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. 

Divine bargaining

"So... all I need to do to get all the desires of my heart is to take delight in you and you'll just give them to me? Cool!" 

That is always the imaginary dialogue with God whenever I read the verse from Psalm 37.4:

"Take delight in the Lord,

and he will give you the desires of your heart."

However, realistically, whenever I look at the lives of people who truly took delight in the Lord, that verse seems to be plainly wrong. I don't imagine that any of the people whose story is in the Bible had being slaughtered, persecuted, cut in half, crucified or had their limbs ripped from their body because of their faith as one of the items on the list of 'desires of your heart'. In fact, whoever decides to really take Christianity seriously have lives that look pretty grim and undesirable. 

Christ himself said that "You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved." (Matthew 10.22) and showed by example that the one who truly loves as he did ends up being hated, flogged and killed. 

So... how do we understand the verse from the Psalm? Was David wrong? I don't think so. 

The dialogue I had imagined - not very different from the negotiation you can find in a market - shows quite clearly I initially understood the verse as being a bargain, I realised that I was looking at my faith through the eyes of a capitalist consumer. I imagined it all as being a cosmic bargaining with the sovereign creator of the universe - which, let's be honest, is pretty pathetic. 

So to try to understand it I decided to put aside the very exciting 'getting desires of the heart' to start from the beginning: Delight in the Lord. 

What does delight in the Lord actually mean? Does it mean leaving all my possessions, going up into the mountains, living of the land and never being reinserted to society? Does it mean being happy all the time? 

Firstly, something that God is not saying: 'act like you like me', or 'serve me human'. He is not asking for an action. He is asking for a response. 

Suppose I have made a batch of cookies. The house smells great as you walk in and I say: if you enjoy cookies, I will make you happy by giving you more cookies. I don't think that God is saying something entirely different in this verse. 

Taking delight means enjoying God himself, which I do not think is something to be belittled or dismissed. The point is: to know if we delight in or enjoy something, we have to try it first. "Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him." (Psalm 34.8). We are invited to try him! And the only way to do so is the same way we do to get to know people: spending time with him, listening and talking to him, essentially... building a relationship. 

Generally we tend to see God as a means of getting [insert here something you want such as health, money, comfort, security, love], not very unlike a teenager that is happy to be kind to their parent on the days preceding asking for money to take a trip. But being invited to take delight in him is an entirely different picture. When you take delight in someone, you spend time with them because of them. You enjoy their company, even if sitting silently in the same room. Sometimes they may even give you council, words of wisdom, a present, but you're not there for that. You're there for them. 

The thing is, any relationship which is successful ultimately changes you the more you enjoy each other and the more time you spend together. You start liking the same things, your opinions often begin to align. The way you talk, act and dress is mutually influential. With God it is not different. 

When we take delight in the Lord, it is not that we are buying him or making him just shrug and say "Fine, I'll give you the things you want now". We are not changing God. It is He who is changing us. 

Our will and desires are transformed as our relationship with God deepens, grows and we learn to love and delight in him. Our hearts become in tune with his, and so the things our heart desires are things that he would like to give us. A parent is much more likely to want to give an apple to satisfy the hunger of their child than a rock - even if the child asks for a rock. However much a parent loves a child, he will not give it a rock to eat even if the child desires it more than anything. It is not that the parent is being cruel by not giving it, but exactly the opposite. He is not satisfying the child's wish out of love. Once the child learns that rocks are not edible, but that apples are very much edible, the parent will far more often be able to give the child what they desire. Similarly, as we are shaped by God, he will give us the desires of our heart, because they start to become in tune with his own desires for us. 

Therefore, in one sense, even if you decide to pursue the self-seeking path to get what you want in the end, seeking the Lord for that, you might end up being quite surprised if you truly succeed. You may find that in the midst of delight in him, either the desires of your heart have been already satisfied by his nature or... are really not that important at all. 

"Master they say that when I seem
To be in speech with you,
Since you make no replies, it’s all a dream
– One talker aping two.

They are half right, but not as they
imagine; rather, I
Seek in myself the things I meant to say,
And lo! The well’s are dry.

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake
The listener’s role, and through
My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake
The thoughts I never knew.

And thus you neither need reply
Nor can; thus while we seem
Two talking, thou art One forever, and I
No dreamer, but thy dream.– C.S. Lewis"  

Glorious failure

Whenever I am asked what I do, the word neuroscience generally makes people react with surprise and some awe. Generally the initial surprise is followed by: "Wow, you must be really smart then!". But, in reality, it is not a particularly glamorous job. The smell of decaying tissue, the lab coats with smears and duck-taped gloves, none of it feels particularly remarkable.

