The Torah or the Laws, or as Christians would understand it – The Old Testament, are not a “law code” but rather terms for a covenant relationship. Though many take it as Manual For Good Behaviour dropped from heaven, it is certain from the way God describes His own relationship with us, that it is familial.
Why the bible is not a literal law code
In 2 Samuel 14, David excuses his son Absalom (who murdered Amnon), contrary to every law and principle in the biblical law codes, with no appeal or defence of his actions and no reference to it. Furthermore, in Jeremiah 26, the most detailed description of a trial in the Old Testament, Jeremiah is accused of treason for announcing the temple’s destruction. His defence is that another prophet before him, Micah, announced the same message and he was never imprisoned. This is an argument from precedent, not from a law code. No laws from the Torah are ever consulted to defend or accuse him.
What proof that God desires relationship not sacrifice?
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”
Genesis 22
In Mark 14:36, it is Jesus who calls God “Abba, Father”. In Matt. 6:9, it is Jesus who teaches us to pray to God as our Father. While all the names and descriptors of The Lord are important in many ways, the name “Abba Father” is one of the most significant ways in understanding how God relates to us. Abba in Aramaic means “Father”. Abba signifies the close, intimate relationship of a father and his child, as well as the childlike trust that a young child puts in his “daddy.”
In today’s gospel according to Matthew, 25:1-13 tells of Jesus teaching his disciples via parable: “The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones, when taking their lamps, brought no oil with them, but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps.”
Suffice it to say, when the bridegroom arrived, the foolish ones had no oil and asked for the wise ones for their oil. Seeing as there wasn’t enough to go around, the wise ones declined. And so when the foolish ones rushed out to get some, the banquet started with the wise ones who remained present and the doors where closed. When they returned, the bridegroom aka the Lord, did not recognise them.
In real life
I’m a cradle Catholic. I do recall my own childish reticence at spending my precious Sunday mornings at church. This time, my eldest child was sick and in no shape (nor could I, in good conscience, allow her to bring her cough and sniffles amongst the elderly parishioners), so I had more or less anticipated how my youngest would react when I came to interrupt her session of Hello Kitty Island Adventure on the gaming console.
feeling aggrieved
“It’s so unfair!” she complained, wiping tears of frustration aside. I understood but at 8.45am in the morning, when I reached into what reserves of wisdom I had, I realised I didn’t have the right words for a 9 year old.
I wanted to talk to her about having right relationship with the Father but because she’s too young, i didn’t want her to think the relationship was transactional – that is to say: we go to church so we can ask God for things.
God is not a wish granting genie.
Jonathan Ho
I held her close as we entered the lift and I could feel her apprehension, so I lifted my eyes to God and asked for the Holy Spirit to grant me the wisdom to have that conversation.
Coincidentally, today’s gospel was about the bridesmaids and the lamps and waiting for the Lord. The homily was about how building a relationship with God is not something that can be given, just like how the oil in the lamps couldn’t be shared, if you don’t have a relationship with God, how can He recognise you?
If David but extends his digit, he connects with God
In the car ride back, there was a peaceful silence, quite the opposite from the defiant silence I endured on the drive to church. She asked, “Daddy, is this why you are always praying?”
The oil is our prayer and time given to God, it is the right relationship that no one else can share or give you. It’s not coincidence that consistent prayer builds up the light in our lives and brings it the fragrance of God’s blessings. Prayer is our ‘supply of oil’. When you’re in constant relationship with the Father, it doesn’t matter the day nor the hour, we live lives “safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
I smiled as I turned back to look at her, “Isn’t it weird if you don’t talk to me daily? You talk to me daily because i’m your daddy. I’m always praying because God is my Father.”
Hear O Israel the LORD is our God the LORD is one, and as for you, you shall love the LORD your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength.
For thousands of years every morning and evening, the Jews prayed the Shema
As far as the English translation goes: you are commanded to love your God with all your heart. However, the Hebrew word used in the original text is Levav.
To our modern eyes it would suggest that an emotional kind of love is being commanded but to the Jews, levav encompasses a much wider sense than merely ‘heart’.
Walking with God, using your Levav
Indeed, when the biblical authors talk about the heart in many other ways that might seem strange to contemporary readers but actually make sense in context when you interpret the English “heart” with its other mentions in the Bible. The reason why so much of ‘decision making’ happens in the “heart” is because the Israelites had no concept of the brain or even a word for it. What they imagined was that all of a human’s intellectual activity took place in the heart.
