Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Of Nolan, funerals and relationships


Some thoughts ran through my mind as I stayed home this past few days to chaperone the kids. It was a week of funerals, including That One. Some of my friends had loved ones who passed on, while others had elderly family members waiting out their time on sick beds. It got to a point where I tuned out by watching movies back-to-back.  And it seems that Christopher Nolan’s films aren’t exactly what we should be watching to relax our minds.

Nolan’s films are about human relationships. Think about it. Shelby’s relationship with the people around him. Borden and Angier’s failed professional and personal relationships. Wayne’s loss of his parents. Cobb’s guilt over his deceased wife. Cooper’s estrangement with his daughter. These were driving points in Nolan’s works. His films are about relationships as much as they dazzle audiences with special effects or action sequences.

Just like the complexities of the dream layers or the science behind black holes, human relationships aren’t the easiest thing to comprehend. Perhaps they are the most complex things we have. We seldom have a good grasp of what they’re all about, even as we fumble our way through life.

It’s funny how in school we’re taught math and everything else except how to relate with one another. I remember my early days in the education service, encountering a rather over-enthusiastic colleague who proposed a grading rubric that involved assessing how well each student worked with others. But how do we even put a grade on that? What does it mean when a student is 67% able to relate to others? That he has 33% sociopathic tendencies?

As we prepare to say our goodbyes to loved ones, or even less-than-loved ones, we will always reflect on one question. How would the relationship have turned out if we had done things differently? You know, there is wisdom in the admonishment to not let the sun go down on our anger. For we don’t know how much hurt will fester, or if any of us will have a tomorrow to make amends.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

A reason for obedience

As I grapple with mid-life crisis while trying to find meaning in existence, one particular question from old comes up persistently - "Yea, hath God said,...?" If we applied that question, it would be equivalent to that of trying to obey my Creator and simultaneously rationalizing my daily actions.

We must listen to God only. The trick is knowing what to do with our reason. Obedience is only significant if we have the choice to disobey, and very often the most compelling motive to disobey is our reason. But what price this freedom to decide? Someone once said that while we are free to choose, we are not free from the consequences of our choices.

Rationalizing is a natural response when we don't like what God has said, or, even more so, when we don't hear from Him at all. To put it in another way, many well-meaning Christian friends have said to me, "If you've not heard from God, then maybe He wants you to take the initiative and step out in faith." This and other statements to similar effect shake my faith in God, especially since I am an impatient man, and crave for the big-picture view of circumstances.

For every "Yea, hath God said", can we respond with a "Thus saith the Lord"? Tough.

Monday, March 09, 2015

Love in a rational manner

Most times we want love to be a feeling or an emotion. The young ones specifically want it to be something romantic. But having lived with someone in a marriage for slightly over 10 years, I'm slowly beginning to realize that love can, and should also, be something that comes from my mind too. Otherwise, how do I see purpose when the kids are thrashing the living room and one another for the n-th time, when the pot is boiling over, and when I'm trying to listen to the wife over the phone while a paper aeroplane zips across my face?

Mark recorded my Lord Jesus saying this, "...you shall love the Lord your God with...all your mind..." Embedded together in His command to love with one's heart, soul, and strength, is also with one's mind. One's intellect, one's will, one's act of commitment, one's reason, one's logic, call it whatever you like but one thing's for sure, I have to tell myself to love even when I don't like candlelit dinners, walking in the rain, or having some elevator Kenny G-type muzak in the background.

Loving in a rational manner. Is that possible? If I believe it was love that compelled my Christ to stretch His arms out on the cross, then I have think that it was not just a feeling or emotion that drove Him to do it. I wouldn't know what went through Jesus' mind that Friday, but one of it was probably the thought - I must do it.