About half of my time is spent in a lab handling things that are toxic and transferring very small amounts of liquid from a vial to a plate - 96 times per plate multiple times a day. It is repeating, repeating and repeating things to have statistical significance and half of the time not have any idea what the heck is going on.  

This is how a series of bad experiments over the last seven months, a lot of uncertainty regarding the future and a few other issues culminated in the rather pathetic (if not comical) sight of me walking down the darkened road, in the rain, at 9.30 pm after 12 hours doing experiments that never worked, while water soaked into my bones in the cold - the weather only adding to make me very frustrated and angry with the powers that be. 

Buried in a hole I dug for myself of self-pity, frustration and immature ranting, I couldn't help but wonder: what's the point of all of this? What good do the prestigious titles of 'neuroscientist' and 'master' do when I am literally trying to figure out why a particular chemical that only half a dozen people in the world care about reacts in such an inconsistent, chaotic way with my cells? What is the whole divine purpose of this nonsense? Why have I been weak after weak facing so many nasty uncertainties and issues? Am I being foolish trying to find a higher cosmic meaning in my small stupid first world problems? After all, what is my purpose if this is how I spend my days? In fact...what is my purpose at all? 

A quiet statement silenced my mind and halted my rant suddenly: 

"Your purpose is to glorify Me. And you can do that in failure as much as in success." 

This was a very revolutionary thought. Can I glorify God in failure? How? Doesn't everyone always pray for the church event to 'be a success for God's glory'? Or for so and so to be 'healed for God's glory'? Isn't God only 'blessing', 'working', showing his love and glory when the sick child is healed, the meal is provided in the time of hunger and when thousands of a random village in the back of the bush accept him due to the work of missionaries? How can God possibly be glorified when things look like they have... well, gone perfectly wrong?  

I thought about Jesus' ministry: people questioning him because of his humble social-economic background (Matthew 13.55, Mark 6.3), calling him a glutton and a drunkard, friend of sinners and traitors (Matthew 11.19, Luke 7.34), plotting to kill him and trying to stone him (John 8.59, 10.31), trying to push him off a cliff (Luke 4.29), pleading that Jesus will leave their town (Mark 5.17), religious leaders plotting to kill him (Matthew 12.14, Mark 3.6, John 11.45-57), and ultimately was betrayed by one of his closest friends (Luke 22), his own people pleaded for him to executed (Luke 23.21) and for a thief to be released instead of him (Matthew 27.21). 

For someone that wanted to bring God's love and salvation to people, that sounds like a pretty terrible ministry. Probably if he were a missionary and kept bringing back these stories of failure no one would want to support him. 

And yet God says he is well pleased with Jesus (Mark 1.11, Matthew 3.17, Luke 3.22), he fulfilled what he was supposed to fulfil (Matthew 1.21) and God exalted him (Philippians 2.9). 

Wait... what? 

Prosperity gospel is the belief that God will bless you with health, wealth and other earthly blessings and, though not all churches claim to be aligned with that line of thought, it seems that the general concept of God blessing us with earthly concepts of success has slowly permeated Christianity. Perhaps it is some sort of Newtonian concept of thinking good actions result in good reactions from the universe, perhaps it is some form of trying to make Karma theological. Maybe it is the influence of capitalism and the trading assets and benefits. But Christianity sometimes looks like a bargain to some people: if I am a 'good' person, therefore God should allow good things to happen to me; if I am a Christian, then God should make me happy and successful. God loves me and cares about my happiness, therefore he will provide me with my dream job, a long life, a good wife/husband, with successful results. If something is going wrong, then I am not being good, Christian or holy enough. However, the overwhelming Biblical evidence is that that belief is just utterly wrong. 

Hosea being married to a prostitute and suffering from it for a metaphor God wanted to use, Ezekiel's wife dying for God to get a point across, the suffering of Jeremiah, eleven of the twelve disciples following Jesus and Paul being martyred in horrific ways, from an earthly perspective faithfulness to Christ looks like a pretty grim path to take - but that is exactly it. Christ suffered. Christ died. And the same fate came to many who followed him. 

Our culture today, in the exaltation of positive emotions, has come to believe that God loving us necessarily means he wants us to be happy over all things. But, though I would imagine he would want us to be ultimately happy, he knows that we cannot truly find happiness apart from himself and the way he designed us to be: holy. God puts our eternal holiness over our temporary happiness. 

