God! Discussion on God!

I do not know to what extent I believe in God. I certainly do not believe in the strong sense, but only in a weak sense. Just as Mathematics has strong and weak proofs for a theorem, God’s existence requires a strong proof for my rational being to accept it as truth. The weak proof is there and I am sure you have heard some or other version of it. Typically, the abundant beauty and complexity of the natural world, with all the beasts and plants, oceans and mountains, including your favorite outdoor place, are testaments of God’s glory. But this need not be the case. A lack of imagination and ignorance in probability and the physical sciences prevents people from understanding that this universe could be brought about via stochastic processes – randomness that changes over time. Then there are those who actually try to substantiate the existence of God with “science” – intelligent design is a recent manifestation. To me, these are pathetic, desperate attempts, to justify faith in God in our increasingly secular worldview.

I think it is the task of the theologian to grapple with what we understand God to be. God is complicated. He is supposed to be love, while also being omniscient. The former quality, I heard at a recent valentines day party for Christians, where members of a panel from different Pentecostal churches all agreed that God is love. There was also a reading from the espistle of St Paul where the nature of love was discussed. I will not discuss these qualities here, but I am sure if you are Christian you have come across this verse of what “love is” and what “love is not”. I wonder whether anyone then will agree with me if say that God’s love is exhibited by letting our loved ones die. Last week, Valentines day Sunday, we heard the awful news of the death of a young man. He was in his late teens, a high school graduate and he just died in his parents’ car, while they were all traveling via Botswana to Zimbabwe. The mother was a teacher for the Holy Confirmation and she prayed out loud – one of the few people to do so in our Church – during the time of the mass when Catholics are invited to pray and offer their “intercessions” to the Lord. Now this, what type of love is this?

Then people will tell me, such as Philip Yancey in his book “Searching for the Invisible God” that not all things happen in God’s will. He means to say that bad things we are perplexed by are not afflictions from God, but are a consequence of the “fallen world” where evil prevails, claiming innocent victims in its path. This argument is, however, inconsistent with God being omniscient. Either one must abandon the omniscient aspect of God (is it even in the Bible?) or admit that bad things, freak accidents, are part of God’s Will.

Let us posit that God knows what pill Neo will take, the blue pill or the red pill, for argument sake. Then this means God has knowledge about Neo’s choices, even though Neo has free will. Indeed, I may know what agent X is going to chose without influencing agent X’s choice in any way. In this, case God can still be omniscient and give us free will, which means that bad things can happen due to our failings, not God’s.

Well, this is all good and dandy if we ignore the fact that God knew what Neo would take before Neo did. This is very strange for us to comprehend, because it means knowing – not predicting or guessing – but knowing the future. So if God knew what Neo would choose before he was offered to choose, before he met Morpheus and before he was even born, God is no longer letting Neo have freedom of choice.

There is a dilemma we run into if we posit that God still allows Neo freedom of choice. The first horn of the dilemma assumes God is the only being at the start of the creation, during that time in Genesis when there was only darkness. Then God must have known Neo’s plans. Now, here knowing the plans of a future agent called Neo must mean that God chose those plans for Neo. There is no other agent at this point and so God must be choosing Neo’s plans by knowing them. Therefore, he has given Neo no freedom of choice. The second horn of the dilemma tries to escape the first one by pointing out that knowing something does not mean ordaining that thing. For example, I can know that I am the being my mother will conceive will be my sibling, but this does not mean I made them my sibling. It is my mother and father who brought my sibling into being (with God’s help, but lets leave him out just for now). So in the same, it would be wrong to assume that God ordained Neo to choose the red pill just because God knew it. But then this assumes God was (is) just a passive being that knows everything while it is going on. Therefore, before the creation, God knew about Neo’s choices, but he did not ordain them as such. The dilemma comes in when we ask the question “well then, if God did not ordain them as such, than who or what did, before the creation?” To this question, I assume you are all silent, your lips pursed together, thinking about the consequences of my argument.

Therefore, do we relinquish the idea of God’s omniscience? This would be tantamount to admitting that he is not divine and omnipotent. I doubt you will stand for that. Therefore, you must admit that God does influence our choices. I say influence, because I am not privy to how much He has preordained and how much is left to us. Then God may be responsible for bad things, which means, God is not love in the way we understand love.

