everything to do with my identity. 

Dear church, your political alignment can't save you

I tend to limit my thoughts on politics to the safety of philosophical discussions on the Saturday breakfast table with Jonathan. I do think a lot about it, about which policies I agree with or disagree with, what is the balance between justice and mercy, but it is not something I debate lengthily. This is why I am surprised to find myself writing about it publicly (although be warned this will not necessarily be done in a rational elaborately structured text, but perhaps more of an unloading of the heart). 

Over the past few weeks I have seen my facebook timeline shift from friendly small talk to a bloody battle ground, trenches dug deeply into each side of ideology and beliefs. Insults fly easily, although not more easily than lies (please, stop calling it fake news, that is simply a euphemism for lies); lies spread about people, political parties and presidential candidates. I have seen the same political figures portrayed as demons and as saviours, and I have seen friendships and relationships torn apart by passionate discourses, arguments and the continuous propagation of deception. This is the fuel on which the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections have run. 

We are a passionate culture, and we are not afraid to express emotions - we do this with a vast vocabulary to demonstrate these emotions to an extent that any English speaker wouldn't even imagine possible. But lately all of the passion - often directed at the FIFA worldcup, the local soccer teams or carnaval - has become an angry, hateful discourse of people actually insulting each other because of their political ideas. 

Our open approach to religion has also affected the debate a lot. Talking about religious beliefs is not a taboo, even in universities and highly intellectual institutions; often the myriad of religious beliefs that exist in Brazil are all followed in and believed in at the same time by the same person. Coexistence of different religions has been a consequence of the different groups of immigrants the country received, all of whom brought with themselves a different worldview and religions. Predominantly, though, the country is Christian (both catholic and protestant) and thus, shockingly, many, many horrors have been said during these presidential elections - from all sides - in the name of God. The church and self proclaimed Christians have been the cause of most of my grief as I see this divisiveness spread like wildfire. 

At the end of it all, I cannot feel anger towards any side - even if I do have an opinion on the matter. I can only feel a deep grief for my home country and its people, crumbling under widespread corruption, dishonesty, violence and, ultimately, fear. This is driving people to extreme desperation and to extreme views. Some older and wealthier generations that want to protect whatever comfort and property they have earned (often with hard work) are seeking the protection of extreme right wing, many younger and/or not so wealthy people are seeking the governmental support of the left wing policies. One does not trust the government, the other believes they need governmental interference to survive. Each believe their philosophy will save the country, each believe they are seeking the right candidate, policies and party. Each believe the other side is the enemy. 

For a country that is making many statements and decisions in the name of God, the recent elections have revealed a certain irony in how far this whole affair seems from God. People are not seeking justice, they are demanding blood. A sacrifice. The sacrifice of the other side, the other people that believe something different. They are seeking salvation through this sacrifice of another in the name of their ideology. Rather than targeting the anger to the moral issues that have caused this fear in the first place, they are turning on each other.  

The blood sacrifice that campaigners are pleading for in their messages of hatred is an extreme contrast to the one who - although one with God - gave up everything out of love for others. The one who was a sacrifice in life and in death for others.
One of the reasons I avoid discussing politics is because I do not think I have a clear alignment - I believe all views have good and bad aspects, but none is perfect and none can save a person, much less a country. What makes a country is not its ideology, but its people. They shape the culture, the life and by consequence the economics and politics. If people are corrupt, they will corrupt any system - whether right, left or anything in between. What needs to be transformed is not the ideology, but the people. Ultimately, my unpopular opinion boils down to the fact that as a Christian, I believe the only hope for salvation and redemption is through Christ*.

Put insightfully by a quote misattributed to C.S.Lewis' book "Screwtape letters"**, a fictional work in which Screwtape instructs his apprentice-temptor nephew Wormwood, it is eerie the resemblance to our current setting:

"My dear wormwood,
Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics. Arguments, political gossip, and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met serves as an excellent distraction from advancing personal virtue, character and the things the patient can control. Make sure to keep the patient in a constant state of angst, frustration and general disdain towards the rest of the human race in order to avoid any kind of charity or inner peace from further developing. Ensure the patient continues to believe that the problem is “out there” in the “broken system” rather than recognising there is a problem with himself.
Keep up the good work,
Uncle Screwtape"
- Screwtape letters, C.S.Lewis

So my plea to my home country is that since so much is being said about God, then do look to him. Look to the Jesus you swear by and pray to. Look at his life and let it transform you, your message and your politics. Your politician is not your messiah, your ideology is not your salvation. 

To the Christians who are feeling they are failures because they could not influence the outcome in the first round, feeling powerless in light of a possibly very gloomy future, who have been seeking discernment quietly in prayer, to those who are disheartened and who have lost hope, also look to him. Look to him as you continue to seek justice for the oppressed and as you continue to lay down your weapons - as you give up the comfort of a protective crowd defending an ideology;  look to him for comfort as you long for the world to be as it should; look to him as as you love your enemy - perhaps in that very enemy you will come to see your brother. 

Take heart knowing that Jesus lived in a time of Roman dominion with an emperor in power, in a time when he was executed although there was no evidence against him, and yet this did not prevent him from loving those around him or keep him from his mission on earth. That doesn't mean his mission was easy or painless - but it was good, perfect and acceptable to God. Regardless of who wins or who loses in the second round of the elections, we know what our mission is and we know where our true hope lies. 

*A brief note: By this statement, I want to make it clear I do not think politics and the church should mix, history shows clearly how badly that can go. But I do believe that through Christ we can learn to love, be humble, gentle, kind, patient: this can better equip all of us - those who write the law, those who enforce the law, those who live under the law - and make a better society. Many good and successful law systems even if not openly Christian are based on the basic principles of Christian values, such as love, justice, mercy and charity.

**Edit: I thought this quote was C.S.Lewis' but it was pointed out to me that though widely used around the internet it is not actually from the book, though the ideas are similar to some in the book. Quite ironic that in the very text I criticise fake news I propagated a misattributed quote; apologies to all readers! 

When your heart isn't in it.

For a very long time I found it easier to spend time with God during difficult times. Due to many things happening growing up, my faith was a core value which kept me going and taught me how to be a christian in times of crisis. There is something about the depths of despair, loneliness, depression or pain that makes it necessary to remember constantly God's love, mercy and justice just to get by each day. My big problem right now is that this means that I never learnt what it means to follow Jesus in times of peace.