By saying this I do not mean to say he is this terrible being that will make us suffer until we realise how we need him, in fact, he provides many sources of temporary joy and happiness in the world - a good conversation with a friend, a cool drink in a summer day, a beautiful sunset, a good book, family. However, he will not endlessly pour into our days all the blessings we hope to have less we forget the true Source of all joy. 

Pain, suffering, frustration and failure often are ways in which we can grow closer to God and for him to make us holier. But not only that, even if while on earth we were to reach perfect holiness, we still would not be exempt of suffering any more than Jesus was. We also do not have to play the 'I'm a Christian and my life is perfect' card, as he showed. He experienced negative emotions too. He showed fear in the Getsemani (Luke 22, Matthew 26). I also think that there is some irritation/frustration when he curses the fig tree for it not having fruit, even though it was not season of figs (Mark 11.12-14). He shows anger against the people dishonouring the Father in the temple courts (Mark 11.15-17). 

But ultimately, he remained faithful and obedient in spite of all this. He did not start listing things he should be doing differently in order to bargain with God and receive blessings; he never questioned God's goodness; he never asked 'why me?'. He did not necessarily want to go through carrying the sin of the world and being crucified (Luke 22.42), but we cannot wait to feel like we want to go through such things: obedience is only obedience when you do not necessarily want to do something. Otherwise, it is only doing what you would be doing anyway. 

If we continue to believe that we need earthly blessings to know that God loves us, cares for us and is pleased with us, while we may be not be any less Christian, we may be stagnant in an immature state of relationship with God. We may never understand him, his character or will in more depth. We will be the two year old who is so distracted with the shiny gifts from the father (or distracted and worried why we did not receive the gifts from the father), that we miss out on the gift that the father is himself. Our hearts will be prone to wander and our faith weak. 

We are not called to health, wealth, happiness and perfect families. We were not called to have the right feelings all the time and to just go with them. We are not called to results, successful stories, crowds of people who love us. Our lives have the purpose of glorifying God as the Son did, and the best way to do so is to do his will: 

"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." 

- Micah 6.8 

We are called for obedience in - even if it costs us all of those other shiny things we love so much. And in that, even the most extravagant, frustrating and gut-wrenching failure can be the greatest glory you have ever achieved. 

Entertaining our lives away

In spite of having multiple hobbies and interests, it has been with some disappointment and a nagging sense of guilt that I have watched my time spent drawing, painting or writing dwindle over the past few months. Even though I wouldn't consider my hours to be unreasonable in any way, the fact is once I am done with experiments, reviewing scientific literature and writing my thesis or papers, I do not really feel like exercising the intellectual effort of engaging in any of my other hobbies. All I want to do is sit down, eat and let my mind rest with an easy to read fiction book, a movie or an episode of a series. 

However, observing this trend I began to wonder: how much of my time and, ultimately, my life is being poured down the drain into fictional worlds that have never existed? Into worlds of happy endings, of magic, dragons knights in shining armour? Worlds in which science works like magic, and in which heroes and villains are caricatures, as easily told apart as black and white? Stories in which the good guy gets the girl and they live happily ever after (whatever that is supposed to mean)?

If, for instance, I were to consider two hours a day destined to entertainment (either one movie, two episodes of a series or a few chapters of a book), that would sum up to 14 hours a week, 730 hours a year - which is shockingly one month per year or an average of approximately 6 years of one's life (given a life of approximately 70 years) spent away from the real world. 

The fact is our generation consumes an unprecedented amount of entertainment, and much of identity is based on the types of movies, books and music you like. There has been a decline in people with particular intellectual interests, and very often bonding and friendship are based solely on similar entertainment choices. Suddenly, financially we are not capable of funding the extent of entertainment, and thus illegal downloads have increased and people 'own' more than their computers are capable of storing. We have come to the circumstance in which our need for entertainment has reached an extent where it is now socially acceptable (and often expected) that you will literally steal something to be able to satisfy your need for it. 

One of the many issues arising from this is that it is profoundly changing the way we see and interact with the world. 

For instance, recently a study was published on the way that romance novels and movies are as harmful to relationships as pornography; each of them profit from creating an artificially constructed ideal which satisfies the two stereotypical forms of ideal relationships of each gender. From spending extensive amount of time in these artificial worlds, we create false expectations as to what relationships are like, and thus are perpetually unsatisfied. We are frustrated believing that perhaps another person might fulfil our emotional or sexual desires in the way portrayed in a particular book or movie. Now only that, also most movies  do have a romantic component: the good guy wins the girl, kisses (or has sex with) the girl and the credits start rolling. And suddenly people find themselves in an actual relationships in which they have to figure out what happens after the first kiss or what "happily ever after" actually involves. 

