How meanings can change.
Travelling on Nicoll Highway at near sun-down, I turned to my friend and thanked him for the ride. Exhausted, I retreated into silence. I’m supposed to be having some good time, afterall I’m on holiday. A breakaway from so much of silly and shocking public statements I lament over back home. Yet, there I was, unwanting.
377A debate and the rewriting of pluralism (Insight: The Straits Times, October 27) I confess that it was ’…the rewriting of pluralism’ that caught my interest. In any case, I found myself reading a response to Nominated Member of Parliament, Thio Li-Ann’s Two Tribes Go To (Culture) War. Admittedly, I am not just about ready to plunge into a debate on Penal Code 337A, but some of Thio’s trenchant rewriting of secularism and pluralism warrants some serious thoughts.
“As law has a moral basis, we need to consider which morality to legislate…religious views are part of our common morality. We separate religion from politics but not religion from public policy. That would be undemocratic. All citizens may propose views in public debate, whether influence by religious or secular convictions or both, only the government can impose a view by law.”
Thio wrote elsewhere: “Democratic pluralism welcomes every view in public discussion, but does not commit the intellectual fallacy of saying every view is right. The goal is to ascertain the right view for the circumstances”.
If this is true, when viewed in the context that the government being the sole authority to impose a view by law, the result can be worrisome. Is the government a non-religious entity by itself? The right view for the circumstances; who’s view?
A theology of love
A theology of love cannot afford to be sentimental. It cannot afford to preach edifying generalities about charity, while identifying “peace” with mere established power and legalized violence against the oppressed. A theology of love cannot be allowed merely to serve the interests of the rich and powerful, justifying their wars, their violence, and their bombs, while exhorting the poor and underprivileged to practice patience, meekness, longsuffering, and to solve their problems—if at all, nonviolently.
The theology of love must seek to deal realistically with the evil and injustice in the world, and not merely to compromise with them. Such a theology will have to take note of the ambiguous realities of politics, without embracing the specious myth of a “realism” that merely justifies force in the service of established power. Theology does not exist merely to appease the already too untroubled conscience of the powerful and the established. A theology of love may also conceivably turn out to be a theology of revolution. In any case, it is a theology of resistance, a refusal of the evil that reduces a brother to homicidal desperation.
(from Faith and Violence, Thomas Merton)
This is a powerful way in which Thomas Merton can speak to our theology today. Surely, it does not do all the thinking for us, but it does teach us to think - it is when our untroubled conscience jolted, when thoughts stimulate the mind, the heart and the hands that contemplation truly begins.
Eid Mubarak
I was told this year that I should consider performing my ummrah. My eyes bulged. But I was delighted nevertheless. My friend’s mother probably meant to tease, but I’ve always enjoyed our conversations together. I was never made to feel a stranger in their home. ‘Tuan Haji Iskandar’ had just performed his ummrah with his mother this year and last week I was not only enjoying lemang and ketupat but a full treat of their stories from Mecca. I told them I would if a kafir dhimmi is allowed to make his pilgrimage to Mecca likewise.
But here’s a mother-son family who’s impressed me with their quiet but moderate and loving expressions of their faith. A helpful friendship; amidst alarming interpretations and caricatures of Islam today.
Yangon Horror
As America’s aura in asserting liberal democracy is decimated across the globe, the world looks now to China for her intervention to stop the atrocities of the military regime in Burma. America has her own ghost of Christmas past. Middle East is a failure, with Iraq, a disaster, while the Talibans are still on her tail with no end to terror. I agree that there are no easy solutions to Bush’s nightmare. Washington’s only weapon comes in the form of economic sanctions which appears lame and unable to yield the junta’s subordination.
China’s ‘authoritarian capitalism’ is seen to exercise a more diplomatic approach towards Rangoon, not withstanding her US$2 bn of military support (over the last 20 years) to Than Shwe’s regime in return for 20 years of Burma’s natural gas supply at 40% below market value. How does China herself deal with dissentions within is an extremely important question to ask. Whether China acts without her hegemonic agenda is subject to serious debate.
Back home, my thoughts and conversations converge on the increasing need for a more healthy and active Christian participation in the quest for social justice and liberty; amidst the current underlying fear that the country continues to seemingly slide down the slippery slope of totalitarianism. There musn’t be merely a dishing out of correct theology and doctrines from the pulpits but a clear embodiment of the spirit of the gospel and a call for action in the public sphere. I think there is an urgent need to quash the sense of indifference within the thick walls of our symbolic and consumeristic spirituality, and to free our generation to respond, to choose and to live out a wider spectrum of the expression of Christian faith.
While it is certainly imperative for the shaping of a Christian philosophy for the common good, aptly explored in Dr Ng Kam Weng’s post here, I see a need for a sincere engagement; not just in Christian involvement in social actions (which are extremely important) but at the same time a sincere reframing of our Christian apologetics. Our commitment to the common good can be totally questionable when we approach the ‘common’ with our citadel of unquestionable truths while casting other approaches to mere speculative interpretations. Our sincere conversation with postmodernism, which appeals to a consideration of the ’silenced’ voices, involves our willingness to listen (and seriously listening) to the ‘other’ voices of interpretation of truth alongside with our own interpretation of the same. That the canonization of our own scripture is in itself a ’silencing’ of other voices/texts within the Christian literature, not to mention of those outside. This is indeed crucial to make space for a common good.
The Burmese monks show us a crucial role for an honest religious conviction embodied in the here and now. Yes, we pray for their agony now. But beyond that, how willing are we in allowing their interpretation of faith; in the face of political and economic hegemony, in the face of yet again an effort of silencing dissenting voices, to question our own?
Novel novel.
Why do I read novels?
The shelves at Kinokuniya pride themselves with an ‘ivory-tower’ of intellectual works, opulent facts; facts which provide us with comprehensive intellectual and historical frameworks to understand the world today. But isn’t it true that facts are not just simply known, or read off the world? Isn’t it true that how we perceive, group and organize features that exist intends our ‘truths’ and ‘facts’? Pages that divulge lofty ideas and fix-it answers are, on the other hand, deafening voices of certainty and authority. We fill ourselves with so much answers that I think we begin to lose ourselves and become the answers we sought. Isn’t our journey about owning up to our search for meaning and not just depending on off-the-shelf softwares we install and run conveniently? Yet, all these sell best.
I told Jen that reading novels help me feel human again. Unpretentious, humble and full of flaw and imperfection. ‘Real’ not because they can be empirically or logically proven, either through discourses or concensus. But real. And yes, to quote Kundera (yes, him again), ‘the stupidity of people comes from having an answer to everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything…it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties’.
Darker days ahead
A couple of friends told me that my ‘black’ wordpress does not look welcoming. Perhaps so.Yet, I think days ahead are no less blacker. We are ushered towards them nevertheless, kicking and crying for some. Still, they can be defining times. We ask, we examine….perhaps we ignore. There are choices. Darkness can speak to us in ways which light cannot.
This darkness is becoming clearer…darker. I told my friends that I like black. I admire its elegance. It brings out yet another part of ourselves. Perhaps, the truer part of ourselves. Yes, darkness can speak to us in ways which light cannot.
