The Passion

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. - (Isaiah 53:3-5 NIV)

The Holy Week in the Philippines is an occasion to be joyous. It is a weeklong vacation spent with family and friends and a welcome break from the daily grind of work and responsibility.

But like that one other great Christian holiday, the spirit of the Holy Week has become somewhat lost in the excitement for a holiday spent in the cool highlands or warm summer beaches of the country.

As I took my daily commute this morning, I was reminded of how full of sorrow this world of ours is.

Sure there is the daily experience of seeing the less fortunate of our countrymen, both young and old, darkened by the grime and soot of the metropolis as they go about their business of begging for alms.

Sure, there is the seemingly endless news about how disaster after disaster seems to come upon our people, what with the storms, floods, and landslides hitting various parts of our country on a regular basis.

Sure there is the rampant crime, the petty thefts, the daring robberies, the unsolved murders, the allegations of corruption, and all sorts of heinousness that man is capable of inflicting on his fellow man.

Sure there are the wars, and the threat of wars, of civil unrest, of rockets being fired, of territory being fought for, and the cleverly disguised and not-so-cleverly-disguised barbs thrown by the world’s most wealthy and influential against each other, even as the least and impoverished continue to outnumber them in an ever increasing ratio.

Humanity it seems, has for too long lived under the shadow of these things that we have become almost desensitized to them.

After all, a man who loses his sight will eventually get used to the darkness. Given enough time, he might even forget what it means to see.

And that is the most sorrowful thing of all.

That is what I saw on the faces of my countrymen this morning, on the eve of the Holy Week holiday.  I did not see faces full of joy and hope. I see faces of resignation.

And why should not they be resigned? Life could be so much better. Humanity could be so much better. But here we all are, forced to live off the unwanted dregs of a life and humanity that has somehow gone terribly wrong.

We have been living this way for so long that it is likely that most of us have already forgotten what a better life and a better humanity SHOULD look like.

Oh, but we do get glimmers of it once in a while.

Every time we react with angry indignation at how we’ve been mistreated and our rights trampled, that is actually a longing for the ideal. It is the deep seated instinct for light that even the most jaded blind person has within him.

But even that is not enough to show us that we were meant to live as creatures of sight and light.

Without something real and tangible representing the ideal, then we can only have muddled and confused ideas of what it looks like. Not unlike the blind who can only make out bits and pieces out of a hazy vision.

And that my friends, is what the message of the Cross of Christ is all about.

It is about giving sight to the blind. It is about light being brought to those in darkness. It is about slaves being given their freedom. It is about love given to the unlovable.

It is about a God who took all of our pain, all of our suffering, all of our indignities and shame. He took the worst that humanity has to offer in order to redeem what was once considered lost.

All of this is told by the Cross of Christ. And it would be foolish of me to try and even put into words the passion by which He fought for our freedom at great cost to Himself.

Few of us can bear shame. Fewer can bear pain and suffering. And even fewer still will bear death. A few might bear them for the sake of a loved one. None will bear them for the sake of the evil and unrighteous.

Christ bore them all for all the evil and unrighteous.  And that means all of us.

“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

- (Romans 3:23 NIV)

This is why we celebrate the Holy Week. This is why we should be joyful, not just in the next few days, but all of the days of our lives.

For if we celebrate Christmas for the birth of the Savior, we celebrate the Holy Week for His very act of Salvation.

So whether we go to the highlands or beaches, or stay home, or wherever we may be this week, let us be joyful and happy and celebrate the life that He purchased for us. Let us remember with passion that the reason why we live is because of Him alone.

 “…the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

- (Psalms 118:23 NIV)

All Honor and Glory therefore be to His name.

Soli Deo Gloria!

An Aborted Revolution?

“Where are the youths who will dedicate their innocence, their idealism, their enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where are they who will give generously of their blood to wash away so much shame, crime and abomination? Pure and immaculate must the victim be for the sacrifice to be acceptable. ‘Where are you, young men and young women, who are to embody in yourselves the life-force that has been drained from our veins, the pure ideals that have grown stained in our minds, the fiery enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts? We await you, come for we await you!” – Jose Rizal, El Filibusterismo (English Translation by Jose Ma. Guerrero)

I have just finished reading the English translation of Jose Rizal’s El Filibusterismo, which was translated by Leon Ma. Guerrero. I have read the El Fili before of course, it being a required reading during fourth year high school in the Philippines. The text I had then was in Tagalog, which made it difficult reading for me, sad to say.

My thanks go to my father who got me Guerrero’s translation, although he did it a bit begrudgingly. He had initially insisted that I get a Filipino translation of it. I remember telling him that it mattered not the language in which it was written, as long as the spirit of the writer is communicated intact. Truth after all, is still truth, even though it comes from the mouth of the devil himself.

