resting in christ · each person's life journey is similar and different, personally singular...

Resting in Christ

Chris Kang

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Resting in Christ

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Chris Kang

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Copyright © 2015 Chris Kang. Except for brief quotations in

publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in

any manner without prior written permission from the author. Write:

[email protected].

Cover design and photo credit: Elaine Lum. The cover shows

floorboards of the former Penang Free School in Malaysia.

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This book is dedicated to

my lovely wife Elaine

and her beautiful Mum and Dad,

Siau Lin (in memory) and Yun Keong.

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Thank you for walking with me

in the grace and truth of our

Lord Jesus Christ.

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Wilfred Yeo

Author’s Preface

One New Life in Christ 11

Two Swimming Manual or Lifesaver? 27

Three True Meditation 31

Four Going Deeper 37

Five Walking with God through Suffering 43

Six Letting Go into True Grace 49

Seven Vindictive Wrath of God: Gnostic Virus in

Disguise? 59

Eight Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata 65

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Nine Idolatry 79

Ten Self-Emptying Love of Christ 93

Eleven Practising the Presence of Jesus 97

Twelve Resting in Christ 113

References

About the Author

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FOREWORD

These initial reflections, drawn from Chris' encounter and

personal relationship with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the

Living God, are refreshing, unabashedly and unashamed

snapshots of a man who has experienced love and fallen in

love with his God. His reflections, meditations, revelations

and applications, arising from his 'organic journey of

growth' with Christ, to and into the ever Triune God,

Father, Son and Spirit, engenders hopes that the reader

may be drawn into a communion relationship with the

Triune God, drawn by Father, revealed through the Son in

Jesus, empowered and experienced by, with, through and

in the Spirit.

Each person's life journey is similar and different,

personally singular and jointly related in all its simplicities

and complexities. These snapshots of Chris' life prompts

one to pause, re-look and reassess the veracity and validity

of experiences, relationships and realities with, in and

through Christ Jesus, the Word who was God, Who

became flesh.

Snapshots remain snapshots. Many more snapshots will be

penned as Chris' 'organic journey of growth' progresses

with its many twists and turns and myriad of encounters

and experiences. Here, they ever remain Chris' records of

his life's moments in time shared with us in love.

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Received by the reader in love in Christ Jesus through the

Holy Spirit, I believe that the reader will be freed to

embark on a similar unique 'organic journey of growth' of

a love relationship with the Triune God, Father, Son and

Spirit.

In this light, and through Him Who is Light, I commend

this book.

Wilfred Yeo

3 June 2015

A seeker in all his human frailties, touched, loved, enabled and

being transformed by the Triune God to continue his exploration of

life, in the Son, Who is Life, Who has become flesh, through the

Spirit, into the Father.

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AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Soon after coming to faith in Christ in 2014, I felt that my

whole world had collapsed, my identity destroyed, and my

career ruined. I had lost everything.

But in His mysterious ways so full of tender mercy and

grace, God has led me through the fire to a clear forest

stream flowing with His sweet eternal presence. His

presence and action in my life is indelible. His touch has

left me radically reborn for an unknown, unseen future.

This book is a tiny snapshot of my encounters with my

Lord and creaturely reflections that follow after. They are

constantly unfolding even as He shapes me to be all He

wants me to be. Foolish though these words may be, I

hope they may nonetheless impart some portion of God’s

wonderful grace to you and magnify His holy name.

I thank God for surrounding me with a multitude of elder

brothers and sisters in Christ: Wilfred Yeo, my theological

buddy; Eeleng, for her delicious nourishing meals; Des

Soares, my trusted elder at Creek Road Presbyterian

Church; Irene Alexander, for her care and counsel; and

Chris Brown, my spiritual director for a gospel-shaped life.

Shalom to them all. And love to all my readers.

Chris Kang

27 May 2015

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One

NEW LIFE IN CHRIST

"Where do I begin to tell a story of how great a Love

can be? The sweet Love story that is older than the sea;

the simple truth about the Love He brings to me.

Where do I start?"

When I was born in Singapore 45 years ago, my

grandfather gave me an impossible Chinese name

"jiang deng-feng" meaning "river climbing to the

mountain peak." This name has been a puzzle to me

all my life, my logical brain finding no solution to this

Zen-like koan that has intrigued me for as long as I can

remember. At age five, my granduncle introduced my

Mum and I to the simple practice of reciting the name

of Kuan Yin Bodhisattva, the feminine personification

of universal compassion in Chinese Buddhism. Also at

age five, I started attending my local Anglican

kindergarten St Hilda’s, where I was first introduced to

the Bible and Christ.

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At fourteen, I started formal Buddhist studies at

Raffles Institution, a top high school and the oldest one

in Singapore founded by Sir Thomas Stamford

Raffles. My Buddhist studies teacher Mrs Toh was

very kind though stern, and I thank her for all she

taught me. Those many afternoons of lectures and

discussions established in me firm foundations in

Buddhist philosophy and practice. At sixteen, I was

part of a team that won the National Schools' Buddhist

Quiz, and as top scorer in the entire competition, I

received a nice book voucher from a local Buddhist

bookshop plus a trophy. That felt good. Around that

time, I met my first Buddhist spiritual mentor Bhante S.

Dhammika, from whom I received my threefold refuge

and precepts marking formal entry into the Buddhist

community. He taught me much of early Buddhism,

Pali suttas, and core Buddhist meditation of śamatha,

anussati, and vipassanā.

In 1990, I met the late Acārya Godwin Samararatne

(1932-2000) who became my heart spiritual teacher.

He guided my meditation practice in impactful and

deepening ways, and was most of all a humble friend

and wise compassionate mentor. He is the only person

in this world I would dare to designate as a 'liberated'

or 'awakened' being, in Buddhist speak. Although

nominally a Buddhist, Godwin was always open to all

spiritual traditions or none. His counsel extended from

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Theravada Buddhists to Chinese Mahayanists, from

Christians to atheists and agnostics without prejudice

or narrow sentiments. He was a spiritual friend

(kalyāṇa-mitta) to all.

In the years that followed, my meditation practice

deepened to the extent that profound states of

unification (jhana) and direct insights into

impermanence (anicca) and non-self (anattā) were

evident. Several unforgettable implosions into timeless

cessation of nibbāna - the unborn and uncompounded -

marked my practice. Results of these direct glimpses

were also increasingly evident in my day-to-day life -

effortless ethical discipline, natural unshakeable

confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha for

personal liberation, and reduction in greed/attachment

and hostility/ill-will.

From mid 1996-2003, I trained in Hindu tantric

meditation and yoga exercises, fasting twice a month

without food and water for 36 hours at a

stretch. During this time, my meditation practice

deepened and expanded further. I was regularly

entering into deep, boundless, blissful, formless

absorptions to the point where consciousness is so

attenuated that it seems to be non-existent. Further

insights into non-self and nibbanic cessation occurred

during this time. From 1999-2003, I completed my

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doctoral research in Hindu and Tantric studies with

critical comparative analyses of the entire spectrum of

Indian religious and philosophical schools including

Buddhism.

From 2002 to 2012, I studied and practised Tibetan

Buddhism in the Gelug tradition (the tradition of the

Dalai Lamas) under the able guidance of Geshe Tashi

Tsering/Khen Rinpoche. From Lamrim to Highest

Yoga Tantra and Mahāmudra, from Vaibhāṣika to

Madhyamaka, from Abhidharma to Pramāṇa, from

Abhisamayālaṃkāra to Ratnagotravibhāga-śāstra, from

Buddhist logic and epistemology to the intricacies and

complexities of tantric psychophysiology and after-life

theory - I completed a comprehensive curriculum of

Buddhist philosophical and mind training. I completed

retreats in Highest Yoga Tantra, familiarised myself

with generation and completion stages of bliss and

emptiness. Further insights into non-self (anattā)

and śūnyatā (emptiness) were evident during this

period.

From 2009 to 2014, I studied and trained in Dzogchen

theory and meditation under the tutelage of B. Alan

Wallace, undertaking multiple short and longer-term

retreats. I've had other supporting teachers like the

14th

Dalai Lama, the late Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche

(who taught the Dalai Lama), and Choden Rinpoche.

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In 2012, I was introduced directly to quintessential

Chan practices of mozhao (silent illumination)

and huatou (critical phrase) by Guo Xing Fashi, senior

Dharma heir of the late Master Sheng Yen (1930-2009).

As you can see, I'm a spiritually curious and passionate

seeker of truth since I was a young boy. My search has

never been merely intellectual but encompassed

experiential immersion. In that same spirit, my wife

and I participated in a charismatic Life in the Spirit

Seminar in Singapore in 1995. This was followed by

catechism classes in our local Catholic Church for

some months until we could no longer accept the

traditional doctrines of Catholicism. We did not

continue with our Christian journey, so to speak.

Since 1996, I've been teaching meditation and yoga,

first on an occasional basis and later more regularly.

From 2002, I've also been tutoring and lecturing

academically in the university setting. First as a

mindfulness coach and then as a full-time Buddhist

teacher, I led meditation retreats ranging from one to

five days, covering different styles of Buddhist

meditation practices including mindfulness. All these

have passed away. The old is destroyed, the new

(Gk: kainos) has been born ...

Early this year, I embarked on a solitary Dzogchen

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meditation retreat during which I meditated up to 14

hours a day. It was not difficult to continue meditating

formally even beyond that duration, if I wished to. But

I decided that a few simple things needed practical

attention. Anyhow, my meditation practice has

effortlessly deepened beyond anything I ever imagined.

Breaking coarse awareness into substrate

consciousness, and then breaking through that to a

primordial and subtlest awareness - naked and free,

luminous and dynamic. That awareness rested utterly

and effortlessly in the basic space of reality - luminous,

ungraspable, unlocalised, atemporal, free of any trace

of affliction whatsoever. No self, no problem; no

inherent existence or non-inherent existence; no

coming, no going,; no gain, no loss. The distinction

between meditation and non-meditation faded

away. Every perceptual appearance, thought, emotion,

and mental construct was none other than the effulgent

play of non-reified awareness.

As I proceeded along smoothly in my practice, I began

to realise with clarity and precision that even if I

achieved vimutti (liberation) as taught by the Buddha -

which was a real possibility for me - that in itself was

not the highest and most complete fruit of spirituality.

This realisation marked the beginning of a dramatic

shift in my entire life's practice. A lasting inner peace,

wisdom and compassion are in themselves worthy

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'attainments' but ultimately solipsistic (i.e. lopsided) if

other areas of life remain in peril. Probing and deep

questions chip away at the falsity and reductionism of

spiritual nibbāna while the world around us burn away

in hopeless despair and destruction. For, as the earliest

and most authentic teachings of the historical Buddha

proclaim, one can only purify oneself not another.

However much later Buddhism tries to cover up the

essential lacunae at its very heart with a myriad of

strategies, the fact remains that the Buddha’s core

teaching is about exiting from the world. Flowery

Mahayanist philosophy, shock tactics of Zen, exotic

flamboyance of Vajrayana ritualism and cultic

devotionalism (not to mention crass commercialism),

or even modernist revisions of ‘meditation revolution’

for the masses or ‘engaged Buddhism’ that

camouflages the Buddha’s quintessentially world-

transcending imperative, all fail to convince me in the

end. In fact, engaged Buddhism owes much of its

identity and form to the social justice ethos of the

Christian gospel through the former’s encounters with

Christianity in the modern West.

Self-effort begins and ends in a performance-based

spirituality that fails to satisfy in the final

analysis. The Buddha never promised anything other

than irreversible inner freedom or peace. Any talk of

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fullness in other areas of life through Buddhist

meditation or prayer was nothing other than empty

unreliable chatter and extraneous religious clutter of

later Buddhist tradition. It became evident to me that a

'God-shaped' hole in the hearts of many Buddhists has

caused them to project alien ideas and practices onto

the Buddha's Dhamma to satisfy real and prosaic needs

that a distant and aloof goal of nibbāna can never hope

to satisfy, let alone fulfil abundantly.

Then, in a totally unexpected and unforgettable way,

awareness broke through again beyond its primordial,

nonlocalised, atemporal being into That which I cannot

articulate in words. Rather than a That, perhaps it is

more correct to say a Who. Rather than ‘my’

awareness breaking through, it is better to say that He

who is beyond creation broke through into this

nameless yet fully personal history. He, the eternal

plenitude of grace and truth who loves me with an

everlasting self-emptying love, broke into this side of

creation with a thunderous silence so blazingly gentle,

it melts all that awareness is.

Yet even such description fails as it tends to reify and

misconstrue the full richness, intimacy,

length, breadth, height, and depth of my 'holy

encounter'. This encounter transcends anything I've

ever come across in meditative experience. It was

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utterly outside my expectations and inclinations. It

had nothing to do with me, but everything to do with

Him. Grace personified found me. All the last vestiges

of affliction, striving, condemnation, mistake, failing,

sin fell away as stroke after stroke of these negativities

was absorbed by our Lord and Saviour in total

openness and love. Life, righteousness, peace and joy

superaboundingly flowed from Him into me and

speechless tears overwhelmed me. Rather than a

singular and unrepeatable event, all of this unfolded

over several weeks as an ongoing process of unveiling

and discovery, culminating in a realisation that

radically transformed me from inside out upside down.

Our beloved Lord revealed Himself to me at just the

right time in my life, totally unexpected though it was.

He found His rest in loving me, saving me! So I may

find my rest in Him. Hallelujah!