In the book of Proverbs, wisdom dwells in the heart. Solomon used his heart to make decisions and as you might well realise, making decisions from the heart is rarely a good idea.
In 1 Samuel 13:14, we also find this description for King David: “But now your kingdom shall not endure. The Lord has sought for Himself a manafter His own heart, and the Lord has appointed him ruler over His people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”
So what is Levav? It denotes the whole decision making apparatus of a person, both emotions, and intellect. So when the Bible says that David was a man after God’s heart, it is a descriptor that though that King David was a man of faith and while it meant that he was by no means perfect, he would own up to his mistakes.
When God’s first anointed King of Israel Saul, a man known to be handsome and generous, began to believe in his own ability rather than acknowledge that the God who who blessed him abundantly, that anointing fell onto David’s shoulders.
From the Bible, we know that David’s giant slaying faith kept him in good stead. David even loved his enemy, Saul, centuries before the promised Messiah would make it a command – opting not to take matters into his own hands but rather trusting in God’s timing.
It is crucial to note, David’s levav was helping him make all the right God-oriented decisions: An emotional person might decide to kill his enemy. A logical person might rationalise that killing Saul would be better for the fledgling Israelite kingdom. Instead, with levav, emotions and rationality combined to give David uncommon wisdom to trust God despite being clearly able to “settle his problems” with a thrust of the sword.
Even when he made Saul-like mistakes of trusting his own might with an ill advised taking of census against God’s wishes (in those times, a man only had the right to count or number what belonged to him. Israel belonged not to David but rather to God) he was quick to repent and when God offered him a choice of three punishments: famine, rival kingdoms or plague – the first two would have involved some level of dependency upon the mercy of man: warfare could after all be as severe as a human enemy wanted and famine would require Israel to relying on the generosity of other nations, David chose to rely on the mercy of God — pestilence was a direct form of punishment from God, and during a plague they could (ideally) beg a compassionate God for relief.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
Deuteronomy 6:5
Time and again, David put God in his heart and God’s love and intellect allowed him to be a leader not only worthy of his people but also the bloodline that would lead to our Messiah.
To the ancient Israelites these aspects of the inner person, heart and mind, were combined in this single term. Therefore, in Deuteronomy 6:5 we are ordered to love the Lord with every fibre of our being.
Why is understanding Levav so important?
Sometimes, circumstances might be beyond our intellectual comprehension. We know, as did the early Hebrews, that fire burns and in severe cases, outright kills us. For Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Hebrew names Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah), they knew that certain death awaited them as they were thrown into a fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon for refusing to bow to the king’s image.
It was here that their ‘emotional fidelity’ rather than their minds to recognise that, “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” – rationality allowed them to recognise the fire, what it could do and what God could do. Emotions recognised that even if God didn’t deliver them, God would still be there for them in the world beyond. In their case, there was a fourth person in the fire with them, the Word-to-be made flesh.
Perhaps, the best example is St. Paul himself, an exemplary scholar of the Torah. When we look at Paul’s own language to describe his pre- and post-Damascus road experience, we begin to understand his perception of himself. Highly educated, he was zealous for the law until when he discovered Christ’s true identity when he counted it all rubbish (Phil 3:4-7). He calls his former self a “persecutor of the church” (3:6), and whatever righteousness he had, he considered it his own, having come from the law, not having come from Christ through faith (3:9). His rationality was so strong, it blinded him to truth, until his healing opened his literal and metaphorical eyes.
There are some who believe that blind faith is contemptible. Indeed, ignorant, uncritical adherence to something that doesn’t make any sense is a rejection of rationality and evidence and in some sense, a contradiction to a Creator-God who made a knowable universe. However, Jesus seemed to invoke blind faith when he appears to Thomas after his resurrection: “Have you believed because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe” (John 20:29). But the reality is that St. Thomas is a picture of God appealing to our levav when those of us so inclined need evidentiary facts to make that transition from unbelief.
That Thomas is recognised as a saint today shows that knowing, loving and walking with God requires that you do so with all of you, not just parts of you. He didn’t even believe his own friends – the very people that he’s been on ministry with for three years. Yet, when Jesus appears, the Lord understands this skeptic, and beyond the superficial admonishment, our Lord gives Thomas the ability to not only get over his loss of faith, but to know clearly – “put your fingers in my hands and my side,” asks the Lord.