I mean St Paul writes about this in a letter to the Romans about God’s wrath :

But one of you will say to me , “If this is so, how can God find fault with anyone? Who can resist God’s will?” But who are you, my friend, to answer God back? A clay pot does not ask the man who made it “Why did you make me like this?” After all, the man who makes the pots has the right to use the clay as he wishes, and to make to pots from the same lump of clay ,one for special occasions and the other for ordinary use. And the same is true of what God has done. He wanted to show his anger and make his power known. But he was very patient in enduring those who were doomed to destruction. Romans 9 : 19-23

The idea of freedom is choice is torn asunder by the above passage. God can make people just for the sake of destroying them, as a potter can make pots for breaking, as pots for “ordinary use” are bound to break, while those for special occasions are cherished.

The fact that people are “doomed for destruction” in fact testifies to the fact that some people are meant to be killed and condemned. But there is a part that enervates me, the idea of God being patient with those who are doomed. Patience implies love, implies that God is giving a chance to repent, to become part of the fold. However, did we not just say that God created them for destruction? How can this be? It is for this reason that I believe Paul himself is just giving us his, divinely inspired, contemplation of how God operates. He himself is not sure of the answer to the question “Who can resist God’s Will?”

He appears to be grappling with the possibilities of an omnipotent God, giving the example of the potter and then he goes on to speak about God directly. First he makes it seem that God chooses those who are to be condemned, but then he ends of with something that suggests God was waiting on their human agency to redeem them before he finally destroyed them.

Paul did not understand God any better than we do now. The function of that piece of scripture must be to get us discussing how God operates and the tensions between love and omnipotence. So this is why I can only believe in God in the weak sense, because I do not understand Him/Her/It.

Indeed, in my heart of hearts, I tend to believe that God is just the most imaginative solution the human mind has come up with to the problem of being self-conscious.

This, however, does not stop me from being a Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ, as my savior, friend and lover of my soul and body (to whom I’m not always faithful). It is just that I doubt, I experience doubt and I have to live with it as part of my faith.

Valentines day eve

I have a history of donating books. When I was in grade 9, I had built up a sizeable collection of Dorin Kindersley, eyewitness guides, these illustrated books were intense learning experiences for me. I gave about half of them away, to the library of the SOS children’s village, a project that was done at interact. I also gave them a softcover copy of the origin of the speices – I had two , one soft cover and one hard cover. All ordered, online, from Europe and America with my mother’s credit card. The number and expiry date I knew off by heart, this was when internet buying was booming, but the three digit security code had not yet come into practice. About a decade ago.

I was just reading an eyewitness guide, Prehistoric Life. Dinosaurs, the two different groups they fall into, orinthischians and saurischians, as well as some that just don’t fit neatly in either. I felt there was a Valentines day dinosaur somewhere that I needed to find, before tomorrow, Feb 14^th. Baronyx. Yes, he will be my Valentine.

Valentines day evening

Is this guy for real? I feel amused and flattered and flustered. He texts me, barely knows me and says “ur? But you’re so handsome and with an awesome voice to beat damn.”

To this text I reply, tapping away while I wonder what he means by that “I don’t know what to say”.

You may want to know what I am that he was surprised by. If you know me well enough, you know what I am talking about. If you don’t then you don’t know what I am, that which I say implicitly (please, you call this implicit, you are oozing with heteroertoticism here).

Breaking news – I just found more evidence for my one of theories about the meaning of his text. “But you’re down ryt interesting mix of culture..og that’s what got me ticking.”

He just texted me this.

This comment echoes what he said earlier, when he saw me, met me in the flesh. We were waiting outside, in a line of seats, waiting to audition for a job as a promoters for an add agency. I guess that fact that the add in the paper required “well groomed” promoters brought out my handsome qualities so much so that even he noticed them.

He was, from the onset, open. He spoke with people in the line and his voice is a soothing and low, the kind you hear on only real good radio. Then I started talking to this other lady in the line, who cut in front of me. A black Namibian lady, she is who told me that “she needed a seat” and that’s why she did not stand in the line of people that was before the row of seats. Cheeky. She told me about how is Japanese, but somehow made it to Africa and how she is black. I entertained this idea, really I did, for a moment, I though she was a Japanese-Afro mix. But then he told me that she was just kidding. At some point I said “Well yeah, I am Bulgarian and you may not have guessed that.” They both agreed that it was not obvious. Later he asked “What’s your surname?” and I told him : “Mulongeni.”