The best word for this radical insight is revelation - so

pure, so beyond words, so direct and powerful, so

undeserved, unearned, unmerited, unexpected. This

revelation jolted me out of my complacency, making

me realise just what my Lord Jesus has gone through to

save me, how much He has done for me, how high a

price He paid for my redemption and salvation. These

are eternal truths I had never been able to penetrate

thus far with all my so-called 'intelligence,'

'awareness,' 'wisdom,' and 'insight'! I was so blind but

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now I see. Not because I earned it, not because I

achieved it, not because of my so-called 'meditative

prowess' (which is not worth the dust on His feet), but

simply because He freely gave that precious revelation

of Himself to me, a sinner. Yes, I'm most willing to

admit I'm a wretched sinner, now that He has opened

my eyes to Him and what He has accomplished for me

as He hung on that tree. Through and in Him, I tasted a

freedom and victory like nothing I've experienced

before. And with absolute conviction, I shout to the

Lord: "Thank You, Jesus! It is all because of You and

You alone! It is Your victory, not mine. I'm but a

beneficiary of all You've done and I've been set free

because of You".

A Buddhist found Christ in a way least expected. At

last, in total trust and joy I received Jesus as my Lord

and Saviour. "Done is what is to be done! There is no

more becoming ...," as the Pali suttas echo.

The lost sheep finally realised its lostness and heard

and responded to the voice of its good Shepherd.

Christ has beckoned and found me. He called me from

the foundations of the world and brought me into His

heart. And as I entered, He shared with me His Home.

Where do I begin to tell a story of how great a Love

can be? ....

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Friends, I wish I could better tell you what I have gone

through. But my words are limited and concepts

poor. However, if you watch and listen to the Calvary

animation video sermon, you might just catch a

glimpse of what I mean. Watch this:

http://www.newcreation.org.sg/news/announcements/gl

obal-reports/2014/05/07/calvary-animation-video-

(what-happened-at-the-cross)

I know many of my students and friends might be

shocked, even grieving over the loss of a Buddhist

teacher they have known for a time. I fully understand.

I continue to love them and care for them as precious

people who are greatly blessed, highly favoured, and

deeply loved in the Lord. I do this not in my own

power but in His mighty name. Jesus. He is the One

who knew and loved us before we were born.

Finally, my Zen koan has been solved. My Dad gave

me the name 'Chris' when he registered me with

Singapore's Registry of Birth. Chris is short for

Christopher, which means 'bearer of Christ.' Thus, for

this river to climb up the mountain peak, I'd have to

lose my identity as a river to form rain clouds over the

mountain summit.

http://www.newcreation.org.sg/news/announcements/global-reports/2014/05/07/calvary-animation-video-(what-happened-at-the-cross)



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How is this done? By being a bearer of Christ Jesus,

our amazing Lord and Saviour.

And this is what I've been called to do for the rest of

my life on earth. Amen!

Postscript:

I'm reminded of a saying from Thich Nhat Hanh, a

respected Buddhist teacher: "Sometime, somewhere,

we take something to be the truth and we cling to it so

much that when truth comes in person to knock at your

door, you will not open it." Jesus has knocked on my

door and His love has moved me so deeply that there is

no other choice but to invite Him into my heart.

It was also tremendously inspiring to catch up with

three old mates, one from as far back as primary school

and two from senior high school. Together, we went

through the top-notched premier schools in Singapore

and all were exceptional scholars (except me of course,

as my scores were usually behind my three friends).

Glad to report they are now all senior consultants in

the medical profession, shouldering leadership roles in

their respective specialties. What's amazing is the fact

that they, being long-time Christian believers, have

prayed for me all these years and are now seeing the

fruit of their prayers in what God has done in my life.

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Though generous, industrious, highly intelligent,

goodhearted super-achievers in their secular profession,

these three old mates and brothers-in-Christ inspire me

with their humble attitude. They celebrate our Lord's

grace in their lives and boast of Him instead of

themselves. While they certainly deserve to feel proud

of what they have accomplished (which is huge), they

nonetheless attribute their success to our Lord. They

could not thank our Lord enough. Hallelujah!

In contrast, I've met quite a few meditators and

scholars who seem to have a problem with pride over

their perceived 'spiritual' and 'philosophical'

attainments. The trouble with man-made religion is

that regardless of tall talk on self and non-self,

enlightenment and emptiness, there is simply no way

one can truly free oneself from the insidious deceptive

grip of self and law (man's fabricated system of dos

and don'ts, techniques and attainments, merit and

demerit, fortune and fall).

Pride remains deeply ingrained and arrogance soon

follows, without warning and scrutiny, made

impervious by the illogic of religio-cultural

rationalisation. This illogic runs deep and is based on

the mindset and system of spiritual merit and demerit

centred around the individual. In the final analysis, it is

a system that is at best temporal, unstable, unreliable,

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and ultimately futile as a way of incomprehensible

eternal salvation.

One final point. The ideas and insights shared in this

book follow my personal organic journey of growth in

Christ, in communion with trusted, kind and wise

elders. Hence, perceived or real theological

inconsistencies between earlier and later chapters may

be apparent. I have deliberately left them unedited so

as to testify to the process of growth from initial

dawning of Christ’s saving knowledge to unfolding

deeper revelations of His being and activity. I walk

with and in Him on this journey without end. It is an

eternal journey into Christlikeness.

I pray that when I come to die, I can say with Paul that

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race,

I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7). Testifying that the

Christian life is not about blessings whether material or

spiritual. That the true Christian life is about Christ

alone as centre and end, rather than means to an end.

For richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, He is all I

want and all I ever want to be. May it be so by the

grace of God. Amen.

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”Rather than ‘my’ awareness breaking

through, it is better to say that He who is beyond creation broke through into this

nameless yet fully personal history.”

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“He, the eternal plenitude of grace and

truth who loves me with an everlasting self -emptying love, broke into this side of creation with a thunderous silence so

blazingly gentle, it melts all that awareness is.”

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Two

SWIMMING MANUAL OR LIFESAVER?

Friends, I want to share with you some musings on the

stark contrast between self-based, avoidance-based,

performance-based spirituality and the true gospel of

grace that irrevocably saves. I borrow this analogy

from others who have used it before. But I'd like to

use it in a way that places in sharp focus the limitations

and ultimate inadequacy of spiritual teaching that puts

all hopes on the self-willing, self-evolving individual.

Imagine you are drowning in a turbulent sea. The

more you struggle, the more you sink. Without outside

help, you will soon tire and drown. Imagine again that

you are thrown a sophisticated swimming manual with

all the swimming techniques and tricks you can ever

find in a book. It even comes with glossy pictures of

swimming champions who won gold trophies using the

techniques of this book. And there is a glamorous

biography of the author himself. You are told in the

manual not to rely on anyone except yourself and to

avoid rough waters when learning how to swim.

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At this crucial juncture, the swimming manual with its

training program comes too late. Your life is seeping

away by the second.

The author of this swimming manual lived about two

and a half thousand years ago and his techniques and

words were not recorded until about 400 years or so

after he died. Some smart people even argue that he

never really existed as a real person.

Now, would you put all your faith and trust in this

manual? Especially given the precarious situation you

are in and the paucity of historical reliability of its

authorship and content?

My friends, in your precarious state, would you have

the inclination, ability, and longevity to learn the 'eight

or ten steps' to 'enlightened swimming' while gulping

mouthfuls of saltwater and hardly gasping for breath?

Would you be helped by the expensive swim-suits,

caps, and goggles that you have been asked to procure

as part of the last-minute swimming lesson?

It seems foolhardy to punch a hole in your pocket at

this critical moment only to die alone and miserable in

the stormy seas.

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Consider this. What if a qualified, strong, bold,

compassionate, and competent lifesaver were to jump

into the sea, take hold of your struggling body with

flailing arms, calm you down with his resonant voice

and physical mastery, and lift you assuredly up onto

the rescue chopper to land safely on dry shore?

Would you be alive to see another beautiful day of

God's creation? Yes, you certainly would!

Jesus is like that lifesaver. He is qualified and

competent, for He is the living Word and eternal Son

of God who has come to dwell among us. He is

strong with all the resources of Heaven at His

disposal. He is compassionate and bold, willingly

laying His life down for you and me even though it

seems so impossible to do. At times like these, when

we are drowning in the sea of life and struggling to

keep afloat, an ancient exorbitant swimming manual is

the last thing we need.

What do we need? We need a lifesaver. We need

Jesus. And what we need to do is call for His help and

let Him save us from ourselves - from the quagmire of

our delusion, alienating isolation, prideful self-

occupation, deadening separation from our Father.

Friends, our lovely Saviour awaits our open hearts and

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open arms. Stop living on struggle street. Stop

stressing in the marketplace. Give all your cares unto

Him. Take His yoke upon you, for His yoke is easy

and His burden light (see Matthew 11:28-30).

Come to Him and find true perpetual rest, not the

counterfeit rest auctioned elsewhere to the highest

bidder. By resting in our Lord and Saviour, you'll find

grace awaiting you just as Noah (meaning 'rest' in

Hebrew) found grace in the eyes of the Lord (see

Genesis 6:8).

Friends, turn away from self and turn towards

Jesus. And you'll find salvation (soteria) like nothing

you've experienced before. It is time.

ה

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Three

TRUE MEDITATION

We live in an age where life’s uncertainties and

stresses push us into all kinds of 'self-help' including

meditation. Meditation in various forms has become a

fad in our busy performance-based culture. Religions

offer myriad brands of meditation for the cashed-up

spiritual consumer.

Buddhism, a tradition I'm most familiar with, has more

than its fair share of diverse meditation techniques for

sale especially the exotic Tibetan ones. And these

Tibetan ones generally do not come cheap. Borrowing

a consumerist metaphor, it is possible to question

whether we are getting the best deal for our financial

outlay when we shop for these spiritual goods. It is

legitimate to ask whether as ‘consumers’, we are being

conned by glossy marketing and modernist revisionism

of old feudal modes of religious control.

True meditation is not for sale. True meditation cannot

be commodified. True meditation does not belong to

the economy of the market. It belongs to the economy

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of gifts. True meditation comes as a priceless gift from

our Triune God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

True meditation goes beyond mere stillness, bliss,

emptiness and awareness, however pristine or nondual,

however philosophically astute or emotively rich. We

hear of so many 'enlightenment' techniques. We are

bombarded with advertisements of meditation for sale

by well-fed, well-endowed, globe-trotting 'enlightened'

masters. Ask yourselves: “What am I really buying

here? Do I really want to spend money on these

branded meditation goods? Why are free spiritual gifts

being turned into cash cows for the religious elite?”

We can probe further. Can a broken world entrenched

in darkness and affliction be restored into wholeness

by spiritual platitudes alone? Is meditation truly the

panacea for all of humanity’s problems? Are masters

of meditation truly world-renouncing saints or are they

clever religious entrepreneurs? Is religious power

vested in hereditary religious authorities, propped up

by structures of religious acculturation, part of the

solution or is it part of the problem?

Wallowing in this masquerade of religious piety that

cloaks exploitative capitalism is deeply problematic. It

lulls us into a false sense of spiritual security measured

by how much money we have. Tragically, money is the

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currency to purchase and consume spiritual goods for

our eternal security. Yet, religious deception and

control over unsuspecting minds has been around for a

long time. So has religious feudalism and legalism that

buttress such deception.

Right then in the time of our Lord Jesus Christ,

religious Pharisees in their religious piety and dead

legalism felt sufficiently threatened by the all-

renewing power of His Spirit to crucify Him. They

laid false accusations against Him and sentenced Him

to death in secrecy. For not only did Jesus challenge

the religious empire of these pious folks, He shook the

very foundations of their lucrative economy built

around their complex religious rituals.

Our Lord faced it then. We face it now.

Friends, it is time to wake up from this nightmarish

religious consumerism and ask ourselves what we

really want for our lives. Challenge your own beliefs

and identity, no matter how much you have invested in

them in the past. Pause for a moment and stop

purchasing spiritual bliss with your credit card or

earning your enlightenment with techniques, practices,

rituals, laws, and more laws.

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Ask yourselves this: what if eternity beyond this

present life is not a hoax but a reality? What if how

and towards whom I orientate my life right now has

eternal implications? And if so, how do I think, reflect,

meditate, contemplate, enquire in a way that is truly

free of the encumbrance of self, religious power, and

Shangri-La consumerism?

What is true meditation that sets me free?

Friends, only in communion with our ever fresh ever

lovely Jesus is there true meditation in the Spirit that

unfailingly enlightens, empowers, nourishes, quenches,

liberates. All self-initiated and self-performed

meditation assuredly fails in the end. Only in, through,

and by Grace is it possible for there to be freedom

from the known, from the self.

Grace is what allows and enables true repentance

(Greek: metanoia) to be unleashed in us. Repentance

means a deep change of heart and mind adorned by

positive behavioural change that sets us free in Christ

Jesus. Be done with man-made religion and self-effort!

Enter into grace. Soak yourself in grace. And flow in

the dynamic resonance of grace!

Grace is a gift to be openly received with a heart that

has come to the end of itself. Grace can never be

35

earned, worked for, deserved by our efforts. Our

Daddy God wants to hang out with us always. Let us

want to hang out with Him. For this sweet fellowship

with Him is the best cafe conversation you can ever

have with anyone. Our appointment with life is now, in

Jesus who is our friend.

Talk to Him. Walk with Him. See all things good or

bad, happy or sad, through His eyes. Marvel at the

fresh air you breathe and the shade of the trees that He

has made just for you! That is the beginning of true

meditation.

Home is where love is. Let us come home to God now,

for God is love. And Christ is the evidence of His love.

Will you come home, my friends?

ה

36

“Talk to Him. Walk with Him. See all things good or bad, happy or sad, through His eyes. Marvel at the fresh air you breathe and the shade of the trees that He has made just for you! That is

the beginning of true meditation”.

