Stains On My Soul

So its been a while since I wrote and I figured that I should restart my practice of seizing the little moments I have and putting them down in words. Maybe dig up some of the other moments off my phone but... lets not get ahead of ourselves eh? Start slow. Anyway, thank you (you know who you are) for reminding me of this by the act of simply coming up with it yourself. 

We all have our little lies. Our little secrets. Our little bad habits. But sometimes we are faced with situations or actions that chip a little away at the thing we call our character; little, little chips, knocking away the wall of our willpower till it one day crumbles.

The first of my recent experiences comes from watching the acclaimed Netflix show "House of Cards". Its a fairly gripping tale of a US senator doing despicable things to get to his goals. The acting and scripting is first rate - I was hooked by the end of the first episode.

I stopped at around episode 5 or 6.

There was just something, this something I felt at the end of every episode. The main character would have gained some ground on his revenge plot, and along the way done some morally ambiguous (or downright evil) thing that sometimes actually resulted in something good for someone else. The problem was, when I turned off the show, it was as if I had dragged by brain and my senses though some fairly toxic miasma.

I felt dirty.

Now, please don't get me wrong. I'm not condemning anyone who watches this show, and I know too, very well indeed, that its just a piece of fiction. All I am saying is that somehow the act of watching it has made my soul ill. It was as if I took dirt and rubbed it onto my face. I felt it staining my soul a darker shade of grey.

The Bible tells us in Philippians 4:8 - "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things." 

These were not the words that were in my head when I was thinking about dropping the show. I do think however, that somewhere along the line, they had taken root in my heart and somehow that has made the difference in this situation.

I'm reminded of this today, as I think that God has made another difference in my life by reminding me of the word "Integrity". Integrity can be described as simply being the same person to every other person - including yourself.

In a long story cut short, I went for a climb up a mountain, early Saturday morning. After that rather grueling hike, I decided that a foot massage would be the way to go. Unfortunately for me, that was rather much the poorest decision of the trip. My masseuse evidently believed that brute strength was the most effectively way to relax tense muscles, and attacked my feet and legs with an enthusiasm I believe he had also had for food. Bruised and battered, it was only later that night, before I went to bed, that I noticed a distinct itch running the length of my shin.

By Sunday, the itch had gotten worse and no amount of cleaning and application of unguents seemed to help. I resorted to digging into my stash of medication for an antihistamine pill, which, along with liberal application of prickly heat powder (my new love), soothed me sufficiently to find sleep. Monday morning brought a slightly less inflamed sight, but good golly i now looked at a shin full of pustule filled bumps. 

This is one of those moments you're looking at something so absolutely grotesque and yet the sight of it remains so utterly fascinating (or maybe it just runs in my family since everyone outside I've offered to show it to replied with an immediate "NO"), but it was sufficient enough to send me scurrying to the nearest clinic to get it diagnosed and medicated.

The doctor's diagnosis was "folliculitis", which basically meant that the large swaths of my hairy legs were infected by who-knows-what at the roots of my hair follicles, causing the inflammation and pimple party. I immediately attributed it to the calamitous massage, particularly the bits where his callused hands (and sharp fingernail) went up and down my legs, threatening to pull my manly leg hair out by the roots. The doc said it was more likely a reaction to the cream he used, in combination with the dirt and grime and sweat from the climb, causing a kind of reaction in my skin.

Well, $39 in doctor's fees later, I dropped my insurance agent a message to ask if this sort of thing was claimable. Her response was to ask if it were caused by an insect bite - as that would definitely be claimable.

I hesitated.

I really wanted that money back. Plus, that is what accident insurance is for isn't it? Add to the fact that insurance companies are big, big enterprises and claiming my little share of the pie which, in all honesty, was indeed an accident of sorts, would only be fair.

I said yes, it could have been an insect bite. 

Towards the end of Monday, I was reminded. It happened in the shower, a place of certain spiritual revelation, that the word "Integrity" came to me. It weighed me down - could i find myself happy with the claim, a sort of reparation for my loss and suffering? It took me a while, but as I stood under the warm embrace of water, I accepted that to allow that little lie would stain my soul. I didn't want that.

My agent was kind and agreed to try for an allergic reaction to an unknown substance instead, which was far more accurate, but likewise less likely to clear.

But at least my soul could rest easy.

I suppose its in these kind of little moments, these little decisions that we either build up our character, our integrity, the force of who we are, or allow it to be whittled down to ruins on the ground. CS Lewis described it (somewhere) as a dial that we have in our lives - it turns ever so little in one way or another, to good or to evil, until one day we look upon it and realize the sum of our own collective responses to see the person we have become.