Prior to my coming back to the Philippines in June last year, I also read El Fili’s predecessor, Noli Me Tangere, which was also translated into English by Guerrero. After having read both, I now am fully convinced of their relevance to all Filipinos and understand and agree with the intent of our educators to make it essential reading.

Perhaps it was because of the impatience of youth. Perhaps it was my own lack of proficiency in the grammar of my native tongue. Perhaps it was the lack of years of exposure and experience living in Filipino society. But is it only now that I truly appreciate Rizal’s work.

The reading was still difficult, but not because of the language. No, the difficulty lay in the theme.

I have heard it said that many consider Rizal to be a visionary or prophet, due to the uncanny way in which he captured the spirit of our times. The themes he tackled are the themes we still face today as a society: ignorance, greed, apathy, resignation, abuse of power, indiscretion, lack of morals, and lack of true spirituality.

But then again, I should not be surprised. After all, the Bible, which was written way before Rizal’s work speaks of the same themes.

I believe that prophecy is not really anything supernatural. Most of the time, it is merely an extrapolation based on a truthful assessment of our present conditions.

We know the consequences of evil. It is just that we wilfully choose to suppress that knowledge, afraid of the price required to correct our ways. In so doing, we blind ourselves to the future. More importantly, we blind ourselves to our impending doom.

Again I have heard it said that the present condition of Filipino society is exactly what we deserve. After all, we only reap what we have sown. One cannot expect to harvest sugar if one planted rice. Similarly, one cannot hope to harvest the benefits of a just society tomorrow if one sows indifference and discord today.

God, who is truth, cannot be mocked says the Apostle Paul.

Rizal might be a prophet, but he was not the first. Rather, Rizal was the first Filipino to tear the blindfolds across his own eyes to see truth for what it is.

Some of our academicians and historians have said that Rizal’s writings were instrumental in kindling the Philippine revolution against Spain, and that that revolution was “aborted” due to our experience in history. I humbly beg to disagree.

The revolution Rizal was talking about has yet to fully manifest itself in our society. For it is the same revolution that the Messiah Himself foretold. It is the same revolution that all of humanity must undergo in order to regain what was meant as our birthright.

When that spark is kindled in our hearts by Him who shed His own blood for us, then even the most jaded society shall be consumed by the fires of His revolution: the revolution of the spirit.

I pray that God’s revolution would ignite in the hearts in each and every one of my countrymen.

Soli Deo Gloria.

 “The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know." Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.'" So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.” - (Ezekiel 37:1-7 NIV)

 "I tell you the truth; no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." - (John 3:3 NIV)

Made to Worship

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. - (Romans 1:20 NIV)

Human beings are the highest form of physical life on our planet, if not our solar system.

Whether you take that statement from a naturalistic standpoint or a spiritual viewpoint, it remains true.

We humans are meant for great things.

Which begs two fundamental and existential questions for humanity:

What are we made for? And more importantly WHO made us?

The naturalist will tend to digress at this point, and say that human beings are NOT made. They have evolved as a result of the interaction of the natural laws of the universe, namely the interaction between time, matter, and a rather unscientific sounding thing called “chance”.

If you ask a naturalist what chance is, chances are he/she will tell you that it is but the result of the random interplay of events and matter in our physical world.

In other words, human beings, from a naturalistic standpoint, are an accident. There is no conscious purpose behind the laws of nature that sought to bring human beings into existence. We simply came to be as a result of the interplay of those laws.

If this sounds straight out of a science fiction novel, let me point out that apparently, this is what leading scientific figures in the world’s most influential societies are thinking. And what the scientific community thinks, the rest of the world tends to follow.

There are certain logical conclusions one can draw from the naturalistic explanation for human existence. First, since humans are the result of a mindless process (remember, lack of consciousness means lack of a mind), then humans by inference cannot have a mind or consciousness.

The logic behind this is simple. You cannot create something out of nothing. If the process by which humans were formed was a mindless one, then you cannot expect that process to impart a mind to that which it had formed. Put another way, I cannot give you a million dollars, if I don’t have a million dollars to begin with.

Sound reasonable enough?

The second conclusion is this: if human beings are without a mind or consciousness, then human beings do not have the capacity to be self-aware.

Again the logic here is simple. You cannot be aware of anything if you do not have a mind or consciousness to be aware with. I cannot spend a million dollars if I don’t have a million dollars (this is different from loaning a million dollars which I do not have the capacity to pay for. While technically, I could spend a million dollars on credit, I still NEED the actual million dollars to spend, despite the fact that I’ve loaned it.)

