Faking Love

My friend and I were at a gathering and my friend was busy asking some questions to another guy he had just met. I thought later that my friend wasn’t really interested but only faked it. I reserved my thought process for later. I do not believe now, that he faked it. He didn’t fake it but showed what perfected will, wills for. Pure Intentions perfect the will without relying on biases.



The biases and stereotypes that ‘we have to have something in common to enjoy our conversation and be friends’ are dispelled. A perfected will eventually manifests into perfected love. Fancy love is filled with fancy things: colors, cakes, juices, gifts, kisses and smiles. Not that we don’t need fancy love, it is often and in the beginning, an expression of loving someone in the first place .But true love endures. It endures lack of motivation to love.





Mrs. Dolores, whose son is the scout captain in college shows off her son as her trophy. Everywhere she goes people talk about her son. She loves her son and because of this new found pride, she is motivated to love him more.





Passions(sensibilities or senses that arise out of our sensitive appetite of our Soul) play a prominent role in our love. Everyone enjoys a funny movie but not so much a history movie. Love has to be cultivated for a history movie. It has to be appreciated that history aids our understanding of the perspective of the times and the very journey of the lives of men. History records the journey of the ordinary days, audacities and atrocities in time. This phenomenon is not an emotion per se such as fear, thrill or anxiety that we can relate to as in any other horror movie.





The appreciation of why history is essential can make history fascinating and studying the complex lives of men, a form of love. But it’s not all jokes and pranks. Our will has to point to appreciation than to enjoyment. It is very easy to see why you are not enjoying a history movie and call it boring (if the movie is genuinely not boring). Perhaps your will points to your senses and your senses expect a tickle, a prank, a fight, an adrenaline rush, a surprise or a sexual overture. The same reason we don’t enjoy academic books on philosophy as opposed to bestsellers and cheap watered down cosmetic imitations of the same. (Read: All of the self-helps books today are cheap imitations of the teachings of Classic Philosophy and Christian Philosophy and Stoicism)





This is the same reason we don't visit the sick. We visit Disney land, for why should we be alone at home when it’s so much fun on the rides? Nobody desires living alone or loneliness. We don't visit the sick, for how can we enjoy visiting old, clumsy, uncouth dregs? But they are essentially alone and lonely. All they want often is just someone's company. Nobody visits them in years. Imagine if you sat next to one and the thought running through her minds is: someone has come leaving Disney lands, clubs, pubs, and come here to visit me. Someone cares. I do exist for him. I am a person. I am wanted.





Now to actually swim the tide and really make it to the old age home, your will has to point not to your emotions but point to a part of you that identifies with loneliness and being alone. This is part in you called reason. It does not ask what one feels but what one ought to do or what is right. This identification may be personal(first type) of having known what loneliness feels like and never willing that anyone else undergo the same(compassion) or the identification(second type which is knowledge: empirical or rational) that certain things are good like sharing and caring and certain things, the absence of good(bad) like conceit and deceit regardless of having undergone it .





If you think of an old woman and your will points to emotions, perhaps usually, only ‘dirty’, ‘smelly’, ‘old’, ‘ragged’ and ‘morbid’ will come to your mind. These are the same as a ‘rancid food’, ‘animal waste’, ‘crow shit’, ‘feces’ and ‘stench of sewage’ that makes us run away from it just as strawberry, vanilla and chocolate lure us towards itself.





There is an objective resistance to suffering, to what our passions dislike. Anything that involves sweat, tears, pain and hardship is rebelled by the passions in spite of their ends being good. Anything that involves ease, comfort, gratification convenience is invited by our passions even if the ends are bad. This is due to the fall of Man. We are but fallen creatures.





Man is reason and passions. Passions are overbearing. They often take man away from reason. This is at the center of the doctrine of selfishness. What do I choose? What does my heart will? does my heart will that I visit a sick lady? Deep inside all of us will to bear good fruit. But again we wish to do enjoyable good, something our passions invite and not rebel. Again, passions get the better of us. We talk ourselves into thinking, "hey I am a nice guy. I like to befriend people" and then we befriend a guy who either roots for the same football club as we do or who loves mark twain as we do, who plays tennis as we do or who listens to Metallica and has a stash of new age rock. Again our passions play a dominant role. We go with what we enjoy. We call it love.





Now when you really begin to make an effort to actually walk across the classroom and say hello to a puny little guy wearing spectacles scribbling algebraic expression and say: what are you doing? He answers, I am doing the homework. You are aware that no one is going to do it for another week. You ask him what he likes and he says mathematics and Electronics. You were expecting he would say formula one and Liverpool.