What Jesus actually offered Thomas with that action was the gift of loving God with all his levav and never doubt again. To the point where Thomas gives the most ardent testimony and confession of Jesus, not only His resurrection, but His divinity, making St. Thomas the perfect Blaise Pascal advocate. (Pascal once said, “the skeptic who comes over the line becomes the most passionate evangelist.”) – Such was his fervour that Thomas was the only one of the apostles who spread the word beyond the middle east. According to Syrian Christian tradition, Thomas was killed with a spear at St. Thomas Mount in Chennai on 3 July in AD 72, and his body was interred in Mylapore. Today, we have him to thank for the Mar Thoma Syrian Church.
It is through this levav that God often sees our faith justified. Sometimes, we pray with the attitude that God should take our fire or trial away, but loving God with all your levav would allow you to recognise that God would be in the fire with you, just as He was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and just like how Jesus recognised that while emotionally, He wanted “the cup to be taken away” but loving with His levav, He understood, “not my will but thine be done.”
So, “Hear O Singapore the LORD is our God the LORD is one, and as for you, you shall love the LORD your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength.”
Long ago, twin brothers Rhian and Rafal founded the School for Good and Evil, created to groom fairy tale heroes (called “Evers”) and villains (called “Nevers”). Dissatisfied with evil’s constant submission to good, Rafal attacks Rhian using blood magic. There is a twist at the end (and I won’t spoil it for you) but this premise forms the foundation for Netflix’s latest production – The School for Good and Evil
Despite enduring mixed reviews from professional critics, the movie is rich with narrative subtext and for those with Judeo-Christian upbringing, an immediate allegory for brothers Rhian and Rafal mirroring the Bible’s Book of Genesis- Cain and Abel. And if one extends this analogy further, a microcosm for the metaphysical realities of good versus evil.
Centuries later, this motif of duality repeats itself in the village of Gavaldon where best friends Sophie and Agatha learn about the legendary school from a bookshop owner. Sophie has spent her formative years “training” to be an “Ever”, she’s portrayed as your stereotypical Disney princess in the beginning while Agatha has no such lofty aspirations, longing to live an ordinary life. One night, a magical creature uproots them from their homes and to their joint dismay, Sophie is delivered to the School for Evil to her chagrin while Agatha, despite having no such calling (or ignorant of it) is dropped at the School for Good. Needless to say, both struggle in their respective classes, Sophie having trained all her life to be good, is ill prepared in the ways of evil; Agatha, having lived a life of simplicity, is flummoxed by the strict rules (Torah observant Jews will recognise the symbology of the 613 Laws in this) and both are outcast by their peers. This is where it gets interesting because the movie is a fantastic pop-cultural study on “the simple nature of right and wrong”.
A moral choice is not a choice between good and bad. A moral choice is a moral quandary between bad and worse and having the wisdom to choose the more righteous path.
– Jonathan
As Bruce Wayne discovers in Batman Begins, “Is it morally right to steal food to feed oneself or one’s family in a time of extreme poverty?” or are we complicit in their actions for not obeying Luke 3:11 – “If you have two shirts, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry”? How is it that our ancestors having partaken of the tree of good and evil and sending us into exile, we are still so inept at making good moral choices?
If Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, why are we are so crap at knowing the difference (and choosing good)?
“And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Now in the Garden of Eden there were two trees standing in the midst of it. One was the Tree Of Life, the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man was to live by the Tree Of Life; but he was not to touch the other tree or he would die. But man did partake of the other tree, and when he did, death entered into him by his sin, and he became separated from God.
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
The Hebrew wording in Genesis 2:15 and 17 is important here. “Then Yahweh God took the human, put him into the garden of Eden to avad or (work) it and to shamar or (keep) it.” The avad and shamar are job descriptions mirroring one other place in the Bible – Levites working in the temple. Therefore, Adam and Eve are royal priests working in the Holy of Holies, with God present.
What did God actually command about the eating from the trees?
In verse 16, “Yahweh God commanded the human saying, ‘From all the trees of the garden you may surely eat but from the tree of knowing good and bad you shall not eat because in the day you eat from that tree you will surely die” – in the Hebrew, there’s a double emphasis on eat aka “eat eat” – because it is His will that we have life and multiply. The first command doesn’t place the tree of life off-limits, and it is when you obey this command, that you get the tree of life. However, eating from the tree of knowing good and bad will result in forfeiting the eternal life that was already yours. In the Hebrew, there’s also a double emphasis on die aka “die die”. This isn’t a warning as many misunderstand, that “if you eat from the trees of knowing good and bad God will kill you.”