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Four

GOING DEEPER

In this chapter, we will not be looking at self-generated,

self-applied, self-maintained meditation. Such is the

way of the world. Man-made religions of the world

propound meditation 'techniques' that share this

common trait. No matter how they are dressed up,

whether with the rhetoric of selflessness or cliches of

guru devotionalism, all ultimately fail to escape the

trap of effort and performance founded in the

individual.

Surveying the various methods of meditation, one can

say that they are based on (1) focusing attention on an

object be it a physical sensation, external object,

visualised image, or awareness itself; (2) inducing

subjective emotional states like love or compassion via

a conceptual or imaginal focus; (3) cultivating a so-

called unbiased awareness of mental or physical events;

(4) analytically probing into an abstract concept such

as emptiness; (5) 'resting' in a space of impersonal

ineffable awareness. While seemingly varied in form,

38

they all exhibit identical structural features.

First, they require from the meditator an investment of

self-effort in the practice. In more advanced stages, the

effort might be so attenuated as to appear seemingly

‘effortless’. Secondly, they are predicated on an object

of meditation however subtle or abstract. Thirdly, they

operate under the system of individual merit and

demerit, performance or lack thereof. Fourthly, they

inexorably entrench the self despite intellectually

sophisticated rhetoric to the contrary. Fifthly, they fail

to go beyond the scope of subject-oriented awareness,

be it egocentric or cosmocentric, localised or non-

localised.

In short, they operate under and can never free

themselves from the confines of self-focused solipsism.

Friends, in the previous chapter, I introduced you to

true meditation rooted in ever fresh ever lovely

communion with Jesus, your personal Lord and

Saviour. I suggested that the beginning of such

meditation lies in opening your senses to the wonders

and miracles of everyday life freely provided for you

by our Lord. And this comes not through forcibly

imposing on yourself a blind belief or idea but solely

through receiving fresh waves of His revelations into

your heart. There is nothing for us to 'do.' There is

39

only holy waiting upon Him in quietness and trust,

with a spiritual posture of willingness, openness,

humility. Having said that, it is possible that as we

begin engaging with this practice, we may feel a sense

of effort in directing attention to Jesus. Or we might

find it much harder than first thought to simply open

and receive from Him. In time however, we come to

realise that even the ‘effort’ to lovingly attend to Jesus

is supplied to us through grace. And so is our openness

to receive from Him. A pure movement of grace.

Friends, there is a deeper dimension to hanging out

with Jesus. Not deeper in terms of practice or

technique. Not deeper in terms of your awareness. But

deeper in His terms, in His eagerness to draw you into

his embrace so you can be forever blessed, highly

favoured, deeply loved with an everlasting love. You

see, my friends, meditation in Christ is not a method of

focusing or resting your awareness on anything. This

meditation has got nothing to do with your self-effort,

your merit, your emotional state, your non-judging

mindfulness, your analytical wisdom, your devotion,

or your spacious luminous ground of awareness.

Rather, this meditation is all about Him and Him alone.

Meditation rests on His everlasting, unfaltering,

altogether lovely meditation on you and I. His

meditation is ever perfect, ever fresh, ever restoring,

40

ever healing, ever providing, ever protecting, ever

loving and ever redeeming in a way beyond anything

you can ever ask or think.

You know what? Your meditation or my meditation

may have ups and downs. We might be smoothly

absorbed one day and hopelessly restless the next. We

might pride ourselves in our realisations or get others

to take pride in us and our attainments. Our meditation

might be ambrosial one day and fallen into the abyss

the next. Who can tell?

But His meditation is unwavering. His meditation is

unsurpassed. His meditation impeccably saves. His

meditation abides timelessly in the ontological depths

of His being, where you and I dwell the moment He

became flesh and took on our humanity.

Our part is to realise we have no part. No part in

keeping up false pretense. No part in self-effortful

practice. No part in looking to our merit or demerit. No

part in training our minds in a graduated fashion or

leaping over into the highest and most refined

techniques of enlightenment. No part in finding and

entering into our own ground of being, however

enticingly spiritual it might seem.

No, my friends, our part at this point is to give up our

41

part and rest totally in Him and His perfect finished

work on the cross! That cross is a symbol of His

perfect meditation in which we can dynamically

participate. Without guile or hypocrisy but with full

surrendering of all that we are and all that we have. For

you and I, our 'deeper' meditation is to simply and

nakedly rest in His peerless unfaltering and life-giving

meditation. His meditation is a passionate outpouring

of His entire being, replete with all His enlightened

wisdom and power, freely imparted to us and for us to

enjoy for eternity.

In the depths of Christ’s being, He as God’s

inexhaustible wisdom enlightens us with effulgent rays

that overcome and transmute all darkness, death,

deception, confusion, and despair. This redemptive

enlightenment began at His incarnation, finished at His

crucifixion, and culminated in His ascension to the

Father’s right hand. Heaven is now our home if we

consent to His presence and action in our lives and

receive Him into our hearts.

You see, my friends, deeper meditation in Christ rests

on remembering and resting in His meditation on us,

for us, as us. From beginning to end, it has never been

about us but always about Him and His redemptive

love for us. Stop running around in the world searching

for the truth that you think or imagine will set you free.

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What you are looking for, or rather Who you are

looking for, is here in front of you and all around you.

Open your eyes and see! Who you are looking for has

always been and is now looking for you. Christ has

already, has always, and is now personally stretching

His hands out to you, calling you to draw near with all

the sweet tenderness and passion of His heart. He is

calling you to come home to Him, to come home to

love.

Will you respond to His finest whispers of love, my

friend?

"And of His fullness we have all received, and grace

upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, but

grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John

1:16-17).

ה

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Five

WALKING WITH GOD THROUGH

SUFFERING

I have often encountered the question of the prevalence

of suffering in our fragile lives and world, and why a

good God would allow such often senseless suffering

to occur. To be honest, I don't know.

What I do know is this: as a Christian, I know that God

cares enough about me to come in person as Jesus

Christ, to go through the worst suffering we can ever

imagine, a suffering which He does not deserve so that

we would never have to go through that same suffering

we justly deserve. You might ask: do we deserve to

suffer like Christ did? The short answer is yes.

And why? Because we who continually fall short of the

perfect goodness and holiness of God; who continually

worship created physical, psychological, social, and

religious idols apart from our Creator Himself; who as

a result of our idolatry commit acts of commission or

44

omission that deprive others of life and peace,

stubbornly persist in thinking of ourselves as somehow

free of fault and entitled to every little comfort of life.

We become so lopsided in our reality orientation that

we deludedly believe that if God exists, He exists

solely to please us and succumb to our every whim and

fancy. But He doesn't.

In spite of all our shortcomings and depravity, God

nevertheless chose to bear the consequences of our

shallowness and squalid natures by incarnating as one

fully human yet fully divine. God became flesh and

dwelt among us to redeem us from ourselves and to

place us in His very being, so we no longer have to

bear the curses of our sinfulness but enjoy eternal

intimacy with God our Father.

What I do know is that my Lord and my God came

down in love for me. He is so much vaster and deeper

than any suffering we can conceive, yet so fully in

touch with our experience of suffering that He suffers

alongside us, with us, in us, for us, as us. What is so

infinitely wondrous and profound is that no matter how

deep or wide our suffering seems to us, in the fiery

cauldron of somatic pain and emotional affliction that

seems so unbearable, there is a divine yet humanly

intimate presence in us that is deeper and wider than

suffering itself. Christ partakes in our human suffering

45

so fully and completely that we can now partake freely

in His divine peace and wholeness, not as a movement

of escape or transcendence, but as something radically

different and unheard of in any wisdom or faith

tradition of the world.

He partakes in our suffering and we partake in His

abundant life and peace through the immanent

transfiguration of our pain and affliction in His

effulgent light. In the midst of our suffering, we see,

hear, smell, taste, feel and cognise the sweet healing

transformative presence of our Lord and Saviour, our

everpresent Emmanuel (God-with-us). Instead of

being swallowed up by suffering, our suffering

however intense or longstanding is swallowed up in

totality by Christ Himself. And as our suffering and its

roots in our false self-identities are decimated in Him,

we are liberated to live more abundantly and

graciously in the plenitude of His resurrection life

flowing in and through us. We who belong to Christ.

And as His brethren, we receive in faith His glorious

salvation which we steadily work out in our dynamic

walk with Him, bearing verdant fruit of the Spirit. We

begin to partake in His binah wisdom, shalom peace,

hesed loving-kindness, shekinah glory, dunamis

power, charis grace, and agape love. Through faith in

Him, His strength is made perfect in our weakness!

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My friends, in the midst of our pain and affliction, we

can look back to what Christ has done for us by Him

becoming flesh, receiving abuse and rejection, getting

scourged and spat on, nailed and crucified, and hung to

die our deaths in the darkest pit of hell. We can look

in to the indwelling Spirit of Jesus in the innermost

recesses of our hearts, to always rest in His embrace no

matter what storms befall us. We can look forward to

the day when He will come again to make all things

new, to usher in the new heavens and a new earth

where pain, sickness, grief and death shall be no more.

I thank Timothy Keller for his insights on these three

points of looking back, looking in, and looking forward

to Christ, the true ground of hope and salvation for all

of us regardless of social and biological differences,

now and forever more.1

Friends, no matter what you are going through right

now, know that you can always come back to Jesus,

who has loved you with an everlasting love. Let not

your pain and afflictions cast you down or hold you in

paralysis. Step into His presence, open your heart to

Him, and let Him love you to the end of time, the end

of all suffering.

For only Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. When

you drink from the bubbling spring flowing from the

spiritual Rock that is Jesus, you will never thirst again.

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If that is you, no matter where you are, from your heart

receive Jesus into your life:

"Lord Jesus Christ, I believe into You. I believe you

became flesh, lived and suffered our humanity, died on

the cross and rose again, and ascended to heaven, all

for me. I am a sinner but your blood has washed me

clean of every sin. Thank you for restoring my right

relationship with our Father. I receive You as my Lord

and Saviour now and forever more!"

If you have prayed this prayer, please accept my warm

welcome into the family of God. You are now a

beloved child of our Father in whom He is well-

pleased. Praise God!

ה

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”Friends, our lovely Saviour awaits our open hearts and open arms. Stop living on struggle street. Stop stressing in the marketplace. Give all your cares unto

Him … … Come to Him and find true perpetual rest, not the counterfeit rest expensively sold elsewhere. By resting in our Lord and

Saviour, you'll find grace awaiting you …”

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Six

LETTING GO INTO TRUE GRACE

Whether we turn to look inwards into our minds or

outwards to the world, we see a constant flurry of

unease. Increasingly, our hearts are not at peace.

Unredeemed life ricochets in a sea of insecurity that

we either ignore or assuage with spiritual palliatives

that do not ultimately work. In our health, relationships,

finance, career, even entertainment, there is neither

real security nor peace. No lasting wholeness that we

can find anytime, anywhere. On the contrary,

everywhere we look, there seem to be reports of stress

and malaise, broken marriages, child abuse, addiction

to drugs and alcohol, economic meltdowns, new

epidemics, rampant acts of terror, ecological

destruction, and mental worry, fear, anxiety and

depression.

When we come to spiritual practice, especially

meditation - a popular past-time in our highly strung

modern world - we often hear of the need to 'let go.'

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Many famous teachers teach this. Many more try to

practise it. Yet very few, if any, succeed in truly letting

go. In the world, when people attempt at letting go,

they either fall into indulgence or sloth. In religion,

when serious folks try to 'let go' as they go about their

meditation, they either fall asleep, fall into addiction,

or just fall. Wait a minute! Did you say addiction,

Chris? Well yes, I did say addiction.

Addiction to what? Addiction to a false peace and

security shut off from the world of meaningful

engagement. Often euphemised as quasi-spiritual

sound bytes like 'calm' or 'tranquillity', what many

serious meditators call 'letting go' is little different

from physiological hibernation that is unfruitful. Such

'letting go' does not come close to creating even a

semblance of genuine peace much needed by a broken

and increasingly darkened world. In man-made

religious practice, it is common to see a life-denying,

unfruitful pseudo-serenity lulling good people to sleep,

or worse, death, if not mortally then psychologically

and spiritually.

For the very few that manage to escape the seductive

blind alley of pseudo-serenity, they may find some

sparkle and peace in what they might regard as

'genuine letting go'. Don't get me wrong. These are

sincere and single-minded individuals seeking a lasting

51

cure for their existential malaise. They are willing to

put in the hard yards and thousands of hours of 'bums

on cushions' in order to meditate properly. Some of

them may even be 'well respected' masters of

meditation, living in forests of Thailand or caves in the

Himalayas. They espouse ethical discipline, simplicity

of needs, earnest awareness, quiet introspection, and

everything else contemplatives think they need to 'let

go' and 'break through' into the deathless state. Though

outwardly simple and even ascetic, one cannot be quite

sure just how much mental clutter is carried inwardly.

But say, for the even rarer few souls that manage to

declutter their minds sufficiently, a more insidious

challenge awaits.

This challenge takes us beyond letting go, to the

ineffable inner peace where our struggles with the

world supposedly end. This is the realm of nibbanic

cessation. Sorry to disappoint you but even the

'complete peace and freedom' that comes from 'letting

go completely' is still located on this side of creation.

Nothing, not even nibbana, breaks through to the

Beyond, to the Creator who can never be reached by

self-effort but who instead reaches out for us by a pure

movement of grace. The initiative and timing is all

from His side, not ours. There is nothing for the ego –

gross, super-attenuated, or seemingly absent – to do.

Nibbanic consciousness itself remains incapable of

52

touching the other side of creation ‘where’ the Triune

One is, ceaselessly outpouring His love to us.