I begin to wonder now what would make me interested in walking across to a person and introduce myself to another reluctant and a less interesting prospect as this nerd. The object behind this action is either some deep seated interest or extra ordinary love. There is no other. The visit to an old lady, to make another person feel the same dignity that has been bestowed equally by God on each of us, is either driven by extra ordinary love or a certificate of having accomplished social work.





Watching a history movie can either be grooming a special love for appreciating history or stalking an astonishingly pretty girl who watches such movies and wishing to cross her ways in the pretext of love for history. The action of going against your passions, of what you don't enjoy has only two motives: conceit or caritas i.e. love. There is no other.





If I was talking to the guy, I was either feeling he doesn’t share our academic field, does not share passion for books, for discussing a city, and perhaps feels left out and unwanted. At this moment he is not very different from the old lady who is left unwanted. The only difference being he can close himself in his own world of materials believing that he doesn't need friends. He feels perhaps he has his bike, his oil rig job or his cigarette. Materialism will soon wipe out any traces of ‘unwantedness’. He will have a world within himself. Soon, feeling unwanted which materialism allowed him to obliterate will slowly turn into feeling of hatred: who needs these bookish people who only talk about books





He is not different from the old lady except that the old lady has nothing to call her own. She cannot hide behind materials. When the person is very introvert and doesn’t feel the desire to talk or be candid and yet you take an interest in knowing his job, his company, the clientele, it is either because you wish to have a referral in the Oil Rig or you want him to feel wanted, to feel that people do want him to talk about his job, to talk about his love for his bike. It is not ‘faking’ but pointing your will from emotions (what makes me happy) to reason (I ought to make another happy)





I call this selfless becomes one has no vested interests in it. Your objective is to make another happy. You do it for love. You may not like to know about Oil Rigs but learn to love it. Love teaches, if your will can be commanded to point to good and not to emotion. A mother does not like to stay awake all night to care for her sick child. It’s not her hobby. She doesn't wait for the child to fall sick in order that she can stay up all night. She learns to stay awake and sacrifice for the good of her child. She longs to sleep too.





But she points her will to goodness rather than emotions. Her emotions of deprived sleep and her longing for a comfortable bed is not very different from what we feel when we have to befriend someone less enjoyable, eat something that is not cooked well, visit the sick, watch good cinema as opposed to popular cinema that may be boring initially because of our overbearing reliance on sensation (comedy,horror ect).





But a mother’s love is pure and hence her will is perfected in order to choose good over what her passions desire. It would be very rare to hear of a mother with an impure intention of suffering for a child because someday her child will be rich and take care of her. At that moment, she only wishes her child to be well and be freed from the sickness. It would be rare to hear of a wife who wishes her husband wake up from a coma so that he would have just enough strength to sign all of his wealth in her name. At that time, she only wishes her husband to come alive for her need to be loved.





Impure intentions destroy the dignity of the person. If the mother does suffer for her child in order that one day she will have her rewards, her child ceases to be a person and becomes an investment just as Mrs. Dolores, perhaps overjoyed in her self-indulgence, began to perceive her scout son as a trophy. The comatose husband is the wife’s insurance package in an event if her intentions are impure. To love is to will good, to have pure intentions.





Love is the toughest teacher. It makes us a man from an animal. It purifies. Love commands the will to seek not enjoyment but what is good. To will, that another not be left out of a game is choosing a good. Often that would mean playing with a novice and turning a novice yourself, which may not be challenging or enjoyable, just so that he could enjoy the game than shudder away at your mastery and attribute it to the difficulty of the game. Love seeks that he be able to appreciate the game as much as you. A father plays like a child and suppresses his own pursuit of challenges and thrills in order that, one day the child will play like the father. Omnia Vincit Amor

Goodness is contagious

My friend presented a strategy and I adopted it. The strategy was appealing because it was good. I had been influenced by it. Goodness is contagious. How it is then that, evil is more influential? Because Goodness is noble and worthy of all praise, it is hard and hence the absence of good, that is evil, flourishes much easily than good.



We learn about machine and inventions that were made for good but are much easier to be used for something else. In life too, our weakness makes us do something else. Our weakness often even does not allow us to recognize goodness. How Goodness is then is contagious?



Because the greatest power of love can break barriers of the strongest forms of evil. Jesus taught the same. He said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. In that sense, the best way to humiliate your enemies is to love them.