The wage of death comes not from God but rather from a human who’s taken the knowledge of good and bad into their own hands. God exiles them from the garden so that they can’t eat from the tree of life which means that they’ll eventually die and it’s a consequence of our disobedience for taking without being given (remember Abraham because he will become relevant later in this read). And it’s the taking that leads us to the situation that Cain and Abel encounter resulting in the first death – a murder. Cain obviously knows murder is evil, when he attempts to hide the fact from God with “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
God knew, and Cain also knew that God knew, yet chose to lie and the rhetoric was not just an instrument to expose Cain’s guilt but also a chance for Cain to confess and seek forgiveness but having knowledge of good and evil still did not give Cain the necessary wisdom to know how to choose righteously or morally.
Adam and Eve lived in a state of moral immaturity. We can infer from the Lord’s command that humanity was in an infant state and that growing wise was not something to be grasped and known just by eating of the fruit but rather, something to be learned. God wants to shelter and protect Adam and Eve from good and bad until they can learn wisdom from Him to become wise rulers over the garden. And so the question is, how are you going to get wisdom?
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
2 Corinthians 11:14
“Good becomes evil, evil becomes good”
Good and evil: A mirror for our reality
God gives us the gift of life and then when we start ruling the world as stewards, we start introducing new variables into the world: how do you quantify and reward contribution? how do you equitably apportion time off work? What is fair? Who arbitrates? Every good thing in our lives is also matched by an equal or greater number of opportunities to ruin it by taking our own knowledge of good and bad because we start to see the world through our own perspectives rather than the Father’s.
Slippery slopes and the “simple” nature of right and wrong
How many of you are familiar with this feeling? “I work harder than my rivals, I deserve more money, I deserve more time off.” Sooner or later, we start making justifications for decisions that seem good in our eyes. Through these justifications, we start redefining evil as good, neglecting our perceived competitor’s wellbeing as much as we care about our’s. Suddenly, we are eating from the wrong tree and it seems like the right thing to do.
What is the right thing or wrong thing to do?
In the Bible, the serpent is described in Hebrew as “more arum than any beast of the field” or “more shrewd”. In the book of Proverbs, to be arum is a positive trait of the righteous: It’s the ability to consider all the factors involved, find the solution and be able to creatively use wisdom to move forward in righteousness.
Living by the Torah, the Pharisees were often quite wise and were very holy people but what Jesus did not appreciate was how the Word of God was weaponised by some Pharisees who used knowledge of the Laws to oppress those they viewed as “less holy” than they were. In Matthew 12:12, Pharisees attempted to trick Jesus. They ask if it’s lawful to heal on the Sabbath, since healing is “work,” and the Law supposedly forbids it. In other words, One can be wise to good ends or ill.
What can go wrong if we look at superficialities and decide on what is good or evil for ourselves
“Once upon a time good was real and true. Now we are in an age of self-centred perfectionism!”
Professor Clarissa Dovey, School of Good and Evil
Jesus however, bearing the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, turns it back on them: “Who would not lift one of their sheep from a pit if it fell in on the Sabbath?” Jesus’ question assumes that most everyone would choose to show mercy to the sheep instead of woodenly following the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of it – Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
Contrary to common perception, Jesus is not teaching that observing the Sabbath is wrong. Nor is He suggesting that the literal meaning of any law is unimportant but rather that the Sabbath was one of God’s gifts to Israel. The requirement not to work was intended to bring God’s people rest – just like God Himself rested on the 7th day – not to add to their burden. Jesus is objecting to how the Pharisees have twisted God’s commands. Jesus shows that the Pharisees don’t understand that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 12:7). It is a fundamental example of “knowing good and evil” still does not equip you with functional wisdom to know the difference and choose/act accordingly.
Indeed, in this age of “wokism” represented with self-centred perfectionism, we have become obsessed with virtue signalling and turned “good” into a weapon of attack.
“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good but God“
Like the Father, Our Lord continues to prompt us to consider who deserves to be called “good.” The Lord’s fundamental lesson here is that goodness flows not from simply following a rule book and doing good deeds, but rather from God Himself. Jesus invites us to carry our cross (fundamental to us not redefining good and evil in our own eyes because when we take on our shoulder despite what we perceive to be “unfair”, we are in essence trusting God to do right by us) and to follow Him, the only means of doing good by God’s benchmark standard.
