Does God condemn a person for rejecting Him ?  Or does an already damned person remain condemned when he rejects God ?

I believe it is the latter.  Unfortunately, the partly inaccurate and truncated message that people often hear is that they will go to hell for rejecting God.

This is what John 3 : 17 - 18 actually says –

For God did not send His Son [ Jesus ] to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.  Whoever believes in Him [ ie. Jesus ] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe already stands condemned because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Paraphrased –

A drug is invented not to kill a patient, but to cure him.  A patient who takes his medicine gets better, but a patient who refuses to take his medicine is as good as dead, because he has not taken the only thing which can cure his otherwise terminal illness.

I haven’t been writing lately because (i) the PC is out of order and we’re waiting for PCs to start shipping with Windows 7 before buying a new one (but we’re getting tired of waiting) and (ii) I’ve been awfully, awfully busy trying to seal a deal which I’m negotiating on at work.

The deal which I’m working on was intended to be closed months ago.  Unfortunately, new issues arise every other week resulting in the parties having to get fresh approvals from their management and signing postponed.  More recently, we thought we might be able to ink the agreement last Saturday, which was postponed to Sunday, then Monday — all over the Hari Raya long weekend — then Tuesday and, well, I don’t know whether we’ll sign today. 

I’m told my colleagues that this process is like going into labour but being unable to give birth.  Or less elegantly, going to the toilet and being unable to discharge.

And I feel like the toilet bowl.  Or more elegantly, the grass which gets trampled on between the two fighting elephants negotiating the deal.

Although I’m (sort of) complaining, there has been good in all this.  To begin with, if the parties did manage to reach agreement in July or August as originally planned, it would be almost impossible for me to find the time to do the work.  Especially August when I was out of the country for about three quarters of the time.

In the past few days, I’ve also managed to help the parties reach agreement on issues which were potential dealbreakers, without any particularly clever drafting on my part.  There were also several instances when the lead negotiater requested that I meet up with my counterpart over the long weekend — something that neither of us were particuarly keen on; as it was I felt bad for interrupting his meals on several ocassions by calling him on the phone — when I received his e-mail agreement to my proposal.  I imagine the chief negotiator must have been impressed, though I did nothing much.

So while I have been pretty miserable these couple of months / days, I see the hand of God intervening at critical moments to help me work through difficult situations, and to appear better than I actually am at work.

"The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." (Psalms 16:6)

Of all the Good Fridays in my life, I think yesterday was the least "Good Friday-ish" of them all.  We started Good Friday off by taking the kids to the Jacob Ballas Childrens’ Garden in the morning — which left us pretty tired out for the rest of the day — and ended with a 7 pm Good Friday service.

One thing I managed to squeeze in, between the morning and evening, was send an e-mail to my former and (until I sent the e-mail) prospective employer declining a job offer.  The reason, I said very truthfully, was not that the salary offered was unattractive, but that I had little confidence that the HR and senior management would treat its lawyers fairly over the long term.

"The fact that we are only having this discussion now, when I had been working for 8 years in first [ X ] and then [ Y ] for a fraction of what my counterparts (both in and outside of service) drew, indicates that it is all too easy to be taken for granted" were my exact words.

The reply to my e-mail which was sent about 2 hours later (yes, this is evidence that civil servants are hard at work even on a public holiday) started off with "today is Good Friday and your e-mail came at a time when Jesus died at the cross, taken for granted".

It was a remark which made me pause in at the end of the day (when I read the e-mail) to reflect that, yes, I have probably been taking Jesus for granted.  (Years ago such a remark would have also made me want to play Messiah and it still does pull at that heart string, but I think I’m a lot more cynical more and less easily moved by such remarks).

The other issue which occupied my mind for most of the day was that of being shortchanged, because that was primarily what my e-mail declining the job offer was about — that I had been shortchanged, and that I didn’t expect anything to change if I rejoined.  During service this prompted me to re-read a passage which I had read about a month ago, about the life of Jacob in Genesis 31 : 38 to 42 -

"I have been with you for twenty years now. Your sheep and goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten rams from your flocks.  I did not bring you animals torn by wild beasts; I bore the loss myself. And you demanded payment from me for whatever was stolen by day or night.  This was my situation: The heat consumed me in the daytime and the cold at night, and sleep fled from my eyes.  It was like this for the twenty years I was in your household.  I worked for you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks, and you changed my wages ten times.  If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed.  But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night he rebuked you."