Thus, for the extremely rare person who lets go

completely, his or her struggles with the world may

have ended but the groanings of a struggling and

broken world remain unabated. Even if the completely

peaceful heart can now respond sensitively to the pain

of the world, the limited human, however enlightened,

can never save the world from pain, or restore its

brokenness, or redeem its fallenness. Humanity can

never save humanity, for humanity itself is in need of

saving.

Only God who is eternally beyond humanity and

creation yet immanently passionate in humanity and

creation can, and will, save. It is written,

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only

begotten Son that whosoever believes into (Greek: eis)

Him shall not perish but have everlasting life" (John

3:16).

Christ did not come into our world to condemn but to

save. Many, especially religious and legalistic folks,

rejected Him. Yet what crucified Him on the cross was

not Roman mercilessness or Jewish contempt but the

totality of all humanity's sins. Yes, including the sin

53

of overestimating our own power to save ourselves, the

false thinking that we can meditate our way to

salvation, and that our self-efforts will liberate us in

the end. I used to think like the world does, like man-

made religions do. But not now. Now I know better.

Now I know that this rhetoric of salvation by and

through self-effort is nothing but a big fat lie.

Salvation, which is total deliverance and wholeness

comes by and through Christ alone. When we see

deeply the loveliness of the person of Jesus, joy and

hope overfills our heart. When we comprehend the

perfection of His finished complete work on the cross

on our behalf, faith overwhelms us and peace reigns in

our conscience. We realise that freedom and peace is

neither about us nor is it the result of our efforts,

whether individual or collective. From beginning to

the end, it is and has always been about Him and His

love for us. Love came down, full of grace and truth, to

set us irrevocably free.

Friends, when we keep our gaze and understanding on

Jesus, our Redeemer and Friend, we cannot help but

taste His freedom and His peace. Mired in sin and

curse since the fall of humanity at creation's dawn, we

have suffered the fruit of our own rebellious pride.

This same rebellious pride keeps us in the circle of

self-effort and performance-based spirituality, and

54

stops us from coming into intimacy with our Father.

He yearns to draw us close to Him, to embrace us in

His infinite heart of love, to give us all the blessings of

salvation He wants for us. But He will not force these

blessings upon us if we choose to reject His Son,

whom He has sent to save us from ourselves. On the

cross, God's justice and mercy kissed.

God's holiness can never condone sin and leave sin

unpunished. But God's mercy can never bear the cries

of our pain even if our sinful acts rooted in our old

Adamic nature need to be dealt with. So God sent His

Son instead - One who is one nature with the Father,

One who knew no sin and did no sin and is not sin (see

2 Cor 5:21) - to be sin for us so that we may become

the righteousness of God in Him. How great is the love

of our Father for us that He chose to enact His

righteous justice on His Son who is one with Him, so

we may be brought into close intimacy with Him.

Because of Jesus, we can now come boldly to the

throne of our Father and cry, "Abba, we are Your

beloved children in whom You are well-pleased!"

Friends, the more we look to Jesus and His finished

work, the more we fall deeply in love with Him. Faith

arises and grows effortlessly. As faith grows, the

pipelines of God's supply burst open so we can receive

more fully than ever before the infinite blessings that

55

He is ever pouring out to us. Blessings encompassing

our material and spiritual natures but more importantly

blessings that enable and empower us to be more and

more like Christ.

Here, our letting go has a sure foundation. Our letting

go of all self-effort and performance-based thinking

allows us to transcend the many blind alleys of self-

directed practice of 'letting go.' We cease looking to

ourselves for deeper and deeper releasing of our

neuroses and tensions. We stop believing in the

deception of self-earned enlightenment. Our letting go

is grounded in the fathomless ocean of God's grace.

Believing into Him goes far beyond and far deeper

than mere belief of an individual subject in an external

object however supreme. Instead, believing into Him

denotes a dynamic process and movement of trust and

love, where the lover and the beloved entwine in a

shared passion, shared intimacy surpassing notions of

'I' and 'mine', 'I here' and 'you there'.

So, faith or believing into Jesus profoundly conjures

the sense of peerless letting go into God's

inexhaustible supply. Wave after wave of unearned,

undeserved, unmerited favour unceasingly flows to us,

with fresh supply of grace for every new challenge or

trial. We do not seek it. We do not labour for it. We

only hasten (Gk: spoudazo) to enter into that rest of

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Christ's finished work. This is a rest and refreshing that

surpasses anything we can ever ask or think, for it is

not born of the flesh but of the Spirit.

Bear in mind though that I am speaking

epistemologically, not ontologically. As far as the

ontological chasm between absolute Godhead and

historical creature is concerned, I as a created being am

inescapably distinct and apart from Him who is

timelessly beyond all conceptual and linguistic

confinement. He is LORD. I am His. Jesus the Son has

joined me in and through Him to HIM the Father in the

Spirit.

Friends, let us raise our hands in letting go and letting

God's supply flow. Let us turn away from self-

occupation and turn towards Christ. Let us let go in

Christ alone who is our Refuge, Rock and Shelter for

all time.

The Lord bless and keep you and be gracious to you in

these end-times. Come, Lord Jesus, come!

ה

57

“We cease looking to ourselves for deeper and deeper releasing of our neuroses and

tensions. We stop believing in the deception of self-earned enlightenment. Our

letting go is grounded in the fathomless ocean of God's grace.”

58

“Rather, our sovereign and almighty God is able to voluntarily assume the totality of our corrupt humanity so as to

confront, overcome, and transmute sin and evil in the depths of his very being.

59

Seven

VINDICTIVE WRATH OF GOD: GNOSTIC VIRUS IN DISGUISE?

My brothers and sisters, I'd like to briefly address a

thorny and possibly highly controversial issue. For a

while now, a phrase often used in church preaching

and writings has bothered me. This phrase has led me

to reflect on the kind of God we worship as Christians

and the implications of our view of God on the way we

relate to others, especially those we consider 'outsiders'

or 'non-believers'. In his inimitably quiet and

unobtrusive way, the Spirit gathered me in

conversations with respected elders in Christ and

prompted me to finally write this piece. Here goes.

To cut to the chase, let me just say outright what I

currently think. I am persuaded that the theology of the

wrath of God exacting divine punishment on sin due to

God's utter disgust of sin, and by extension exacting

punishment on Christ who acts as our penal substitute,

is problematic. This theology of God's wrath as

articulated seems to me to rest on at least the following

60

assumptions, assumptions which may prove to be

fallacious.

First, there is a conflation of sin and sinner resulting in

punishment of the sinner when the actual target should

be sin. How (and for that matter why) should sin be

'punished' in a wrathful way begs an answer in its own

right.

Secondly, there is conflation of God's way of dealing

with sin and Man's way of punishing sin. Sociological

and anthropological studies might show just how

humanly constructed the notion of 'punishment' is

especially when exacted in response to violation of

social norms and cultural behaviours. But is God really

like that? Or are we creating a punishing angry God

that reflects our own inadequate and immature

response to the problem of sin?

Thirdly, there seems to be a confusion of God's 'wrath'

as spiteful anger seeking destruction at all costs rather

than as a 'welling up' of determined resolve to deal

with sin, as in original Greek 'orge' which signifies

'welling up or rising of energy' but often translated as

'wrath.'

Fourthly, there seems also to be a forgetting of

Patristic theology of the early church, which theology

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has been the basis of the Christian faith from its

beginnings to the present day. In particular, today's

preaching seems so obsessed with the crucifixion event

that the entire teaching on the incarnational redemption

effected in and through Christ seems to be forgotten

and unspoken. In the nondualistic incarnational view

of the Church Fathers (e.g. Athanasius, Ireneaus, Cyril

of Alexandria), sin and evil has been forever dealt with

by God in the ontological depths of Christ's humanity

by the transmuting power of the Lord's kenotic love.

Our biblical God is not a God who fears or abhors evil

to the extent he has to quarantine himself from it.

Rather, our sovereign and almighty God is able to

voluntarily assume the totality of our corrupt humanity

so as to confront, overcome, and transmute sin and evil

in the depths of his very being. And because of this,

evil no longer has any hold over us. Evil is real. But

evil is not on par with God. In the end, evil is parasitic

on good and has no substance given its nature as

privation of good. God is far greater than evil and has

no need to fear or excise himself from evil (I am

indebted to brother Wilfred Yeo for thought-provoking

conversations on this and other issues.)

Finally, the presupposition that God hates sin and

cannot come near it suggests a Gnostic recoiling from

impurity and evil on the part of our God. Gnosticism,

62

considered a dangerous heresy in the early church, is

an insidious perverted view of spirit's utter separation

from matter where what belongs to spirit is

uncompromisingly pure and what belongs to matter

and the world is inescapably corrupt. How can this be

for our biblical God of love and justice who is absolute

creator yet personally immanent in his relationality and

historicity? Have we in our human inability to accept

the messy corruption of life and the instinctual

avoidance of brokenness (physical, emotional or

spiritual) inadvertently fallen prey to the Gnostic virus

that has infected our theology without us even

knowing?

Much more can be said about how we are to

understand scriptural passages where the 'wrath' of

God is mentioned. Also, the theology of the crucifixion

and resurrection of Jesus Christ can be further

unpacked in light of the foregoing discussion. That is a

matter for another time and another post.

Friends, I know what I have written here may shatter

strongly held beliefs (even my own as attested to in

previous posts) and provoke some anger (not least

towards me.) But I share these ideas and questions

with you in the hope that we can participate in a

process of free and open inquiry grounded in love so

that we may reclaim what is true and gracious in

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accord with our Father's heart for his children and his

kingdom.

Let the gospel of truth and grace shine brightly in these

dark times.

ה

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“And because of this, evil no longer has any hold over us. Evil is real. But evil is not on par with God. In the end, evil is parasitic on good and has no substance

given its nature as privation of good.”

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Eight

KENOTIC GOD AND DYNAMIC SUNYATA

The late Masao Abe (1915-2006) was a Japanese Zen

Buddhist and professor in religious studies who became

prominent in Buddhist-Christian interfaith dialogue. Abe's

distinctive brand of Kyoto school philosophy challenges

us to rethink alike our stock conceptions of God in the

Judeo-Christian context and of emptiness (śūnyatā) in the

Buddhist context. I have been stimulated by his writings in

this regard, especially his thought-provoking piece

Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata.2

Much can be said about the various strands of Abe's ideas

in this seminal article. But here, I'd like to focus on just

one of these strands. I am particularly intrigued by Abe's

theological challenge posed to the notion of God's love

and its relationship to choice. For Abe, as I understand

him, the Buddhist notion of śūnyatā or emptiness denotes

the radical groundlessness of all things given that

everything exists in utter dependence on everything else

and thus nothing is a closed self-existent entity in the

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Buddhist schema. In other words, śūnyatā points to the

'boundless openness' and 'agentless spontaneity' of

ultimate reality, a reality that is simultaneously seamless

with the historical and the relative. The relative world of

mountains and rivers, animals and plants, humans and

their technological marvels is none other than the ultimate

sphere of śūnyatā - a truth perceptible to and experienced

by one fully awakened as a result of meditative endeavour.

For me, Abe's reading of śūnyatā poses a theological

question to the Christian who believes in an absolute

personal God standing behind the realm of created order,

who as a self-existent being (whose existence is not

dependent on extraneous causes or conditions) loves all

creation and humanity with unconditional agape. For Abe,

śūnyatā applies to all of reality - relative or ultimate,

created or uncreated (whatever that means) - and thus

would apply to God if he indeed exists (which to general

Buddhist sensibility, he obviously does not). How,

assuming that reality is indeed radically interdependent,

fluid, open, and agentless at its core (with agency nothing

but a false reified apprehension of what is essentially

process through and through), can there be room for a self-

existent unchanging creator God that stands ontologically

apart from creation acting upon and in created reality?

Would not such divine action imply change on the part of

God for what is action but a change of some sort?

Moreover, if God cannot escape change by virtue of its

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creative activity, would this not imply that God cannot be

self-existent or independently existing from his own

side? Hence, would God not be empty or of the nature of

emptiness (śūnyatā ) as per Abe?

I'd like to address this challenge in several ways. First, by

addressing the tension between notions of an eternal God

and a God that changes. Secondly, by showing how a

changing yet self-existent God can be said to have a nature

of emptiness (śūnyatā) and yet is inexhaustibly beyond

any human attempts to conceptually confine him. Thirdly,

by arguing that seeing God through the non-dualistic and

relational lens of Patristic theology (a perspective that is

often missing or lost in today's Christian preaching and

teaching) allows us to speak of the kenotic or self-

emptying God without compromising the real personhood

of the Triune God.

First, the biblical God is eternal, timeless, standing outside

time yet is immanently present in and active upon

temporal reality. How is this possible? My view is that the

nature of God in terms of both his communicable and

incommunicable qualities (i.e. impassibility, aseity, love,

omniscience, omnipotence, goodness etc.) intrinsic to

himself are eternal, timeless, unchanging, just as the

fluidity and wetness of water is unchanging no matter

whether the water is clean, dirty, muddy, coloured, cloudy,

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or transparent. Better still, the two atoms of hydrogen and

one atom of oxygen that comprise the water molecule

remain unchanged no matter whether that water is clean or

dirty. Hence, God is self-existent in so far as his

intrinsicality is concerned.

Functionally, God moves and acts and thus 'changes' in

and through his eloquent dynamism that is expressed in

both creation and incarnation, just as water can take many

shapes and sizes according to its container or flow rapidly

or slowly according to its volume and slope of its terrain.

God is thus enousios logos* or intrinsically eloquent by

nature. God speaks and his Word (logos) is what makes all

things possible, rendering order and rationality to

everything that is made. God is also enousios energeia* or

intrinsically active by nature. God creates and shapes all

things, intervenes in the created order, and incarnates as a

human being out of love to redeem, save, and free all

creation from the prison of sin and darkness. Note that his

eloquence and creativity are not separate from his being or

nature as demonstrated by the word enousia meaning 'in

his essence or nature'. Rather they are non-dualistic and

inseparable. Hence, God is eternally unchanging in

intrinsic nature and constantly changing in function - an

eloquent dynamism that is integral to his nature.

