Monthly Archives: April 2016

Monday of the 5th Week of Easter
Acts 14:5-18 | Psalm 113b:1-4, 15-16 | John 14:21-26

At Lystra there was a crippled man, lame from birth, who had never walked. […] Paul called out in a loud voice, “Stand up straight on your feet.” He jumped up and began to walk about. When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they cried out in Lycaonian, “The gods have come down to us in human form.” They called Barnabas “Zeus” and Paul “Hermes,” because he was the chief speaker. (Acts 14:8, 10-12)

Cultural traditions can interact with evangelisation attempts in unexpected ways, as Barnabas and Paul discovered in Lystra. The thought of the two apostles being mistaken for Greek gods on earthly holiday in the middle of modern-day Turkey is…fascinating.

In Singapore, I’d say the local “cultural tradition” is one of prosperity theology, though not necessarily honouring the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Signs include:

• yearly (or more) prostrations before the Money God,
• battling one’s way through mobs to grab free stuff, then flipping it at online auctions,
• battling one’s colleagues for promotions and raises, to the point of “damning with faint praise” and other subtle (or overt) put-downs,
• hoarding items that one no longer has need for, but “it’ll be worth good money someday, so no to the local orphanage”,
• substituting hedonism for happiness, yet showing up every day with a glum face

If the two apostles worked that same healing here today, they would be swarmed by a half-hundred prospective employers dreaming up get-rich-quick-through-miracle-cure schemes. After all, that new condo and Lamborghini won’t pay for themselves.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

To be honest, I haven’t been immune to “irrational plenitude” either. During my recent house-cleaning, I was left with a pile of almost 50 electronic devices and assorted peripherals that I barely used over the years, and have now degraded to the point of being barely e-cyclable, in some cases with internal batteries on the verge of exploding. I can’t explain why I didn’t donate them to charities while they were still usable, and that’s deeply troubling.

Against such a “money never enough” attitude, conversion seems like an impossible task. I’m currently trying something a little crazy: be the “impossibly happy” person amongst the sourpusses. Indeed, I’m now a lot happier (and healthier) than I was 20 years ago, even though I’m earning significantly less now. Spending a couple of hours each night contemplating the Good News, and blogging my reaction to it, are both big parts of that contentment, and I’m looking forward to sharing this little tidbit with anyone who dares to ask “what’s with that big smile on your face?”

Now that I think about it, the looks I’ve been getting on my train rides are probably closer to “contagiously insane, avoid at all costs”. Perhaps I should tone my grin down a tad.

Lord, teach us to take pleasure in sufficiency, taking what we need from the bounty of Your unconditional Love and sharing the rest of that Love with others around us. Amen.

P.S. This book inspired the title for this entry.

5th Sunday of Easter (Year C)
Acts 14:21-27 | Psalm 144:8-13 | Apocalypse 21:1-5 | John 13:31-35

As a decades-long Catholic software developer, a part of me has long suspected that we’re in a very sophisticated simulation. Something along the lines of a universe-sized The Sims, running on an unfathomably powerful server farm, designed by an extra-universal entity we call God, populated by quintillions of other code fragments called flora and fauna, and 7 billion instances of Homo sapiens programs that have attained self-awareness and the power of metaphysical reasoning.

Do I look like this to you?

No, I do not speak of a Matrix-like “brains in vats” existence. I think our brains, our very minds, are part of the simulation. This “world” in which we “exist” would be running on a small handful of programmed rules which, combined in various ways, give us all of Nature with its physics, chemistry and biology. In Matrix terms, there is no “red pill” in this scenario that yanks us out of fabricated reality, since we only exist inside this reality.

However, God can also decide to inject specific and individual exceptions to those rules. We tend to call these miracles.

Omniscience and omnipotence? When you’re in control of the simulation platform, there really isn’t anything you can’t find out, project into the future…or tweak.

Jesus could be an in-simulation projection of God Himself, a sort of “avatar” in role-playing parlance, with full access to simulation internals to effect miracles at will. Truly, “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30) and “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

The “flame within” that is the Holy Spirit? Special subroutines that interact with our core code.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (Apocalypse 21:1)

A new heaven and a new earth? Reinstallation and character re-creation, wiping out the detritus of sin and death.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

The other part of me reacts with the knee-jerk “BLASPHEMY!“, and I’m sure more than a few people would decry my remarks, on the basis that any attempted explanation of how God could make all creation come into being somehow lessens His majesty.

That could not be further from the truth. Instead, even as an experienced computer programmer, my mind boggles at the intricate completeness of this simulation that makes you consistently real to me, and me to you, and everyone to everyone else. We’re just scratching the surface of ineffable complexity here, brothers and sisters, and I couldn’t even begin to write the code that self-evolves over 14 billion local years into an actual human mind, much less what we would call a soul.

So to me, God is still my Creator, He is still worthy of all praise, and my faith has suffered not one whit at the thought that I might be just a collection of machine instructions in a divine computer. From this perspective, the Suscipe prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola takes on a whole new dimension:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

Amen.

Saturday of the 4th Week of Easter
Acts 13:44-52 | Psalm 97:1-4 | John 14:7-14

The Jews […] stirred up a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their territory. So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium. (Acts 13:50-51)

Jesus certainly foresaw that His disciples would encounter difficulties in their evangelical journeys. His command to “shake the dust from your feet” where welcome was wanting appears no less than four times in the Synoptic Gospels, twice in Luke alone. As far as I can tell, the Bible only records this one instance of the disciples doing so, here in Pisidian Antioch.