Evil cannot be overcome by a greater evil as in a war which is a game of one-upmanship. But the clutches of evil is broken free by the overbearing of love. That is why in life, you do not have to try hard to change someone’s will. Try loving them for a change and they will humbly submit.



What will make them submit is their own goodness. But I wished to change them because they were evil in the first place? That was the whole point, wasn’t it? But they recognize your goodness when you love. No one can recognize goodness without himself being good. My goodness has established goodness in others. Goodness is contagious.

The best movie of all times

You were not made for comforts. You were made for greatness

-Pope Benedict XI



We all know how winning a football world cup feels like. We don’t have to be the players on the field. The team is received with roaring adulation and jubilation. In another scene, Imagine yourself walking out of an airport in a foreign country and scores of unfamiliar people take hold of you, greet you, cover you with the choicest bouquets exalting your books



Now imagine a bee line of a thousand people thronging for a movie ticket. You already have a pass by the virtue of sharing the same name as the title of the movie. You find that strange and yet oblige to watch it after their persuasion. When you enter, they are watching a show you are quite familiar with; the scenes feel as if they have been experienced. The melodies are also your favorite songs. The dialogues are what once you have expressed, delivered and dispensed. It all seems like you have met the characters and perhaps been the very protagonist of this movie. And then it dawns on you: they are screening the movie of your life. Today they are showing your life as a movie. And theatre is packed till the last seat.



Angels are trying to force themselves in from the windows. St. Peter and St. Paul are buying pop corn and finding their seats quickly much to the discomfort of those who are being hindered by the constant noise. St. Thomas Aquinas has bought along another secretary with a quill in case he finds some inspiration to pen down a psalm. St. Monica has come along with her son. Some of them are sitting on the floor lucky just to get in to see your life? What is so enigmatic in the movie?



They say this man lived a life of honor. He loved the church. He let his faith radiate into his life. He was a man who modeled his love for God on King David, of whom God said, “is a man after my own heart”. A man who found in others something to love and like Christ tried to wash each other's feet and bore his cross to enter his own Glory. A man who tried to share the good news with others.



They have all come from far away to see the flame he held within, a flame never to be extinguished until his last breath. They have come to watch that flame, incandescent, burn into a thousand different experiences on the screen today. Do our lives burn with such vigor that someday the same saints we pray to, would be making a beeline for the tickets to watch a movie, a movie of how you go about life with cheerfulness and a touch of grace?

The Classic Understanding of Emotion

Often many pop spirituality authors have this tendency of ranking emotions from a higher rating (such as Love) to a lower rating (such as jealousy). There are objective goods and truths in the world but an emotion per se is not objectively good or bad. Perhaps they are objectively good or bad but not to the extent that they can be good or bad in all cases. It is not in the nature of an emotion to be good or bad.



Love is good but if reason does not prevail, a fine thing as love can be corrupted by wishing to possess and impose on others, requirements, we would never wish on our selves. Our own insecurities make us pervert Love and consequently, motivate us to harrow and impose ourselves on them. What motivates our action is not Love that has ceased to exist but to be free of our insecurities and be free from our doubts and trust issues.



No one thing is good in the world, say love or patriotism. To cite another example, there are instances when a mother’s love for her own children or a man’s love for his own country (say Mamta Banerjee’s love for West Bengal which people alleged is clear in the rail budget) have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people’s children or countries says C.S Lewis [brackets added without italics]



The problem with this over-emphasis on emotions and making a psychology out of it is that it gives emotion too much power and gives ‘will’ and reason a lower rank. It is all about what one is feeling, what one should feel, what thoughts is being transmitted from the universe. No questions are asked such as, where are these emotions coming from? Why am I feeling jealous? Jealousy can also be good.



I see two guys being very good friends and I long to have a relationship as they do. I am jealous. Until now, the full force of jealousy has not manifested. Until now, my will is controlling my emotion, the jealousy is not overbearing for the will tends to reason and good. Because the will tends to reason, it does not allow emotion to run like a horse away from reality. Reason says (to jealousy), “Stop here, beyond this you cannot manifest because it may undermine yourself and others”. Reason prevails. Reason prevails also because the will tends towards good: I cannot be jealous for something so noble. I am jealous for I myself long for a relationship like theirs.



Plato and Classic Philosophy say that the soul is made of intellect and will. Emotions are of the body, the passions. Usually, passions take a man away from reason. It is not wrong to feel these passions but these passions are usually overbearing if reason does not keep its check and subject the passion to dominion of reason just.