Do you see where this is going?

The third conclusion one can draw from all this is as follows: if human beings do not have a mind or consciousness to be aware of themselves with, then who the heck wrote and is reading this article?!

The answer: nobody. There is no mind or consciousness outside of humanity that is capable of being aware of humans, since creation or “nature” (which is the politically correct way of describing reality from a naturalistic viewpoint) is a result of a mindless process. And since humans are a part of nature, humans themselves do not have the capacity to be aware of their own existence.

Therefore nobody has written or is reading this article.

This is problematic in so many different ways that it would take reams and reams of philosophical discussion to tackle properly. And even then, it wouldn’t matter because as the arguments above show, nobody would write nor read them anyway since no one has the conscious capacity to do so in the first place.

The question that needs to be asked at this point is this:

Where did all these words in this article come from?

Perhaps the naturalist would say: they’re just the mindless result of the interaction of the natural laws of time and matter, plus chance.

To which I would ask: then where did the naturalistic explanation for reality come from? To whom is it addressed to?! And for what purpose?

See, as much as the naturalist worldview would like to believe (the word “believe” here is crucial) that everything that exists does not have an underlying purpose behind them -- being the result of a mindless process -- the naturalist’s very explanation for the existence of nature in itself serves a purpose.

What purpose does it serve?

To explain the nature of reality!

To whom?

To someone who has the mental capacity (i.e. a conscious mind) to process that explanation with!

And who in nature has that mental capacity?

I do not doubt that even the naturalist would say that nothing less than a human being would suffice for the job.

The naturalistic viewpoint therefore is self-defeating. It does not and cannot sufficiently explain the nature of reality to accommodate for the phenomenon of the simple act of presenting its own explanation for reality to someone.

If we reject the naturalistic explanation for the existence of reality, then what alternative are we left with?

I have to point out that at this point most naturalists would turn agnostic and say that they do not know.

Well, the alternative to me is rather plain and obvious: if a mindless process cannot account for the existence of reality, let alone consciousness in humans within that reality, then something with a consciousness MUST have been there in the first place to impart consciousness to the human race.

If this makes sense to you, then you are faced with the inevitable conclusion that a Creator exists.

And if you’ve accepted as fact that a Creator does exist, not only would you have made it easier to answer the two existential questions at the beginning of this article, you would have already given the Creator honor by acknowledging that you have indeed been created by Him.

If you’re a human being, and you’ve come this far in reading this article, I want you to know that the Creator is waiting with bated breath at the conclusions you will draw from all of this.

Because in the end, you and I were meant to know Him. You and I were meant to give Him honor.

You and I were made to worship.

It is my sincere prayer that you will come to know Him and cherish Him as I do.

To Him be all the glory.

The State of Humanity

For God's wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and wickedness of those who in their wickedness suppress the truth. - (Romans 1:18 ISV)

2012 is going to be a very interesting year.

According to a Mayan legend, the world is about to end this year.

My comment to that is, so what if it is?

If the world does end in 2012, it does so because we had it coming.

I’ll say it again:

WE HAVE IT COMING.

Now I don’t want you to mistake that as coming from an arrogant, self-righteous, doomsayer wannabe.

I want you to take that as something that needs to be seriously considered, not just for our sakes, but for the sakes of the generations that follow us, namely our children and their children.

Because this will be our legacy to them should it come to pass.

Yes, a devastated earth is going to be OUR fault.

This requires no beating around the bush. I’m throwing out political correction and sensitivity in favor of the cold and hard truth. The emperor be damned, but someone has to point out the fact that he’s wearing no clothes.

How many catastrophes have hit humanity these past few years? How many financial crises? How many wars? How many uprisings?

How many people suffered as a result?

These past few months alone, the Philippines counted over 1000 casualties from flooding and landslides.

I’m not being insensitive here. My own family was a victim of flooding in 2009 when Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy in the Philippines) washed through my wife’s home in Cainta, Rizal, destroying most of her family’s belongings.  These are things that hold value for her, not just in the monetary sense, but also in terms of the memories attached to them. Photographs and other memorabilia of her family, irretrievably gone.

She was lucky. Many had lost family members, relatives and friends.

But then here’s the thing: Is it really just a matter of good and bad LUCK?

Or is there some other underlying reason for the occurrence of these types of events?

Some of you might already be saying: look Chris, humanity and our planet has seen and have been through many of these types of catastrophes in the past. Our history confirms it. And if there’s anything to learn by our history, it is that we have managed to survive, even thrive, despite these events. And just as our ancestors did before us, we will survive and thrive through these events as well.

Now who’s being arrogant and self-righteous?

