Mind

“…no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 Co 2:9

What our mind has conceived is from what our mind has gathered from study and observation of the physical world through our senses and, as far as the knowledge of the metaphysical is concerned, we can only speculate and conceptualize. We may get some right, but there is no way of knowing until the truth is revealed.

“When we are dead, we are absolutely dead,” one atheist stated with the uttermost certainty in a debate. Obviously he was looking at reality purely from an empirical point of view and the conclusion he had drawn seemed to be perfectly rational to him. “Believing in atheism is intellectually very satisfying,” he remarked. This scholar was indeed quite brave, for he declared that he wouldn’t mind going there if there was a hell. “I will be perfectly happy there, for there I won’t be bothered by any preachers.”

If only we could truly come to terms with the notion that there is absolutely nothing beyond the physical world! If so, we would never ask the “to be, or not to be” question, and venture into the abysmal unknown without the slightest fear. I wonder whether the aforementioned debater will have any dread before he departs from time and enters into eternity. I would be a little bit concerned if I were him, for no matter how firm our belief in empiricism is, we seem to hear from time to time a faint timeless echo, penetrating the barrier of time and entering into the inner chamber of our hearts.

I don’t know which of the following is easier to achieve: to convince ourselves that there is nothing but pure material in this world or that there is something that exists beyond the physical. Why do we even hasten our steps and whistle ever so loudly when we find ourselves walking alone in the dark, trying so hard to assure ourselves that the story of goblins and ghosts are mere old wives’ tales?

We are most likely wrong when we try to conceive what isn’t really conceivable, but to deny its existence merely because of its inconceivability is arrogance and foolishness. In one sense the agnostics deserve more of our respect than the atheists, because they at least have the intellectual courage to confess their ignorance concerning the supernatural.

The fact that we may get it wrong shouldn’t keep us from speculating about the unknown. We may miss more than we hit, but it produces so much joy when we contemplate about what the Lord has prepared for those of us who put our trust in him. Since there is nothing beyond the horizon of this world for the atheists, their imagination must end at he end of the earth, but that’s exactly the place where our imagination begins, and with the guidance of the Scriptures, our spiritual fantasy may even turn into reality.

Handle with Care

Beautiful things can turn ugly if we don’t handle them properly. Very few things in life are more invigorating and exciting than romantic love, but, ironically, it is more fragile than most things that we treasure and it will easily break to pieces if we fail to handle it with the most care.

When the initial courting is over and the relationship between you and your significant other starts to heat up, somehow you may be caught off guard when you two, for some odd reason, start to argue and quarrel at a very frequent rate. It’s some sort of negotiation process perhaps, for you two are just getting to know each other and conflict is probably inevitable, but I have a slight suspicion that something must have gone wrong, for it shouldn’t have to be that way at all. It is really the first breath of winter, telling you that your relationship is heading in the wrong direction and, if you don’t change its course in time, it will collapse rather quickly and you will be crying in the dark, licking your wounds and mending your shattered heart for yet another time.

The one who is worthy of your love should also be worthy of your protection. If you truly care about a particular relationship you should learn to handle it with the greatest care. You should give your best efforts to keeping your loved one whole physically, emotionally, and spiritually by not violating her in any way, physically or otherwise. Love is such a precious thing that it should never be used as an instrument by which we get what we yearn to possess from our beloved. Selfish and possessive love will always end in a disaster and broken hearts.

I will not get any more blunt than what I have said and I trust most of you know what I am trying to convey in this note. It’s disastrous when two people try to find security in another’s love, yet end up getting hurt by each other’s instinctive desire to possess and both become discontent when they begin to calculate their investment and return. “This isn’t what I bargained for,” you exclaim, and start to figure out a way out. Sad, isn’t?

Strength

“…God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”
1 Co 1:27

The strong are in control, but the weak are under other people’s control. The stronger you are, the more options you will have in life, but if you are weak, you will run out of options rather quickly.

Because of a particular mistake that John Donne made in his youth, all his avenues of promotion were blocked except one - by the king’s order, he could only become a minister. He could have become many things had he not eloped with the daughter of a powerful man in court, yet he became immensely weak because of the offence he committed. In fact, he even did jail time for a while.