“The humans become like one of us knowing good and bad because they took from that tree. So Let’s send them out so they don’t take from the tree of life and eat and live forever.”
Genesis 3:22
God wants His people to have the knowledge of good and evil, but it has to be matched with the ability to listen to God’s voice first: Proverbs 1:7 – The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The serpent weaponises his wisdom through lies between truths “you will be like Elohim” (and indeed we became like Him but without His understanding), manipulated Adam and Eve to “take” wisdom on their own terms. When that happened, God had to cast us out for our own eventual salvation and safety. Else, we would be like the morningstar, knowing good and evil, and damned for eternity for rebellion.
Stewardship can go very wrong when one is ill equipped without wisdom
The human condition: Are we currently equipped with wisdom to properly steward the garden?
The Bible shows a repeated narrative of humans failing their tests and then learning wisdom through faith and trust in God. If, Abraham did nothing to gain a son for himself but just trusted God, there would be no Ishmael only Isaac (and not to mention none of the sin and evil for casting Hagar and her baby out into the desert). More importantly, Abraham took responsibility in contrast to Adam’s “Eve gave it to me to eat” and Eve’s “the serpent made me do it”. That in itself was the beginning of wisdom.
Abraham’s repeated pattern of obedience from honouring all the requirements that God made, including male circumcision, to obeying God’s call to leave Mesopotamia, and to travel to the land of Canaan with Sarah, his nephew Lot, and their entire possessions, proved that he was worthy of becoming the “father of many nations”. By Genesis 22, Abraham’s first great failure in the taking of a son instead of waiting for the one God promised is mirrored in a great test of obedience when he was prepared to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command.
Our time here in exile, like our fathers, is indeed our own graduate course in the School of Good and Evil. We are being groomed to rule beside our Lord in the garden and we need God’s Holy Spirit for wisdom, it is not something we can merely take for ourselves.
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? or what shall a man give in exchange for his life?
Matthew 16:24-26
There’s a common perception that when it comes to serving God, harder is holier. This is not an entirely surprising perspective because the church celebrates the trials and tribulations of the saints. Not to mention, the Gospel authors make it clear that we should “deny ourselves” and in our hearts, we read that passage and interpret that to mean that Jesus wants us to choose thing that we want to do the least. This is almost heresy when you consider that God, as our Father in Heaven, wants what’s best for us, in accordance to how He has made us to be. What Jesus is referring to in that passage is that when our wills and what we want do not align with the Father’s will and what He wants, then we deny ourselves.
St. Joseph: the holiness in ordinariness
What does it mean to be holy? Being holy means saying “yes” to the Father. It also means saying yes to the personal crosses we encounter in our lives daily as Jesus asks. For someone like St. Joseph, that meant doing the work of a carpenter and raising his son, Our Lord, as an ordinary human boy; though so little is written about him, we celebrated the “Year of Saint Joseph” in 2020 in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Church’s Church’s declaration of Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church.
“We are all called to become saints…be a saint by carrying out your work with honesty and competence and by offering time in the service of your brothers and sisters. But, father, I work in a factory; I work as an accountant, only with numbers; you can’t be a saint there…. yes, yes you can! there, where you work, you can become a saint. God gives you the grace to become holy. God communicates himself to you. Always, in every place, one can become a saint, that is, one can open oneself up to this grace, which works inside us and leads us to holiness.”
Pope Francis
St Joseph was an ordinary man on whom God relied on to do great things. In the Gospel of St Matthew, St Joseph was described as a “just man.” The term “just” or “righteous” means right with God. We read an inner monologue of his thoughts and emotional conflict from the minute Mary tells him of her pregnancy but he continues to do exactly what the Lord wants him to do, in each and every event in his life. St. Joseph’s fidelity to his everyday responsibilities as a husband, father, provider, and protector of his family – is synonymous with his life of holiness.
But all the Saints had these hard lives, I’m definitely sure harder is holier…
Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.
The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
“After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
Matthew 25:14-28
“Each according to his ability”
When our Lord tells us the Parable of the Bags of Gold, he makes certain to mention that the master in the story has given his servants responsibilities “each according to his ability” – one had received five bags, another had received two and the last received only one. Yet, when the master returns, he is not interested in the quantum of the returns but only that his servants had done their best. The master in the parable, a proxy for Jesus, gives equal praise to the servant who has returned five more bags of gold and the one who has returned only two more bags of gold. In our Lord’s eyes, both accomplishments merit equal praise even though the results are quantifiably unequal: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!”