As things have in some ways gotten quieter, my time in prayer has not been an emotional experience anymore - there is no burden to be put down, there isn't a particular relief after prayer that makes me feel much better having done it. Life is good, and if I didn't have some deep question or request, where does prayer fit into life? My faith wavers sometimes and my attention is driven to other things. I have tried sitting and praying, waiting for something incredible and supernatural to happen - but  often nothing happens. I have tried forcing myself to be contemplative, trying to take grand conclusions about theology or God even from trivial phenomena. A friend, many years ago, even asked "why are you forcing your relationship with God to be contemplative?" - the reality is, I thought this was what it meant to be a Christian. It has only been recently that my views on this have finally been challenged: is the emotional experience I think I need to have every time I spend with God biblical or cultural? I remember particularly when talking to my friends the unanimous opinion that 'praying is very hard' set me to think: why does it feel so difficult? 

Christianity is not an emotional experience

In the Bible, many prayers come in moments of emotional extremes - either praise and celebration prayers or praying for help/deliverance. One look through the psalms and you'll find 150 examples of people either being completely enraptured with God himself or being completely desperate. So, yes, prayer does seem to have some connection to emotion. But we also have examples of the exchanges with God being more continuous, a daily, regular affair. For example, Daniel prayed three times a day (Dn. 6.10) and Jesus would take some time away from the crowds to pray and be in solitude (Luke 6.12-13, Mark 3.13, Mt. 13.14). Why do we find it so difficult to do so now? 

A few days ago I opened my Bible hoping for something exciting, uplifting and... instead had to read about Ezekiel's vision of a man who looked made of bronze measuring every single wall, gate and room in the new temple. The next day, more measurements. The next day, more measurements again. My quiet time really felt like a one way conversation, and after three days of this - when I was really hoping to hear God say something through his word - was, well, disappointing. 

I would not be surprised if, like me, more people thought that do be 'doing quiet time right' we need the big emotional revelation every time. Perhaps it is a way of seeking an instant reward for it: I took time to pray, therefore God will make me happy/give me insight into my future and decisions/fix this for me. If God did not give me my little golden star, then I have no immediate motivator to pray or it means I don't know how to do it - and therefore I don't try again. Or perhaps we even feel like it is a source of embarrassment - when people have piles of incredible stories of incredible answers to prayer and after years you still have 'nothing to show' the shame and possibly guilt (is there something wrong with me? am I worse than others?) might be disheartening. 

I think that this is an area where our current culture has made us lose the plot in our belief. Too often an emotional experience is raised far higher than an intellectual one, and while emotion can be a part of the Christian experience it would make for a very fragile belief system if it relied on how we feel. And this is where Christianity and the ample evidence for the events it affirms (for more on this I would recommend I don't have enough faith to be an atheist), the rational belief should continue to be sufficient to motivate us to live according to its values - even when you're reading about the number of cubits of the east wall of the new temple has. 

While very often we pray for God to change our emotions such as to help us to feel love towards others, to help us to love him more, seek his will and to act in a way that pleases him - all very good things - the Bible does not command us to feel a certain way. It commands us to live a certain way. It gives us very hands on advice: "train yourself to be godly" (1 Tim. 4.7), "This is why we labor and strive" (1 Tim. 4.10) , " [the Spirit of God] gives us power, love and self discipline". Making the right decision and acting on it may lead us to having the right feelings, but waiting around for the feelings to show up is failing to understand the importance and urgency to obey. 

I know it may sound like a massive cliché, but the fact that we have a relationship with God is the all transforming key concept in Christianity. We are not seeking enlightenment through contemplation, we are also not doing good things to get good things back: unlike many philosophies and belief systems, we are not the centre. 

Overwhelmingly the metaphor used for God in relation to his people is the one of God being the father (just to cite a few, Psalm 68.6, Malachi 2.10, 1 Corinthians 8.6, Ephesians 4.6), and having a relationship with him means taking the back seat and often obeying when we don't know why. 

If I think about God as father, daily time with him suddenly makes a lot more sense - I think of a family dinner table where the eight year old at the end of the day telling dad what happened that day: this happened in school, this made me sad, I had an exam, I made a new friend. Conversation is not big and emotional necessarily - although those times may come - but it is simple, honest and routinely. Importantly, the child also hears the father - perhaps even talking about something that it doesn't understand yet, but is still listening and learning. And one day in the future, many years from now, it may remember that conversation and respond appropriately because its dad said something about that (maybe one day the size of the eastern wall will make sense...). 

In my experience of someone with wobbly faith, being rationally convinced about Christianity and acting in spite of not feeling like it has kept me going through seasons of confusion or even plain apathy. In fact, if you have ever had a meaningful relationship - a parent, a sibling, a close friend, a spouse - you probably know how important acting in spite of how you feel can be for a relationship. Whether it is because of a fight or just something that made you sad, sulking or holding a grudge is the same as saying 'how I am feeling is more important than you are'. But, set aside those feelings and act like you feel like you love them and you are then far more likely to actually go back to feeling love for them again. 

In light of all of this theoretical discussion about spending time with God even when your heart isn't in it, I have compiled a few things that have helped me in those seasons. I know that many of the blog's readers are far more experienced and wise, so please feel free to leave in the comments any suggestions of things I haven't added to the list that have helped you, and hopefully we can help each other keep striving towards godliness together. 

•  Look at other people's written prayers: The Lord's prayer is an incredible place to start, it embraces everything from being grateful, seeing God for who he is up to asking for forgiveness, asking for help even in the most basic needs up to asking for help to live well. Other prayers from the Bible, or the book of common prayer or by other authors can sometimes be helpful. 
• Pray for others (people, nations, world). It helps to keep things in perspective. 
• Pray with other people - friends, spouse, family, you name it. One can encourage the other and it helps the mind not to wander so much. 

I once could see, but now am blind

When I first started doing research there was limited choice of biology projects in my university - that was how I ended up researching in molecular biology for about a year and a half. My mother found it incredibly entertaining that I ended up working with the tiniest units biology dabbles in, because apparently I had a tendency to like small things and particularly small toys when growing up. Small dolls that were around 5 mm tall, tiny houses and utensils, anything small that I could spend a very long time setting up (and then maybe play with for about 5 minutes) were the idea I had of a great time. Now as I set up experiments in tubes that can hold maybe 200 µl, pippeting incredibly small amounts as low as 0.2µl (for a reference of how small that is, the volume of a drop of water is of the order of 20-50 µl, so 100 - 250 times smaller than a drop of water), my skills developed in setting up tiny houses have come in very handy in the lab. 

The only frustrating part I have found with molecular biology is that things are so incredibly tiny that you can't really see what you are doing for a really long time - a lot of it is moving small amounts of colourless liquid to other tubes with small amounts of colourless liquid - and hoping for the best. You spend a long time setting up an experiment - preparing or ordering reagents, using online databases to design primers that will determine what chunk of DNA you want more copies of. You then carefully try to follow a little 'recipe' and put all those 'ingredients' that often don't look any different than water and then wait a few hours of different temperature cycles and see what the readings of the machine say. 

Sometimes, you find out that you forgot an ingredient and that all of it was a waste of time. Other times you find out that your preparation wasn't good enough. Far too often it doesn't work (or does work) and no one knows why - but hey, that's just the way biological sciences work. 

