The toothache that I’ve been having for the past couple of weeks has become unbearable, and turned out to be a wisdom tooth that had to be extracted.  What a bloody mess !

… is pretending to blow his nose.

(This post is rated R for adult content.  If you are under 21 years of age, or above 40 years old, you should move on to the next post or another website).

A good friend from London and I were chatting over MSN, and he congratulated me on the conception of our second baby.  I disclosed that the second one came as a bit of a surprise.  The discussion then shifted, as it somehow not infrequently does in my conversations with him to, er, sex.

A bit like Superman sex, was my friend’s comment.  I have not watched Superman Returns but apparently Superman had, somewhere in that movie, caused Lois Lane to conceive after just one hot night of ahem.  (I must say I’m a little flattered to be compared to Superman, though I can think of a lot more useful things to do with powers like superhuman speed and strength, or ability to leap over buildings in a single bound, than a super-procreative power).

After logging off, I reflected on our online conversation and became (just very slightly) disturbed by the thought that Superman had pre-marital sex.  I mean, Spiderman, X-men and other superheroes may struggle with complicated love relationships but they don’t have pre-marital or extra-marital sex, do they ?  (Or have I missed too many superhero movies since the birth of Jed ?)  And here we have Superman, superhero of superheroes, paragon of virtue, tarnished by the scriptwriter who has him engage in ahem before he and Lois Lane tie the knot. 

Tsk tsk … I’m such a prude.  But I thought it interesting to note that, in a world that - sometimes rightly and at other times wrongly, sometimes to its benefit and at other times to its poverty - increasingly sees things in shades of grey, even the black and white, fairytale innocence of the Superman myth must also shattered.

Delivering a presentation on the Advance Medical Directive (AMD) Act yesterday, I couldn’t help but think back upon how my Dad died.  (No, he didn’t make an AMD before his death, but in the last few days of his life he was unconscious, terminally ill, and extraordinary life-sustaining treatment would probably only have artificially prolonged his life.)

And I was sad.

Some of the most inappropriate thoughts entered my mind at service on Sunday (if the pastor is reading this it is not because the sermon was boring).  My mind wandered and soon I found myself thinking back upon the more memorable scenes from Night at the Museum, one of which was a witty line by miniature cowboy Owen Wilson - "I ain’t quitting you" (itself a spoof of Brokeback Mountain, which I suppose makes this thought doubly inappropriate).

But that, I had also thought at that time (no I wasn’t totally wasted), is the essence of the redemption story, isn’t it ?  About a God who loves us so much that He doesn’t know how to quit us.  And so, amidst the doom, gloom and pronouncements of divine judgement in the book of Jeremiah, He declares to an Israel (and, by Jesus’ death on the cross, the rest of the world) that repeatedly rejects Him , in 31 : 3 that

"I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with loving-kindness."

Have sold my soul again to service this time, permanently.

Contract just got renewed.

Jed has been going to school for slightly over a month now.  And all of a sudden, it dawns on me that we are no longer fully in control of his life.

Before Jed started school, he would have stayed at home the whole day.  And my mother would tell us what he did during the day - what he ate, how he slept, where and what he played, and the TV shows he watched.

Now that Jed is in school, it is impossible to know everything about him.  We don’t know all of his friends, or at least not very well.  We don’t know what he studied in school, or at least not the syllabus everyday.  We don’t know what he ate, whether he liked the food, whether he fought with anyone, or made anyone cry.  We no longer know and control everything.

All of a sudden, our baby is not such a small baby anymore.

There is only a brief period of time in every parent’s life when their babies are truly babies, fully dependent on them.  These times ought to be treasured.  Because in a blink of an eye, the baby will grow into a child, then into a teenager and, before you know it, a young adult ready (you would hope) to strike out on his own.

We miss the baby version of baby Jed.

In "shocking" news, at least according to our newspapers (see "Lawyer Turned Terrorist" in Weekend TODAY), it was disclosed that even highly educated professionals could be swayed by deviant religious websites and converted into terrorists.

I’m not entirely sure why this news is shocking.  Not all terrorists hail from poor, disfranchised communities.  Wasn’t Muhammad Atta also relatively well-educated, and as capable of leading a fairly comfortable life in the US ?

I’m also puzzled.  Our prospective terrorist - one Abdul Basheer Abdul Kader - apparently experienced some kind of epiphany before leaving his sinful, alcohol-imbibing ways and turning to extremism.

Now, most people who experience an epiphany may swear off alcohol, drugs or sex, vow celibacy or join a monastry, or commit themselves to full time religious ministry and / or charitable work.  Occassionally, you get a more wacky variety like the Branch Davidians who set up cults (in the case of the Branch Davidians, in a place aptly named "Waco") engaging in orgiastic festivity before taking their own lives.

But strangely and not uncommonly ever since 9/11, epiphanies are now turning people into terrorists.  I think this calls for self-examination on the part of the orthodox religion.  All epiphanies (the word itself a religious term) - whether leading to constructive or destructive behaviour - have their roots in religion.  But it seems that not all religions are equal in terms of constructive potential (or the converse).  So what is there which is flawed in the orthodox religion, that apparently predisposes its believers who experience an epiphany to extremism ?

Today marks the third month less one day, since my dad passed away.  Reflecting on his struggle with cancer, it dawned on me how difficult it must have been to keep up his faith when physically he was so wasted.

Job 1 and 2 is an account of how Satan had asked God for permission to take away the wealth, family and health of a believer Job, in a bid to prove to God that a man would not keep his faith when afflicted with poverty and disease (for no apparent reason).  In Job 1 : 9 and 2 : 4 the Accuser says -

Have you [ie. God] not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has ?  You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.  But stretch out Your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face.

…

Skin for skin !  A man will give all he has for his own life.  But stretch out Your hand and strike His flesh and bones, and he will surely curse You to Your face.

Eventually, even Job’s (presumably) closest companion - his wife - did not stand by him.   "Are you still holding on to your integrity," she says "curse God and die !" (Job 2 : 9).

What can a person look forward to, when everything or almost everything that he holds precious in the physical world around him collapses ?  Why should a person still live with dignity and integrity, when in the throes of poverty, disease and death ?

The testimony of Job, and of my father’s life, is that we should, because there is a God who remains in control of everything though this may not be obvious, or though we may not fully comprehend the reasons for what we are going through.

[Upon receiving the bad news], Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head.  Then he fell to the ground in worship and said : "Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the Name of the Lord be praised."  (Job 1 : 20 - 21)

Postscript : Lest you think that such belief in God is an invention of human imagination, to console ourselves in times of distress, then I ask - why do even the most irreligious of us insist on allowing people to die in dignity, instead of culling the weak and sickly like chickens ?