If you feel hungry and wish to leave for lunch but have a project and project team stopping you, your emotions or passions can persuade you to leave. Reason has to prevail, saying,” look I cannot leave as no one else is leaving at this critical juncture” But passions may be too strong and one may cook up things like: why can’t I leave, I have finished my work? Often many people would call this lack of charity or individualism which is fine at a certain level but definitely does not help in projects.



Eventually you are going to do (action depends on will) where your will is pointing. If your will is pointing to reason (I ought to stay back), you will not go but simply control your hunger for a little while. if your will is pointing to emotions (Just leave and grab a bite, quick), the battle has already been won and you will begin to make some excuse like a phone call or that you have to visit the toilet in the pretext to leave for lunch. Deep inside, you know you ought to have waited back with your team. Nobody makes excuses for the right things but only for the wrong things.



Another thing about emotion is that people often say that we should ‘go with what your heart says (emotion) or ‘trust your feelings’ or ‘higher instinct’. They really don’t understand how emotions work. When a man is drowning, there is perhaps a will to help as everyone believes in helping but only fear, insecurity and weakness of losing one’s own life in the process, sets in as the primary emotions. In spite of this, reason demands: jump, he will lose his life. If I had to go with my emotions or with my ‘higher’ instinct, that was to flee, I would be choosing self-preservation over the highest nobility: life. Yes, prudence can be shown and self-preservation is also choosing life but it is choosing one’s own.



Man often feels emotions due to his own imperfections and often due to what society perceives is ‘sissy’, ‘pansy’, ‘girlee’, ‘dufas’ and all those stereotypes. At such times, either given in to what I ‘feel’ or command myself to adhere to reason and not emotion for emotions will always rebel against reason.



There are certain imperfections in Man. If Ben was brought up in a community where things work, an eye for an eye, there are chances, an act of virtue, of bearing up excess work in silence would be deemed by Ben as cowardice. An obedient person could be perceived by Ben as a weak person and the emotions running through Ben’s mind would be to avoid being associated with such people.



An Emotion is a horse galloping fast and Reason, the horse rider. The horse rider has to control the horse by reining it left or right and subjecting the horse to the right direction. Else we risk breaking the foundations of right and wrong by patronizing emotions and doing as we desire rather than doing what ought to be done.

The bare minimum

Today we talk about not an uncommon nature of man. In my school days, we had an organization that visited our school to garner funds for their NGO. They gave out forms for all students and we had to go, usually, door-to-door to collect money. This was a huge hit in the Nineties. Seventy-Five rupees was the minimum to earn a certificate and there were other rewards for those who surpassed 1000 and above. I never knew what those rewards were simply because I never ever reached there. I do not know who reached there as I was surrounded by hundred others who were content with the certificate.

There is a danger to interpret the notion I am slowly trying to form as a ‘lack of pursuit of excellence’. I am trying to elucidate a behaviour not a lack thereof. If I was trying to talk about a pursuit that man has none of, I am trying to talk about something wanting. No, I will stick to what man does not what he does not or cannot.

The behaviour of Man (that you may observe in yourself as I observe in myself) is that of the ‘bare minimum’. His will is not inclined to goodness but rather to ‘not being called an evil person’ To explain, it is like a banker whose only objective ought to be to maximize his money but according to bare minimum, the banker would only strive to avoid going bankrupt. His motto isn’t ‘how can I maximize profits’ rather it is ‘how can I surely not become bankrupt’

You will observe this ubiquituous phenomenon whenever there are choices to be made between good and evil. Man, in such a case doesn’t really will to do good but he is conscious that he ought to choose good for he tries never to be deemed ‘evil’. He continues his life satifsying the bare minimum. He doesn’t wish to dress with modesty or chastity. No, he doesn’t choose that but he asks questions such as: what bare minimum requires to be fulfilled in order that these clothes are not called obscene?. What minimum can I contribute in a fundraiser or to a beggar or in Church inorder that I am not called a miser?

Our hearts don’t will for virtue but only to satisfy the bare minimum in order to not be called sinners or defilers. A woman may hope that her outfit is not obscene. Deep inside, she has an inkling she may have crossed the line which means she will feel immensely peaceful if she has just made it within the line. She will not choose chastity through her outfit rather stay within ‘limits’ to not qualify as ‘obscenity’.