“So you are both Namibian and Bulgarian, wow.” He later went in, auditioned, came out and I as was walking in for my turn he asked for my number which I gave willingly.

So yeah, it must be a thirst. He seems extroverted, somewhat like me and he is cosmopolitan and urban. He wants to know someone with a “double culture”

As my French friend said the other day “Tu es tellement chanceux d’être un cheval entre deux cultures.”

A horse inbetween two cultures, that’s what I heard, I maybe misheard, but I think it makes sense.

Is he for real then? Oh Mohammed, I wonder what you think!

I guess I am, the fact I am writing this in an American fashion demonstrates how hybrid I am. How my English has changed or just become more American than it was before (the US English is the arguably the hegemony).

I texted (smsmed back) saying:

“yeah and I like anthropology too.”

Hope it does not sound ironic, cause I do.

The reply

“Woah…an adition to Ur alrdy exsting atributez. Damn, brthz must b dying 4 u (so u cn dig’em up sumday LOL)”

He is for real, I think. He really finds me fascinating.

So to really try and force out straight talk from him, I am about to write:

“Are you one of them?”

I actually wrote “ just 4 str8 talk, tell me r u dying for me?”

Car accident Feb 11th

My grandmother was involved in a minor accident. Crossing the road – she walked across the zebra – but this urban jungle of Sofia is unruly, a taxi hit her as she walked!

Is it my fault, she is alive and fine, except for a broken ankle, but is it my fault?

Yesterday morning, before the accident happened in Bulgaria, I did a sun salutation up on the hill near my house, looking at the rising sun. I chose to just do a normal sun salutation without praying the rosary as I have done for quite a while now, since I got my rosary in June 2009. Am I just trying to make links where they are none?

No more writing about this,dance it. I am praying now , the chaplet of the divine mercy, I will pray it now, it is 3:04 pm and St Faustina says Christ told her to pray it at 3pm.

Awake

Awake. The written word awoke in me as a stood there on the first step of the end of our corridor, looking at the distant – 2 meter away- space by the bottom of the shoe cupboard. I wanted to write it down, this feeling of being home that came to me then at 5:30 something am. In the quiet of the morning light I remembered how my brother was preparing shifting through this same space I was looking through. Getting ready for his valentines day dance, with red and grey nike shoe, he walked to and from his room to the bathroom mirror, fixing his color, his tie – red- slung over this his shoulder round his neck. That smell of his deodorant, of being home.

The TV woke me and I went to switch it off, my brother lying on the sofa asleep. He must of come back some time that night. I motioned to turn it off, but I saw images of ‘dumpster diving’ and heard talk of freegans. In Australia. Reminded so much of Alex Barnard who was a Freegan at Princeton. I asked him, I remember one day at Butler Dinning Hall, whether he considered going to the dinning halls at 7:59, just before they throw the stuff into the pig bucket. He said , if I recall rightly, that he would look into it. I was doing that, eating at the last possible moment, often it was lunch at Rocky dinning hall, till one day that old lady at the card swipe machine had enough. Enough said about that. Freeganism, I don’t think it can work in Namibia, because frankly, little goes to waste here and if it does, it’s inedible. In spite of globalization, we are not industrialized and wasteful to that extent. At least stores aren’t. Selling old bananas and garlic, I see it all the time.

February 13th

Audition. I went to an audition today, I had not been to one in since, I dunno, over a year. It was the for the twentieth independence anniversary of Namibia, there is going to be a dance performance. I went there open – open to the possibility that it will be edifying to be part of the dance performance and with the desire to loose it, it being my body’s lethargic, lukewarm state, which I get tired off. I warmed up and then we were told to find a position all facing forward, towards Hamisch, one of the choreographers. He did wonderful roll downs of the back, head and hands to floor and push outs to a long ‘plank’ pose to come back. Those were standard modern. But then these steps, sweeping of the feet over the floor, like scoops and long legged high kicks to down as the body pivots to turn a quarter circle. “It’s actually Zulu”, Hamisch said if I asked whether the high kicks were a Nama stap – the movement resembled the kicking high and then feet together of this Namibian movement. No, they were not Namibian, in fact, there was no movement that I recognized as Namibian, nor did they announce anything to be Namibia. No theme, no idea, no movement. They were African – the contracting, supple chest that concave and convex, but we associate those with the West.

