Obsession

At what price perfection? The film was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Whilst I agree the acting was excellent, I found 'Whiplash' a very disturbing film. I would nominate it for the Most Abusive Film award if there was such a category. A music coach/conductor who practically terrorizes those under his care and charge, physically and emotionally to the point that one even committed suicide. What kind of teacher is that? His rationale - to 'motivate' them to peak performance, in his own words, "I was there to push people beyond what's expected of them. I believe that's an absolute necessity."

Is it, really? I can understand passion and the quest for excellence. Indeed if there were no passionate, daring, hard-working people who broke through existing boundaries, the world would be so much the poorer. But to descend to manipulating, insulting, bullying and abusing an impressionable youth in the pursuit of his ambition to be ' the greatest musician in the 20th century'? - seems to me the means doesn't justify the end. To be passionate is fine, but where's the line where passion veers off into obsession that drives a person to be so totally self-absorbed that everything else in life fades out? When every moment becomes a fearful anticipation of a slave-driver screaming  'not my tempo' and getting bombarded with curses and demeaning remarks that must literally feel like lashes of a whip upon the heart. 

The young man is so driven he practices till his hands bleed. He cuts off a budding relationship because the girl would 'get in the way' of his ambition. He tunes out traffic whilst at the wheel , gets hit by a truck and still rushes, bleeding and injured, to the concert hall because this is the one chance he has to prove himself a virtuoso. Only he is thoroughly embarrassed and shamed in public, for dear coach suddenly pulls the rug under his feet by changing the music score.  He has been set up to fail, so that he can succeed. What kind of mean psychological trick is that? What if the youth had buckled under the pressure, ended up in an asylum or simply jumped off a cliff? Sure, in the movie, he rises to the occasion and performs so fantastically, or rather so fanatically, he is finally headed for super-stardom. But it could just have so easily and disastrously swung the other extreme to the destruction not just of someone's dream, but of someone's very life.

I remember frustrating attempts at writing my devotional book in Bahasa Malaysia. My editor was exacting in demanding re-write after re-write. It was either the punctuation, the grammar, the sentence construction, the style of expression, or everything else was wrong. Hours of slaving away at the computer over days and months on end. Unlike the coach in the movie, my editor didn't use foul language, rage or throw a chair at me, but many times I felt like I wanted to just chuck it. What made me grit my teeth, cross out what seemed (to me) such nice lines, rack my brain for another word, try another way of expression wasn't the rejection of my editor but the fact that I was absolutely passionate about finishing what I truly believed God had started in me. Because it was His book, not mine; He inspired it, and by God, I would birth it.

Does it matter that my book would never make the best seller list anywhere? No. I guess if I had an editor like that  movie's fictional coach , I would have been classified as a 'worthless...little piece of s--t, an absolute tragedy' because I managed to deliver 'just a pretty good job', instead of being the best devotional writer in the Christian world. But I was sublimely satisfied with just a 'pretty good job' and I guess my editor was too, since it was published finally. It didn't have to be perfect or even excellent. Because there will always be some other writer better than I, some other book better than mine. It didn't even matter if it turns out to be the only book I will ever write in my life. Ultimately what mattered wasn't the accolade of man or the pride of self, but the knowledge that my little piece of work would bless someone somewhere reading it. And God would be pleased, for that is the whole purpose I am given the gift of writing and the chance to write.

If, as touted in the movie, greatness is the only acceptable grade, does it mean 'mediocres' who never quite make the cut are doomed to a life of nonentity? Fame is such a fickle task-master. You can be the toast of the moment for today, yet by tomorrow you would be yesterday's headlines. Give it a year, two, five, or ten and you are all but forgotten, remaining as just one foot-note out of many in the history of time. A king once  asked God, "Lord, what are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them?", recognizing "They are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow." (Psalm 144:3-4).  The Bible reminds every human, "What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14)  That certainly puts us all on the same level, no matter how great our 'performance' in this stage-show called life. At the end of it, we will all stand before our Maker, irrespective of our beliefs.