However, believing that the negative consequences of excess entertainment are limited to romantic relationships is at best naïve. The flooding of our minds of a month per year of action,  emotion, magic, powers and supernatural abilities suddenly makes the real world seem impossibly dull and boring. Suddenly we find that often we will "pursue our dreams" and that won't work out. We may try our best, but we still do not achieve fame and success. Our beauty standards of what we should look like are completely unrealistic (sorry ladies, I don't think you have time to retouch make up in a zombie apocalypse and sorry lads, there is no science to make your muscles grow overnight like Captain America). Disregarding rules will have negative consequences, unlike what Harry Potter says. Relationships are not made of first kisses and happily ever afters - they are made of imperfect people working hard to take care of each other (and that probably will involve conflict). 

We then look at our lives - hours of studying, hours doing work we don't really know the point of, hours cooking and housekeeping, our relationships, financial difficulties - and we can't help but be sorely disappointed and frustrated. Our wins do not have crowds cheering us forward, and our accomplishments do not have epic music. 

This disappointment drains us emotionally, and our lives seem to not have meaning - and so we ease our minds by flooding them with yet more of the temporary joy and meaning of mindless entertainment. We need to feel some spark of joy, power or hope and thus we look to fiction as we often cannot find it in the world. 

I do not think that eliminating entertainment entirely is a solution. Storytelling has always had a place in society - often it would be a form of communicating inheritance, origin and education. Fiction is a form of art which may help bring to light relevant matter of society or morality, for example. It is one way of building empathy and understanding points of view other than your own by living in the situation of other characters. 

However, the concern I have had in observing is the increasing importance and dependence we have on it, and how much of ourselves is defined by activities often destined only to 'switch off' our brains. It seems to be a numbing of the mind hypnotising us into a trance, a fiction that pulls us out of the real world and keeps us trapped in an addiction artificial emotions - not very unlike the use of drugs and alcohol. 

From a Christian perspective, I cannot help but ask myself: How much does this endless entertainment contribute to my soul and character? How many years of my limited time on earth do I want to give to Hollywood and Netflix? What is there in me and my life that drives me so strongly to numb myself, fleeing from myself and reality? Or, the question I have been using to reevaluate many aspects of my life: 

What is the relevance of this in light of eternity? 

"Homing"

This week I entered the last year of my first quarter of a century. In general, I don't like making a big deal about birthdays, but there is something particular about my recently acquired age. It is an age I generally associated with a person that has everything much more 'together' than I do - that knows what their future beyond the next 10 months looks like. Someone that has at least a more established idea of what career path to take. A week in, I think it's safe to assume no magical changes happen to a person when they blow the candles that makes them into an amazingly put together adult.
Entering the sixth year of living away from my mother's home - I am completing a fourth of my life as a nomad, living away from my mother's home. I have in two years lived in three cities under about 6 different addresses. I have lived in houses with 13 different people. Unsurprisingly, I feel a bit worn out.
I carry around things to try to make anywhere feel like home - candles, posters, pictures, letters, books, quotes. But at the moment I look at the year ahead of me - not knowing what lies beyond that - and my heart just yearns for somewhere to be "home". Somewhere to rest the head and the heart. Somewhere of peace, and of love. And rather than a housing issue - of a building with a ceiling and four walls - I believe my current issue is one of 'homing'.
For many years, I thought that desiring the stability of a family to come home to was something inherently wrong. I thought I had to get my act together on my own, be independent and responsible for myself, stable emotionally and not depend on anyone or anything to determine my identity. Seeking such things in a house, in a family, were, to me, signs of some form of weakness.
I also thought that as a Christian this was wrong. I had seen so many people around me making a family into an idol in itself - something worshiped and pursued far more than the one who created the family in the first place - that I constantly feared this. Often, I would avoid discussions about marriage or children not due to lack of interest, but out of fear of succumbing to this idol I had seen ruin so many lives. God must be enough on His own.
I still approach such ideas with caution and rebuke myself when I sway too much in that direction; howbeit, I have come to understand that the feeling of yearning a home, emotional stability and love are not inherently bad in themselves. Like most things, what matters is not the feeling, but what we do with it. What may ultimately destroy us is what we direct these desires to.
For instance, God established marriage himself before the fall (Gn. 2). Therefore, it is his creation and was within everything he saw was "Good". He said it was not good for man to be alone. However - unlike popular belief, especially in Christian circles in which there is always a high expectation for wedding bells - he never encouraged this to be anyone's ultimate goal. In fact, he has some quite hard things to say about family in Luke 9.
When one man looks out Jesus and says "I will follow you wherever you go", Jesus doesn't use euphemisms. He doesn't act like a life of service is a walk in the park, all love and butterflies. "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." And so those who serve him may come to this too. Following this, when two people want to respectively bury a parent and another to say goodbye to their family, Jesus gives two very blunt answers: “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” and  “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” I do not believe in any way that Jesus is saying family is a bad thing, but these verses establish very clearly that God is to be above it in one's list of priorities.
But then what is to be done with this need humans have for a home and a family? The desire for marriage, so haunting to many people? Is it to be left and ignored? Personally, I do not think this feeling exists by chance or coincidence.