Secondly, an eloquent dynamic God is thus empty of a

static reified self-existence that Aristotelian thought would

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call an Unmoved Mover. In fact, using Aristotelian

categories to capture the biblical God so as to understand

him is, to my view, to try to tame something that is not

easily subject to domestication. Such a move is also

anachronistic and risks obfuscation rather than

clarification. By stripping away our conditioned

Aristotelian lens, we can approach the creative being of

God in fresh ways that come closer to a view indigenous

to scripture itself. In this regard, Abe's conception of

śūnyatā may prove helpful in so far as it offers a

relationally dynamic metaphysic and an open spontaneous

epistemology that speak to the truths of the God of the

Bible. In so doing, Abe's śūnyatā may serve to bring into

sharper focus the boundlessly spontaneous and agentless

heart of God as he dances and weaves the fabric of the

kosmos in creation and implements the redemptive

incarnational design of the saving Christ.

In the absolute interior of his own relational being, God is

ceaselessly outpouring in love between Father, Son and

Spirit, the three Persons of Godhead. Our Triune God is

eternally three yet one, one yet three, not so much in terms

of oneness in substance, but in terms of conjoint

relationality where each Person of the Godhead co-exists

only in relationship with the other. There is to my mind

no other way the three Persons can exist without falling

into the chasm of substantialism - be it of the unity or

multiplicity kind. Both substantialist unity and

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substantialist multiplicity pose intractable theological and

practical problems which I will not discuss here. Thus,

Father is Father only in relation to the Son; Son is Son

only in relation to the Father; Spirit is Spirit only in

relation to both Father and Son. The three Persons of the

Godhead are three in the several relationship but one in

the joint relationship (I attribute this joint-several

relationality framework to my theologically informed and

Spirit-filled elder brother in Christ, Wilfred Yeo).

Each Person is a person in so far as they relate,

communicate, care and love. In other words, personhood

is not a synonym of isolated agency or inherent existence

but a functional descriptor of pure relationality and love.

As such, when we speak of the biblical God as ceaselessly

outpouring in love within the interior relationality of his

being, we can understand this as an act of agentless

spontaneity in a field of boundless openness that is

śūnyatā.

Having said that, we must be careful not to think that we

have exhausted all that can be said of God's innermost

nature. On the contrary, if God is by definition fathomless

truth and grace (pleroma), it bodes us well to adopt a

posture of intellectual and spiritual humility even as we

earnestly seek to fathom him on this side of creation. In

other words, we would do well to embrace an open-ended

hermeneutic that creatively seeks to answer the deepest

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questions yet is endlessly enthralled by how much of the

incomprehensible mystery of God we do not yet know.

Thirdly, by returning to the early roots of the Christian

faith in Patristic theology, especially the thought of church

fathers like Athanasius, Ireneaus, and Cyril of Alexandria,

we can catch a glimpse of their non-dualistic and

relational insights into the Godhead that enables a fresh

appropriation of the gospel for these troubled times. In the

contest against Gnostic tendencies and dualistic-separative

views of God in the first few centuries of the church,

luminaries such as Athanasius and others sought to

reclaim a biblically sound understanding of God

encapsulated in the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. Prominent

20th century theologian Thomas F. Torrance writes of the

deeply non-dualistic, integral and relational God of

Scripture as opposed to the spiritually isolated, impersonal,

separative God of the Gnostics that finds itself utterly and

forever quarantined from any trace of evil, brokenness, sin

or corruption.

To Torrance and Athanasius, such a hyper-sanitised

conception of God is not only unbiblical but wrong. The

God of the Old and New Testaments is a profoundly

personal God who is not afraid to get his hands dirty, so to

speak. He is a God who is not afraid of evil, sin,

corruption, brokenness. For though evil is real and

effectual, it is nevertheless secondary to good at best, for

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evil is simply a privation of good. The substantial reality

here is good not evil. Evil is parasitic on good and

ultimately holds no water. Thus, God has no need to

quarantine himself from evil out of fear or disgust. God

can, is able and willing to come down to our level of

brokenness through his self-emptying love, to incarnate as

us in and through Christ and redeem our sin and

corruption within the ontological depths of his humanity.

Christ the Son, as incarnate Word and Saviour, comes to

us in our fallenness and incorporates all of us into his fully

assumed humanity. In joint-oneness with the kosmos and

humanity, Christ the Son of Man shines his light and

wisdom into our darkened hearts and souls, enlightening

us to all truth and with his Spirit empowering us to grow

in all that is good, true and beautiful. Christ confronts,

masters and transmutes all evil within the depths of his

and our humanity by his self-emptying love. Indeed, this

is love.

Self-emptying or kenotic love.

That God is willing and able to change for us, partaking in

our human nature in order that we can partake in his

divine nature. Such change on God's part does not in any

way exhaust who he is and all he is; nor does it detract

from his eternal nature as God. Rather, his condescending

and incarnational love exalts who he really is. A God of

total and unconditional love and justice in accord with his

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righteousness.3 Strictly speaking, it is the Son who empties

himself through kenosis to become flesh and dwell

amongst us. But God being a triunity of Persons whose

integral wholeness should and can never be broken, it is in

my view possible to speak of God emptying himself for us.

In other words, since the Father and Spirit are necessarily

present where the Son is, it makes no sense to talk of the

kenotic Christ without implying a kenotic Father and

kenotic Spirit - thus a kenotic God is necessarily implied.

Bringing in Abe at this point, I argue that in the absolute

interiority of God's relational being, a spontaneous and

agentless outpouring of love endlessly flows between the

three Persons of the Godhead. This flow of love is at once

an effulgence of divine eloquence (enousios logos) and

dynamism (enousios energeia) intrinsic to God's being.

And that this self-emptying love is no different from the

fathomless expanse of boundless openness at the heart of

God's being.4 And from God's heart, from his absolute

interiority of being, he creates the universe in an explosion

of rapture and incarnates as Man out of his irresistible

self-emptying love. This creative and loving act of God

reiterates the fundamentally personal and relational

essence of his being.

In conclusion, I hope I have shown that the Triune God of

the Christian faith is both a self-existent eternal being and

dynamically loving creator and saviour. This seeming

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tension between the unchanging and changing natures of

God is resolved in the nondualistic relational

understanding of the Godhead through retrieval of the

essence of Patristic theology. The complementariness of

God's eternality and dynamism is well expressed in the

non-substantialist, non-reifying discourse of

śūnyatā applicable to both the whole of creation and the

absolute interiority of God's relational being. More can be

unpacked and said, but enough for now.

"In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us

and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our

sins" (1 John 4:10).

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me

and I in you, you will bear much fruit ... As the Father has

loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love"

(John 15:5, 9).

ה

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“That God is willing and able to change for us, partaking in our human nature in

order that we can partake in his divine nature. Such change on God's part does not in

any way exhaust who he is and all he is; nor does it detract from his eternal nature as God. Rather, his condescending and

incarnational love exalts who he really is.”

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Terminology

*Ke.no.sis. (Gk.) : | "A Greek word used in theology with

reference to the self denial of the Son of God in becoming

incarnate and entering into His state of humiliation. The

use of the term is based upon Philippians 2:7 where the

phrase heauton 'ekenose, 'emptied Himself,' occurs. ...

[See also John 17:5 and 2 Corinthians 8:9 for other places

where this idea finds expression.]" [i]

*Pur.na. (Skt.) : || A Sanskrit word denoting the fullness,

perfection, and wholeness of the Divine that is essentially

infinite and complete in itself, free of any need to fulfil

desires.

*Ple.ro.ma. (Gk.) : || "[A Greek word that ...] denotes

'fullness'that of which a thing is 'full'; it is thus used of the

grace and truth manifested in Christ, John 1;16; of all His

virtues and excellencies, Ephesians 4:13; ... God in the

completeness of His being, Ephesians 3:19; Colossians

1:19; 2:9. ..." [ii]

*Sun.ya.ta. (Skt.) : || "[A Sanskrit word denoting ...] the

doctrine of 'emptiness' or 'voidness' stressed in many

Mahayana sutras. It goes beyond the early Buddhist

position of anatman (not-self) in stating that even dharmas

[phenomena] have no existence in their own right. One

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must be careful to understand that sunyata itself is not an

ontological state, and that even emptiness is empty." [iii]

________________

[i] Merrill F. Unger and R. K. Harrison (eds.) (1057, 1988) The

New Unger's Bible Dictionary. Chicago: Moody Bible Institute of

Chicago, p. 734.

[ii] W. E. Vine, Merrill F. Unger, William White, Jr. (1984,

1996) Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New

Testaments. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, p. 259.

[iii] Charles S. Prebish and Damien Keown (2006) Introducing

Buddhism. New York: Routledge, p. 284.

ה

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“The King has emptied Himself to be

for, with, and as us. He who deserves all worship chose to wash His disciples' feet, our feet. Let Him wash you now. Let Him love you with an everlasting love.”

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Nine

IDOLATRY

Human beings are experts in idolatry. We do this

almost instinctively. We need no training. Often

though, training in the form of social and cultural

conditioning further entrenches our instinctive idolatry.

And what's worse is that we do not even know we are

idolaters. Even if inchoate whispers in the depths of

our souls seek to penetrate through the fog of our

denial, we are only too quick to ignore or hush up

these whispers. Pride trumps self-honesty. A case of

fragile egos fearing exposure. Broken human beings.

Totems of idolatry

What comes to mind when you read the word

'idolatry'? Religious statues? Graven images? Mega-

buildings and oversized monuments of religious

worship? Well yes. These are totems of idolatry no

doubt. But there is more. In our media-hyped world,

we are bombarded with TV strains of idolatry such as

American Idol, Australian Idol, and what not. Hyper-

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ventilating over creaturely symbols of cosmetic, sexy,

populist charm. In our hyper-modern society, we crave

as sources for our deepest identity and fulfilment

media-caricatured idols of money, sex, romance, power,

prestige, possessions, partners, internet dates, facebook

fans, twitter followers, food. Even innocuous things

that can be good when seen in their right perspective

can become idols for us when we place all our identity

and hope in them. Things like marriage, career,

children, and nature itself.

Idolatry of nature

While creation before the Fall is indeed good, it is now

darkened and broken. When we worship nature or

embed our spirituality in it, we are entrusting our souls

to something broken, transient, disintegrating,

ultimately unreliable. Instead of allowing creation to

point us to the creative luminosity of its Maker, we

idolise the created dis-order of nature. We build our

fragile hope on the fragile earth, inviting us into more

pain, fear and despair when climate change threatens to

burn up the planet. Broken creation can never be a

source of refuge for broken humanity. And you

guessed it - broken humanity by itself can never save

the planet. We cannot even save ourselves.

But wait, there is more, still.

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What underlies our idolatry

As we begin to dig beneath the facade of shallow

niceties of our unreflective lives, we might intimate the

need for a more profound approach to living. We begin

to explore spirituality. Given our stress-filled and fast-

paced world, the high demand for quick fixes to our

mental burdens and existential angst is not surprising.

We see an explosion of new age modalities, exotic

eastern mysticism, body-bending and mind-contorting

yoga, Zen rogues in robes, and Tibetan lamas

marooned in ritual flamboyance or intellectual

gymnastics. Not to mention charismatic tele-

evangelists more interested in your money and

submission than your salvation. In our hunger and

longing for what will truly satisfy us, satisfying our

deepest needs for wholeness, liberation from captivity,

freedom from exile, homecoming and belonging, a

peace beyond all understanding, we forget the very

thing that ever will and wander aimlessly searching for

what never will. We forget the source of our life and

ground of our being. Our source and ground in our

Father who was, is, and always will be the absolute

fulfilment of all our longings and hopes.

We have but do not yet know the God-shaped hole in

our hearts. This inner void propels us to seek God in

all the wrong places, things and persons. The Creator

can never be conflated with the created. Whether we

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like it or not, whatever we think of God due to our life

tribulations, the fact remains that we long for all the

things that only God can provide. Thirsting for yet

resisting love. Hungering for warmth yet hardening our

frozen hearts. Longing for intimacy yet frightened of

the costs. Searching for yet not finding peace. Wanting

to be made whole yet lingering in brokenness.

Intimating that Grace awaits you yet shrinking back for

fear of losing yourself.

As a result, we distract ourselves. We fill our empty

lives with busyness, noise, social attachments,

ambitions, agendas, empire-building (material or

spiritual), cult personalities, gurus and masters - a

plethora of idols that capture and imprison us rather

then set us free. Is that all?

Idolatry of vested interests

No, we distract ourselves with consolations of multiple

lifetimes. That we will be reborn or reincarnated again and

again - for some a comforting thought, for others a

terrifying problem to be solved. I find the classic line of

Jack Nicholson playing the role of Edward Cole in "The

Bucket List" (a fine movie worth watching) to be salient

and spot-on. In the movie, Edward asked his friend Carter

Chambers (played by Morgan Freeman) what it takes for a

snail to climb up the evolutionary ladder if indeed the tale

of reincarnation is true. Whether he knows it or not (I

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suspect he does), Edward's skepticism poses a question

that threatens to punch a gaping hole in the rebirth

doctrine.