Of course there's nothing wrong with pursuing perfection and wanting to be the best, but there's something awfully wrong when in the process we chase it to the point of forgetting life is more than just about being number 1 - in anything. I am glad my self-worth doesn't depend on well I 'perform' as a Christian woman, single mum, employee, occasional writer, neighbor, human being. My self-worth comes from knowing I am indeed fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of the perfect God, by whose grace I myself will be perfected when I finally come face-to-face with Him in heaven. I am glad even when I sin and fail His impossibly high standards, God doesn't hang me up like a  masochistic judge, eager to make me suffer for being less than perfect. Actually He can, and according to His law, He should since I would be a complete failure in His eyes, anyhow. Just like the movie hero went through hell because he didn't play good or great enough for his coach. But unlike the movie, God doesn't send me to hell, because Jesus Christ has already gone there for me when He got nailed and hung up on the cross for all my infraction. Because of that, I am freed and free to sing a new song everyday, even if I don't sing very well.

"... he (Jesus) was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. " - Isaiah 53:5

The End

"Without it, there will be a complete breakdown of social order!" And with that grand announcement from a mercenary crab,  Apocalypse descended to wreck a whole community under the sea. The 'it' being a particularly addictive piece of burger which is cooked according to a secret recipe sealed in a bottle and kept in a booby-trapped safe. Thus is unleased evil, hate, mayhem and destruction when seemingly decent creatures are deprived of their Krabby Patty burger fix. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the antics of Spongebob and the motley troupe of Bikini Bottom inhabitants in the latest Sponge Out of Water movie. I know some people find the movie nothing to shout about, just another infantile cartoon about some dumb talking sponge.

But actually it all depends on how you perceive its message; there's always another level of relating to any movie if we care to think further. Looking beyond the obvious absurdity, there were so many gems of parody buried underneath the zaniness. I found myself giggling over how even religion wasn't spared, when a crazed squirrel (the gentlest sweetest creature in her 'normal' non-burger-addicted state) led a mob to initiate a sacrifice on a huge rock altar to appease the 'angry gods'. So reminiscent of humans on the one hand  always blaming God for any and everything under the sun, and on the other, trying to reach God by our own puny little efforts at 'being good', blindly obeying religious man-made dogma.

And what hilarious digs at the capitalistic egoistic world of today - a pirate stealing the secret recipe to start up his own burger ship-on-wheels enterprise, gawking humans whipping out smart phones, super-heroes shooting ice-creams, raining bubbles and flying steel claws, spoofs of a Star Trek-ish dolphin guarding the future of the universe.... goodness, what madcap-ness...


But like I said, on the serious side, there's a lot of hard-hitting truth to this essentially simplistic story of good vs evil. We don't have to be religious to recognize the breakdown of society in real life, real time, here and now; we just have to read the daily news. Statistics on family issues like divorce, abortion, or safety issues like violent crimes are plain depressing. If the Internet can be believed , there are at this moment, 65 countries at war involving 618 militias-guerrillas and various separatist groups; war being simply humans killing other humans over 'it.' 'IT' can mean anything and everything. Who knows, maybe there will come a day when we will kill even for a burger, like in the movie. That realization hit me as Spongebob is sitting   with -of all people -  his enemy Plankton on a hill overlooking the fires destroying his town and he talks about why his whole world has turned into a cess-pool of anarchical selfishness, not for lack of some addictive burger, but for lack of love.

Is this a defining moment or what? It takes a cartoon character to hit jackpot, so to speak. Humanity can boast about having and doing everything but the one thing that will be our downfall is this one word - love, or rather the lack thereof. A word that's the very foundation of the Christian faith.  After all the most quoted line of the Bible from John 3:16, is  ...For God so loved the world that He gave...Jesus Christ, that whomsoever believes shall never perish but have eternal life.  A love that doesn't depend on us, but is all dependent on God Himself. It's only His love that can transform .... enemies into friends, even sinners into saints.