It is precisely this type of arrogance and self-righteousness which will result in humanity’s eventual downfall, Mayan prophecy notwithstanding.

The fact of the matter my dear friends, is that humanity is messed up.

Left to our own devices, we will be evolving ourselves into extinction, blissfully ignorant of it all the while.

This is no tired sociological cliché. This is the truth. And the sooner we throw away our ignorant pride and learn to accept this truth, the better it will be for us and our children.

Okay Chris, we’ve heard this one before. Go ahead, finish your rant with your so called Gospel. Tell us how our only hope lies by reconciling ourselves with a wrathful God by accepting His Son Jesus Christ who supposedly died 2000 years ago for our sakes. Tell us how having faith in Jesus can save us from our oh-so-imminent destruction. Tell us how we need to be born again into the spirit, and learn to look beyond the apparent and the material, into how everything that we do has much more far-reaching effects than we can realize.

Tell me Chris, about God’s love for me. Tell me how He loves me so much that He sacrificed His one and only Son for us, the very sinners He hates and despises, and is currently pouring out His wrath upon.

Tell me how I just need to accept His grace, His free gift of reconciliation, and how I would end up living for eternity in heaven because of it. Tell me that all my sins, my shortcomings, my failures to live up to God’s standards will be forgotten, wiped away by the blood of Christ, and how God Himself will come running with open arms to receive me into His embrace.

Tell me how all the angels, saints and the heavenly hosts will rejoice in my having turned my back onto my destructive lifestyle, in favor of living a life of love where I sacrifice my own self-interests in favor of others.

Tell me Chris, do you really believe in all that crap?

Yes. I do.

I do because the scathing words I wrote above are my words. The very same words I rejected the Gospel with prior to my conversion.

I carried within me that same spirit of selfish ignorance, arrogance and self-righteousness, and used it to life a lifestyle of blind self-indulgence.

I eventually found myself broken, in the midst of despair when everything I was living for came crashing down around me as a result of what I perceived to be a great injustice to myself.

GREAT INJUSTICE.

I was made to realize that I did not know what those words truly meant.

I was made to realize that the one true injustice is that we turned our backs on our Creator.

The one true injustice was that a man by the name of Jesus Christ, came unto the world preaching love, self-sacrifice, adherence to truth, and living in peace and harmony with all of humankind and creation, and that by living such a life would we be reconciled with our Creator…

AND WE KILLED HIM FOR IT.

I did not choose to understand this by the way. I was MADE to understand this. Not by human wisdom, but by the wisdom inherent in all things.

At the very depths of despair, I was made to understand the real problem in creation:

THAT I AM A SINNER.

That I had fallen short of the purpose for which I was made.

And that purpose is to know and cherish the Creator, and have a lasting relationship with Him as He unfolds His grand design for all of creation.

I have exchanged that relationship for a lie. The lie that I am whoever I want myself to be. That I can determine the course of my own existence by myself. That as long as I believe solely in myself and my dreams, everything will be okay.

2012 is going to be a very interesting year.

It is the year that God will once again prove His love and mercy for humanity, by showing them that despite His wrath, despite how He will continue to pour and rain down destruction from the Heavens on humanity, despite how many human lives He takes away in the process, He is still giving us a chance.

He is still waiting with open arms that are eager to embrace, for the return of the prodigal son.

May humanity soon come to realize the state that we are in.

Soli Deo Gloria.

A Dental Encounter

There is nothing more humbling to me than to be put in a situation where I have no control whatsoever.

And with that humility comes a need for a Savior.

Yesterday, we took our daughter Ahlana to the dentist to have several of her teeth removed. It was the first time our daughter would have a dental extraction, let alone have several at the same time. Aside from the extractions, she would also have several teeth fillings.

The procedure, along with our daughter’s age, required that she be put under sedation.

Needless to say, that as a concerned parent, I had more than a passing worry about the whole thing.

What if things go wrong? What if something happens to my daughter? What if we end up losing her during the process?

Those of you who are parents could perhaps understand and excuse my pessimism. We have only one daughter after all.

I cannot tell you how much I hate not being in control. I was raised by my family to be a man in charge and independent. I was made to realize that in this world, you cannot really trust anyone to do anything right, and that the most qualified person to do anything for myself was myself. There was no one else to help myself other than myself, and I had no one else to blame if something goes wrong, other than myself.

My family had their reasons for raising me this way. Conditions within Philippine society are such that it pays to be self-reliant.

But this upbringing did come with a price. And that price was that I found it hard to ever completely trust anyone. That and the fact that I hated not being in control of anything.

So when my wife and I were talking to the chief pediatric dentist and her anesthesiologist prior to the procedure, the foremost thought running through my mind was: “Can I really trust these people to do what is best for my daughter?”

