DAY 57 OF 100 DAYS SELF-REINVENTION SERIES - The Meaninglessness of our Meanings – The Power of Gratitude

The quickest way to be happy is to choose what you already have – Werner Erhard

When a woman's time comes for delivery, she has huge expectations. That expectation is legitimate. We all have expectations for everything. But what happens when our expectations are not met? We experience pain. We question God, asking him why. It doesn't make sense, we argue. For years, I wondered why God created snakes and mosquitoes. It just doesn't make sense. I hated these two creatures, and I still do. But this hatred has nothing to do with what God had in mind when He created them. As I grow in age and wisdom, I find that rather than hate these creatures; I should sit in the quietness of my spirit to find out how these creatures can serve me. What reason did God have when he made these creatures? Shortly after I became a born-again Christian, I struggled with the Old Testament, constantly questioning why God would permit wars. And as if this was not enough, I read instances where even when he consented to wars, his own people suffered varying degrees of casualties.

In Mathew 19, Jesus continued his teachings about the way life works. He taught that some people were born eunuchs, some were made eunuchs by others, while some others offered themselves to be eunuchs. He concludes by saying that those who can accept it should accept it. Apparently, he knew that this picture he painted did not fit the mental concept of God his listeners had. In rejecting it, we begin to experience pain. There are many people today whose mental agony is because they cannot reconcile their concept of God with what is happening in their environment. Several philosophers have come to the conclusion that the purpose for which this world exists is independent of our own expectations and concepts – I agree with this school of thought. Mental healing comes when we align our thinking and our mental creation of what we think God should be like with what he truly is.

The first step in expanding your arena of personal creation and existence is to align your concepts with what is. We go into marriage with an expectation of what it is. We take up a new job with certain expectations about what it entails. We give birth to children with expectations of how their lives should turn out. When reality does not align with our expectations, we begin to complain. In an earlier chapter, I wrote about Jesus' response to his disciple about the man who was born blind. The disciples asked Jesus, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor his parents," said Jesus, And Jesus goes on to say, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." This is not the normal God that we expect; what happens is that we try to superimpose our concepts on God on who God truly is. Jesus said this blindness is to the glory of God. The power at our disposal is the interpretation of life. However, beneath this interpretation is our ingrained beliefs of what ought to be. Why did x, y and z die at 40? The question we are scared to ask is, why not? Why is xyz still single at 45? But why not? Asking the right questions will usually evoke better answers. What we need to do is challenge every belief causing us unease. Some people consider jumping off a cliff because their life experience does not line up with their expectations. What this person should do is ask the right question i.e., why not?

The Nobel Laurette and Algerian-French Novelist, Albert Camus in his book, The Stranger, struggles with this strange human situation about existence. “Where is the all-loving God when Covid is ravaging the planet?” Camus asked. When the main character in his book, Meursault was sentenced to death, he went to the Chaplain who told him to turn to God, but that only infuriates Meursault. In what Albert Camus felt was the benign indifference of the universe, “Meursault fully accepts the absurd idea that the universe (or God) is indifferent to human affairs and that life lacks rational order and meaning. He moves toward this revelation through the course of the novel but does not fully grasp it until he accepts the impossibility of avoiding his death. Meursault realizes that the universe's indifference to human affairs echoes his own personal indifference to human affairs, and the similarity evokes a feeling of companionship in him that leads him to label the world ‘a brother’. Here, Meursault finds that he is actively happy once he opens himself to the reality of human existence. He finds that he is also happy with his position in society. He does not mind being a loathed criminal. He only wishes for companionship, ‘to feel less alone.’ He accepts that this companionship will take the form of an angry mob on his execution day. He sees his impending execution as the ‘consummation’ of his new understanding."

A man sentenced to death is suddenly transformed by a realization that he is not different from what he called God or his feeling that God was, in his view, indifferent to our sufferings. He, too is indifferent to human sufferings. At this moment, he aligns himself with God and calls God his brother. As beings that seek meaning, we are constantly judging and defining things: Miss A is beautiful, Miss B is ugly, etc. We never try to relate these comparisons to the divine order. All these comparisons are meaningless. For a long while, the Hillsong track "A billion times" left me in awe of the God I professed to serve. One day, I got the lyrics, and it transformed my conception of God. Below are excerpts from the song:

So Will I (100 billion X)

God of creation, there at the start, before the beginning of time, with no point of reference, You spoke to the dark and fleshed out the wonder of light. And as you speak, a hundred billion galaxies are born, in the vapour of your breath the planets form, If the stars were made to worship, so will I. I can see your heart in everything you've made, every burning star, and a signal fire of grace. If creation sings Your praises, so will I. And as You speak a hundred billion creatures catch Your breath. If the stars were made to worship, so will I. If the mountains bow in reverence, so will I. If the oceans roar your greatness, so will I. For if everything exists to lift You high, so will I. If the wind goes where you send it, so will I. If the rocks cry out in silence, so will I. If the sum of all our praises still falls shy Then we'll sing again a hundred billion times.

I saw from this song for the first time that when the Oceans are raging, they are actually singing about God's greatness. Even rocks that I thought were without life sing praises to God in silence. What a profound transformation when we can see God in the situation that we have described as absurd. Isn't it amazing that to this day, new galaxies are still being born? Think about it: galaxies are reproducing  galaxies and stars more stars to this day. We are looking for life in outer space when what we are really looking for is our own concept of life. Before us is life itself. When planets are giving birth to new planets, shouldn't that put you in a state of awe? When we see volcanoes, we think something evil is happening to the planet, unknown to us; the rocks have decided to sing a song to God. Can you imagine how much your life will be transformed if you found out tonight that the thing you have been complaining of was put there to exalt God? That situation you labelled as failure has been designed to put you in a state of the worship of God.

How should we align ourselves with God? The answer is gratitude. Start expressing gratitude for the situations that line up with your concept of life and those that don't. When you do this, you get the space to know how to act in the situation. In the midst of scarcity, Jesus expressed gratitude and the remnants of what started as insufficient to feed ten persons, fed over ten thousand, and the pieces left were over twelve baskets. What is Jesus doing when he expresses gratitude? According to Werner Erhard’s quote above, He is accepting what he already has. Will you?