Tragedy and Time

The last I check from the Myisis system, my application for leave has been approved, which means I am effectively on holiday now till August. I guess this will be give me time to try to find ways to relieve my chronic tension headache, and also to find out more about other education courses in university that might be more suited to my disposition and competency. I guess I would try to crash the other courses in the university to see what they learn in the other courses, and write about what I hear over there.

For Church service today, Pastor Soh gave a sermon on Luke 13 titled Tragedy and Time. It is the passage where the disciples were asking Jesus whether the mishaps that had been caused to certain people were indications of their grievous sins. As I have heard many times before, the ancient people, including the likes of the Jewish people, have the traditional conception that all bad things that occur to people were as a result for punishment of sins. We can reference other instances of the bible where such a conception of suffering as being due to sin is displayed. In the book of Job, Job’s friends castigated Job in his suffering for lamenting against God because they inferred that Job must have been sinful as to deserve the calamity upon him.

I do wonder though why this traditional doctrine of suffering transpires even to the relatively newer environmental context of the New Testament. I thought that the people in the new testament would have known better given what has been written in the old. Job would have effectively effaced the proposition that the righteous would not suffer. We see in the likes of Psalms 73 where the Psalmist laments about the apparent prosperity of the wicked while they live, while the righteous suffer. If this doctrine has been debunked in the old testament, why do the disciples continue to rationalize bad things with that reason?

Back to the passage in Luke, Jesus told the disciples that the slaying of the Galileans by Pilates, and the crashing of the tower on the people in Siloam, did not indicate that those people were more sinful. Jesus then added the words, “But unless you repent, you too will all perish”. I suppose perish here would more purposefully refer to some sort of second death in the afterlife. The Reformation Study Bible has an interesting take on this. It comments, “All are sinners, so Jesus calls on His hearers to repent—otherwise they will perish. The Galileans had had no time to repent at the time of their deaths, and Jesus’ unrepentant hearers might also face deaths that would give them no time to prepare.”

Pastor Soh talked about how all of us were guilty and deserving of God’s wrath, all except one man, Jesus. Pastor Soh highlighted the part about Pontius Pilate placing Jesus on trial and not wanting to sentence Jesus to crucifixion because he could not find “guilt in the man” (John 19:6). But does anyone deserve tragedy at all? I mean, most people have their weaknesses, and their foibles, but does this go all the way as to say that it is justified if one suffers such calamitous harm upon themselves? I would take the position that we need not justify a reason for suffering on the moral culpability of the sufferer so much. Jesus did after all respond to the disciples question about the blind man he healed that it was neither the man nor his parents who have sinned, but that this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him (John 9).

On a side note, I thought that the description of Pontius Pilate at the trial of Jesus is quite a contrast with what seems to be portrayed of him in the slaying of the Galileans as they were offering the traditional Jewish sacrifices for the atonement of sins, and then mixing their blood with those of animals with what Pastor Soh infers as being a mock sacrifice to God. Pontius Pilate does seem more capricious in this account that what would be inferred of him in the trial of Jesus.

On a personal note, life is taking a detour for me with my taking leave from law school. Things has not been going well for me, with my difficulties at law school, as well as things like sustaining a tension headache, tinnitus and some hearing difficulties, and finding the usual social difficulties in school due to my having Asperger’s Syndrome. I sometimes lament against God because I feel that he should do more to help me out in my life. I wish I could be as righteous as Job when lamenting as that would make me feel more justified in my laments. But I am certainly not. And in moments of angst, I am so upset that I say things like “God is dead”, which really scares me because I fear that I am committing an unpardonable sin by blaspheming against God.

My Pastor has an even sadder tale of tragedy in his life. His wife died of cancer quite some years ago, at quite a young age, even before she had hit 40. Pastor Soh recounts how he was trying to find reason for this tragedy on his wife, whom he said, was a good person, who kept a healthy lifestyle with healthy habits. He asked God whether there was something he had done wrong, or if he had sinned, such that God would take away his wife. And he remains unsure of the reason till this day. My heart really goes out to him. It is more than what a man should have to bear in life.