The answer of course was that I can’t. Their waiver, which I had to sign prior to the procedure, said as much. There were too many unseen variables. Too many possibilities that things could go wrong.

It was a grim and sobering reminder that no matter how much we fool ourselves into thinking otherwise, the cold and hard fact is that we are not really fully in control of anything in our lives.

In a world where anything could go wrong, doubt is the quintessential posture that one adapts to.

And doubt was what gnawed at my soul the moment my wife and I gave the go ahead for the procedure. And like a ghastly bride accompanying her undead bridegroom, that doubt came with the cold touch of fear: the fear that something indeed might go wrong.

My daughter is old enough to realize that this was going to be an uncomfortable experience for her. She clung to her mother instinctively the moment the nurses came for her. The anesthesiologist tried to speak soothing words to her even as he hid the needle and syringe containing the sedative behind his back.

I tried my best to brace myself for what was to come. But as any parent would know, you can never truly prepare yourself to see your child in pain.

Hearing my daughter scream and cry as the needle plunged into her little arm was hard enough. But seeing her slowly go limp as the sedative did its work was beyond anything I’ve experienced before. I personally had to carry her to the dentist’s chair where the nurses strapped her in. I tried to speak words of comfort to her as I carried her. But instead of hugging me as she usually would, she just lay there limp in my arms, her dazed eyes looking up at me with her mouth half open. I had never seen her in this state before.

It was an incredible struggle fighting off the urge to just run out of there with my daughter. I fought desperately to keep my tears in check as the nurses calmly told me to leave the room.

It was at this moment that I realized why I needed God in my life.

When your loved one’s fate lay outside of your own hands, to whom do you put your trust in a world where nothing is ever certain?

My wife and I had been so agitated by the experience of seeing our daughter be put under sedation for the first time that we both had to go back to our car. There, we let ourselves go and cried to God to protect our daughter during the procedure. It was a trial of faith like none other we have experienced so far.

I would be a hypocrite if I said I believed in God and yet did not acknowledge His Sovereign Will over everything. He wouldn’t be God otherwise. And it was this Sovereign Will that I appealed to with prayer: that He would allow no harm to come to my daughter, and that the very same God who blessed us with her, would not choose to take her away at this moment.

Through the turbulence and swirling storm of my soul, His voice spoke in answer to my pleas:

Would you still love Me if I took away your daughter?

My thoughts were then filled with the image of the crucified Christ, hanging bloodied and dying, offering everything He had for love of His Father and of mankind.

God gave His one and only son for us. Could I do the same?

I realized that I could not.

In that moment, even as my heart was breaking with worry over my daughter, I acknowledged God for who He really is.

He alone is God. There is none like Him. There is no other Force who keeps the universe from falling into random chaos; no other Being who purposefully creates and destroys, and puts everything back together again.

If I couldn’t trust Him, then who can I trust?

“Let Your Will be done Lord. I will trust in You no matter what.” I prayed as my heart bowed down in worship.

And even as I continued to cry, my soul settled within me. It had found its solid ground.

My daughter is back to her old bubbly self again, sans four teeth of course, and with a few tooth fillings added in as a result of the experience.

As for myself, I too walked away from this dental encounter with a filling of my own: A God-sized one filling that hole within my soul that only He could fill.

To Him be all the Glory.

PS. Our thanks go out to all our relatives and friends who prayed with us over our daughter. May His Glory fill your lives as well!

A Hope Everlasting

I would like to open with another of life’s toughest questions:

What are we living our lives for?

Every day, I chance upon the faces of the multitudes going to and from work as I commute, and wonder what dreams, hopes and aspirations they have in life that they would endure the daily grind of the rat race.

Do they even have any hopes at all?

I sincerely believe that life is not possible without hope.

There must be something to be yearned for; some aspiration that sustains life at its dreariest and provides the impetus for growth.

Otherwise, what would be the meaning of it all, apart from merely eking out a living to bring food on the table?

If we were meant to live only to feed ourselves, then human civilization could have remained perfectly satisfied living in a subsistence economy that produces just enough for our nutritional needs.

Our history has shown us otherwise however, and thus proves the adage of Scripture:

Man does not live on bread alone.

-------

I have thought long and hard about the hopes that men have, and how they’ve fared in sustaining humanity in our journey through life.

I thought first about materialism and the desire for the accumulation of material wealth.

This would be the most obvious since we live in a material world.

There is no doubt that we need the material in order to survive. If work requires energy, then energy requires mass, as Albert Einstein postulated in his famous formula, E=mc², where “m” stands for mass (i.e. the material).

For us therefore, life is not possible without the material.

Is it not therefore, a legitimate hope to aspire for material wealth?