We don’t choose to vie for goodness.we are happy doing just enough to not be called a sinner. Such a ‘pursuit’ (I switch now from behaviour to the why the behaviour is allowed) is the virtueless waste. For it chooses to value the fear of turning into a sinner than choosing the joy and prudence of being a saint. An excellent student who returns home from school everyday oblivious to the distress of his fellow students at their inability could guiltlessly say, “Well, I have not disturbed, distracted, hidden or misled them in any way in order to be evil” Yes, but they need help and you haven’t done anything noble either.

It reminds me of this Catholic Prayer:

I confess to Almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned through my own faults, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do…

So perhaps you, a product of the ‘bare minimum’, of the virtueless waste think, what I have done? Nothing at all, I stayed within limits, what do I have to confess? And then meditate on what you have failed to do...Often, that is all the difference between a sinner and a saint.

Children and Pain

Some time ago, some fellows had a moral dilemma. They were talking about shouting at wives and I interrupted: why would you shout at your wife? Just be nice to her. They said you can’t be nice to your wife when she has patently annoyed you. I asked them to show more charity but they wondered where I was coming from. They asked me, “What’s wrong in shouting at wives, Don’t people beat children? Is it right or wrong?”


I now answer that it is wrong first to compare shouting at a wife that one does from their weakness and is not a tool like beating a child. To compare them both is to not understand the two different cases at all. I have other means with my child but I use beating (pain) as it is most effective (why such effectiveness is justified only in the case of children will be dealt with later). In the case of my wife I can’t use pain is because I am suppose to show love.


To shout is the absence of good. A patient person would show tolerance before breaking. To not possess the virtue of patience is not an excuse to yell or beat someone. A much more patient person would show a lot more patience before breaking. My point is, a person who makes a scathing remark instantly on his wife or yells at her at the drop of a hat, it shows, how much love has subjected him to obedience and virtue. Love makes us love our mothers. Love should make us love our wives and be understanding, respect their free will what they choose for themselves (until unless it undermines your marriage as a whole) Love makes a person increase in holiness (being patient, pure, generous, understanding).


And here is where I said that if a husband yells at a wife where he ought to show love, he is weak. This is fine, everyone is weak in different degrees. There is none who has escaped the fallen nature of Man. But some are weaker than others. Some try not to be weak and in that they show a lot of virtue because love disposes them to virtue. Some of them have by habit, created a vice. They are those of whom their wives say, “My husband, if my house is not in order, he gets wild” or “My husband, the minute he steps into the door, poor man, bad day at work, starts screaming at everyone” These men are more weak than others. They ought to try harder as the good men who love their wives and will never raise their voices much less fingers even under fire. Testimony to this fact is my father (so that no one says such men don’t exist. And Yes, I believe it is holiness that has made my father like this. Without holiness, he would be just like other men. )


Now I come to the crux of the topic of why such love may not be used with children.


You don't beat a woman because she is not a child. Somehow this line may seem to give the license to beat children. What is it about children that they can be beaten and what is it really about adults that they can't. There is something in adults (woman, adults, parents et all) that is missing in children due to which what is torture to woman is not so to children. What is ‘manhandle’ to woman is not so to children. What is ‘force’ to woman is not so to children. And that's why beating children, shouting at them is not the same and cannot be compared to beating and shouting at wives and women in general.


I am not trying to justify violence against children. Violence is to harm a person as its end. Beating children is violence when you beat children as an end. When you beat children because you are a father and you want to show them who is boss amounts to violence. I am not speaking of this form of beating. This form of beating uses 'they are my children I can do what I want' as a pretext to manhandle other beings. It makes objects of children such as tables and chairs we can fling in any corner of the house. This is downright wrong and is condemned by me too. But I am talking of beating in a much more philosophical sense


Beating causes pain. A child at his/her age cannot understand why a particular thing is good or bad. If he wants it, he wants it. It is not given to a child to reason or understand: may be my parents are not that wealthy. I think I am wrong in my demands. May be I will be a good boy and they, in their joy, give it to me


A child cannot reason like this. His will though, when he comes of age and that is why an adult (teen) is taken to psychologist to mend his ways and not to a policeman, to be threatened to mend them anyways. A psychologist will 'reason' with the teenager which if the teenager finds reasonable will amend his ways. Whereas a child will be threatened of being sent to military school or of the bogie man or of the devil snatching him away if he makes mischief. Fear of pain and pain itself plays a prominent role in a child's life because at such an age a child is more animal in his mind.