It is in these little ways that the Holy Spirit keeps us, persuades us, teaches us, to never trade the clarity of our soul for the stains of this world.
                                                           

Onwards.

I actually didn't intend to write this. but even now, as I sit in my comfortable, privately owned, fairly large room, I find myself feeling a sense... a need, to express some of this out, as if just to organize my thoughts and consider who I am.

About 7 days ago, a great man passed away. The last 7 days have been about mourning and grieving and remembering. Many of my friends have written long, heartfelt personal eulogies to him; a man they did not know personally, but recognized innately as someone who is responsible for letting live in a blessed state now. 

I wonder if those words could have been said sooner? I suppose the outpouring is really a way of coping with their own feelings (just as this post is), a way to mark a great person's passing, a way to express what they have felt all along. Certainly the accolades would have been pleasing to the ear were he still alive, but perhaps it were for the best that the praise was kept till his passing. 

I digress. Let others say what they want, good or evil, for that is their words.

Mine are these. I have always respected him. I came to understand from a young age, so young that my maturity in this area then surprises me now, that his form of governance was the right way forward for Singapore. Despite my upbringing and background, I fully support the idea that one must be merciless when pursuing the greater good. Sometimes I catch myself leading that very way, and it took many years of mellowing out (and perhaps caring less), to be more... people orientated. 

Despite this, I never really agreed with some of his policies. Elitism, for example. The direction of the school system, so adept at creating drones, for another. I respected him, but I did not love him. Revere him. He was to me, a great man, one that had such immediate and tangible impact on my life and the world around me, but he never reached beyond that. 

And yet, when the passing came, there was a shadow that fell. Perhaps I was swayed by the general sentiment. Perhaps I felt more than I thought I did. Regardless, I knew two things - one, I had to pay my respects. Two, I did not want to... display it. 

Honestly, when I reached the spot, I did not know what my reaction would be. The bow came naturally. As did the pause. I felt right after that. 

Now, I look forward. Onward. If anything, I have learnt that in some ways, I emulate him. Or rather, if I may be so bold, I feel a kinship with his spirit. The scorning of wealth and pleasure and power and acclaim, each merely pawns in the great game to achieve the goal of which we felt the call to. When the true desire is present, all these other things fade.

Which, perhaps, is why I always only prayed for one thing for him - that he may know Jesus Christ as Saviour. That was my tribute a long time ago, for a long time since. It pained me to know that such a man of drive did not get to know the peace that gives rest from the passion. When his wife passed on, I was glad to know that she had come to know Him. And gladder still when I read that he found some peace in words he did not yet understand. My hope remains is that the words became real before his passing. 

And so now, I consider my life and how I can truly pay tribute. My goal and my drive do not stem from him, for that belongs, heart and soul, to God. But I found, perhaps, encouragement, and inspiration, to stay the course, particularly to stay where I am. I have always known that my call was here, but now I am revived to keep the focus. Unlike him, I lack drive and have gone quiet for far too long.

Perhaps its time to awake again. 

In his words: The world is watching. 

Live out what you were made to do. 

Onwards.

Dear diary...

Dear diary,

I ripped my shirt while at work today. I wish I could say that it was from my rippling muscles (which do not exist) but it was because I used my shoulder to push open a door and my sleeve got caught on that little metal plaque that reads "PUSH" and momentum betrayed me.

Damn. There goes my $80 G2000 shirt that isn't even 3 years old.

Damn. 

Some days

Some days
I just miss you
even though i know i should not.

Sometimes

sometimes i wonder why i bother
sometimes i wonder why i care
wouldnt it be easier to bother about the people that bother
and to care about the people that care
wouldnt it be sweeter
to love those who love before
or love in return
who remember and show rememberance
who give without being given
who ask because it will be answered

so sometimes i wonder why i bother
and wonder why i care
when life would be so much sweeter
if i did not have to bother or care.

Although. I do know the answer.

Why the movie called "Fury" is my favourite film of the year.

Warning. Spoilers abound. Although this isn't a review.

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Fury tells the story of the final mission of the tank named Fury and its crew. It centers around their leader Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt) and the newest crew member, Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), The remaining crew are named Boyd "Bible" Swan (Shia LaBeouf), Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis (Jon Bernthal) and Trini "Gordo" Garcia (Michael Peña). Norman, a clerk who has never seen war before, joins the battle hardened crew at the beginning of the movie because the previous gunner had died in the prior battle.

There's a lot to talk about the film: its themes, its brutality, its depiction of the unflinching horrors of war. But I'm just going to focus on what, or who the characters were. Because that's where the real story is told. Underneath the bravado and pyrotechnics and violence that covers the film from beginning to the end, is a story of men and who they really are.