In the same vein, we can ask what it takes for a bacteria, a

virus, a cockroach, a rat, a giraffe, a flatworm for instance

to be reborn as a creature higher up in the pecking

order. And conversely, what atrocity or rottenness does a

human have to perform to be reborn as an E. Coli

bacterium as opposed to a phagocytotic single-celled

amoeba. One may sit on a high throne preaching the

'scientific' doctrine of rebirth to the masses but fail in

every way to account for the actual workings of karma or

rebirth in intelligible ways acceptable to the scientifically

informed community. If one is preaching as a religious

hawker, that is fine. But if one wishes to claim that this is

all 'science', grounded in 'reason' and 'logic', essential to

the identity of a world religion that seeks the truth, then

one runs into a problem at once intellectual and moral.

For a complex idolatry couching itself in the rhetoric of

multiple lifetimes may strike pseudo-scientific tones for

some but finally hits an intellectual ditch where answers

are scarce, evasive, or absent. Stock responses tout that

only fully enlightened beings can answer such tough

questions with specificity and accuracy. But are these

questions really that tough? Surely, they are merely the

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next logical line of questioning that follows standard

presentations of the rebirth doctrine!

For a religion or 'science' (as some proclaim) that proudly

defines itself by the use of 'logic' and 'reason' to arrive at

truth, it seems to me intellectually dishonest if not morally

suspect to promote an inexplicable grand narrative such as

rebirth with so much zeal yet so little credibility. A

'credibility' which is supposed to lend contemporary

relevance to such 'science'. The trouble is that this veneer

of 'credibility' hides an inconvenient truth. The truth about

the masked idolatry of vested religious, economic and

political interests shot through with hypocrisy and

intellectual bankruptcy.

Idolatry of meditative experience

As we go deeper into our spiritual lives, as we make

'progress' in our meditative lives, we start to

experience stuff. Heady stuff. Earthy stuff. Neurotic

stuff. Heavenly stuff. Mystical stuff. Enlightenment

stuff. We begin to feel vastly different than before. We

wallow in peaks of blissful oneness and depths of clear

insights. Depending on your spiritual ideology, you

may either conflate your very being with cosmic

consciousness, Self (atman), divine Being (brahman)

or think you have awakened to buddha-nature,

emptiness, the Tao, or even accomplished the rainbow

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body (which by the way is so fragile it requires

delicate environmental conditions for its manifest

transmutation from the coarse stinking dying body) or

think of your attainment in terms of some other

fanciful mystical permutations. Here is the catch. You

have just entangled yourself in arguably the most

subtle idolatry of all.

A hyper-spiritualised identity formed from self-

performance apart from the true ground of light, love

and life. The personal Triune ground that is immanent

in yet utterly transcendent to creation, irreducible to

creation (pantheism) or enclosing of creation

(panentheism). And certainly not some impersonal

truth or abstract principle that is subject to the control

of one's intellectual fabrication and emotional whim

and fancy. You see, it costs nothing for you to be made

one with impersonal cosmic consciousness or abstract

pure awareness or ineffable nirvana. It costs nothing

because there is no relationship.

Relationship requires that you give of yourself. And

relationship with God costs you everything. Ultimately,

in non-relational spiritual idolatry, you - the broken,

fallen you - remain in control despite your mistaken

assumption of self-transcendence. Even though in

reality you are not and have never been in control.

Rather, the sinful corruption within controls you.

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Whether you like it or not. Whether you know it or not.

Whether you are honest enough to admit it or not. And

that is the problem.

Idolatry from the beginning

That has been the problem from the beginning of

creation. The book of Genesis is a narrative of how our

rebellious rejection of God's presence and action in our

lives broke the fabric of the cosmos and ushered in

darkness both material and spiritual. We idolised our

selves. And out of that primordial idolatry comes death.

Death in our minds. Death in our hearts. Death of our

bodies. Death and despair.

Now you may say that I am being Exclusivist. Bigoted.

Dogmatic. Okay. But so are you. Our so-called

postmodern sensibility might delude us into a feel-

good 'all is truth' and 'all paths lead to Rome' mindset.

We might think that such a mindset is 'inclusive',

'universal', 'accepting', truly 'tolerant' of divergent

views. But I beg to differ. This mindset might well

prove to be the most insidiously intolerant and

exclusivist perspective of all. And hypocritical too.

Why? Because that very mindset of 'inclusivism'

excludes any view that claims to be the only

truth. That very mindset of 'universalism' is actually

rooted in presuppositions of effluent, white,

metropolitan, middle class, anglophonic society in

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modernity that perceives itself intellectually superior

to untamed others.

To claim as in the proverbial five blind men and the

elephant analogy that each of the diverse worldviews

does only grasp a part of the whole truth with each

equally valid to another is to implicitly claim that we

see sufficiently the whole elephant to tell others they

have only grasped its parts. How else can you make

such a claim except from a presumed vantage point of

objectivity that is in fact just as subjective? Sorry to

say but you are not standing on some neutral

epistemological ground that arbitrates all truths. Thus,

to spout such 'inclusivist' rhetoric is actually to

proclaim an underlying exclusivism that is hidden

beneath the rosy surface. And such exclusivism is

insidious for its hiddenness, hypocritical for its

proclamation otherwise, and is to my mind worse off

than if one is to make an exclusive truth claim

outrightly, honestly, truthfully. For we are all

exclusivists. We are all bigots. Let us admit it and get

on with it.

Be done with idolatry

One final thing to say. Some of you might know that I

have been a Buddhist teacher and meditation guide for

many years. Some of you might remember and perhaps

still experience the bewilderment and angst of seeing

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your Buddhist teacher fade into oblivion and emerge as

a Christian disciple and blogger. I'd like to invite you

to question your own assumptions. Your own clinging

to images and views. Let's put everything you've learnt

into action now. If you want to be Buddhist, let's be

Buddhist to the end. Let go of your images and

projections of your Buddhist teacher, his Buddhist

identity, and your own Buddhist identity. Are you

game enough to do that? Are you able to penetrate into

your own idolatry with the light of truth? The truth that

will set you free?

My friends, no one and no thing created on this earth

can set you free. Not even yourself. No saffron-robed

monk sequestered in Thai forests; no Zen patriarch

building his spiritual empire; no Tibetan lama

presiding over his feudal kingdom; no creaturely

human however 'enlightened'; not even the Buddha

himself. Even he needs saving.

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, my soul.

I will praise the Lord all my life;

I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who

cannot save.

When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;

on that very day their plans come to nothing.

Blessed are those whose help is in the God of Jacob;

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whose hope is in the Lord their God.

He is the Maker of heaven and earth;

the sea, and everything in them - he remains faithful

for ever. (Psalm 146: 1-6)

Idolatry is idol worship. An idol is a created object that

has usurped the place of the Creator in our hearts.

Borrowing from Timothy Keller, an idol is a

'counterfeit god' so to speak.5 To worship is to ascribe

ultimate worth and value to a thing in such a way as to

be changed or transformed (as I once heard Timothy

Keller say). To ascribe such ultimate worth and value

to the multitude of idols in our lives is to open

ourselves to being changed. But changed in a bad way.

So bad as to spiral down into darkness and death. To

worship idols is to be changed in the direction of

captivity, exile, bondage, slavery. As is often said, the

door out of Hell is locked from the inside. We

effectively lock ourselves in Hell when we reject the

love, light and life of our redeeming and saving Lord.

Why do we keep locking ourselves in?

Stop rebelling now. Stop rejecting love. Let Him break

through into your heart. For He has done it all on the

cross. He has received the greatest abuse and evil just

to save us. He has come not to be served or prostrated

to, but to serve with all His heart. The King has

emptied Himself to be for, with, and as us. He who

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deserves all worship chose to wash His disciples' feet,

our feet. Let Him wash you now. Let Him love you

with an everlasting love. Let Him come into you now

and you shall never thirst again.

Only one God. One Lord. One Spirit. One Name. Jesus.

My friends, God is no longer unknown. No longer

impersonal. No longer distant.

He has a face.

The face of Jesus.

ה

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"Father, even as you draw us to Your Son and

Your Son reveals You to us as our Abba, may the Holy Spirit awaken us unto all the times we have idolised anything, anyone, even our very selves. Let us discern with ruthless honesty and wisdom the God-shaped hole in our hearts driving us to all sorts of idolatry that ultimately crush and deaden us. For what life is there in lifeless statues, monuments, ideologies, mental images, creaturely comforts, charismatic personalities, spiritual highs? Help us Lord to see Your face, as if for the first time, and let Your healing flow of love, life and light enter into our hopeless lives. Empower us to see and know You for who You really are - the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Saviour and Redeemer, our Lover and Friend. And as our restless hearts find their repose and rest in You, may we always be cradled in the unfailing embrace of your unending grace. In Jesus' name. Amen"

ה

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“Let Him break through into your heart. For He has done it all on the cross. He has received the greatest abuse and evil just to save us. He has come not to be served or prostrated to, but to serve with

all His heart.”

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Ten

SELF-EMPTYING LOVE OF CHRIST

God is good. And true. And ever so beautiful.

After months of prayerful waiting on the Lord, a

quickening has transpired in my soul. He has led me to

a new place to meet a new person this morning. The

place was The Old Franciscan Friary at the Brookfield

Centre for Christian Spirituality. A serene, translucent,

thinly-veiled place where the light and love of God

shines through. A cosy contemplative chapel sits in the

centre of the quiet green surrounds, where a Celtic

labyrinth on its side invites pilgrims to walk mindfully

from periphery into centre and out to the margins again

in full and constant relational presence of our Triune

God - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - in and

through Christ Jesus.

Here in this place, in God's embrace where all else

fades away, I sat in community with four Christian

brothers and sisters for a noon office at the chapel. We

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sat in contemplative silence; we prayed the sign of the

Cross and Our Father; we sang lovely liturgical songs

of worship; we read and reflected on the Word. And in

front of us was a beautiful mural of Christ with

stigmata in his hands amidst trees and birds. A simple

table with lit enclosed candles reminded us of the light

of the Spirit that forever shines, even into the darkest

recesses of our wounded hearts and broken world.

Irene led the noon office. It was an office in the Celtic

prayer tradition of Northumbria Community, a diverse,

worldwide, Christian community committed to a new

way of living.

The person was Dr. Irene Alexander, a psychologist

and spiritual director who teaches at Christian Heritage

College and Australian Catholic University. A loving,

nurturing, wise presence. An elder sister in Christ. A

new friend and mentor. We shared morning tea and a

long chat amidst the warm rays of the morning sun and

playfulness of the chirping birds. Some maintenance

work was going on but its sounds were muted to the

extent they disappeared for me as I plumbed deep into

the sacred space of luminous Spirit. A living sphere of

emotions and images that has no name. Cradled within

the strong gentle arms of our loving Lord. Transfigured

and healed by the immanent presence of a God who

suffers for, with, and as us, while eternally alive in

impassible repose.

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As I left The Old Franciscan Friary, I looked forward

to reading two of Irene's recent books - A Glimpse of

the Kingdom in Academia: Academic Formation as

Radical Discipleship (2013) and Practicing the

Presence of Jesus: Contemporary Meditation (2011).6

Her gift to me. A heart full and grateful. My heart. All

part of that deep interwoven mystery of new life freely

given to us by the self-emptying love of the Son, from

the Father, in the Spirit.

ה

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“I plumbed deep into the sacred space of luminous Spirit. A living sphere of emotions and images that has no name. Cradled within the strong gentle arms of

our loving Lord. Transfigured and healed by the immanent presence of a

God who suffers for, with, and as us, while eternally alive in impassible repose.”

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Eleven

PRACTICING THE PRESENCE OF JESUS

Meditation is not a technique. Meditation is not a science.

It is not even an art. Meditation in the biblical sense can

contain all these things but surpass them all in nature and

function. For biblical meditation is unapologetically

rooted in a loving awe-inspiring relationship with the

Person of God.

But take heed: as Christians we meditate not to gain

special favours from God, acquire spiritual prowess, or

develop spiritual merit on our side. We meditate as a

primordially spontaneous act of celebrating, delighting in,

rejoicing in our Triune God who first loved us and gave

Himself for us. We meditate to work out the salvation He

has first worked into us so we may grow into the likeness

of Christ by His grace in the Spirit.

In the last two chapters of this book, I’d like to share some

reflections on the practice of Christian meditation. I draw

inspiration from a number of Christian teachers on this

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rich and profound heart of Christian spirituality. For

example, St John of the Cross, Brother Lawrence, Thomas

Merton, Richard Foster, John Main, Thomas Keating,

Timothy Keller, and Irene Alexander. Thus, what I share

here may not be original in content. Yet, given my

unconventional pre-Christian history as a Buddhist

meditator, I may add nuance and inflexion to the practice

of Christian meditation in ways that are fresh and new.

To meditate well, we need to meditate consistently,

appealingly, attentively, heartfully, at times playfully, at

times seriously, but always devotionally. Strictly speaking,

practicing the presence of Jesus is non-meditation rather

than meditation. The word ‘meditation’ tends to suggest,

often mistakenly, the twin idea of technical achievement

and gruesome self-discipline. It also tends to convey an

ethereal sense of the mystical on the one hand and a

prosaic mindfulness of the everyday in another. Which of

these two senses prevail depends largely on one’s

predilection – spiritual or secular – and prior exposure to

the varying contexts of meditation.

Here, I wish to focus on biblical meditation which is in

essence gospel-centred, gospel-inspired, gospel-grounded

meditation in and through Christ. At first, such biblical

meditation takes place in a several relationship with Christ,

progresses through a several-and-joint relationship with

Christ, then culminates in a joint communion with the

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Triune God – Father through the Son in the Spirit. In this

chapter, I will share on the first two phases of such

relational biblical meditation. From the outset, practicing

the presence of Jesus steers clear of technical complexity,

rigid discipline, ethereal mysticism, and mundane

engrossment camouflaged as ‘mindfulness’. I will touch

on the culminative phase of biblical meditation in my next

and final chapter on Resting in Christ.