Now I am not for a moment so deluded as to think that my life has been as tragic or difficult as that of Jacob’s.  Nor do I for a moment think that God is busy rebuking whoever might have treated me unjustly (there are some people, and shame on you).  Rather, this passage reminded me of God’s grace — that though I was not born into great wealth, and have neither great intellect nor political acumen, that though I have sometimes entered into bad bargains and made naive career choices, I have somehow attained reasonable success in life.  That I am where I am, can only be by the grace of God.

After struggling in ICU for about two weeks, mother-in-law passed away last Wednesday.  While everyone including me prayed that she would recover, I am personally uncertain if this would have been best outcome for her if the recovery was only partial.  The worst case possible would have been one where she made it out of ICU, but was paralysed in half her body from stroke and unable to talk, with kidney failure necessitating dialysis for the rest of her life, and with one or both legs amputated due to the lack of blood flow to her legs for an extended period of time while in ICU.

Yes, she was suffering that horribly.

In the course of my mother-in-law’s illness I kept asking myself if my lack of faith was a / the reason for the absence of a miraculous recovery.  This being the second time that I had experienced a family member struggle with a terminal illness — the first being my deceased father’s struggle with cancer — I told God that my faith could not handle another "disappointment".  Therefore, in some ways my mother-in-law’s struggle with her illness also became a struggle for my faith.

After spending many days wrestling with this issue, the answer finally came while I was in the ICU room one evening.

"Faith looks beyond the immediate". 

Meaning that while healing in this lifetime was what we hoped for, the absence of immediate healing does not mean negate our faith.  Rather, faith looks beyond immediate healing, believing that there will be healing beyond this lifetime.

The next morning I opened the Bible to Hebrews 11, which is the passage which I recalled talks about faith in some detail.  It confirmed what I had heard the day before.

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see".  (Hebrews 11 : 1)

Meaning, in the present case, that faith is being sure that there will be healing, even if we do not see such healing immediately, in our lifetime.

"All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.  And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. … they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them".  (Hebrews 11 : 13, 15)

Meaning, that God had given many Christians certain promises, but not all these promises were fulfilled in their earthly lifetime.  Instead, these promises were to be claimed in heaven, and these Christians continued to persevere as they were in faith looking beyond the immediate.

Similarly, healing need not take place in our lifetime.  If so then in faith, we believe that complete healing and restoration will take place in the life beyond.  Also, while we hope and pray for immediate healing, we should not be consumed with a desire to see healing take place in our lifetime.  We are all just visitors ("aliens and strangers") on earth, and it is healing in heaven that we should look forward to both for ourselves and those whom we love.

Having heard from God in the ICU and through Hebrews 11, the question of healing (or lack thereof) has lost its theological and spiritual sting, and what remains is for us to allow time to assuage the present feelings of loss.

We, and in particular father and brother-in-law, are in the process of building a new home.  It is a new beginning without the physical presence of mother-in-law, but touched by how she had loved them while she was alive.  There is also a new hope, that we will all get to see her again when our time on this earth is up, complete, healed and whole.

(For an account of my mother-in-law’s struggle in ICU, and her funeral, please read my brother-in-law’s blog here.)

On (or about) Thursday 8 January an errant Israeli motar shell hit a UN school in Gaza, killing several school children.  This prompted an AFP report on "257 Palestinian children killed in Gaza" (which title, I would point out, when read with the article’s first paragraph confusingly suggests that the attack on the UN school caused 257 casualties), exerpts (first four paragraphs) as follows :

Tiny bodies lying side by side wrapped in white burial shrouds. The cherubic face of a dead preschooler sticking up from the rubble of her home. A man cradling a wounded boy in a chaotic emergency room after Israel shelled a U.N. school.

Children, who make up more than half of crowded Gaza’s 1.4 million people, are the most defenseless victims of the war between Israel and Hamas. The Israeli army has unleashed unprecedented force in its campaign against Hamas militants, who have been taking cover among civilians.

A photo of 4-year-old Kaukab Al Dayah, just her bloodied head sticking out from the rubble of her home, covered many front pages in the Arab world Wednesday. "This is Israel," read the headline in the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. The preschooler was killed early Tuesday when an F-16 attacked her family’s four-story home in Gaza City. Four adults also died.

As many as 257 children have been killed and 1,080 wounded — about a third of the total casualties since Dec. 27, according to U.N. figures released Thursday.