But then here is the catch: the material is impermanent.

I cannot tell you how difficult it was for me to accept that truth.

I had believed, as many others do (consciously or unconsciously), that the material represents the real. The “real world” as our knowledge and sciences would have it, consists of the material. Anything that is immaterial cannot be observed or studied, and therefore, does not exist. It is by the real and material that we base our lives upon.

It came as a shock therefore, to realize that all matter ultimately collapses into nothing.

Don’t believe me? Then try to look up the word “entropy” and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The physical universe is slowly but surely decaying. Our sciences confirm it. Nothing in the physical world is permanent.

Now let us look at the implications of this for those who hope and long for the material.

If the accumulation of material wealth is all you hope and work for in this life, then does it not bother you that all of what you worked for will ultimately and literally come to nothing?

When the disciples went with the Messiah to see the temple in Jerusalem, they marveled and wondered at the massive structure, thinking to themselves: “Ah, what a majestic structure! Look at these great stones that form its foundations! Surely, this temple will last forever!”

The Messiah answered them:

"As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down."

(Luke 21:6 NIV)

If the physical temple of God was not exempt from entropy, what more our own material wealth?

Our own physical bodies, being themselves material, are also subject to death and decay. Of what use will accumulated wealth be to us then?

In His parable of the rich fool, the Messiah describes how a rich man hoarded for himself the fruits of his labor. Thinking to live out the rest of his life in ease and luxury, the rich man sought to build bigger storehouses for his grain.

"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'

(Luke 12:20 NIV)

If all our work and toil is to amass wealth that will ultimately come to nothing, then to hope for the material is nothing less than a delusion.

Materialism therefore, is self-defeating. It is a false hope.

-------

Then I thought about a second hope that man has: the rise and ascension to power.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines power as “the ability to do something or act in a particular way.”

A further definition by Merriam-Webster lists power as “possession of control, authority, or influence over others.”

By these definitions, humans are already born with some measure of power. Even a new-born baby for example, has the power to influence its parents for a bottle of milk when it cries.

This power increases accordingly as an individual grows and develops.

It is considered natural for humans to crave for more power, as it provides us with a sense of security and identity within our societies.

So we work for promotions, certifications and recognitions, study for diplomas, degrees and doctorates, and run for political offices and other positions of leadership and influence.

But do any of these truly provide us with a lasting sense of security?

If we work and compete our way to the top of our respective careers, will it be truly worth all the effort?

Human history is replete with men who have been considered the most powerful of their time: great Kings and Emperors wielding power over many peoples and nations. Were any of them truly happy with what they had?

Or did their pursuit of power only result in an insatiable hunger for more, thus dooming themselves to a life of emptiness?

Again, our history shows us that power is not permanent. Kingdoms and Empires rise and fall. Kings and Emperors die and fade into memory.

Power ultimately fails.

And so people living for the pursuit of power find themselves in a similar situation as those who live for material wealth: they are setting themselves up for a great and terrible loss.

Power, like wealth, is illusory and fleeting.

The ambition for power therefore, is also a false hope.

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Finally, I thought about the hope of getting the most pleasure out of life.

After being told that nothing is permanent, I believe it is only natural for a man to resort to hedonism. (I know I certainly did, at one point in my life.)

Life is about getting the most pleasurable experience out of everything. (By “pleasure”, I mean sensual pleasure that is derived from the physical senses of touch, sight, hearing, smelling, and taste.)

“If it feels good, then it must be right. After all, we’ll all end up being dead anyway.” So the sensual hedonist would say.

The Greek philosopher Epicurus came to a similar conclusion when he founded the Epicurean school of thought.

Death is the end of all things. Therefore, what matters is to attain pleasure in this life before the end.

Oh the price men would pay to gain a moment’s pleasure!

We only need look at commercial advertising to see that men are easily lured by the promises of the sensual.

Living a life in pursuit of pleasure however, can only culminate in pain. I have found this to be true on many levels.

A man who lives to eat and drink will eventually have to face the pain of countless medical conditions that such a lifestyle produces. The same goes for a man who lives for sexual pleasure.

And since we already established that all material things ultimately fade into nothing, finding pleasure solely in material things also inevitably end in the pain of loss.

I simply cannot imagine myself lying on my deathbed, knowing that I’ve lived a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, only to realize that I’m ending it in pain.

The prophet Isaiah, seeing the wanton sensuality of his people during his time, wrote down these words:

But see, there is joy and revelry, slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep, eating of meat and drinking of wine! "Let us eat and drink," you say, "for tomorrow we die!" The LORD Almighty has revealed this in my hearing: "Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for," says the Lord, the LORD Almighty.
(Isaiah 22:13-14 NIV)

To live a life of pleasure only to end it in pain is both a tragedy and a travesty.