John Donne was a splendid poet, but I think he was at his best when he was ministering to the people in London as a pastor when the city was under the deadly cloud of the Black Death. Many people had escaped from the city to seek fresh air, but the devote minister of St. Paul stayed. He was the strongest when he cried out in sheer desperation: “John Donne, undone!” He produced his best poetry after he suffered great losses in life and had to depend solely on God for solace. His writings spoke to the most when he was reduced to the least and were most life-affirming when he was teetering before the portals of death. His “Holy Sonnets” are beyond compare as far as Christian verses are concerned. The Lord brought a strong man down through various adverse circumstances and lifted him up at the end. One can never become something in God’s kingdom until he becomes nothing. Of all the self-portraits done by Rembrandt, in which one of them do we see ourselves? Is it the licentious young man with a glass of wine in his hand and a woman in his arms? Probably not. It touches my heart every time I look at the picture of Rembrandt in his old age after he had gone through many sufferings in life.

We cannot be truly strong unless we first become weak; yet we often choose to be strong and tend to do and see things from the angle of strength, not weakness. The majority of Christian churches in America are fairly small, but every single one of them has the aspiration to become bigger and stronger, as if being big physically is the only indication of being strong spiritually.

We are by nature small, so we are into bigness; but God in essence is big beyond compare, therefore being small is more appealing to him. The Lord Jesus sees individuals in a crowd, but our desire is to turn individuals into a great crowd. We draw strength in numbers, but the Lord looks at the collective weakness of the crowd and the greater the number is, the weaker it will be. Didn’t the Lord spot little Zaccheus hiding in a tree because he saw something genuine in the short man’s heart that he did not see in the crowd of people and chose to dine with the men whom many seemed to have disdained?

Weakness

“…and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”
1 Co 1:25

Being strong and weak is just self-perception and does not really correspond with reality. If we look at ourselves from a human point of view, we are either stronger or weaker since we always use our neighbors as references with whom we compare ourselves. We are infinitely weak if we compare ourselves with the infinitely strong.

How do you perceive yourself?

I am just a son, yet I often look beyond that and consider myself more than what I am; I am mere mortal but I always see myself as semi-divine. I am not content to be flesh and blood; I want to be more than what I have been created to be. I want to jump higher and run faster than my fellowmen; I desire to achieve more than all the people before me have accomplished and no one after me may duplicate my feat. I want to be the one and only.

We are the weakest when we aspire to be the greatest. A monkey can be the best monkey he can be, but he will be the worst man if his ambition is to become a man. We can be the best we are created to, but we will become the worst if we intend to be something we are not. We can either be the best man or the worst god, and in the process of becoming a god we may become a grotesque creature who is neither man nor god.

I can strive to be the best I can be, but I can never be better than what I am supposed to be or am created to be. To be human is to be limited by our limitations, and some people do have more limitations than others. We have to accept who we are and seek to fulfill what we are destined to be and commissioned to do as a child of God and never compare ourselves with other people and become jealous or pompous. The Lord has given various amounts of talent to his servants and what he requires of them is that they invest what they have inherited.

We are the strongest when we know exactly who we are and faithfully do what the Lord calls us to do; we are the weakest when we try to be what we are not and aspire to do what is beyond our ability to do. The bright angel in heaven who rose up to the highest ended up sinking to the lowest.

I can either be the best preacher I can be or be the worst doctor or lawyer I may want to be. I am not saying that we should not try to better ourselves by climbing higher; what I mean is at some point in life we should learn to accept who we are and be thankful for what we have achieved by the talent with which we have been endowed by the Almighty.

“I hope someday I can finally be a hermit and not feel guilty about being a hermit,” I said to my son jokingly. It was no joke actually, for that was exactly how I felt. A hermit is probably nothing but a sanctified bum in some people’s eyes. Nonetheless, “so was I once myself a swinger of birches and so I dream of going back to be.”

The Inklings

Throughout my life, I have been very much misunderstood and under-appreciated, and have longed to be known by a group of friends and appreciated for who I am, not what I appeared to be. After years of trying, I have given up the idea of having these kind of friends and learned to be content with having one true friend - my wife.

C. S. Lewis didn’t have a spouse until late in his life, and I suppose one of the reasons why he was not anxious to get a wife was that he had a group of kindred-spirited friends. Together they took walks in the woods and had long, spirited conversation in the pubs - far more enjoyable than having a nagging wife who constantly demanded his attention. I often wonder how in the world he managed to find so many like-minded friends in a small circle, yet I have so much trouble even finding one in a big crowd.

That was why I was puzzled by my fellow blog king, who told me that his most recent date’s conversation was way too serious for him to handle. He even blogged on how he disliked serious conversations, and took some measure to avoid having them. It baffles me because I always thought that in order for us to have serious relationships, we must have serious conversations. In fact, if we have any depth in our thinking at all, even our light conversations should have some seriousness to them. I can’t image how much fun the Inklings (C.S. Lewis’ crowd) had when they held their battle of the wits. We can't hardly criticize them for having “serious conversation,” can we?