Breathing the Breath

Have you ever wondered why God even gave us breath to live in the first place? From the moment we were born, we've caused our mothers pain, our cries in the middle of the night keep our parents up. When we were kids we said and did a lot of things to cause them and other people hurt and grief. As we grew older, and adolescence kicked in, we became rebellious, fought for our "independence". And what about the wicked things we do to each other on a daily basis?

Why is it that we were given this propensity to choose evil when good is always there for us to pick instead?

Last night I went to the first of 3 VERITAS fora held on campus this week. The overall theme is on "Hunger and Suffering", and each of the 3 fora aims to pit the Christian perspective against the Secular Humanist view on the various topics under the overarching theme. Last night, I heard Dr Vinoth Ramachandra (a Christian nuclear engineer who gave up a life of academia to work amongst the Sri Lankan victims of strife) debate on the side of God and Jesus Christ against Dr Philip Kitchner (a Secular Humanist philosophy lecturer in Columbia). What I felt was that Vinoth was just full of the Holy Spirit when he debated. Neither heated up nor condescending, he spoke as I imagined Jesus had spoken when He was on earth -- forceful yet gentle and loving and kind. Perhaps it was because I was biased (in my view, in a right kind of way) but I felt, along with other friends who were with me last night, that Dr Kitchner was kind of unpleasant. He poo-pooed our values and morality and blithely put the Christian perspective down as being "weird" and "appalling". Vinoth never made such value-judgments of the secular humanists. When we spoke to him (Vinoth) later, he genuinely seemed like a very humble, gentle man who had truly devoted his life to God's work. That is the kind of defender of Christ whom I want to be.

Upon discussion with Peishan and Shuxiang later that night, we came to the conclusion that there were just some questions that we could not answer. Why were we even given the propensity to sin? Why are we given infinite suffering, apart from Christ, in return for our finite wrongdoing?

But does the fact that we cannot answer all the questions mean that we should not embrace Jesus Christ for what He had done to set us straight in this life? Throughout the debate when Dr Kitchner was speaking I felt this inward groaning within me--convicting me that what he said was wrong and I couldn't accept it. While I could articulate some of my misgivings with what he said, much of that, I must admit, had to be left inarticulated within my heart. I just knew. And when Vinoth spoke of Christ, and when he attacked the secular humanist views on "the intrinsic value of humans" and "morality being a 'work-in-progress'", I felt a peace that I cannot explain. Yes I know it was the Holy Spirit working within me. But how do you explain this to people who have chosen to make it their life goal and career to harden their hearts against what Christ wanted us to enjoy? The more I heard Dr Kitchner speak, the more I could sense his heart had hardened. While he could acknowledge that a lot of what Christ said is good and true, he could not accept that Christ Himself was ALL good and ALL true. (Yet he was most willing to take Plato, Socrates and Aristotle as being ALL true.)

Even though I have a lot of work to do the next few days, I will try to find time to attend these fora. They provided an excellent testing ground for the things I believe in. And I know now, even more clearly than ever, that Jesus is the Rock on whom I choose to stand. I was glad to able to confirm that putting my faith in Christ was the right decision to make, all these years. Let's pray for people's hearts to soften and open up to Him.

Why did God even give us breath to breathe? One of Matt Redman's songs provides some of his own reflection on this question:

Breathing the Breath

We have nothing to give that didn’t first come from Your hand
We have nothing to offer You which You did not provide
Every good and perfect gift comes from Your kind and gracious heart
And all we do is give back to You what always has been Yours

Lord we’re breathing the breath that You gave us to breathe
To worship You, to worship You
And we’re singing these songs with the very same breath
To worship You, to worship You

Who has given to You that it should be paid back to him
Who has given to You as if You needed anything
From You and to You and through You come all things O Lord
And all we do is give back to You what always has been Yours

Lord we’re breathing the breath that You gave us to breathe
To worship You, to worship You
And we’re singing these songs with the very same breath
To worship You, to worship You

Along the way, we might stumble and fall. But I would much rather choose a certainty in the morality that Jesus Christ has provided for us--He not only taught us how to live and love, but gave His own life that our sins might be forgiven. I would rather come to the end of this physical life knowing where I'd gone wrong and gone right morally, than to rely on this nebulous notion that the searching of human morality is a humanistic "work in progress". At the end of my physical life, I would not know which stage of this work in progress I was at, and hence whether my actions were moral or not. I would be afraid to have that kind of uncertainty on my deathbed. Besides, a lot of the "intrinsic value" that Dr Kitchner kept harping on, and the way he articulated it, stems from the Judeo-Christian traditions. Except we acknowledge that our intrinsic value lies in having been created in the image of the Triune True God.

I once was lost, but now am found
'Twas blind but now I see.