While the first two-thirds of the parable are quite clear in their meaning, many struggle with what happens to the last servant with one bag. In our eyes, he’s a fearful man and he perceives his master as a harsh taskmaster. How many among us will admit that we perceive God as a harsh bean counter who keeps tally of our sins rather than an all merciful, all loving Abba, Father? So, we see and think that the last servant is a proxy for us. However, Jesus gives us quite a few clues, the master had gone on a long journey and so the two servants doubled their holdings had been hard at work and the last servant merely hid his responsibilities in the ground and did nothing for it but offering our Lord a feeble excuse which the master chastises as “wicked and lazy”. Hence, from this passage we can discern that our Lord gives us crosses according to our ability and He is as proud as a Saint’s success with his big crosses (5 bags) as he is of a Saint’s small crosses (2 bags) and all He asks is that you do not set your smallest of crosses (1 bag) aside.
What it actually means to be good and faithful servants
“When the Lord invites us to become saints, he doesn’t call us to something heavy, sad… quite the contrary! it’s an invitation to share in his joy, to live, and to offer with joy every moment of our life, by making it become at the same time a gift of love for the people around us. if we understand this, everything changes and takes on new meaning, a beautiful meaning, a meaning that begins with little everyday things”
Pope Francis, General Audience, November 19, 2014
Man is made to work, not only because it is written in the book of Genesis that he was created to till the earth and care for it, but because it is the way in which God gives us the capacity to transform himself, create new things (just like God does), and also to improve the world. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 2428) teaches that “in work, the person exercises and fulfills in part the potential inscribed in his nature. the primordial value of labor stems from man himself, its author and its beneficiary. Work is for man, not man for work. Everyone should be able to draw from work the means of providing for his life and that of his family, and of serving the human community.”
The sanctification of ordinary work is a living seed, able to yield fruits of holiness in an immense number of souls. When reflecting on St Joseph being a just man, Pope Benedict wrote: “In Joseph, faith is not separated from action. His faith had a decisive effect on his actions. Joseph is a ‘just man’ (Mt 1:19) because his existence is ‘adjusted’ to the word of God.”
St Joseph became the “good and faithful servant” precisely because our Lord’s adoptive father performed his duties as given by God faithfully and to the best of his ability.
Let’s face it, if you really think about it, life is scary – There is much more we cannot control than what we can. You might get to your destination safely but an errant driver can mount the sidewalk and mow you down. As part of your weekly routine, you could be going for a leisurely run in the park and then have a tree come crashing down on you like it did the lady in Marsiling park. In many instances in our lives, we actually take it “on faith” that things will work out. We ride the elevators in faith, we take public transport in faith, we soar through the air and cross international time zones in faith, yet, when it comes to the Lord’s will in our lives, we have more faith in the builders of rollercoaster rides than we do our heavenly Father.
What is faith?
In Hebrews 11:1, Faith is described as being “certain of what we do not see.” It is an absolute belief that God is constantly working behind the scenes in every aspect of our lives, even when there is “nothing your senses can discern”. When we fail to understand that God is always working behind the scenes, unbelief gains the upper hand in our thoughts, giving fear a moment to take hold and for anxieties to cloud your judgement. Let me put it this way, we don’t see the maintenance personnel keeping our aeroplanes flight worthy do we? Yet we trust that these winged contraptions will ferry us safely. What gives?
I fear nothing, for all is, as the Force wills
Anti-fragile faith or How to Trust your Heavenly Father
“Daddy, this is yummy! I like all the dishes you choose.” Remember when you didn’t like any food I recommended? “Yes.. but I was young!” And then one day you decided to try the mee goreng I’ve always wanted you to try! “And before that, prata with curry instead of sugar…” And.. it was the dahl curry which wasn’t too spicy for you and now you eat all kinds of curry and spicy mee goreng. “Now I know that daddy knows what I like and I can trust his choices!”
“Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
Matthew 7:9-11
Suffice it to say, as a father to two young children, I often find myself lacking in wisdom and intellect to steward these souls entrusted to me. We are flawed and with the aid of the Holy Spirit, dare we hope to raise children to reflect His glory. That said, our Father in heaven lacks nothing and so, if our children can trust in our human “goodness”, we definitely can trust in the Lord’s true goodness. Do you trust your Grabcar or Taxi driver to take you to your desired destination? If that is so, what more when Jesus takes the wheel?