Norman is the clean slate and naturally the audience identifies with him the most. It's almost all about his perspective. He comes in green, as a guy who signed up to type letters but gets sent to battle having never shot a gun or killed a person. Through the course of the movie, Norman is changed by the things he sees and the things he has to endure.

Boyd, Grady and Trini are bitter and scarred by the war. They trust in Don because they know he's the best man to get them through the war. Grady is antagonistic and a brute most of time, but he shows his inner vulnerability close to end when he tells Norman that everyone thinks he's a good person while the rest of them are not. Trini's the guy who's fairly neutral, the "support" guy. He does his job and is more than willing to partake in the ugliness of war.

Boyd however, is a little more complicated. Deeply religious, he spouts verses, takes the time to give dying soldiers their last rites, has a fairly firm view on the faith he proudly professes (thus the war-name). Despite that, he's shown that the war has bitten deep into his soul - he demonizes the Nazis and revels in killing them, and at perhaps the most tense moment of the film, subtly suggests that they could do whatever they want with the German women whose house they had entered.

That just leaves Don. We don't quite see who he is at the beginning of the movie. He appears to be a remorseless killer, ready to kill any Nazi (particularly the SS), who cares for his men so that they'll be a complete fighting unit. It appears all very Hollywood.

But then, we are showed the cracks. The first time you see it, they've reached safe ground and are carrying out the crew member who died. Don walks away from his crew on the pretext of getting official stuff done, but he stops and shudders. It's pained him, but he refuses to let his feelings be shown in front of the others. The next time it happens is after he's forced Norman to kill the German prisoner. Don walks away and grimaces. He's been forced by circumstances to stain Norman's soul.

You get other hints of who he actually is. When Fury takes part in the conquering of a town and manages to take out an anti-tank gun before it could kill them, the German soldiers caught in the blast come out burning to death. Norman, both in rage against his peers and in pity of the dying men, shoots them dead while the rest of the crew comment that he should have let them burn to death. Don on the other hand, makes no such comment but instead praises Norman for shooting them. It appears that he does so because Norman finally is doing his job, but it also becomes apparent (from the rest of his actions during the film), that Don, while having no compunctions to kill, does not enjoy it.

Then the house incident occurs and you begin to realise - Don is a principled man. Once you catch that Don's fury is against the horror that is war and against the sickness that is the fanaticism of the Nazis, the things he says begin to make sense. That's why he sees the bigger picture. That's why he does what he has to.

I'm not doing the movie justice thus far, but bear with me. After that, the Fury manages to defeat a much more superior tank - one that had just destroyed the other 2 tanks with them. The crew is in a high - Boyd states that God hasn't called them home yet, and then says one of the movie's quotes: "Best job I ever had.". The others echo his sentiment, except for Don.

When faced with the knowledge that the Nazi troops they were sent to stop were coming before they could fix their immobilized tank, Don chooses to stay. The rest of the crew want to leave and he tells them to go. This is entirely uncharacteristic as for the first time he does not boss them around but almost happily allows them to leave. In part, this is because he wants to keep that promise of keeping them alive. However, he can't leave - Don knows what was at stake (they were the only ones left to intercept an army column that would hit the Allies supply line). Norman joins him, and the rest follow suit, knowing that they were committing to their own deaths.

This is when the turning point in the movie happens. The crew sit in the tank awaiting the enemy and Boyd shares a verse that he says has been something he has kept with him all this while. The verse is:

"Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

While the others ponder the verse in their own way, each contemplating what is to come, Don breaks the silence by naming the book and chapter of the verse (its Isaiah 6:8 btw).

Boyd is entirely stunned. He can't believe (as probably most of the audience as well) that his CO, the man who appeared entirely amoral and un-religiousness, could recognise the verse he had just quoted.

You see, this is the point. Don is a Christian. He doesn't wear it on his sleeve as Boyd does, but he lives by the principles of it. He makes hard decisions, and some of them morally grey, but his guiding light has always been to do what he needs to to keep the men under his care safe and to help end the war. He's not perfect of course. Perhaps he knew he was losing his way, and perhaps he was awakened to it when Norman joined the crew, but in the end he chooses what he knows to be the right thing to do. And then says "Best job I ever had".

Two last points. During the fight, Don gets shot and needs to be patched by Boyd. Now, I may have heard this wrong, but I was quite sure that Don (and not Boyd) was the one who suddenly quotes this next verse:

"For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever." (1 John 2:16-17)

At this moment, there is a sudden realization on Boyd's face. He suddenly sees the same thing that Don does - that they were meant to survive this far because they needed to do this - stop the German troops at those crossroads. Its as if a sudden clarity came on him. Everything else mattered less, God had called, and they were here to answer.