Not unexpectedly, and not unreasonably as well, the attack provoked global outrage.

Now suppose the motar shell had hit a pet shop and 257 hamsters or 257 rabbits died.  Or that it hit a florist and 257 roses perished.  Would there be the same outpouring of anger or grief ?

I ask this not to trivialise the deaths of the Palestinian children,  but to question why human life is regarded as more precious than animal or plant life.  What is the basis for this ? 

Numerous atheists today believe that a random mixture of chemicals got really lucky and that humans evolved as a result.  That essentially, we are no different from animals or plants but for the chemical makeup.  If so, why do we mourn the passing of human life ?  Why do we express outrage when innocent people are killed ?  Why do we not feel the same outrage when animals or plants are killed ?  Why do we feel anger or a sense of loss at all, if all there is to life is a short period of heightened consciousness followed by decomposition of the life form into its chemical constituents ?

I believe that much as we would like to deny the existence of God, or a divinely-inspired moral order, all humans as created beings have a moral compass hardwired into our being.  Therefore except maybe for the most depraved of us, there is a core set of moral standards which we subconciously adhere to, one of which is the sacredness of human life.  In Genesis 9 : 5 - 6, God (re)institutes this moral order when He instructs Noah -

"And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.  Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man".

Two truths jump out from this simple passage.  The first is that humans were created to bear the imprint of God — "in the image of God, has God made man".  The second is that human life is not to be trivialised, that God will demand from every person an account for how he has treated his fellow man.  Taken together, this means that every person, male or female, young or old, able-bodied or handicapped, economically productive or not, straight or gay, "red and yellow black and white", is precious in the sight of God.

I suppose there are many who take sides in or protest against the conflict for reasons such as identification with the Jewish or Palestinian cause, or ethnic or religious affiliation, or political advancement.

However, for Christians, the life of every Palestinian child, and of every other Palestinian, as well as of every Israeli, matters because human life is precious in the sight of God.  And when we plead or pray for peace, restriant or justice in this conflict, it should also be because we grieve at how there has so little respect for the sacredness of God-given life.

Here I would deviate to add that this Biblical view on the sacredness of God-given life must, in conjunction with whatever other guidance God has provided in the Bible, inform our views on controversial matters such as the artificial conception, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, and other like issues.  I think it would be presumptuous of Christians to pretend that the Bible has clear answers to all these new (or maybe not-so-new) scientific developments; it does not.  In the absence of clear scriptural approval (or sometimes disapproval) I suppose a safe position to take would be to object to everything, but I don’t think this is necessarily correct.  Rather, the Christian who supports artificial conception, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, and other like issues in any general or particular circumstances must do so with reverential awe for the sacredness of God-given life, sincerely believing with good reason that what he supports does not (or does not without good reason) detract from the fundamental principle that every life (no matter how "embryonic") is precious in the sight of God, and with the apprehension that God will call him to account for the impact of his views on the life of his fellow man.

I’ve been meaning to pen down my thoughts on the Prodigal Son for some time already, but just haven’t found the time.  Pending the time that I do, here’s a meaningful song by John Waller based on the parable.

The global economic crisis has claimed another high profile victim, this time in the form of a distraught Madoff investor who committed suicide after losing $1.4 billion of client money.

This is sad news.  Christmas should be about hope, not suicide.

It just struck me a few days ago that in these uncertain times, Christians have been given the greatest assurance ever.  This is the Person of Jesus Christ, whose other name is Immanuel or "God with us".

In Romans 8 : 31, 38 - 39, Paul wrote about God’s reassuring presence (in the context of persecution not financial trouble, but I believe the principles apply to our present day), as follows :

31 … If God is for us, who can be against us ? … 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Of all the Christmases in my short existence, the one this year feels the saddest.  Never has the world appeared more hopeless, and never have I felt more helpless to do anything to improve it.  The global economy, teethering on collapse, threatens to drive the many poor below the poverty line and into starvation, the excesses of overconsumption have sent the global climate reeling, terrorism scored a massive victory in Mumbai (taking the life of numerous innocents including one Singaporean), Hong Kong and Indonesia struggle with the bird flu, and more and more people appear to be rejecting or abandoning the church.

It seems sometimes, that we are regressing into a world without God, where there is no reason or hope to life other than our chemical composition.  Not that God doesn’t care about our world, but that the world no longer cares for God, squeezing out the sacred and spiritual out of its secular existence as much as possible.