I was not captivated. I had fun and I danced reasonably well, give or take a few moves missed. I could have performed better, but I don’t think that will hinder me from being chosen. “See you soon” is what he told me, and I guess that’s what he meant as I walked from the Theatre and his shoulder brushed against my arm (he’s shorter). I wanted to just have fun and that’s what I did. I relegated thinking about the logistical problems of me taking part to after it was all over. I did, I even managed to create new movements during the improvisation.

I have to cut this reflection short, as I am writing it, I can hear my mother shouting at my brother for having taken the car out without asking her. He just laughs and says “Why are you shouting”. In any case, I think you understand the whole dance dilemma – it is actually not a dilemma, I just will write the review. Even when I was there, dancing, I knew that it would be fine, to choose to not partake and just write about it review it. Hey, even this blog is a testament to that! I may not be the best reviewer in the World, but I am creative and I can write. I think that’s all that’s necessary. That will suffice. Which of the two endings do you like better?

Update Feb 7th

Topsy Turvy day, in a way. I meant to download some articles and things about a survey of health facilities done in Kenya, but really now I am about to go to bed. It did not materialize.

Well it was not my fault, I could not use the internet at home, the modem was misplaceed in my brothers room, hidden.

I had my third driving lesson today, and I was driving in an area called Otjomuise, just a 10 mins from my house. There are shaccks there, mostly, shinny corrogated iron amidst the green hills or the rolling lanscape. My teacher is great. I will see him and will be driving again in 12 hours, about, since it is in the morning.

Then laster I went to return an overdue book. I did and went to the post office. But so many things caught my attention and crossed my mind there in the Windhoek City Center.
I thought of donating blood (but I am due for donation only tomorrow) and even going to the American cultural center.
I actually went there to withdraw the money I needed to pay the fine (I was just 30c short and that made me withdraw). I ended fasting through the lunchtime here. I was hungry, but I sat on two slabs of concrete, under a tree, against a wall, by the roadside not far from the place where I had to pay. And read. I read the book "To Chicago and Back" in Bulgaria, by Aleko Constantinov.

Then later in the library, I do go (I did not pay today, the que was too long, but I did meet a girl with whom I spoke in Afrikaans, here name is Renne, and she is from Luderitz, but lives here and studies at the Polytechnic) and read through books. There is a cool med anthro book I should borrow there.

I also stumbled upon a book biophysics, the same one in the lab where I worked, that belonged to Joshua Shaevitz, the biophysicist who share the whole megaspace with us, his lab is the first in the space from the Poe field.
I also found out tha the first Namibia contemporary dance company performed on Saturday, little did I know. I know all of the dancers, but none of them called me. I only found out through a facebook invite to become a fan of their group "first rain" dance company. They are gorgeous, at least one of the guys who dances is. I mean in the sense of his lines, he has gorgeos lines, the long linge from the toe to the other foot of a ponchee,like the one of a ballerina dipping down, with her back leg reaching up to the heavens.
I wonder why they did not tell me. I guess, they did not even consider asking me to audition. But anyway, I am involved in these other things here. My article writing does take up time, energy. I am focused on them and dance seems to have taken a hobby type of role in my life.But not to even tell me about the performance, I even saw on of the choreographers and performers on Friday, at the Mall and he did not mention it! I was there not to shop, but to cut through it on my way to Management Sciences for Health (Google them), cause I want an internship there. No longer this struggle, this struggle to understand why I am not "that person" who can just wake up and want to choreograph and dance, for my life. Now I am at peace.

Actually, I did wake up on Sunday, yesterday having dreamt that I was a clown and I made people laugh. I was extending my leg with heel jutting through the air as I flexed my foot, in a red clown costume. I also told jokes. Jokes, really me? I decided I wanted to become a "clinic" clown. In Namiba, they just started now, clinic clowns, for children that are sick. It is a great thing.