But then there are the incredibly rewarding times when it does work! Even though you weren't sure that you were doing the right thing, you followed the instructions that other scientists have discovered, you followed them, you put a little faith in the equipment you used and that its readings would be accurate and... voilá! It did work afterall! 

The journey can be incredibly challenging and requires huge amounts of resilience. After my first research project in molecular biology I almost left research entirely. Not being able to see what was happening in real time, depending on long and expensive procedures and gambling that maybe on the 36th attempt it would work... made me feel like I had no control over my work. 

Growing up as a student, researcher and person I have had to grow more acquainted with that feeling than I would have liked to. Naïvely I assumed that this was a feeling unique to research, but as the following sequences of failures, occasional successes and complete uncertainty about the future, I found that biology - ironically the greek for 'study of life' - was also preparing me for life outside of the lab. 

The same way that I liked setting up my little tiny toys, I also discovered I liked setting up my life - nice and neatly organised, building up towards a future I envisioned. 12 years ago, I set up my life to be an architect. 11 years ago I set it up to be a doctor, but I ended up starting studies in hope to become a biomedical engineer. I set it up next to go to study in the Netherlands, then England, and somehow ended up in Ireland. Forget biomedical engineering, I now wanted to do a PhD in Cork - but I ended up going to do a masters in neuroscience, and starting a PhD in Oxford. Not unlike research, I set up my experiments in one way, they worked a completely different way, and no one knows why. Well...no one?

"I know, O Lord, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps."
- Jeremiah 10.11 

I did try very hard to direct my steps and set everything up, but things turned out completely different. Sometimes the outcome was far more challenging and difficult than what I had planned, some times it ended up being less prestigious and others more prestigious. Often the way God set things up was incredibly frustrating, stressful and there were many tears along the way - but I think I can put confidence in the 'read outs' that these are not isolated chaotic coincidences: they were events which prepared me for a future that I could not yet see or even imagine. 

Perhaps the reason why I like small things is that I am near sighted - as in, I physically have myopia. In several societies in the past, I probably would be considered blind and a useless member of society. If we go back far enough, I probably would have been eaten by a bear already. Perhaps in the metaphorical sense this is my issue too. My eyes form the image of things before the beams of light have hit my retina. This makes my eyesight for things that are close very good, but quite poor for anything further away. I form an image of what I want to aim for too soon. I focus on what is close because that is all I can see. My physical eyesight can be corrected by my glasses, but the metaphorical aspect is not quite as straight forward. There is no way that I can see into the future. 

Often I have found myself asking God to show me things, to open my eyes, to help me see where I am going when trying to make decisions. I have asked him to reveal things to me and correct my sight - which I thought was entirely consistent with a God that returned sight to the blind. But was it?

"I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them. But those who trust in idols, who say to images, 'you are our gods' will be turned back in utter shame.
Hear, you deaf; look you blind, and see! Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of the Lord?"
- Isaiah 42.16-19

This passage really surprised me when I read it a couple of months ago. It suddenly put into question many prayers I had made when seeking guidance for the future. I always thought that as a Christian, seeking God's will we would have extra insights and that he would show me things clearly. In hindsight, this didn't often happen. My prayers were for me to be able to see what God was doing, not about trusting him in whatever he was doing. But a lot of my life and things that happened to me were less like having a carefully detailed map to get from A to B, but stumbling in the dark while trying to get to B and somehow ending up in Z instead. 

A few details that I find interesting about this passage are: 

• "along unfamiliar paths" - being in an unfamiliar path without seeing sounds, well, a lot like being lost.
• "I will turn the darkness into light before them" - for things to 'turn into light before them' they need to be dark in the first place
• "make the rough places smooth" - for him to be the one making things smooth they need to be rough in the first place

All in all, this sounds like frightfully awful business - being blind, lost, in the dark and in rocky terrain. It definitely does not sound like the sea of roses some people try to sell Christianity to be. And yet... those who are called to this frightful situation, God's servant who does not trust his own sight, his own step and his own knowledge of the terrain - the potential idols in this metaphor - those are the ones God says "I will not forsake them". So... the choice is between your own perception and steadiness vs. the help of the creator of the universe that can flatten mountains, create light, and knows everything. Rationally, with these two choices, it sounds like there shouldn't even be up for debate. But anyone that has experienced suffering is not inclined to walk voluntarily into circumstances such as these. Often life is not clear cut and the 'decision according to God's will' does not have flashing neon signs pointing in a particular direction. He is not yelling with a megaphone where is the dark place he will be with us in. In fact, our prayers are often met with eerie silence. 

Therefore, I will not even try to over rationalise this with theoretical answers that are no good. I am currently in one of those places of doubt and silence, and if I had a clear and obvious answer I wouldn't be here in the first place. The best I can do is talk from where I am.

There are a few things I have found comfort in. Obviously, prayer and God's word rank highly. But often the past - ours and of others - can bring a comfort absent in the present. Seeing other times in which God has broken through darkness can reinforce trust in him in spite of our blindness. What are things that God has done in the past in your life? There have also been other brave and wise Christians that have come ahead of us and have trod paths of uncertainty and pain - what do they have to say? 

"We commented to Corrie [Ten Boom] about the practicalness of the things she recalled, how her memories seemed to throw a spotlight on problems and decisions we faced here and now. "But," she said "this is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future that only He can see.""
- Elizabeth Sherrill in preface to The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom

And as a prayer for someone in one of those situations, I recently found Psalm 143. Where comfortingly we find even David in a very human situation crying out to God for guidance, which could be a helpful guide to prayer. 

"Lord, hear my prayer,
listen to my cry for mercy;
in your faithfulness and righteousness
come to my relief. (...)

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I entrust my life.
Rescue me from my enemies, Lord,
for I hide myself in you.
Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God;
may your good Spirit
lead me on level ground."

- Psalm 143.1, 8-10 

The God of the present tense

Since my last post life has gotten very interesting and has been completely turned upside down in relation to what it was. I have gotten married to my best friend and I have started my DPhil in the University of Oxford. 

For a long time I had liked the idea of studying in Oxford or Cambridge. I remember upon finishing school investigating to find out which universities had degrees in biological anthropology and finding that the university of Oxford had the course - but being incredibly disappointed to find that merely the application cost 50 pounds - a fortune for an unemployed 17 year old in Brazil. In spite of Granny mentioning her musings that I perhaps should apply for a university in the UK, the dreams died out fast with the notion of overseas fees. Now, 8 years later I found myself in the very university I had dreamed about - and with full funding and a stipend. 

But more than that, my days outside of working hours have been completely changed - after moving around and doing life solo I now have someone I love deeply to come home to, to listen to, to have interesting discussions over breakfast or at night when the lights are out. The dreadful feeling of loneliness that haunted me has suddenly been extinguished by constant friendship and companionship. 