Meditation in the several

In my discussion on meditation, I draw on the relational

framework of ‘joint-and-several’ ably articulated by

Wilfred Yeo, my theological brother and friend in the

Spirit. To begin with, let me speak on meditation and

prayer in the ‘several’ relationship.

Practicing the presence of Jesus begins and ends with Him.

Remember this – it is not, never has been, nor will it ever

be about you, your achievement, or your merit. True

meditation begins and ends with Jesus. For Jesus is not

simply a sage, prophet, or spiritual master who dispenses

wise sayings and profound techniques for mind training.

Jesus does all that too but more.

Jesus is more, much more. Jesus in His very being is the

eternal Word (logos) of dynamic eloquence and creativity

who has become flesh as the incarnate Word, the Son of

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Man. Jesus is the Son in the triunity of God whose self-

emptying love poured out on us and brought us all into his

humanity. He emptied Himself to assume the fullness of

our humanity so that all of us with all our sin and

corruption, darkness and despair, can be unconditionally

assimilated by Him and totally redeemed, transmuted, and

overcome in and through Him. As a result, our meditation

and enlightenment are found in Him alone.

What this means is that at its very core, our practice of

meditation is not powered by our own egocentric efforts

but by the power (dunamis) of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit

of Jesus Christ. By His grace, we are each empowered to

meditate on Him, dialogue and commune with Him.

Further, the redemptive incarnation of Christ the Son has

made it possible for all of humanity and indeed of all

creation to be joined in relational oneness with the Triune

God in and through Christ. In other words, a new and right

relationship between created humanity and its Creator has

been established. This is an unprecedented, unrepeatable

redemptive act of God. A truth and mystery found only in

the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Thus, in the holy of holies of our bodily temple, we face

nakedly the holy trinity indwelling us in the Spirit and feel

Him nearer to us than our own breath, nay our own

consciousness itself. We imbibe the ceaselessly flowing

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meditation of Christ where love pours out inexorably from

each of the three Persons of Godhead to the other. Our

weak and failing meditation is made perfect by His

unfailing unsurpassed meditation in the ontological depths

of His Triune being.

Effulgent rays of His being that is wisdom illuminate the

darkened pits of our sinful nature, dispelling the darkness

of ignorance, error, corruption, and affliction. By His very

essence of wisdom, He enlightens us to Himself and

grants us saving knowledge of His Person. Throughout

His earthly ministry and at the cross of Calvary, we see

Jesus praying and meditating thoroughly and continuously

the Scripture which He knew so well. And because of His

perfect prayer and meditation, simply delighting in Him

and in what He has accomplished is enough for us to

receive the power and blessing of His consummate

meditation in the Law of the LORD.

In the several relationship, we as believers in Christ stand

separate from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In turn,

He stands apart from us in external relationality. Here, the

locative ‘apart’ and ‘external’ are relative terms. They do

not connote the sense of ‘being out there in the objective

world beyond our skin’. Rather, they point to an

epistemological sense of being experientially distinct and

separate from the presence of Jesus. In severalness, we can

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perceive Jesus as being physically out there or spiritually

in here, but always as a distinct personal presence separate

from our own individual presence.

Thus, as we pray the Scripture and meditate on key

biblical words and passages in severalness, we may catch

glimpses if not strong flashes of Christ’s presence replete

with insights, revelations or consolations. We feel His

warm loving gaze and tender sweet touch, even as His

dazzling wisdom illumines us into wakefulness. Like the

disciple who fell asleep in the garden of Gethsemane

being woken up by our Lord’s commanding voice, we

may be startled into mindfulness by Jesus, the living

source and ground of unconfined naked wakefulness, ever

fresh, ever present, ever merciful.

When we open our senses to marvel at the wonders of

nature – birds chirping, leaves falling, sun shining,

dewdrops on a lotus leaf, a tracery of trees against the sky,

a gurgling mountain stream – we may find ourselves

catching fire as the Lord blazes through all these natural

wonders to touch our cold freezing hearts. A related

practice is what the Ignatians call the Prayer of Examen.

In this practice, we consciously and intentionally look out

for the rising flow of life in every moment, every activity,

every situation. Each expansion of life is a mark of His

loving creative presence. The more we prayerfully relish

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in His life in all things, the more we are enabled to grow

into who He wants us to be.

Friends, this is not just an act of mindful attention. Nor is

this an event of thinking into feeling. Rather, this is a

sudden unexpected breaking through by our ever lovely

Jesus into the prosaic rhythm of our everyday lives. How

do we know it is Jesus?

By His unmistakable resonance. His sweet tender warmth

that cradles all that we are – good, bad, and ugly, His

piercing gaze that reveals all that we were, are, and ever

will be. His commanding voice that is at once gentle and

disarming. His fiery touch that sets our hearts ablaze with

liquid heat pulsating in all directions. His total conformity

with Scriptural testimonies of who He is, what He did, and

how He did them. His direct, sharp, and immediate

penetration into our souls conferring biblical truths that

awaken and change us forever. And more. But I shall

desist from speaking here.

What happens as we are known and touched by Jesus is

that we fall on our face. Not literally but existentially.

Although physically and literally falling on our face is not

precluded. There is no other response, no sane response

except to fall on our face and surrender ourselves to Him,

the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the author

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and finisher of all works. We fall into worship. This is

what can happen at this point in our meditation, as we

practice the presence of Jesus in our daily lives.

Beholding the sweet presence of Jesus dynamically

conforms us closer and closer to the image and likeness of

our Lord. As we remember to cast our loving attentiveness

on Jesus in our every act, in every moment, in any

situation placid or turbulent, we abide more and more

deeply in a flow of faith and devotion. We intuit more

clearly what it is like to flow in the “unforced rhythms of

grace”.7

We open ourselves to the sanctifying influence and

presence of Christ in our lives. For though in our identity

we are sanctified in Christ through the finished work of

His entire life’s cross, we remain to be sanctified in

experience and behaviour – an eschatological reality

waiting to be made present, a ‘not-yet’ waiting to become

‘now’. Even so, the ‘now’ matters for the ‘not yet’.

Meditation in the several-and-joint

The several-and-joint relationship is unique to the internal

relationality of the Triune God, whose three Persons

Father, Son and Spirit relate jointly and severally to each

other. In the joint, the three Persons are relationally One.

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In the several, the three Persons are relationally Three.

Thus, the Triune One is simultaneously Three and One in

the several-and-joint relationship.

When the Son, the eternal logos, became flesh at the

Incarnation, a new relationship between creation-humanity

and the Triune God was established. This was the

inception of the several-and-joint relationship between

God and creation-humanity, an unprecedented and

unrepeated event that shook the entire cosmos. For the

first time since Creation, God bestowed upon His entire

creation and humanity a new kind of relationship between

He and them.

This is at once a new and a right relationship between

Creator and created, a restoration of righteousness to

humanity such that we are made right in our relationship

with our Creator and Father. The Son of God who emptied

Himself to become Son of Man effectively took all of us -

our entire humanity - into His very being. Just as He

partook of our human nature, we now can partake of His

divine nature and conjoined intimacy with the Father and

Spirit in and through Christ, our Lord and Saviour.

Thus, in this new righteous several-and-joint relationship

with God, we are given the privilege and honour of

delighting in His presence and action beyond what is

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possible as created beings epistemologically separate from

Him. Now, because of the incarnate Christ, we can do so

in joint oneness with God through Christ in the Spirit.

And because of the crucified Christ, we can enjoin our

Father without the burden and scourge of sin, corruption,

darkness, and death which have been dealt with by Christ

in the depths of His humanity. We are no longer under the

dominion of our sinful nature and actions.

With the ascended Christ, we can claim our citizenship in

the kingdom of heaven where love, belonging, justice,

peace prevail. Our joint oneness with Him places us in and

with Him at the right hand of the Father on the throne of

grace. While we can partake in a spiritual ascension in

Christ right now, we eschatologically await the real and

effectual ascension at a time He ordains.

Right now, we are enabled and empowered to pray,

meditate (discursively), and contemplate (receptively) as

part of a dynamic interplay between our several and joint

relational oneness with God. As we settle our fragmented

selves and start attending to the presence of Jesus, we lay

hold of our several relationship with God in the first

instance to then move restfully towards increasing joint

oneness. This movement of our spirit towards joint

oneness occurs supernaturally without self-coercion or

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self-conscious effort. As our hearts are fixed on Jesus and

our gaze turned to Him in loving worship, we are

inexplicably drawn deeper into ever-increasing joint

oneness with and in Him. The epistemological distance

between the prayee and the Lord diminishes. Just as

inexplicably as we move into oneness, we also move out

from oneness into severalness of prayee and Christ. The

agentlessly spontaneous inflow and outflow of relational

oneness marks our prayerful meditation at this stage.

In the Christian tradition, especially in the Benedictine

order, a powerful and time-tested way of prayerful

meditation on the Scripture can be found in lectio divina.

(Latin for "divine reading"). Lectio divina involves

scriptural reading, meditation, and prayer aimed at

promoting communion with God and to increase the

knowledge of God's written and living Word.

Traditionally, there are four separate steps to lectio divina:

read (lectio); meditate (meditatio); pray (oratio); and

contemplate (contemplatio). In practicing lectio divina, we

first read a scriptural passage attentively, reflect upon

what we have read, pray to God in dialogue, and

contemplate on the written Word of God. The approach is

contemplative and engaged rather than theological and

analytical, keeping Christ as the focus of meaning in the

texts. The prayee seeks to ‘enter’ deeply into a living

experience of the words of Scripture rather than standing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos_(Christianity)

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at the fringe in objective analysis. This form of meditative

prayer can lead to an increased knowledge of Christ, not

by accumulation of conceptual knowledge but by a sense

of increasing personal intimacy.

In lectio divina, I find the dialectical movement between

the several and joint perspectives to be in full display. One

begins as a prayee severally apart from the story of

Scripture but gradually moves ever deeper into joint

oneness with Christ in the Scripture. As one enters into the

world of various characters in the bible narratives apart

from Jesus, one also immerses in joint oneness with them

in and through Christ who makes such a relationship

possible. Irene Alexander, in her prayerfully meditative

book Practicing the Presence of Jesus, writes honestly and

beautifully of the many ways we can do precisely that,

sharing her own experiences of this profound practice.

In modern times, Christian Meditation (CM) pioneered by

Benedictine monk John Main and Centering Prayer (CP)

taught by Cistercian monk Thomas Keating and Trappist

monks William Meninger and Basil Pennington are two

further examples of Christian contemplative prayer that

have become popular.8 Tracing their roots to 4

th century St

John Cassian and the Desert Fathers through Benedictine

lectio divina and works like The Cloud of Unknowing and

writings of St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_of_Christ

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the methods of Christian Meditation and Centering Prayer

do also owe their emergence from contact with Asian

spiritual traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism.

In my view, while superficial similarities exist between

these Christian meditations and Asian practices, deep

divergences are found in terms of their underlying

theology and insights. For Christians, the practice of CM

and CP needs to be contextualised within the Trinitarian

faith. From the Trinitarian standpoint, the effective power

of spiritual transformation is founded in the Holy Trinity

indwelling us all.

The Triune God is not and can never be the same as other

mystical ultimates found in other religions. Given His

utter ontological transcendence vis-a-vis the whole of

creation, His presence in our lives requires that any

breakthrough into history must be a pure initiative from

His side alone. For that simple reason, the biblical God

can never be conflated with Asian representations of the

ultimate mystery rooted in pantheistic or panentheistic

ontologies alien to the Gospel.

That said, methods of CM and CP involve the application

of a sacred word (such as Jesus, Lord, shalom etc.) though

each in their distinctive ways. For CM, the sacred word is

consistently applied like an Asian religious mantra in

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tandem with breathing. For CP, the sacred word is applied

more loosely and spontaneously as a sign of one’s assent

to the presence and action of God in one’s being.

In both cases, the aim is not to develop this or that quality

of consciousness or to generate this or that spiritual merit,

but rather to delight in a growing relational intimacy with

God while allowing our majestic loving Lord to heal,

grow, transform us from glory to glory into His likeness

and image. As we grow in an ever deepening relationship

with God, what we might call ‘spiritual qualities’ like love,

kindness, patience, stillness, discernment will sprout and

grow strong in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. As we

consistently walk on this journey of grace and truth, we

begin to bear fruit of the Spirit as Paul describes in

Galatians 5:22-23.9

Friends, there is much richness and depth in the Christian

contemplative and prayer tradition that deserves to be far

more widely known and practiced. For me, a well-orbed

Christian spirituality includes a number of key streams.

Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith call them (1) a

prayer-filled life; (2) a virtuous life; (3) a Spirit-

empowered life; (4) a compassionate life; and (5) a Word-

centred life.10

These five streams correspond to the five

great traditions of Christian life and faith namely

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Contemplative, Holiness, Charismatic, Social Justice, and

Evangelical.

Much remains to be explored. For now, we will pause for

a moment to behold our Lord in silent wonder and loving

gaze.

May our practice of the presence of Jesus reveal to us so

much of His grace and tender mercy that our hearts will

finally find their rest in Christ.

ה

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“But take heed: as Christians we meditate not to gain special favours from God, acquire spiritual prowess, or develop spiritual merit on our side. We

meditate as a primordially spontaneous act of celebrating, delighting in, rejoicing in our

Triune God who first loved us and gave Himself for us.”

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Twelve

RESTING IN CHRIST

Now is the time. Here is the place.

To worship our majestic God. To fall on our face in His

mighty presence. We have traversed the prayerful journey

of meditating in the several, then the several-and-joint,

and now into the communion of joint oneness in the Holy

Trinity, in whom we dwell and who dwells in us.

