PARADOXICAL

Friday, March 22, 2013

Lenten retreat reflection: Day 39 – Revisiting (my days of slavery in) Egypt

Since this retreat is about deep conversion through deep prayer, I thought it is but fair that I stop flogging myself for my sins, for a change, and start celebrating past victories, to remind myself that deep conversion is possible indeed.  Today, I choose to commemorate how God delivered me from the sin of judging or making rash and harsh judgments against people.

I remember a time when I was so careless with speech, having come from negative influencers, personalities who are quick-witted when it comes to making fun of others and mocking anyone who offends them. Their tongues cut like lances, to the delight of their listeners, young impressionable me included. Thankfully God showed me how this brand of speech, often laced with humor, is against His ways.

I can’t forget how, in grade school, I got my first taste of what non-Christians love to refer to as karma. My arch-rival in academics, V., one day came to school with a swollen lower lip, which was apparently bitten by an ant. Behind her back, I made fun of her lip together with another classmate I was close to who harbored animosity with V. like I did (out of academic rivalry). When I got home, I greeted my mother with, “Guess what, V.’s lips got punished today.” The next day, guess what happened to my lower lip?

A similar incident happened, again in grade school, when I made fun of another classmate who came to school with a swollen eyelid. Most probably, it was bitten by a mosquito, and her whole face really looked funny. Naturally, I laughed at her misfortune in her face. But what do you know,  the very next day, I got the exact same ‘punishment.’

The great turning point in my life came when I received a letter from my uncle all the way from the States scolding me for making a negative remark about my cousin who’s dangerously close to becoming an old maid. It was the first time I’d ever receive such a letter, which accused me of saying an objectionable comment against my cousin who was at the time having her first boyfriend. I admitted I made such a comment, and it was told as a joke, and the joke reached my uncle and is family on the other side of the world, but apparently the joke struck such a sensitive chord that it hurt so much. In fact, the whole family described my words as like a bomb dropping off the whole household. I was so humiliated and ashamed, though in my pride, a bit defensive, that I wrote them back a letter asking apology, although I had to add how regretful it was to exchange letters for the first time and the subject had to be that.

It was such a wringer I don’t want to go through ever again, although I am much too prone to commit it again and again because of my chosen profession of writing.

In my anguish/agony during those times, I kept on asking, Does God punish, is He a punishing God? Does he love exacting revenge? Or could it just be that the consequences of sin are inevitable? Could it be that it’s the law of the universe that, for every action, there’s a corresponding reaction?

At this point, I am bound to believe the latter more. If we extend the statement, it should also be true that the consequences of other people’s actions are likewise inevitable. If we are sinned against, then it follows that we will suffer from the sins/mistakes of others. This Old Testament statement therefore makes sense: “The sins of the father are visited/vested upon the son.” Notice that it is not even God who vests the sin on the son, for God is incapable of sin. What we perceive as our own punishment is, therefore, our own judgment on ourselves.

I came to this conclusion on my own, after considering how the Bible also contains a passage that says that the act of baptism effectively erases the sins of our fathers in us, which means the newly baptized Christian starts from scratch, as far as sinning is concerned. Nonetheless, the aftereffects of our forefathers' sins in us remain.

Meanwhile, where did my great compulsion to be rash and harsh and judgmental come from, apart from any inherited flaws? Learning from basic psychology, I know it could only come from what inside of me, projections of what I hate about myself, actions to make myself feel better because other people look far worse than I was.

These thoughts congealed when someone I treated as an intimate friend verbally abused me anew by berating me and describing my current situation as a "dead-end," and for me to "get a life," and so on. His rant came a time when I was feeling so low about my situation, so I got hurt. But I also saw my old self in him. The three stories above replayed in my head, and after that, I felt afraid for my ‘friend,’ afraid for what’s waiting for him because of his rash and harsh words. I was glad to have done my duty of fraternal correction, but I could only pray he might not get to the hellish place I had been through for committing the exact same mistakes in the past. 

Finally, it's good to realize that God has been dealing with me for so long, like a son He loves and cares about so much. There is comfort in the thought that, if God indeed "punishes," then He remains a loving Father in that he punishes only those whom He considers as children because He desires their salvation (unlike the 'uncaring' He displays with those whom He doesn't love and thus allows to be deluded by themselves on the sure road to perdition). Nevertheless, I wish I'd have more victories like this to counter all my past and present defeats in this great warfare of life.

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:18 PM

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