The strange thing I have found in the sequence of unlikely events that has brought me to the place in life that I am currently in, is the realisation that I have crossed the finish line I was aiming for. The dream has become day to day life. The hope of having a family, doing life with Jonathan is now every waking moment spent at home. An ancient university is not a vague notion of a 17 year old in Brazil, but where I spend a good part of my day. I have found that the strangest aspect of a dream is that sometimes it can in fact become reality, and that is almost as - if not more - terrifying than a dream being lost. 

I found that for the first time I was not aiming at the next holiday in camp Sol da vida, nor to get into university, or to get a masters, or to get a DPhil, or to plan a wedding. I crossed the finish lines I had been progressively setting up for myself, and I suddenly found myself confused.

The change was not only in my psyche, but it was even in my relationship with God. For so long so much of my time spent in prayer was about if we should get married, if I should go back to Ireland, if I should apply to come to England (in the form of work or a PhD)... and suddenly, when all the cards of the game were played I realised how much of my relationship with him had been less about getting to know him and more about what I should do. My 'special calling' in life became so important to be uncovered, like a lost secret or a locked room that I forgot all about the Caller. 

Perhaps it is because of a very strange and scientifically inexplicable sequence of events bringing me into life in this world that I had some narcissistic notions of grandeur - surely I was put here to do something extraordinary. Surely I had to work hard to do memorable things. But, at the end of the day, even though the ideas I had were ambitious the reality is that Oxford University is a university like any other - with good things and bad things (plus a lot of latin and some funny clothes that make us look like penguins). Where I have to wake up, read, study and work on a day to day basis. There have been no supernatural occurrences that have made me especially smart or capable. If anything, it has been an experience where I did very well in things I thought I was terrible at and terribly at things I thought I was good at. 

Where is God in all of this? What is his next great act? When is the big reveal of the next incredible thing I can do? 

As I worked through all this, Christmas came in perfect timing. Even though not accurate in date as to when Jesus was actually born, it still celebrates a pretty remarkable event in the world. One of the largest events of cosmic significance. An event that people had been waiting for and prophesying about for centuries, something that many believed to be a dream, came crashing into the world we know very unexpectedly. God himself would come, whom many expected would come as a strong military and/or political figure to free his people! And instead of crashing thunder and him coming into scene strong and larger than life with the sound of trumpets, sound effects, light effects, a Gandalf-like picture riding in white to save them all... in comes a baby? Possibly one of the weakest most vulnerable creatures possible? Born not even in an inn or a house but to a poor teenage girl in a stable? God himself would come through the pain of labour, with messy blood in a smelly stable to a likely very scared couple of newlyweds? Talk about a cosmic anticlimax. 

But this was the thing that hit me about how I was trying to understand my 'calling' and meaning in the world. I had this vague idea I had constructed of grandeur, when in fact my dream is a day-to-day job like any other. But this does not make it less important. Similarly, in spite of angels coming to speak to Mary and Joseph, perhaps in that moment of birth, with pain and effort or even as Jesus was growing up they didn't necessarily think about how significant this was in history. In fact, if we look at the Bible there are some extraordinary events - like the parting of a sea, a virgin birth, blind men being healed to see. But an awful lot of the Bible has all the nitty gritty messy things of every day human life: marriage, birth, good decisions and bad decisions. The kings and the peasants all have roles, the prophets had families and children, political events take place and economic negotiations are made. God is not only present in the larger than life events. He was as much the God of David when they have to go to battle as he is the God of Ruth and Naomi when in a patriarchal society God gives them food and a family. 

I thought the main point of my relationship with God was figuring out what calling he had for me in this vague thing called 'the future', but he is not a distant God like a dream. He is the God of the present tense, of the simplest most ordinary human events. Many people are remembered in human history for doing big and important things - either for good reasons or bad reasons. And I confused having a calling that gave my life significance with having a calling that might be memorable. But importance and remembrance of an event are very, very different things. It is possible that the most important thing I may ever do in my life is to in one moment in time smile to a stranger that is having a very bad day. It may not be memorable to me, to the person or anyone else for that matter but God makes extraordinary events come from the fabric of day-to-day existence. 

In fact, I daresay that it is possible that the most commendable actions for our society - perhaps being a war hero in a particular battle, someone having one moment of bravery (or foolishness) seems very dim compared to how remarkable it is for someone to sacrifice their own life and dreams every single day to care for a sick child or parent. 

The Bible may have many impressive characters - people who served in the Persian, Egyptian and Babylonian court with important roles. But what made them remarkable people was not their position, but their daily life where they sought to know, love and please God. They just happened to reflect this in the work they did. The man that Christians are supposed to follow and imitate, Jesus himself was known because of how he did life every day, with the people that followed him, with the outcasts of society, with the lonely and the wounded. He made even the most mundane interactions - like having a meal or talking to someone - extraordinary because of his daily decisions. 

It has taken me a quarter of a century to realise that what defines me is not what I am building myself towards in my career or what I hope to be. Waiting to hear a supernatural calling I neglected the calling I already had before me: 

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?"

I am called to follow him every day of my life, not on Sundays, weekends or bank holidays. Not only when I am happy, not hungry, not tired and the stars align in a particular way. I am not only called when there are flashing neon signs of where to go, or when I have received funding in a particular university. God is calling every day. Finding a calling or vocation is not about sitting and waiting for answers, but living daily calling to live and love in spite of questions.

"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves - like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a young poet

From the shores of fluffy divinity to the depths of truth

Growing up we had a few routines in the family, things no less changeable than if they were written in stone. The first of these was that for our morning breakfast we would always have paw paw - the large tropical fruit loved in colder countries was the first enemy I faced every morning reminding me I could not make my own decisions. The second thing I knew happened everyday was that either of my parents would read the Bible to me. Generally this involved some american children’s devotional book which gave a Bible passage to read and a short text extracting either something to be learned conceptually about God or a practical application. For the past quarter of a century this was what I did every day, with the devotional books evolving as I aged. I often got extra studying from training events in the Brazilian Christian Union that emphasises a lot on training students to lead their own Bible studies and doesn’t run away from even the hard books to study.

However, after three years in Ireland - no training events or camps, only the devotions I did myself, I started to feel something was off. I realised that a lot of the devotional books either were based on nice and friendly passages from the Bible - mostly the gospels or some parts of Paul’s letters. Sometimes, I painfully found that the little short texts by very well intended authors often ignored the actual textual or historical context of the passage in question. I felt like my faith was stagnant, crippled by replays of the same messages.

I thought I might have been the problem - I have been one to often loose sight of faith in light of my daily life and get easily distracted. The truth was, the truth about Jesus is the main point of the whole Bible. The letters Paul wrote are still very relevant, with very practical insights into human behaviour and community. Why did it just feel like something was missing?