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."
- C.S.Lewis

As Easter approaches, sermons and studies surrounding, analysing and picking apart details of the last supper and crucifixion increase in Christian circles. But this week I learnt one thing about the last supper that surprisingly helped me to understand a great deal about human nature.
In the passover meal, there was always a cup of wine set aside and close to the door, the Cup of salvation which was set aside as a sign that the Messiah was coming. In the last supper, this was the cup that Jesus took and offered as a covenant to his disciples. Thing is, offering  this was not unusual in Jewish tradition - we only call this 'covenant' a particular name: Marriage.
When a man asked a woman to marry him, the families would be gathered for a meal, the man would pour out the wine and offer it as his covenant with her. The woman could, in theory, accept the proposal by drinking from the cup, or reject by not drinking. They would then go back to their hometowns, and the woman would now be called by the man's name - because she had been promised to him. The couple would not see each other for several months as the groom-to-be built a house - or in the translation we use in the Bible, 'mansion' - behind his parents' house. Communication would be made by the best man between the bride-to-be and groom-to-be, until the groom's father approved of the house and said the bride was to be brought, and thus they would be married.
What this means is that 2,000 years ago - when Jesus offered the cup to his followers, he was proposing to them, and after raising in the third day went to 'prepare a place' for us (John 14.3). In fact, that whole passage is remarkably consistent with the Jewish traditions!

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."

This is consistent with multiple other passages in the Bible in which God refers to his people as his bride, such as Hosea, Ezekiel, Revelation.
You might ask - what does this have to do with the whole rest of the text? Well, what this means is that if we have this desire and longing for family, for togetherness and, ultimately, for a home it makes sense that we would and that it would be so strong such that it would overrule many other important things. The sad part, however, is that we seek to satisfy it only in the short term aspect of marriage on earth and through building a home with material possessions. These become our securities, and we at some point may believe it is the sole purpose this feeling was there in the first place.
In one thing the little old ladies in church asking you if you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, or someone saying you have to get married - in a strange and unexpected way, they are right that we were all made for the stability of marriage and of a home, and if you are a Christian and have accepted Christ's covenant you are technically engaged (This definition definitely has potential to make Sunday dinner with the family interesting).
But this is what threw me off from all my concepts of such things. My idea, as I mentioned, was that I had to be 'self sufficient, responsible for myself, independent emotionally, etc etc". But, with Christ, this makes absolutely no sense. Often the metaphor used in the Bible to describe his Bride and Beloved is that of an adulteress, a prostitute, unfaithful. She is far from perfect, has a past of lies, deceit and unfaithfulness. She most definitely does not have it all together. And yet, he is proposing this covenant. A very costly covenant, in fact - that would cost him his life. But this is the measure of his love. "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." (John 15.13)
This is not a conditional offer - that Christ will only love you if you become emotionally independent, self sufficient, etc etc. In fact, we are encouraged to bring everything - even, and especially, our brokeness to him, and he mends us, heals us, and by wearing his name, and his purity we are able to be dressed in white. Not by our achievements or hard work - but by his grace.

God sees us as we are, loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are. But by his grace, he does not leave us as we are.

-Timothy Keller 

This made me think of so many brides-to-be that I know, friends and relatives, spending hours of effort, money and decision making preparing for their weddings. And I stopped to think of this covenant with Christ, and I wondered - what if we spent this much time and effort, and had preparation as high on our list of priorities to meet Christ on that day? How would our lives be different?
In light of this extraordinary love, and this covenant, I realised that ultimately, I may or may not have a place to rest my head in the next few years. Perhaps I might have it easy for now and have a vague illusion of security and stability by having a home - or I will continue to be challenged in this sense, and God may continue to push me to realise that my home is not, in fact, on earth. But one thing I do know that keeps me going is that, weather my heart is full or empty, torn or whole, ashamed or proud, there will always be somewhere to rest it: the certainty of an unconditional and irrevocable love. Regardless of houses, families, careers, this will still stand. And, well, that's a pretty darn good thought to carry into the quarter-centuries to come.