What no sense discerns, faith reveals
Testimony: Is this bread? It looks like a stone!
Some time ago, I had prayed for deliverance from a particularly toxic boss, it was because of this boss, I spent all my lunch hours in fasting and prayer at the nearby church for close to two years. Eventually, I had two meetings with a potential new employer and while I was confident of God’s plans to prosper and not fail me (Jeremiah 29:11), what my eyes saw as doors opening, closed. But still, I understood, “His will, not mine be done”. When I finally received the call that it was not to be, I was sad, and even lost for a moment but a minute later, a weight lifted off my shoulders.
Why? Because God’s never breaks His promises. Since God promises that if you ask for bread, He won’t give you a stone, it is therefore not a stone and I trusted that God was planning something even better for me, so I fell to my knees and gave thanks. Indeed, almost a year later, something better did come.
David got up from the floor, washed his face and combed his hair, put on a fresh change of clothes, then went into the sanctuary and worshiped. Then he came home and asked for something to eat. They set it before him and he ate. His servants asked him, “What’s going on with you? While the child was alive you fasted and wept and stayed up all night. Now that he’s dead, you get up and eat.” “While the child was alive,” he said, “I fasted and wept, thinking GOD might have mercy on me and the child would live. But now that he’s dead, why fast? Can I bring him back now? I can go to him, but he can’t come to me.”
2 Samuel 12:20-24
Walk by faith, not by sight
Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us that faith is a gift, and that faithfulness is a “fruit” produced in our lives by the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). Our faith is a confident assurance in an omnipotent God who loves us and cares about our deepest needs. That faith grows when it is tested and we discover each time that God comes through for us. This gift is further nurtured when we get to know the Father as intimately as possible through the Bible and learn the attributes of His amazing character. Biblical heroes like David too experienced fear as he tells us in Psalm 56, “When I am afraid, I will trust in you.” Through the bible, God wants us to know Him and completely rely on His plan in our lives and the Bible is clear that faith does not mature and strengthen without trials. Adversity is God’s most effective tool to develop a strong faith. After all, in the Our Father, do we not pray “Your Will be done”?
What is leadership? In much of Antiquity and indeed, the Roman Empire where Jesus and his disciples preached, it was not particularly enlightened. Often, it was through the use of tools of intimidation like threat of armed violence and asymmetrical power (those who have it using it on those who don’t). You were considered lucky if the leader of your tribe or kingdom was noble and ruled through respect and love rather than fear.
In Jewish eschatology, the Messiah is the future Jewish king from the Davidic line as foretold in the scrolls of Isaiah. The expectation of Christ or Anointed was that He would also be a great political and military leader who would rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, overthrow their Roman rulers and establish the Kingdom by conquering the enemies of Israel.
Pexels- Evelyn Chong
“The first will be last and the last will be first.”
Matthew 20:16
However, when Jesus came, He preached an “upside down world” – a new humanity built on service and sacrifice rather than dominance. That’s not to say that Jesus was militarilyweak or did not have the will to fight either. After all, He did say to Pontius Pilate: “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” What Jesus demonstrated was complete obedience to God’s will.
Why Ephesians 5 matters: How husbands and wives argue/fight is the key to lasting relationships
Often couples show a fundamental disrespect for each other when mild complaints like “You didn’t do the dishes” escalate into a general criticism such as “You don’t do anything for the family.” In a very human interaction, a husband listening to this response can only come back with equally hurtful retorts in “self-defence” and before you know it, the disrespect is rampant, nobody hears the other, and the true grievances go unheard and unresolved while you are stoking the embers of vengeance in your hearts.
This is the “old humanity” that Jesus calls us to leave behind, the old humanity that was dependent on power, meanness and violence (physical or verbal).
How the Gospels portrayed Jesus is mirrored in St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
Ephesians 5:25
Male figures in the family have a high calling. All men are called to be leaders in their homes. It begins with St. Paul’s exhortation: “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Pexels – Josh Willink
The husband’s call to be Jesus at Home
In John13:1–5, we see Jesus laying aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tying it around his waist, He then poured water into a basin and began washing the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. Even as He died on the cross, Jesus forgave the people who killed Him. In essence, the epitome of servant leadership.