Talking to my husband we discussed different ways of reading the Bible, and he reminded me: Did I only trust authors that wrote Bible studies to reveal God’s truth to me? Did I not trust the Holy Spirit to reveal it to me directly?

I decided then to brave out the Prophets - the set of books with a lot of prophecies of pain, punishment, doom and gloom. I had braved Amos and Jeremiah before in some of the times of my life of most growth: maybe it was time for some more growing pains.

As I began reading Isaiah, reading about destruction and punishment coming from the hand of God himself onto his people and onto other kingdoms as well was not easy. Some of the prophecies are quite graphic and involve snapshots of warfare consistent with what we know of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires. Women violated, armies slaughtered, infants bashed. I begun soon to have somewhat of a faith crisis. The God telling the prophets about these things to come did not sound like the same God that I heard about in so many songs and by so many Christians. I have been hearing over and over the record of the God of Grace and of Mercy, of how a good God gives good things to his children, songs about how us humans are wonderful and how God should appreciate our worship - often with quite incredible promises of things we will do for him and how he will forgive us over and over - or even the concept of God being love… this all felt incompatible with the divinity bringing destruction at his hand.

I really struggled with this. Going through a big transition time all I wanted to hear was about how God is good, friendly, forgiving and how he would work everything out - most definitely not about how terribly God could punish those doing things differently from what he instructed!

I realised that I was letting the secular liberal agenda of ‘the right thing is what feels right’ corrupt my view of God. Of course I want God to be fluffy, cuddly, all mercy and grace. The only moments I thought of a God of justice was when I thought about others: murderers, rapists, pedophiliacs, among other things. I want God to exercise justice on them, not on me.

But the thing is: a God who is love cannot have justice cut from his character. The same way I want justice against those that do awful things against others because of empathy and compassion towards the victims of murder, rape and pedophilia, how could God who truly loves those victims far more than I ever could be indifferent to their suffering? How can one that loves not bring justice and punishment against those hurting people he loves?

I had been praying for some time to get to know God better - not just have a wishy washy tailor made God that fit my expectations, but to really understand his nature. I did not expect it would come in this form. I do not claim that I understand many of the things in the old testament, but I found God saying: “I know why I did everything I did. If you believe that I am honest, righteous, loving, just, and still merciful and graceful, do you trust what I did even though you don’t understand it?”. For someone who likes understanding things, asking me to trust something even though I don’t understand it feels a bit rough going. But I assumed it would be presumptuous to assume that I could believe only in something I understand (and a bit impractical, I cannot expect to understand all of the laws of optics to be able to trust what I see, can I?). So I decided to go with it and see where He was taking me.

That was when the hope in the prophecies came. Mixed in with the doom and gloom were entire chapters about heaven, hope, life and salvation. It was like God doing open heart surgery to his people: this is going to hurt, but it hurts to make you better.

I still found myself uncomfortable with some aspects of this God I was reading. He still felt very distant from the one I believed I had prayed to - and who had consistently answered every prayer, cared for every need and has given me such extravagant gifts I hadn’t even any idea how to respond. I said this to Jesus in prayer yesterday in church, that I couldn’t understand why Jesus and God seemed worlds apart.

As I finished the prayer, the song “Before the throne of God above” started playing:

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea
A great high priest whose name is love
Who ever lives and pleads for me
My name is graven on his hands
My name is written on his heart
I know while in Heaven he stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart
No tongue can big me thence depart

When satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within
Upward I look to see him there
Who made an end to all my sin
Because my sinless saviour died
My sinful soul is counted free
For God the Just is satisfied
To look on him and pardon me

Behold him there the risen lamb
My perfect spotless righteousness
The great unchangeable I AM
The king of glory and of grace
One with himself I cannot die
My soul is purchased with his blood
My life is hid with Christ on high
With Christ my Saviour and my God



I sat somewhat dumbfounded. I forgot the main point all those devotions were trying to drive home: the meaning of what Jesus did.

With a diluted God of grace and mercy I had entirely missed the significance of Christ dying for me - if God is good and merciful, he would forgive us anyway, right? Wrong! The only way that sacrifice has meaning is knowing the full effects of the justice, wrath and punishment of God. Jesus’ voluntary sacrifice is him taking the blow that was meant for us - and that I don’t think would be very different from the blood bath the prophets describe - while God remains entirely just. It is the ultimate cosmic plot twist after the fall!

The fact is that by trying to tailor the Bible into the comfortable parts we lose sight of many aspects of God’s character and the significance of many events. It is wetting the toes without ever taking the dive: the little you come to contact with may be parts of the truth, but it’s only taking the dive and the risk of drowning that you find yourself immersed into this universe, held up entirely by this truth. I have to say, it is a quite extraordinary experience (and I’d say at this stage I’m maybe only ankle-deep).

If it were merely a matter of personal growth, then perhaps the comfortable shores would be the best place to be. Howbeit, the more I think of it the more it feels like trying to get to know God more to depth is less of a personal choice and more of a Christian responsibility. By only focusing on the mercy and grace of God - which, don’t get me wrong, are amazing things to think about and praise - not only do we hinder ourselves, we hurt others around us. Because, if God is all mercy and grace, surely he will forgive everyone on judgement day and it’ll be a big party - right?

Understanding the justice of God and understanding the significance of what Jesus did are quite fundamental for evangelism. I cannot help but wonder how much evangelistic initiatives in churches seem to be few and far between because of this fluffy God we worship. If our love for his grace and mercy are not enough to motivate us to share about him, would knowing our word about Jesus maybe being what can save someone from God’s wrath motivate us? Can we love others enough to not want their destruction? God is just. His mercy has come through Jesus.

As Hosea showed us, destruction does not come only from not doing what is right: “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. ‘Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of God, I also will ignore your children.” (Hosea 4.6). The priests at the time were the ones who failed at their role. Are we happy enough with our role as Christians in society, or are we withholding critical knowledge because of fear of rejection from people? Or are we rejecting his law because it’s too difficult?

The good part in all this is that it’s not just God and Jesus. We’re not left to our own devices - a sigh of relief! The way this whole story began was with me asking the Holy Spirit to help me to understand God, understand the passages I read when reading Isaiah. He also translates the theory, knowledge and concepts into action. Rather than us being crippled in fear, he is the one praying for us when we don’t know how to pray, comforting us when we need it and helping us to live like this. We are not alone - but we have to be the ones to take the dive into uncharted waters in the first place. I don’t think it’s easy, but I sure think it’s worth it!