I think it takes a knowledge of a few things to truly grasp this. Some of it is pragmatic - like the big picture of a war. However, some of these things only come when you've spent some time considering if God is real, and if He is, about what he says in the Bible, and how all that translates into living life.

Life is really full of greys. As we live life on earth we don't seem to be able to connect the dots all the time. We sometimes demonize things we should not. We pretend we are people whom we aren't. Like Grady, we sometimes recognize when something actually is good and treat it flippantly or with disdain because we are afraid to look within ourselves and see how bad we actually are. Like Boyd we try to live right, but sometimes the bad in us gets the better of us. Like Trini, sometimes we just don't care.

But like Don, sometimes we do care and we just wonder why we are who we are and why we've done what we've done. Sometimes the choices are hard and they don't make sense. Sometimes we can't see the big picture.

Perhaps, even at the end of the day, we are unsure. When Norman tells Don he's afraid, Don replies that he's afraid too. Now, Don's already been fatally wounded by a sniper. Its not a stretch to say he was saying he was afraid of dying. But if the above holds true, then perhaps he wasn't as much afraid of dying, as he was of meeting God after it was over. What would God say of the choices he's made? Was he saved? Or has he condemned himself?

These are all things we struggle with. The thoughts and motivations of our heart. The wars we fight within our mind, struggling between good and evil. The characters in Fury are not real, but perhaps they echo our very own voices. This is the human condition.

Our circumstances, fortunately (or not), are nowhere as dire or deadly as the crew of the Fury's. But there is still a war being waged, one for our souls and the souls of those around us. What choices do we make? Have we let ourselves become bitter by the daily grind of this mortal world? Do we still make the right choices when faced with a way out? Have we said "here I am, send me" to the call on our lives? These are all such difficult questions and yet such pertinent ones. Will we, at the crossroads, choose right?

We all must choose. The movie is merely that, a movie. It doesn't offer answers. But perhaps it offers us a glimpse of how we can respond right.

And that is why Fury is my favorite film of the year.

The following is shared by Pastor Soo-Inn Tan, the original post can be found here. I suppose I'm posting this ad-verbatim because it resonates within me quite strongly. I will not see this end, not so soon at least, and it a good lesson to remember as my own journey continues.

In the Long Run

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Soo-Inn Tan in 2014

We had not met for close to 30 years. We were students at Regent College in the early ’80s. I remember a spunky woman of faith, tough and with a sense of humour. We met up again a few weeks ago. She shared about some of the struggles she had gone through in the past thirty years—a child with Down’s syndrome and autism, her own battles with breast cancer, a tough marriage, and depression. I was numbed, trying to get my head and heart around what she shared.

And since we were swapping “war stories” I told her about the death of my first wife, the breakdown of a marriage, the loss of my public ministry and my own journey through depression. It was a sombre moment but also a moment of faith. Enough time had passed for us to have seen the redeeming hand of God. We ended our short meet-up praising God for His goodness. We testified to the reality of Romans 8:28.

We also swapped stories of others from our cohort who had gone through unimaginable pain. Our time at Regent was a happy time. None of us could have foreseen all the pain we would go through in our years post-Regent. I guess optimism is our default till we hit some real storms. Yet it is also critical to let our stories run their course to see how things turn out. Often the hand of God and the purposes of our pain can only be seen in the long run.

I think of Joseph going through one injustice after another. He may have been cocky but that didn’t justify his brothers wanting to kill him, or selling him off as a slave. Yet when he had the opportunity to take revenge on his brothers, he shows them kindness instead because at this chapter of his life, he understood the divine purposes behind his tragedies.

When Joseph’s brothers said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept.

His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said.

But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them. (Genesis 50:15–21 NIV)

Genesis 50 is the last chapter in the book of Genesis. Sometimes we need to wait till the last chapter to understand the meaning of our lives. Which is why we shouldn’t give up in the difficult chapters. We need faith and courage to keep on going till the last chapter. Here is wisdom from the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011).

“Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.”

Hebrews 11:35b–40 reminds us that for some, indeed for all, “the end” means the new heavens and the new earth. But it will be all right in the end for “those who love him (God), who have been called according to his purpose.”

I was chatting with a young doctor recently and she told me she was struggling with depression. I told her I was not worried about what would happen to her in the long run. But she had to survive the present. May the Lord give us all the faith and courage to survive the present.

Post taken from http://graceworks.com.sg/in-the-long-run/ 

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