In Ephesians, St. Paul has a conviction that how we usually behave and treat each other is superficial and he believes that true conversion comes from our new identity in Christ and it is from this well-spring of Christ-in-us that we as husbands must behave. In His time on earth, Jesus often used Jewish marriage customs as a beautiful allegory of God’s relationship with the church and this is how husbands must be to their wives.
Though it is never tacitly discussed, the Sacrament of Marriage, a lasting commitment between a man and a woman to a lifelong partnership, is on the level of the priesthood. In that sense, in the persona of Christ, husbands are to be of service to their wives and all the sacrifices that come with it (think Jesus turning His cheek – Matthew 5). This, however, should not to be mistaken for passivity but rather the acknowledgement that God will handle it.
In Scripture, we find many examples of what Jesus would do when someone wrongs Him. In John 18, Jesus is struck in the face by an official of the high priest. His response was to question why he was struck in the face. He asked the official to tell him what he said that was an untruth.
John 19:3 shows that Jesus was struck in the face again when he was sentenced to be crucified. Looking far back into the Old Testament, we see David sparing Saul’s life again and again because 1 Samuel 26:9-11 tells us that David left the punishment of Saul to the Lord. Whether it is Jesus or David, the protagonists or antagonists in their lives are there by Divine Providence and thus, obedience to God (even unto death on the cross) and trusting God’s sovereignty over all aspects of your life, is the quintessence of Christianity.
“If you fight with your wife and win, what have you really won?”
Donnie Yen to the author during an interview
It is in biblical marriage that your old selfish self dies on the cross and husbands become mirrors of our Lord and Saviour. And what did Jesus say about the cross? “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:26)
Debuting in 2004, Debbie Downer was the creation of Paula Pell, a two-decade veteran writer on “Saturday Night Live” and a key force behind some of the show’s most enduring sketches, including Ms. Downer. Evolving from the character’s immense popularity, the name Debbie Downer eventually became an established slang referring to a negative person who has the tendency to bring down the mood of everyone around them.
To secular eyes, the Bible is archaic, a holdover from a time of peasant farmers and scientific illiteracy. Some atheists in fact claim that these are “legal requirements” to govern our actions, reducing the Law to a set of do’s and don’ts.
Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash
Do God’s Laws spoil our fun?
As I was driving the girls to dance lessons one Saturday, I took the opportunity to ask my daughters what they thought about rules governing good behaviour:
“Girls, when daddy gives you rules to follow, do you think I’m spoiling your fun?”
Yes!
“Why do you think that?”
Because it means that there are things we want to do but cannot!
“Do you remember what happened that time when you had too much candy?”
[Replying with some shame] We became very sick.
“You see, when daddy gives you rules, it is because I have the experience to know that too much of a good thing can spoil what was designed to be enjoyable. I knew you would get sick eating too much candy, I gave you rules so that you could keep enjoying candy for a long time.”
Photo by Gabe Pierce on Unsplash
The world is designed to be enjoyed
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good – Genesis 1:31
Perhaps the lightning-rod issue that best reflects how secular society views Christian virtue as mere “stuffiness” or as uptight fun-hating wet blankets is how the Bible governs sexual behaviour: outside of sacramental marriage, it is a sin.
While it is a polarising viewpoint for non-believers, the reality is that a recent 2020 psychological study affirms that while Tinder users showed more positive attitudes towards consensual nonmonogamy and greater sociosexuality than nonusers, they also expressed increased dissatisfaction with their sex life.
In my perspective, the main issue is that ‘consensual nonmonogamy” reduces something like an amazing gift of sex to a mere physical necessity, this in turn reduces us from image bearers and reflections of the Lord to mere animals. In short, you cannot reduce a gift to mere biological necessity and expect to still feel satisfied.
“We long for happiness, but we’re made for joy.”
Father Mike Schmitz
As the word itself implies, happiness is associated with happenings, happenstance, luck, and fortune. If circumstances are favourable, you are happy; if not, then you’re unhappy. One of the greatest misunderstandings of our time is the belief that we are supposed to be happy all the time and so we have a rabbit race for sex or to a lesser degree, like immature children, we think that in order to be happy, we need all the candy we can consume.
God isn’t some Divine Debbie Downer, He made us for joy, and He knows the very things that we might chase and in the process, hurt ourselves. He gave us those rules so that we might have life and have it in the full.