Crippling guilt

Having lived in Ireland for almost 3 years, it came as a bit of a shock moving to England and finding how much Ireland had changed my way of speaking and interacting. In particular, I noticed that I picked up the Irish need to apologise for everything. Someone bumps in to you, and you respond with "Sorry". Someone blatantly does something that is rude, but before you can say anything they are saying "Sorry". Maybe Justin Bieber was in Ireland before writing his song and got the idea of "Sorry" as a title from everyday Irish life. 

The issue I have with picking up that habit is not that sorry is not important to be said, but rather, I do not like that I learnt to say it all the time because of how important the word is. It has become void of meaning. The same "sorry" I say when someone bumps in to me is the one I say to my husband when I do something stupid or when a friend had bad news and I say "I'm sorry about this". I have in no way benefited the stranger, and I have hindered my communication with my husband and friend. 

I started to ponder about all of these apologies and I realised they are not simply a word I have increased in use in my vocabulary, but rather that it expresses a far more serious underlying state: guilt. 

People who observed me grow up know that I had an unusual need to be obedient to the authority over me (normally my mum or my aunt). I would not consider a possibility in which I blatantly disregarded the instructions I received. Maybe once or twice I did something that broke an unimportant rule - but the sense of guilt was so much worse than any other punishment, that I had no desire to do it again. 

I would like to think that this stemmed from a righteous conscience, but the more I think of it, it seems a presumptuous assumption. The more rational explanation I can reach is that my conduct sprung from a profound desire and need for approval and love. Coming from a home where my parents had a very broken relationship, perhaps what made me not go wild was the fear that love was conditional (which, added to a Christian upbringing, added some fear of the Almighty to the guilt and made me make very conservative decisions my entire life). 

I do not regret the decisions I made in trying to obey as a child my mother and teachers, and most of all I am glad that I was raised as a Christian and did my best to live by those values. 

However, there have been times I failed. Times when I made decisions I now know did not align with God's will, or decisions that hurt other people. And the guilt would not go away. 

For four weeks now I have been trying to adapt to married life. For someone that hadn't shared a room for about 13 years, lived alone for 3 years and lived independently regarding times, meals and finances for some time now, adapting to married life involves a lot of apologies, conversations and facing features in one's self that are not particularly endearing. I have noticed the void meaning of my repetitions of "sorry", and I have realised that my fear of conditional love has made guilt eat me inside for years now unacknowledged: what if I did something wrong? What if I said something wrong? Should this have been different? Apologise just in case. 

As I tried praying one day, feeling guilty because I hadn't really been managing to concentrate and spend time with God recently, prayer was very difficult. Until I felt God finally putting a stop to it: You have already asked for forgiveness and I have already forgiven you. My son has already died for your sins - now enjoy the freedom and all that means! Your guilt will not redeem you when you already have a redeemer. Your guilt will not redeem your relationships or the people you love. You need me to do that. Now forgive yourself and enjoy the freedom and the love I have for you. 

Fear of loss made my love fragile. Fear made me withhold my trust in God, his redemption and in every one of my relationships. A simple slip of the tongue of a loved one might be interpreted in awful ways - 'does this mean this is a risk of loss? Do they not love me anymore? Have I done something wrong?' The fear and constant sense of guilt were destroying me and my loved ones. Acknowledging the dominant pattern in my life, I looked on this with hope because of what God has done and can do. 

I am not trying to say that fear and guilt do not have a right to exist. In fact, they are necessary.  A healthy dose of fear of the Almighty strikes me as wiser rather than foolish, somewhat like a three year old fears his father healthily after a rule was broken without doubting his love. Guilt is also a necessary part of the equation - it is a fundamental component of our conscience that leads us to ask for forgiveness and it is not meant to be fun. David described it, he really drove the point home: "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer". But not after that. After he is forgiven he celebrates forgiveness! 

"Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven,

whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the one

whose sin the Lord does not count against them

and in whose spirit is no deceit."

Psalm 32.1-2

Only the man that understands the seriousness of their sin can understand the extravagance of God's forgiving love. Where there was much guilt and repentance, let there be much celebration and freedom! 

The ordinary league of remarkably average people

I think we can agree that competition has had a significant role in the formation of the human race. From people living in caves competing for food and resources, to the wars between civilisations, from disputes between colonised and colonisers, to the competition of who has most likes on whatever social media: it may have changed motivation for existing and forms in which it takes place, but competition has not ceased.

A significant difference perhaps that could be observed is that competition has become progressively more individualistic, less necessary but of no less psychological burden. 

While often competition used to be between distinct social groups (wether tribes, families or nations) social media has increased competition between traits of individuals. We no longer dispute food, water and shelter: we dispute admiration, power and likes. We no longer are seeking means to survive in the jungle as a society, we are seeking ways to survive in the judgemental merciless jungle society has become, where there is no room for the one less beautiful, less intelligent, less funny, or with an average life. 

The standards are also progressively higher for what sets one apart from society. Even if someone lives in a small village behind a bush and are the best musicians in the village, one youtube search on musicians shows us that a 5 year-old Chinese child surpasses by far the skill of that person. Even if we feel we are the best in our class in college on biology, google has multiple articles on a 12 year old that found a way to diagnose cancer for 50 cents in 10 minutes. The increased communication is raising the standards of what 'being good at something' is, and we are left wondering what is our place in a world population of over 7 billion people (all of whom believe they are exceptional at something). Suddenly, contrary to the generous words of grandmothers and mothers, to our surprise, we are discovering that, well, we are quite average people. 

This is constructing a narcissistic and remarkably lonely society. While a tribe could generally rest knowing they have each other's backs to help them in case of an attack, we no longer have this confidence. We know our friends and brothers are our competition too, and we feel we have to measure up to what they are if we are to survive. 

Sadly, this is not limited to academia or a particular industry. I have often found myself in a church context trying to measure myself up to the standard set around me, comparing even presence or absence of spiritual gifts. Are they better at hospitality? Do they serve more? Do I love as much as she does? Why do they have a gift of tongues or prophecy while I have never had that type of experience? Should I do something differently? Does God love them more than me? 

I don't think this is new - many letters in the Bible address such issues. But I do believe the new dynamics in relationships and the unprecedented effects of social media have been affecting the way we interact as a community. Perhaps we have started somehow to believe that #blessed people are more loved by God because they are so blessed or #tksLord people are more holy because of their public thankfulness to God for their skills, talents and gifts. 

We can respond to this in a few ways: trying to live up to it by portraying a more blessed life than we actually believe we are experiencing (hence, being deceitful), by trying to live up to it and be like them or throwing in the towel entirely. 

I am probably guilty of attempting all three in different circumstances. Particularly over the last week while I tried to give a hand in a week of events I caught myself observing gifts other people had and wondering why I had never experienced such things - if I had to do or be something different. A passage in John came to mind as I wondered: 

"Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”). When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”
Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” (John 21.20-22) 

 

So, Jesus had just appeared to the disciples and Peter was having a chat with Jesus. Peter is reinstated and essentially gets a chance to state he loves Jesus three times after having denied him three times. There is reconciliation and Jesus gives him a new job: he is instructed to care for Jesus' followers, and is also warned about the death he would have. Peter then asks 'what about John?'. 