There's lots of good old-fashioned feel-good fuzziness in how the characters team up to hunt down the thief, retrieve the lost recipe and restore order to their land under the sea. I particularly liked how the story was framed by a magical book, which allowed the ending to be changed.  The bad guy wrote bad things into it and bad things did happen, but it could be over-ridden. Just so, an Almighty God can and does re-write bad endings, to turn all things around for good for those who love Him according to His purpose; whatever that evil does, God still and always has the last word. He has written the final chapter where there's no need for any more 'editing', no need for any other sacrifice, no need for any other rescue mission, because Jesus lived out the story in real life; He came, died on the cross and rose from the tomb. Now that's perfect redemption -  End of (old) bad story, beginning of (new) good.  End of death, beginning of life forever. That's the book I want my name to be in, that's the ending I am guaranteed when I choose to believe.

 “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life..." Revelation 3:5 

Whose fault is it?

It's every parent's nightmare - What if it happened to my daughter? Well, it happened to my daughter.  I opened my email in the morning and the first thing I see is  'I was sexually assaulted....Dear Mama...
So I did what any mom would do. I cried. I hugged my princess and told her I was so so sorry I wasn't there for her when it happened. And for the rest of the day I went through a gamut of emotions - guilt, anger, sadness, pain. That morning at my staff devotion, I prayed crying for all our children, as parents who can only do so much and no more to protect them.

My daughter’s email ended with asking for my 'quiet support'. Honestly I had every intention to give her the 'quiet' support she had requested. Of course. I am her mother. Until I read the  comment in response to her column. A reader had expressed the fear 'I always worried if that will happen to my daughter or even my son lost control of himself'. And I knew I couldn't keep 'quiet' about my support. This one is for all the mothers and fathers of daughters and sons.

Well, so it has happened to my daughter. Now what? Life goes on, she has moved on. And rape still happens. Hers is but the story of 1 survivor who dealt silently with the pain and the shame of being violated for years, who finally felt she had to go public about it.

And to think I, her mother, never knew or even suspected. Have I been remiss? If her father were still alive, would it have made a difference? Why didn't God do something? Could I have done anything to prevent it? How dare this man hurt my child? But as I took my anguish to God, I was reminded it's not about me or him, it's about her and not only about her, but about every woman. Heck, just because I believe in God doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen to me, my family, or my country. No one is exempt from evil. Rape, sexual assault and discrimination of women is nothing new. It’s all there in my Bible; my God doesn’t hide the bad stuff of real life in a fallen world.

My daughter declares herself a feminist. Her heart is for women and women issues. I am also a feminist. I too am sad, disgusted and angry at the same old same old misogynistic attitudes about rape that persist in society. Where despite so much evidence to the contrary, people still think it's always or at least partly the woman's fault when she is raped. Actually women get  blamed for everything anyway,  from dirty laundry to not keeping the kids under control to failing to preserve the family lineage in not giving birth to sons (even though everyone knows or should know it's the man's gene which determines gender). I guess it's always been that way since Adam conveniently blamed Eve for giving him the forbidden fruit to eat.  So let's just blame Adam for all those  no-brainers who actually believe it's the woman's fault she gets raped since she wasn't in the 'right attire', she got drunk, she was 'asking for it' etc etc...ad infinitum ad nauseam. That means 'without end or limit, to the point of nausea'.

I am pretty sure there are people who, after reading my daughter's article, still think that way, especially as she herself confessed that at that time, she was in a spaghetti-strap top and she had made her perpetrator angry. That's partly why I asked her to reconsider going public because 1 more 'rape survivor' story isn't going to change society's attitudes. Even if I were to add my own story of how my landlord's son did things to me in the dark when I was 8 years old which certainly qualifies as sexual assault, (if only I knew what that was way back then), it's merely another 'statistic'.

