Living Illogically in Insanity

Take a moment to imagine what our world will be like if it were completely void of a type of love that is unconditional, sacrificial and selfless.

Pause for another moment to remove all the experiences in our lives that were the effects of such a love.
What is left behind after this removal?
How will our lives look like?
And how are we left to feel being unable to receive such love?

For me, if life is without such love, I will return home every evening after work to a cold, empty house. Perhaps, to begin with, I will probably not even have a house to go back to since I have insufficient to buy one on my own! I would have never experienced the warmth of a family that I look forward to returning to each day. Every morning, there will not be a cup of honey, a bottle of water for the day and breakfast made ready for me on the dining table. After a tiring day out, I will have to do my own laundry and find myself even more drained out. There will be no van or car to drive around and I will have to wake up much earlier, get home much later and squeeze with many other people on the public transport. There will be no air-conditioning to emit the cool air that covers me to sleep. There will be no job to pay me as well as it does because I would not have gone through the education that I did. And these are just some of the privileges I am enjoying because of the unconditional, selfless and sacrificial love of just two very significant people in my life - my parents.

Without such love, life would be like a stroke of black paint on a black sheet of paper - motionless, depressing, lifeless, meaningless.

What is your life like without such an unconditional, selfless and sacrificial love? Will it be just as desolate as mine?

The recent news of a 2 year old toddler being run over FOUR times by two vans in China, with no one bothering to stop by to help the poor, helpless and defenceless child portrays, precisely, the effects of a society that advocates that unconditional, selfless and sacrificial love is stupid, illogical and plain insanity. Consequently, this poor child who initially had a whole future ahead of her is now pronounced "brain dead" by the doctors who could not safe her, not of any fault of theirs.

Please do not watch this if you have a faint heart. 

It will be very disturbing for you.

If we take a good look at our lives and how we ourselves have benefited from being at the receiving end of such a love, we will not be able to deceive ourselves any further that such a love is stupid, illogical and plain insanity.

How then, is it stupid, illogical and plain insanity to subscribe to the values of Christ and to take these values into the secular world, taking after the example of Jesus, who with His own life, demonstrated and set the benchmark for what love really is? How then, can we reject walking in His way of love? Unless we are ready to give up and reject all of such a love that others extend to us and completely rid our lives of it. Otherwise, we are just hypocrites who receive, with open arms, what we ourselves think it is ridiculous to give to others.

The world we live in is snuffing out the Christian values that hold the key to the peace, happiness and fulfilment we are so deprived of.

Fidelity has given way to infidelity.
Love has given way to a refusal to forgive.
Peace has given way to terror and unrest.
Compassion has given way to aloofness.
Community support is replaced with individualism.
Hope has given way to despair.
Trust has given way to betrayal and suspicions.
Kindness has given way to sadistic crimes.
Empathy has given way to detachment.

How many lives have been lost because of this shift to a self-centred value-system?
How many lives have been prematurely ended?
How many relationships and hearts have been scarred as a result?
How much more brokenness are we creating for ourselves?

Can we truly say "no" to loving unconditionally, sacrificially and selflessly even though we know it all too well that such a love is not only challenging to extend but more so, it requires us to "die to ourselves" so that we may "love till it hurts and still... continue to love"? Can we truly remain indifferent without denying the reality of who we are and what we are called to do as fellow humans living and sharing this planet? Much for us to ponder on. What is our stand?

How have our lives been enriched because we have been truly loved?
Who, in our lives, have we been refusing to extend this love to? And what is our Lord nudging us to do about this refusal everyday?

18 October 2011, Tuesday
11.53pm