I have a few reactions reading this story: (1) thinking Peter is silly; (2) being embarrassed knowing I am silly like that too; (3) love Peter for the hope he brings that even in my silliness God can still assign me jobs too. 

It is pretty straight forward the way this relates to my ponderings of other people's gifts and talents, rather than thinking about how to do my job well, I was focusing on other people - which is not productive or useful in any way. 

I do believe this tendency is a remnant of our competitive nature, believing that in the church we have to compete with each other as we would to find our place in a company or a social circle. 

The key concept we fail to understand, though, is that as Christians, we are not competing for finite resources. God does not have a limited amount of love which he has to carefully allocate to people based on a number of pre-requisites. He also does not have a limited amount of spiritual gifts and jobs for people to do in serving him. 

God is not the boss of a company he is trying to run with only the best qualified people, he is a dad accomplishing a task he could very well do on his own that is allowing all of his different small toddlers to help with. He is the dad out working in the garden, who has prepared the earth, dug the hole and let his child drop in the seed. He is the one who will water the seed, care for it and trim the branches as it grows, but the toddler will still believe that 'they planted that tree' - not out of badness, but simply due to ignorance as to the complex process happening behind the scenes they have no idea about. He could do his work well alone (and probably much more efficiently), but he lets us take part. For him it doesn't make a difference if we are the more skilled in dropping seeds or our sibling is the better at pouring the water. We may proudly say we are excellent 'seed droppers' to our brother - and this may make him think this means he should not be 'water-pourers' but a 'seed dropper' instead, but it is not a matter of skill, talent or preference. The father loves no less one or the other for the job they do. He would much prefer it (and everything would work much more smoothly) if they were to love each other regardless or their modest toddler gardening skills and tried to work together with each other and with dad.

Another important aspect of functioning as a Christian community is the importance of diversity. One of my favourite ways of reflecting on this one is thinking about the metaphor of the body of Christ. We have 37.2 trillion cells in our body. Each one of them is equipped with the same genetic material (aka, information), and yet they function in totally different ways - and this is a good thing. Depending on the environment, the cells surrounding, and the expression of this genetic material the cell can be in the brain, the eye or the toe and still have an important role in the body. Similarly, as Christians we are equipped with the Bible and the knowledge of God and his love, but we express it in different ways. Some of us see him through art, others through nature, music or intellect. Some of us are teachers, and some of us are bakers. And yet, we all work as part of the same body. For someone with the gift of hospitality to leave their gift unused in order to try teaching just because that seems to be more important not only will hinder themselves (as they will never manage to feel they are excelling what they are doing), they will also be hindering the body. 

When I was around 18 I had to have a surgery performed on me because I had embryonary remnants of annexes related to skin in my spine - in other words, I had hair growing were my nervous system was! Needless to say, this was extremely painful and took a very long time to heal. This is how nonsensical it is to try to take up another's gift just to compete, to have a more flashy gift or feel more loved and necessary in the church. 

So, how do we deal with looking at people that have the same gift as us but seem to be so much more skilled at it? What if we seem to be alright at baking two recipes for hospitality, grand at preparing an average Bible study and nothing special at praying? 

Firstly, this does not affect if God loves us or not - he knows our circumstances and what is easier or harder, and he will not judge us unfairly. He knows the assets each person has, and will judge accordingly. It is better to faithfully serve with our average skills than to now and again serve with our superhuman ability. 

Secondly, if you are an average person, then by definition you are exactly like the majority of the people in the world and the majority of the people that came before you - and God has worked through them. In fact, if you look at the parables Jesus used to describe the Kingdom of God, they are very daily parables. The kingdom of God is the yeast a woman used to raise bread. In a patriarchal society where men would pray thankful that they were not women, he chose the woman to be the one in the kitchen doing daily work raising bread with yeast (Luke 13.20-21). In a society where in agriculture the mustard seed was a seed less desired because if it accidentally fell in another crop it would take over and prevent other seeds from growing, that was the seed chosen to represent the Kingdom of God (Luke 13.18-19). Jesus did not pick the mighty scholars to be those close to him professing and teaching - he chose people from various backgrounds, often uneducated or considered untrustworthy (Luke 5.1-11). God's 'chosen people' was not mighty in war, knowledge or land as other kingdoms surrounding them such as Egyptians, Assyrians and Babylonians - and yet God did everything for them because he loved them (Isaiah 43). Therefore, there should be nothing wrong and no reason to fear should you be a perfectly average Christian with no monuments to your name or books written about your life. The very centre of Christianity, Jesus himself was described as not good looking (Isaiah 53.2), he did not come from a notable place (John 18.5) and did not come from a prominent family (Mt 13.55). 

Therefore, if you ever have doubts as to wether God can love or use you, or why it is that you are less remarkable in any way than other people around you remember that the God we speak of is an expert in making extraordinary things with ordinary people. We may not be able to make ourselves, smarter, more eloquent, good looking or gifted - but whatever is in our hands, we can bring to him like a toddler to his father: and that is all that he wants. And, as Jesus showed, that is more than enough to change the world. 

"Merit"?

Recently, an interval between degrees has put me in a challenging position of needing temporary employment to pay for bills. I have had a humbling task of having to backspace from my CV many things I have been happy about and, well, proud of. It was a strange realisation to find that I just don't qualify for most temporary jobs in the real world. It was an unexpected feeling that I simply wasn't good enough - and this was the first step to the series of events that has caused a lot of changes in me over the last few weeks. My years of research experience yielded me nothing. I realised that I am quite poorly equipped for the 'real world' outside of academia - a world where neurones, neurotrophic factors, DNA and cellular signalling have no relevance when the job that needs done is sweeping a floor or making a cup of coffee. I did get a job eventually, though due to no merit of mine, and I have worked for the last two weeks cleaning in a hotel. The experience has been painful - on my body, but more still on my ego. I have had to be faced with and deal with many character flaws and be corrected in ways and by people I never expected. I found out that everyone knows something I do not know, and most people are much better at some things than I will ever dream to be. But respect and kindness have nothing to do with skill or function, but with seeing each person as a human soul. 

I have always been poor at receiving criticism. But being yelled at by superiors and guests, scolded and corrected almost constantly I realised in myself a pride of an extent I did not know how deeply rooted it was in me. The dynamics when in uniform and when out of uniform were drastically different, and that made me angry and irritated. Initially, if anyone was unkind I wanted to say 'do you think that I am uneducated? That I don't contribute to society? Well I study, I have a masters, I want to do a PhD! You shouldn't treat me like this!' But I now realise that was wrong. I do not deserve special treatment because of my education. If any anger or irritation had a right to be present it should have been because all people should be treated with kindness and respect regardless of their education or background. Whether waking up in the middle of the night to go sweep floors and scrub toilets or working overnight on a complex experiment, we are contributing to society doing jobs that have to be done. Some functions require a few weeks, others several years. But titles and prestige very often have little to do with how hard someone works, how much someone deserves anything, and often have more to do with opportunity which is entirely out of our control. 