Sensual hedonism therefore, like materialism and the pursuit of power, is self-defeating.

It is yet another one of life’s false hopes.

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Scripture records the thoughts of King Solomon, reputedly the wisest, most powerful, and materially the richest king of Israel:

I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired men and women singers, and a harem as well—the delights of the heart of man. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.

(Ecclesiastes 2:8-11 NIV)

Here was a man who virtually attained everything that the world has to offer: wealth, power and sensual pleasure. And what does he have to say about it?

Nothing was gained under the sun.

The warning therefore is as clear as day: materialism, ambition for power and sensual hedonism are false and empty hopes.

Then why in Heaven’s name does humanity still cling to such hopes? Why do peoples, countries and nations continually aspire to these things?

In my personal case, the answer was so simple and obvious, it borders on the absurd:

It was because I didn’t know any better.

I suspect that many others would answer the same way.

If this is the case, then what hope is there for the ignorance of humankind? Is there something or someone who does know what is truly best for us? Someone who can provide us with a true and lasting hope?

My answer to that is an emphatic yes!

His Name is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, whose very name means “salvation from God”.

And His story is available to us through the accounts written in the book known as the Bible.

All we need do is to share His story to all humankind. For no one knows better how life works best, than the Author of Life Himself.

And we can trust in Him to know and understand about life’s false hopes, because He Himself had been tempted with the exact same false hopes prior to His ministry here on earth.

He had been tempted to depend on the material when Satan told Him to turn rocks into bread.

He had been tempted to rely on power when the Enemy told Him to publicly jump off a tall building, and command the angels to rescue Him to display His authority and power over the Heavenly Hosts.

And finally, He had been tempted with all of the pleasures of the world when Satan showed Him all that this world has to offer, in exchange for His subservience to evil.

The Messiah’s answer to all three temptations had been consistent with His teachings and the way He lived His life on this earth:

There is a God to whom we are all answerable to. It is in Him we should place our hopes.

His testimony was sealed by His suffering and death on the cross at Calvary: an event He could have easily avoided or run away from, yet deliberately chose to subject Himself to, in order to show the strength and completeness of His conviction and hope.

His choice to be subjected to the humiliation and suffering of the cross was proven justified by His resurrection, proving that not even death can destroy His hope, the very same hope that He offers for humankind:

"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (John 8:12 NIV)

Here then is real hope. Hope that will not fade nor fail us. It is the hope for the eternal.

And the eternal is God Himself.

As I go through the daily grind, I wade into the teeming masses who push, shove and jostle themselves to be ahead of the race.

Some of them do it for material wealth. Some of them do it for power and recognition. Some do it, in the hopes of attaining some measure of worldly pleasure at the end of it all.

What are we living our life for?

Have we placed our hopes on that which is fleeting and perishing?

Or have we set our eyes on the infinite?

It is my fervent prayer that we will all allow the Messiah to tear the veil of false hopes that this world has laid over our eyes, and allow us to see the face of the Holiest of Holies, the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts, and the one true source of hope everlasting.

May His name be glorified forever.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Confessions of a Christian Geek

I am a sucker for technology.

I am always on the lookout for the latest gadget representing the bleeding edge of human technology. The one that will max out the credit cards, crash the bank accounts, and declare war upon the spouse.

My life used to be about the next big upgrade. That was before I met Christ.

Today, I am still a sucker for technology. I still look at the latest gadgets and gizmos. I’m still tempted by the never ending barrage of upgrade options that the world’s leading manufacturers produce.

But to live out my life for these things? My Lord says that’s idolatry. That’s breaking the first and second of the Ten Commandments, constituting the highest and gravest of spiritual offenses. An “abomination that causes desecration.”

It is a struggle to fight off the temptation to buy into the latest technology. It is a struggle I face everyday, what with the proliferation of advertising on every conceivable form of media available.

The rate and intensity of the advertising increases in direct proportion to the rate in which manufacturers churn out these gadgets. Which means that the struggle won’t become any easier.

It is a battle for life. A Battle Worth Fighting.

Before I knew Christ, I once kidded to my friends that for me, Tech is porn. I still think that’s true.

Technology has become a fetish. For some, life is just not worth living without them. I know this because I used to be one of them.

Recently, I’ve been affected once again by the upgrade bug.

We lost our Sony Handycam in an event at the SMX Convention Center about two weekends ago. It was stolen within moments of our arrival, after we left it unattended together with our Sony Cybershot camera for a scant few minutes. The thief left the Cybershot, obviously preferring the larger (and more expensive) Handycam.