She chose to speak up anyway, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I respect and understand where she is coming from. Because she is a woman and I am a woman, we share the same burdens of being the sex who gets blamed for everything. But we are totally different  in our approaches to these burdens. My daughter's feminism is personal and political as she puts it. So she fights tooth-and-nail for freedom and emancipation of women in a very public way.

Mine is personal and spiritual. I cannot divorce my womanhood from what I believe God designed it to be, which is to complement and complete man, the other human being that God created first. Before all the feminists and women's NGOs throw rocks at me, please note I didn't say to be subdued or controlled by man. As far as I understand it, it’s not about who is superior or inferior, but about bringing out the best in each other. If we would believe God's perfect intent was and still is to have both man and woman love and be loved by Him and by each other, then any attempt to 'fix' problems in human relationship must involve all 3 parties. Leaving aside God for the moment,  feminism must involve the other half of the equation - man. Indeed as much as women object that men always blame them, by the same token, why do we women always blame men for 'control' issues - men rape because they lust (ie lack of control) or they want power (ie they want control). So whose fault is it? Well, as my girl aptly puts it, ultimately it shouldn't matter, what matters is rape is wrong. Full stop.

Having said that, what can be done to stop the wrong? We are talking about deeply-rooted male versus female perceptions and attitudes towards each other. But surely, feminism isn't, shouldn't be, about women fighting for women against men . Where are the voices of the men  who are supposed to protect, defend, honor and cherish their womenfolk -  their moms, daughters, sisters, wives, grandmas, aunties, female friends? Aren't men and women supposed to be in 'it' - this journey called life - together? Well, that was how God meant it to be, and He used a very powerful 'glue' to bind both together. No, it's not sex. It's love and yes, it can involve sex as the highest expression of love in right relationship (ie marriage) between a single male and a single female for keeps. The world will not agree with that;  but agreeing or disagreeing with God makes no difference to Him. We choose to differ at our peril.

When we leave out that kind of love from the sex, we get obsessed with only the sex part - any and every type of sex, whether by force or by consent. When we choose to live to please ourselves, whether it's a woman dressing or behaving any way she likes just because she is free to do so, or a man forcing himself on a woman because he is aroused by lust or power, we are each as selfish as the other person we accuse. We have all failed to love one another as we should because we all put our desires, our wants, our rights and our satisfaction first. We don't stop to consider the consequences of our actions on the other.

Love chooses not to exercise some rights so as not to stumble the weak, and honestly, sometimes aren't men the weaker sex, for all their bravado? What makes them so susceptible to certain female 'appendages', especially when exposed? Why must they  wolf-whistle  when a female form passes by? Is sex all they think about when they see a or any woman? You don't find women 'goo-gaa-ing' over men like that; if we do, I venture we are more subtle and discreet about it. I don’t know why men are ‘like that’, but I do recognize men are different from women; both sexes have unique strengths and weaknesses, both react differently to different stimuli.  I hasten to add that in no way excuses violence.

There is no easy solution to rape, or any of the myriad 'women' issues we struggle with. For that matter there are no easy solutions to any human relationship problem. And at the heart of rape, is a relationship problem between men and women. A relationship that went out of whack  back in Eden when both chose to live a life free of and from God. Will belief in God solve the problem of rape? Don't be naive, of course not; but it should cause us to be aware of how far we have fallen from what God's original intent of how love and sex can and should be between man and woman. Not the ugliness of one-sided force but the beauty of mutually giving, mutually caring love.


Perhaps remembering and believing that both man and woman are fearfully wonderfully made for each other will enable the love to flow again, and we can then behave with dignity and respect towards one another, as each deserves from the other. An idealistic notion? Why is it impossible to believe God’s truth that love never fails and act on that belief, so that the world can be a better place, for both sexes? After all, we have tried everything else, and failed, anyway.

Published MMO 3/3/15