A child is full of passions (emotions). That is why when an adult who does not understand a mother's plight and demands for a bike is said to be acting childish. It is because such a behavior is uncalled for from him. He is supposed to allow reason to prevail. He is supposed to think: my mother is poor, how can I demand a bike from her, what if to make me happy she indulges in committing wrongs like shoplifting or sexual favors just to get me a bike?


A child will not 'reason' but only think through emotions. Emotions engulf a child. It is for the very same reason a child has to be bribed and deals have to be struck to aid him to excel. "Learn mathematics and mama will get you a chocolate" the child does not understand that mathematics is essential to his development to further advance into algebra or calculus like a teenager would. A child does not understand that mathematics is noble and much like an art that can be indulged in as a mathematician or a scientist understands it. Thus a mother uses bribe or fear (pain) to encourage him to believe in something he doesn't understand (why) only for the day that will come when he will understand goodness of mathematics in order to believe.


This is why mothers beat children. There are much tastier delicacies than ‘farex’ and baby food but a child can only understand baby food and liquids. There is still time for chicken, samosas, pulav and biryani. The child's age finally gives in to the 'real' delicacies when he is an adult. In the same way, a child cannot understand 'reason', he wouldn't understand if you speak to him on the nobility of science or the usefulness of geography to encourage him to study.


The child's turns into an adult gives in to reason not into pain and no more can this child-who-is-an-adult-now be beaten but has to be persuaded. Mothers usually complain to their friends, other agony aunts, "my son doesn't listen to me" this means she does not beat him but tries to reason and the ‘agony aunt friends’ don't say, "Why don't you cage him or beat him" they usually say, "Don’t worry, my son will speak to your son"


When a child is an adult and of 'reason' no more can you think of his good so much so to impose it on him of what he can't think for himself. You cannot force ‘good’ on him if he himself doesn't agree it is 'good'. This will be imposing your good on him. No one tells a mother who has a child of 6 years that she is imposing her idea of good on the kid for a child doesn't know what is good. Left to himself, he would think spending all year in Disney land and having all the toys in the world qualifies as ‘good’.


Now I will admit not all kids need to be beaten and rightly aren’t. Some are really disposed to obey. They have been brought up into thinking that only in obedience is their good. This is because they have faith in their parents. This is not a bad thing as people make of ‘faith’ today saying it is blinding and foolish and better not to trust anyone. No parents usually deceive their children. The trouble begins when the parents, in charge of guiding their children look to directing them towards their gain than that of the one's they are supposed to serve (children). We have faith in the law and hence we approach them. The trouble begins when the officers in charge of dispensing law look to their own gain than that of the one's they are supposed to serve (citizens)


Hence you can't beat a woman for your own requirement if she doesn't do or think as you say. She has been endowed with 'reason' as you are, to think for herself, as you think for yourself. Our love is first in respecting this freedom of will they have. We do not respect the freedom of will of a child not because he hasn't any but because his will is distorted and he doesn't know what is good. How do you respect a child's will who is ready to cry and break everything in the shop until the batman figure is his to take home? The same action if committed by a man we would say he is mentally ill. It is simply because the man has not let 'reason' prevail. We talk to the child in the language he understands-pain. Only till pain gives in to reason and no more does pain need to be used. For if it is used on a man who can reason, it is torture.

N.B: I am only writing on why people beat children and not why children ought to be beaten.

The Final analysis of Our Hope

I recall once asking my friend as we were on a boat ride towards Elephenta Caves. I looked at him in the face and told him: what If Moses or just one of the prophets, like Elijah is not true. The whole of the Bible will fall like a pack of Cards. For Jesus meets Moses on the mount during the Transfiguration. If Moses is not true, Jesus could not meet it and yet the Apostles record he did. So the Apostles lie. If the Apostles lie, the Bible loses its credibility as divinely inspired. Every other thing falls apart. 2000 years of Christendom starts crumbling down.

My friend replied that if the Bible was not true, he does not know what to believe in. His life might as well be summarized as a chain of endless days with no meaning at all. He wouldn’t have any hope of any good he did. A similar experience engulfed me recently when I was at Mass in Church

Whenever I come forward for communion in Holy Mass, I contemplate on the Cross or face of Jesus. The other day it dawned on me: what if Jesus’ death on the cross failed to dispose me towards love? What if it failed to bring out pain and sadness of his death and the glory of his victory? What if one day it all stops happening and I become indifferent to the whole event of the Passion and Death that divided time and changed the course of History?
I will have no hope left then.