The theft was a sore blow. It had been our first Handycam: one that my wife and I brought together. It recorded a lot of our family’s memories. Essential memories. Videos of our baby daughter. Videos of our life during my first diplomatic assignment in Vientiane, Laos. Videos of friends and events that we will most probably never see or experience again in this lifetime. Although we thankfully have those videos on a backup external hard drive, it still feels like we lost a dear member of our family.

It took many prayers and many sleepless nights before I could get over the loss.

That and the prospect of an upgrade.

For the past week, I’ve been eyeing the latest Sony Alpha series of Single Lens-Translucent (SLT) Cameras, representing the current pinnacle of technology from that company (of which I have an obvious bias).

One specific model caught my attention: the Sony Alpha SLT-77, a semi-pro/enthusiast level camera that can shoot both still pictures and video in the highest resolutions currently possible. It is a gadget worthy of any geek’s fantasy.

I also thought the model number fortuitous. Seven after all, is God’s number.

The more I looked at the camera’s features, the more I got obsessed with it. I began calculating in my mind how much I needed in order to purchase it.

The obsession initially began as an infatuation. I had browsed the internet to check for pricing and availability and found out that it had yet to be released. Last week, I had asked a local Sony store about it, expecting them not to have any news on its release (the Philippines is not exactly a regular recipient of leading edge technology, especially those not targeted for the mass consumer).

To my surprise, not only did they tell me that it was due for release in the Philippines later this year, they were also expecting to sell it at a price that was essentially the same online (electronics in the Philippines tend to be priced significantly higher than elsewhere).

That information pushed me to the edge of sin. I committed in my heart that I would buy the camera without my wife knowing about it. I would use my credit card to pay for it. Never mind that it would take twelve months and a significant portion of my salary to pay for it.

I wanted the camera. I needed the camera. More than anything. It became the focus of my life: the reason for my happiness. My raison d’etre: the reason for my existence.

My old self had come back full force.

And boy was it ugly.

My obsession distracted me from the things that should matter. My family. My work. My relationship with my wife. My relationship with my daughter. My relationship with God.

My wife saw my obsession and responded as any wife should if she had caught her husband in adultery: she fought for my attention.

And I reacted as any husband caught in an adulterous relationship: first in angry denial, and then in vehement resistance.

I could not believe the words that had come out of my mouth that night. It felt like somebody else spoke those words for me. I saw my wife’s tears as those words stung and cut her.

Its just a friggin’ camera! I screamed to myself.

But deep inside, something told me it had become something more than that. It had become something unholy. Something that is placed where it shouldn’t be, and thus intensely destructive.

An abomination that causes desecration.

The enemy took my obsession with the camera and turned it into a weapon of sin. A weapon meant to distract me from the things I should be concerned about in my life. A weapon meant to hurt the ones that I loved.

I realized later that it was not only my wife who I hurt and made cry during those agonizing moments of confrontation. God cried too. The bloodied face of my Redeemer stared at me as He hung silently on the Cross at Calvary.

All for a piece of worldly technology. Something that will not last. Something that will certainly and inevitably lose its value later on as the next big and latest gadget comes by.

Its not worth it. Not worth the price of eternity.

It was then that I resolved that I would surrender my obsession to God.

I would only get the camera together with my wife, and more importantly, together with my God.

No longer will I buy things behind their backs.

I would earn the money I would use to pay for it.

So I began selling off some of the old gadgets that I had. Not only that, whatever proceeds I got from those sales, I immediately tithed for God. The rest, I kept, but not without my wife knowing exactly how much I had.

No more secrets.

I will set my relationships right once more.

And do you know what happened next?

In response to my obedience, God showed me the most wonderful revelation.

He showed me His version of the perfect gadget.

That gadget is me.

A human being. Formed and fashioned in the heavenly realms. Hand-crafted by God Himself, and powered by His own Divine Spirit.

What does your camera say to that? His words echoed through my mind, heart and spirit.

Tears streamed from my face as the realization of it hit me full force. It was too wonderful for words.

And the best part of it is this:

God is not even finished with me yet!

He is constantly upgrading. Constantly transforming. Constantly changing me from the inside out so that I would reflect the original and perfect design He has for me in His head.

He is doing it, not just to me, but to every human being who comes to Him.

And when His final version rolls out…

I finish this entry with the words from the first epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians:

However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"—

(1 Corinthians 2:9 NIV)

I suspect that even now, somebody in Heaven has yet to tap Steve Jobs on the shoulder and kindly tell him that his jaw is still open.

That I suppose, is the best compliment a geek could ever have for his Maker.

May God’s mercy and blessings be upon you all.

Soli Deo Gloria!