I believe Jesus was saying, in effect: “I know My message will be difficult to swallow for many people, so don’t beat yourselves senseless against such walls of stone. Share My Gospel with everyone you meet as I have commanded you; if they do not accept it, you have done your duty. As you move on, leave them firmly behind, for they are dust, and to dust they shall return (Genesis 3:19). Sodom and Gomorrah will be child’s play compared to the suffering they will endure for their rejection (Matthew 10:15).”

Many of us probably carry some measure of regret, of not being able to convince a loved one to stop self-destructing, or a colleague who lost valuable data by ignoring our pleas to back up regularly, or a lapsed Catholic who refused our entreaties to return to Holy Mother Church. I believe the Lord would say: “Good and faithful servant, you have done your duty both to Me and your fellow men. What happens next is no longer your responsibility; lay down your burden and let Me handle the rest.”

A good deed rebuffed is one of the hardest things to dismiss from our consciousness, but we need to let go of our present “entanglements”, so that we can help others in need who are more welcoming.

Lord, You commanded us to love one another as You have loved us, but when our love is unrequited, give us the strength and courage to let go and move on, so that we can share Your love with others who would accept it and share it in their turn, so as to grow your kingdom here on earth. Amen.

Friday of the 4th Week of Easter
Acts 13:26-33 | Psalm 2:6-11 | John 14:1-6

“Predestination” and “free will” can be tricky concepts to introduce into any discussion about Catholic faith, because many people seem to think erroneously that the one negates the other.

What the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did, though they did not realise it, was in fact to fulfil the prophecies read on every sabbath. (Acts 13:27)

One reaction I’ve received to the above passage is:

So were the Jews predestined to condemn Jesus?

to which I would respond, to the best of my knowledge:

Yes. We believe that the Jews’ condemnation of Christ was part of God’s plan for our salvation, and so it would have happened regardless of any individual’s change of heart. That said, we should also remember that His first followers were also Jews, who came to Christ of their own free will.

That we humans have free will is undeniable. Scripture herself says:

God in the beginning created human beings
and made them subject to their own free choice.
(Sirach 15:14)

As I wrote in yesterday’s blog entry, we are even able to exercise willful ignorance, a common pretext for justifying behaviour that would generally be deemed immoral or unethical. I think some Jews who condemned Christ were willfully ignorant, but most of them truly believed that Jesus did not meet their criteria for the promised Messiah, and therefore committed blasphemy by claiming to be such. As such, they played their predestined role by exercising their free will to be faithful to their tenets, and our Saviour died on a cross.

However, Mother Church is very clear in her Catechism about our predestined path, as well as the consequences of blatantly ignoring the Word of God:

1037. God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.

1731. Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732. As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

1734. Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.

1736. […] An action can be indirectly voluntary when it results from negligence regarding something one should have known or done.

So, we’re free to do what we will, but our actions have consequences and, in the local patois, ‘dunno’ no cure.

As self-acknowledged children of God, we have no basis for claiming ignorance in this matter, any more than a recalcitrant sysadmin has an excuse for not being rigorous in performing backups. Indeed, I’ve been tempted to “play the prophet” a few times by leaving the following message for such persons:

Hard drives will crash.
You will have no usable backups.
Weeping and grinding of teeth to follow.

secure in the knowledge that, from my observations of their laxity, my words will come to fruition in the fullness of time. ?

Make known to me your ways, LORD;
teach me your paths.
Guide me by your truth and teach me,
for you are God my savior,
for you I wait all the day long. (Psalm 25:4-5)

Amen.

Thursday of the 4th Week of Easter
Acts 13:13-25 | Psalm 88:2-3, 21-22, 25, 27 | John 13:16-20

Now that you know this, happiness will be yours if you behave accordingly. (John 13:17)

In other words, “happiness is harmony in mind and action”.

There’s an oft-heard and distressingly universal “Beatitude” that illustrates a different take on this philosophy: “Blessed are the gong-gong (Hokkien for ‘stupid’), for ignorance is bliss.” The underlying logic is bizarre yet compelling: If you don’t know something is “wrong”, then you can’t be faulted for doing it, so it’s better for “personal advancement” not to delve too deeply into moral and religious stuff.

My parents never taught me to respect my elders, so I’ll park my well-toned butt on the only remaining train seat and focus on my Facebook. All the better to ignore the hunchbacked old lady who just boarded.

Aiyah, wife, you don’t give me sex, I go elsewhere to get it lah! Adultery? What’s that? They covered it in Sunday school? So boring, I slept through the whole thing!

Hmmm, somebody dropped his wallet. WOW! $350! Oh, there’s an ID in here. Better not look at the address on the back. Don’t see, cannot return, HAPPY HOUR!

(Yes, I was on the wrong end of that last example.)

Once we know what’s right and wrong, then sins of commission and omission will inevitably gnaw at us. It’s never a pleasant feeling, but we should welcome it as a sign of spiritual growth. We just need to fit deed to thought, and thus attain the bliss of harmony with God.

Lord, open our ears to your Holy Word, our eyes to see You in the people around us, and our hands to do right by You and by our heavenly Father. Kindle in us the desire to know You more each day, that we should never turn away from You for personal gain or earthly comfort. Amen.