One would think I understood that before working in cleaning, especially coming from a city where many hard working people have to wake up at 4 am to get 2 or 3 hours of expensive and poor quality public transportation to work cleaning a wealthy person's house for a very small wage, and yet others receive so much prestige without working a single day of their lives (and often both are neighbours next door neighbours). But I did not. I have taken my privilege for granted so much, that I convinced myself that I 'worked hard' for the opportunities I have had in life. However, many people work very hard - much, much harder than me, with far more kindness and humbleness - and still their lives are considered 'unsuccessful' to society. 

When I think back at my life, there has been hard work but there have been many things that were completely out of my control that have brought me to where I am. Yes, I studied hard to have scholarships to carry me through schooling in a reasonable school. I also worked hard to get into a good public university without fees, and to get a scholarship to study abroad, and there I studied aiming at a postgraduate course. Yes, there have been some challenges along the way in being a woman in science and being a woman in a culturally chauvinistic country. God knows I have loved highlighting all my 'hard work' on self-pittying posts about the hours spent studying, pictures of books piled on a table and have whined about 'student life' to the pain of the ears of those following my timeline during college. But any likes I received were the only 'reward' I probably receive for trying to make myself look good and hard working to my own glory. How many times have I not posted about 'blessings' and #thanksLord things I was merely being proud of and wanted to proclaim to the world with a pseudo-humble tone? However, merely being able to read and write puts me ahead of 33% of women in the world. Having access to internet to post these thoughts makes my access to information much easier than approximately 60% of the world. If I had not been born to a middle class family, if I did not have a family who loved and supported me, if my parents did not have higher education, if I were not bilingual my entire life, if I did not have a house, books, if I could not read or write, getting to where I am would be orders of magnitude more difficult. I am a product of working, but also a product of several opportunities and circumstances I have had no control over. Merit has maybe had a role, but it is not what has determined my life to be what it is.

This is what makes me most angry about feel good pseudo-philosophical statements to improve people's self esteem about 'dreaming big', 'following your heart' and how 'the key to success is hard work'. Those things may all be very true for the average middle or upper class educated young adult, but how can you say that to a malnourished child with hindered development due to poor nutrition or to a sick widow who cannot find a job to feed her multiple children? 

I probably at some stage believed those statements, but the role that they played in my heart has been much darker than I ever perceived them to be. They have justified to myself that all I achieved has been due to merit and deserving - because I 'dreamed big, believed in myself and followed my heart'  I have been able to pursue a career in neuroscience. This automatically made me believe that people in other less specialised jobs just didn't work hard enough in school or didn't rise to the necessary occasions. This drew a line in my heart separating me from them. And I became proud, arrogant and foolish. 

Working in cleaning, meeting people that due to circumstances have had to set aside successful careers due to changes out of their control to go into non-specialised jobs has changed me. Meeting people with families, histories, pains, love and a life made me realise what a fool I have been to think that my success has in any way been due to my own effort and in any way made me better than another person than others. It seems silly, but I was reminded that at the end of the day, we are all human. There is very little control we have over our lives, and that regardless of our job, social rank, financial situation, interests and education we are all human souls with beauty, with sin, with suffering and love. At the end of the day none of those foolish labels matter. We all will be born and die, and experience some suffering and hopefully happiness in between. We will have trials of different types and dimensions. But the things that can make or break us as humans are not our circumstances or opportunities. Our 'success' has nothing to do with titles or money. What makes us have a positive impact in the world is not our bank account, our figure or our degrees - it is what we do with what we have. 

Having more opportunities in life may make a life look easier from the outside. Knowing where your next meal is coming from and knowing that your shack of ply wood won't be washed away by a torrential rain suddenly before you come back from work probably sound like a good place to start in life. However, in the grand scheme of things, what are the things that matter at the end of the day? Money is spent, health fades, houses crumble and degrees lose relevance. We cannot take any of that to the grave. What really is success?

As a Christian, I believe that what really matters are the things that do last beyond this life - the things in our soul. "And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?" (Mark 8.36). I may have gained a lot in the world, but what has it done to my soul? It has made me love less those different from me, and it has made me believe that my provision and security come from my work and not from the loving hands of God. I have been living an illusion, believing in a fickle God who can provide special perks and improvements in my life, like a special membership card to life. Meanwhile, perhaps someone in very poor worldly conditions may be much more generous, kind, selfless and in fact understand the love and provision of God to a degree I may never  understand - and they may be much more successful at things that really matter in life than I may ever be. It makes me wonder if the way we see it in the world is just all upside down. If what we often call blessings are not simply circumstances - circumstances which may function as blessings or as curses depending on how we approach them. One may grow in kindness having more resources, more opportunities to share, give and love. Another may grow selfish, arrogant and cold. It is not our circumstances that should determine who we are, but what we do with them. And it is not our place as humans to judge each other on success or lack thereof: kindness and respect should not be dependent on judgement. We are not told to love those we respect, we are told to love our neighbour - and that can be anyone. 

Perhaps hardships and blessings are not as easy and clear cut for us to understand as we would like to think. We cannot add conditions and caveats to our love and respect towards others. Having more does not mean we are more loved or more worthy in any way or anything. It simply means our trials and lessons are different ones. If we have less, our responsibility is to not resent those who have more and learn to love them, to be generous and trust God for our provision. Having abundance makes our trials harder to see - and in a sense, may be more challenging to be spotted - but we have a responsibility to love and care for those in need and not believe ourselves better than the ones who have less. At the end of the day, we are all humans in unique circumstances. All of us are going through struggles that others don't know about. Everyone you meet knows something you don't know. And the only way to learn to truly love is by refusing the temptation of pride, and assuming we cannot understand the circumstances of another is a good place to start when wanting to judge and add exceptional conditions to 'loving our neighbour'. 

I regret bitterly not understanding my privileges and taking them for granted for so many years. But more so, with shame I realise that my worldly notions of value, merit and success have corrupted my soul and built walls separating 'us' and 'them'. All I can hope is that the lessons learnt during this short time may persist, that whatever my lot I may continue to grow in love, kindness and empathy and be a better steward of all that I am given in the years to come, whether it is much or little.

One last thing I would like to leave with you is an exercise that has made me think a lot about my circumstances, privilege and how people's lives are more than meets the eye (and highlights the meaninglessness of judging another based on success). The questions of the exercise are in the video's description if you would like to see how you fit in.