Times like these, I pray that God will send a new revelation. Not ‘new’ in the sense of a new gospel (for there are none apart from those already revealed in the Bible), or a clever repackaging of the Christian message using the latest gimmicks.

But "new" like the fresh dawn air on the mountaintop.  While air is not new to us because we breathe every minute of our lives, there is a refreshing and revitalising quality about crisp dawn air that is instantly distinguishable from stale city air. 

"New" like the breaking of light at dawn after a long and dark night, as the life and ministry of Jesus is described in Isaiah 9 : 2 -

The people living in darkness have seen a great light;
On those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. 

We need a new revelation.  So that we may have hope.

The church needs a new revelation.  So that it’s testimony and ministry may stand apart from stale alternatives.

The world needs a new revelation.  So that it may be saved from itself.

One of the more difficult passages of the Bible is Exodus 5 - 14.  This is the account of the ten plagues which God brought upon Egypt in order to persuade the pharoah to let the Israelites go (the "Exodus").  It is a difficult passage because it says repeatedly that God had hardened the heart of the pharoah, so that the pharoah would not easily agree to let the Israelites go.  In Romans 9 : 17 - 18, Paul refers to this account, and says

For the Scripture says to Pharoah : "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."  Therefore, God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden.

I recall some of my friends asking me in the past.  In the light of Exodus, how is God fair ?  Do humans really have the freedom to accept or reject God on their own volition ?  If God (pre)determines how we react to God’s message, can we be held personally responsible for accepting or rejecting God ?

I didn’t have a very good answer at that time, and I won’t pretend that I have all the answers right now.  However, reflecting on the passage again today it struck me that God had given pharoah multiple opportunities to relent and repent, each time backed with a visible demonstration of God’s supernatural power to emphasise the severe consequences of disobedience — from the turning of Moses’ staff to a snake to the ten plagues to the pillar of cloud and fire I think at least 12 times if not more — I wonder how many of us would be given so many chances in such obvious terms to avoid a bad decision in life.  This, I believe, was the extraordinary extension of patience and grace by God to a very stubborn monarch.  Viewed in this light, I don’t think God had acted unfairly, or nullified pharoah’s personal responsibility for his rejection of God.

So pharoah screwed it.  Pharoah screwed himself.

Interestingly, Exodus 9 : 15 - 16 confirms this — that God was actually acting with restraint so that pharoah would have the opportunity to relent — and here I have to confess that this is the first time I recall reading these words :

For by now I could have streched out My hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth.  But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

Too bad pharoah blew it.

As [ Jesus ] went along, He saw a man blind from birth.  His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind ?"

"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life". … Having said that, [ Jesus  healed him ].

John 9 : 1 - 7

When bad things happen, Christians often turn to God for a solution, or for a reason, or both.  When illness strikes, we turn to God for a miracle and, if none appears to be forthcoming, for a divine reason for the status quo.  When a project or relationship fails, we also often turn to God for a solution and, if none appears to be forthcoming, for a divine reason for the status quo.  Why ?  Why me ?  Why did God allow this ? 

I wonder how many of us would be satisfied with the answer that God gave the man in John 9.  That is, that the man was born blind, and remained blind for a good part of his life, because God intended to use him as an example for others.  Personally I don’t think I’d be too happy.  I’m only glad to be part of some bigger divine plan, so long as it doesn’t involve any pain or suffering or hardship on my part.  So perhaps this would be the type of answer that I wouldn’t be fully prepared to hear.

I’ve been re-reading Philip Yancy’s "Reaching for the Invisible God" and he writes, in respect of Job, that

"the Bible offers no systematic answers to the ‘Why?’ questions and often avoids them entirely. … for a simple reason : no time-bound human, living on a rebellious planet, blind to the realities of the unseen world, has the ability to comprehend such answers — God’s reply to Job in a nutshell".

Interestingly, a pastor friend whom I caught up with recently, and who has been struggling with cancer for a number of years, arrived at a roughly similar conclusion.  That sometimes God doesn’t answer our "why"s because we would not be prepared to hear the reason.  That sometimes, or many times, he doesn’t know the reason for a bad incident — a very humbling conclusion to reach given that pastors are expected to know the answers to everything.

The foregoing, of course, doesn’t mean that we should give up seeking the divine purpose or lesson underlying every major incident in our lives.  However, we must be prepared to continue to trust in God’s greater divine plan, even when the divine purpose or lesson for a bad incident is not immediately obvious to us.