Praying and meditating in the joint oneness of and in our

Triune God takes some gumption. Joint-oneness prayer

takes energy, faithfulness, devotion, a loving tender heart

softened by His grace and mercy. Once again, I thank

Wilfred Yeo for his insightful sharing on this profound

and unashamedly relational dimension of prayer.

When you hear ‘gumption’, you might understandably

think that this kind of prayerful meditation is tedious and

onerous. It may not sound like fun. But actually, it is not

like that at all. Yes, energy is required but energy is

supplied by, in and through Christ in the Spirit. Thus, we

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only have to remember that it is not our ego-centric energy

that is at play here. Releasing all tinges of self-effort and

self-performance is crucial in prayerful resting in Christ.

But given our habitual rebellious independence and blind

sidedness, we may find ourselves tied up into knots in

attempting to ‘do’ resting in Christ.

My first piece of advice: let go of that idea of ‘doing’; let

be in naturalness and wakefulness; let Christ meditate in

you as you rest in His eternal repose in the Triune Mystery

indwelling you. Stop seeing yourself as the ‘doer’ or

‘meditator’ or ‘prayee’ and simply consent to the Lord’s

presence and action within you.

Let God be God. Let you be you.

Talk to Him. Hear Him speak, Respond in love.

As we move gradually and supernaturally from a sense of

separative severalness in prayer through an increasingly

sense of joint oneness with God, it is possible that we find

strange things happening in and to us. Strange sensations

in the body that may feel deeply consoling or acutely

painful. Strange feelings and unexpected emotions rising

in the heart. Strange thoughts and chaotic images whirling

in the mind while you remain uninvolved and unaffected.

In many ways, these occurrences are not unique to

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Christian prayer and meditation. Manuals of Buddhist and

Hindu meditation practices describe many of these strange

psychosomatic events in great detail. But there is no need

to be unduly fascinated by them. Nor is it beneficial to do

so. In fact, paying attention to such events distracts you

from the real practice and lands you in a blind alley.

Remain steadfast in the love of our Lord.

From accounts of contemplatives, it seems that as your

meditation effortlessly deepens and this can only happen

when one’s effort becomes so balanced that it starts to

seem effortless, you may enter into stillness and joy

beyond anything you have ever experienced before.

Consciousness is awake, clear, relaxed, blissful. And such

a consciousness can have ever deepening levels, each

more subtle in texture and quality than the preceding one.

It is incredibly tempting to latch onto these states and

appropriate them for our egotistic agendas. That would be

a big mistake. Release them. Release your clinging and

move on with a light touch.

Stepping aside these meditative sideshows, however

pleasant or seemingly profound, you call upon the Lord

with all your heart. You call not from self-inflation or

deflation but as a spontaneous outpouring of the love He

has first planted in us through His self-emptying

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incarnation. Christ’s kenosis makes us full. And as we

empty ourselves of everything that seeks to thwart the

place of Christ in our being, we are radically ‘kenotised’

only to be filled anew by the pleroma of Christ’s

inexhaustible grace, love, wisdom, mercy. His perfections

begin to seep into our present reality, transfiguring our

brokenness and enlightening our inner darkness.

In the ontological depths of Christ’s humanity, we partake

of His divinity even though we forever remain creaturely

beings apart from our absolute Creator. This is the

mystery of the ages, that we have open access to our

Triune God’s divine nature in and through Christ and by

our lives being hidden with Christ in God. We approach

the joint-oneness of prayer and meditation. We come to

the dimensionless ground of contemplation.

The length, breadth, height, and depth of contemplation is

not something we can easily measure. In fact, it would be

true to say that contemplation transcends calculation by

the analytical mind. Conceptual and linguistic constructs

lose their hold in this atemporal, nonlocal ground.

Absolute silence, illumination, joy and love prevail. Make

no mistake though, that this seemingly transcendent

ground of contemplation is a sign of our ontological union

with God. Not at all. If anything, it is simply a foretaste of

the unspeakable absolute interiority of the Holy Trinity as

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reflected in the mirror of our limited conscious being. Yet,

because of the unimaginable expanse, richness, and depth

of God’s being (ousia) and activity (energeia), our

microcosmic experience of His unfathomable plenitude

can only but feel limitless in taste and texture. Thus, our

contemplation merely reflects a minuscule quantum of

God’s absolute interiority that is full and emptying, empty

and filling, a dazzling darkness more luminous than

anything perceivable or conceivable yet more hidden than

any treasure submerged in the darkest cavern.

Martin Laird, a contemporary American contemplative

scholar, writes elegantly about how deep prayerful

meditation can allow consciousness to settle into its own

luminous silence, an existential posture of open clarity

where the domination of egocentric agendas fade away:

“Shift your awareness from the distraction to the

awareness itself, to the aware-ing. There is nothing

but this same luminous vastness, this depthless depth.

What gazes into luminous vastness is itself luminous

vastness. There is not a separate self who is afraid or

angry or jealous, etc., just luminous, depthless depth

gazing into luminous, depthless depth”11

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The late Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915-68) has

written evocatively and beautifully about contemplation.

Here are some of his eloquent passages:

“Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s

intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully

awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is

spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the

sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for

awareness and for being. It is vivid realisation of the

fact that life and being in us proceed from an

invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant

Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the

reality of that Source”12

“Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call

from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in

everything that is,and Who, most of all, speaks in the

depths of our own being: for we ourselves are words

of His. But we are words that are meant to respond to

Him, to answer to Him, to echo Him, and even in

some way to contain Him and signify Him.

Contemplation is this echo. It is a deep resonance in

the inmost center of our spirit in which our very life

loses its separate voice and re-sounds with the

majesty and the mercy of the Hidden and Living

One.… It is as if in creating us God asked a question,

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and in awakening us to contemplation He answered

the question, so that the contemplative is at the same

time, question and answer.”13

Exquisite words indeed. And much to reflect upon.

Merton also wrote about the holiness and sanctity that

appears to come from our contemplative practice. But he

is careful to stress that such holiness is ultimately

grounded in God alone:

“If, then, we want to seek some way of being holy, we

must first of all renounce our own way and our own

wisdom. We must ‘empty ourselves’ as He did. We

must deny ourselves and in some sense make

ourselves ‘nothing’ in order that we may live not so

much in ourselves as in Him. We must live by a

power and a light that seem not to be there. We must

live by the strength of an apparent emptiness that is

always truly empty and yet never fails to support us

at every moment. This is holiness”14

Again, he says the same for sanctity:

“None of this can be achieved by any effort of my

own, by striving of my own, by any competition with

other men. It means leaving all the ways that men

can follow or understand. I who am without love

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cannot become love unless Love identifies me with

Himself. But if He sends His own Love, Himself, to

act and love in me and in all that I do, then I shall be

transformed, I shall discover who I am and shall

possess my true identity by losing myself in Him. And

that is what is called sanctity”15

St John of the Cross (1542-91) was a Spanish mystic,

Catholic saint, and Carmelite friar and priest who was

important in the Counter-Reformation movement. Along

with St Teresa of Avila, he is considered a founder of the

Discalced Carmelite Order. In his famous works Ascent to

Mount Carmelite and Dark Night of the Soul, St John of

the Cross wrote powerfully of the contemplative journey

leading to experiential union with God – a journey

nurtured by the loving grace of God like a mother tends

her only child:

“Into this dark night souls begin to enter when God

draws them forth from the state of beginners - which

is the state of those that meditate on the spiritual

road - and begins to set them in the state of

progressives - which is that of those who are already

contemplatives - to the end that, after passing

through it, they may arrive at the state of the perfect,

which is that of the Divine union of the soul with

God. … The loving mother is like the grace of God,

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for, as soon as the soul is regenerated by its new

warmth and fervour for the service of God, He treats

it in the same way; He makes it to find spiritual milk,

sweet and delectable, in all the things of God,

without any labour of its own, and also great

pleasure in spiritual exercises, for here God is giving

to it the breast of His tender love, even as to a tender

child.”16

In a late 14th

century anonymous text on Christian

contemplative prayer The Cloud of Unknowing, the author

suggests a way of glimpsing the nature of God through

abandoning all consideration of God’s activities and

attributes and surrendering the mind and ego to the realm

of “unknowing” through love:

“… but of God Himself can no man think. And

therefore I would leave all that thing that I can think,

and choose to my love that thing that I cannot think.

For why; He may well be loved, but not thought. By

love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought

never. And therefore, although it be good sometime

to think of the kindness and the worthiness of God in

special, and although it be a light and a part of

contemplation: nevertheless yet in this work it shall

be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting.

And thou shalt step above it stalwartly, but mistily,

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with a devout and a pleasing stirring of love, and try

for to pierce that darkness above thee. And smite

upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart

of longing love; and go not thence for thing that

befalleth.”17

When one reaches this stage of contemplation, a forgetting

of all that is not God and that distracts one from full

attentiveness of God is necessary. A forgetting of words

and concepts that clutter the mind goes hand in hand with

a piercing love of the heart that bursts forth to hold God,

however impossible that may seem. For God can never be

grasped by thought. But love calls forth God’s response. It

is part of that same love that has loved us to the point of

death, the love of Jesus Himself that fires up our hearts up

to love in return.

Not that we can ever return the favour but we nevertheless

feel irresistibly drawn to give of ourselves in reciprocal

love. And in loving without holding back or being held

back by thick conceptual elaborations, we penetrate the

mystery of God’s being.

It is important we do not overlook the preceding steps of

the practice of contemplation. Prior to arriving at a joint

oneness of prayer and meditation with, in and through

Christ, it is imperative we fully engage our senses and

intellect as we meditate and pray the written Word of God.

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Scriptural meditation, for example via lectio divina, is

core biblical exercise and must never be relegated to a

secondary place. We do not regard wordless

contemplation as superior to or more advanced than

Word-centred, Word-directed, Word-shaped meditation.

On the contrary, both discursive and non-discursive prayer,

constructive and receptive meditation are complementary

aspects of a well-orbed spiritual practice. As Christians,

we need to remember this point.

A few final words. Settling down to prayer and meditation

in the course of a busy, highly-strung, distracted lifestyle

in our high-demand society is not easy, to say the least.

Our best intentions often get waylaid by the turbulence of

life. Or we feel so used to the sensuality and stimulation of

unreflective living that stilling oneself in meditative prayer

feels like a boring chore. I can understand and relate to

that. Yet, there remains a still small voice within us that

beckons us to a more profound relationship with our Lord.

We feel inexplicably drawn, as if by a spell but in a good

way, towards the loveliness of our Jesus who has finished

His work for us. He came, He lived, He taught, He

embodied what He taught. He was rejected, scorned,

beaten, tortured, scourged, and nailed to a cross for us. He

bled for us even as His body was broken for us. In this is

love indeed, not that we love God but that He loved us

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first, loved us so much that He sent His Son to be our

redemption, justification, and salvation.

Every time we remember this truth of Jesus, our hearts

must surely melt as we fall on our faces, bow our knees,

and confess with our tongues and our souls, that Jesus

Christ is Lord, Saviour, and King.

***

As we meditate on Scripture into a natural warm silence,

our consciousness settles into its luminous vastness, its

depthless depths. And as we repeatedly consent to the

presence and action of the Triune God in our lives, we

release all extraneous chatter slowing images to dissolve

in their own place. As the space of our consciousness gets

increasingly clear and open, all inner events naturally self-

liberate in a flow of naked luminosity. We gradually,

graciously, imperceptibly get magnetised into an ever-

deepening presence and love that is gentle yet strong. It is

as if love and awareness meld into an incandescent living

flame calling upon Jesus, our God.

In that moment of blazing love, we feel no other choice

except to meditate on Him till our hearts are on fire in

intense passion and unquenchable longing. It is a

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passionate longing big and powerful enough to direct our

whole being towards unceasing prayer bathed in light.

We pray with words and with groanings of the Spirit. We

speak with spontaneous utterances of the soul and listen

with uncompromising silence to His finest whispers.

Every whisper, every paean of love from Him, even every

rebuke or conviction is a delight to be relished and a

treasure to be received with infinite joy.

In the end, words must fail. But words do matter. And we

would do well to embrace both words and wordlessness to

come before the Word incarnate in Christ Jesus who will

come again to set all things right and make all things new.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come!

ה

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REFERENCES

1 – See Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and

Suffering. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2013).

2 – Masao Abe, “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata” in

Christopher Ives (ed.) Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist Jewish Christian Conversation with Masao Abe. (Valley

Forge: Trinity Press International, 1995).

3 – Personal conversation with Wilfred Yeo (Brisbane: 2015).

4 – I am indebted to Thomas F. Torrance for these terms enousios

logos and enousios energeia which can be found in his The

Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic

Church. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993).

5 – See Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: When the Empty

Promises of Love, Money and Power Let You Down. (London:

Hodder and Stoughton, 2009).

6 – Irene Alexander, A Glimpse of the Kingdom: Academic

Formation as Radical Discipleship. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade

Books, 2013; and Irene Alexander, Practicing the Presence of Jesus:

Contemporary Meditation. (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2011).

7 – From Eugene H. Peterson’s paraphrase of Matthew 11:29

(MSG). The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language. (Carol Stream, IL: NavPress, 2005).

8 – See e.g. Peter Ng (ed.), The Hunger for Depth and Meaning: Learning to Meditate with John Main. (Singapore: Medio Media,

2007); and Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God: An Introduction to

Centering Prayer. (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company,

2009).

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9 – In Galatians 5:22-23, the fruit of the Spirit consists of love, joy,

peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

10 – Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith (eds.), Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups. (London:

Hodder and Stoughton, 1993).

11 – Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Practice of

Christian Meditation. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006),

92.

12 – Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. (New York:

New Directions Books, 1972), 1.

13 – Ibid., 3.

14 – Ibid., 62.

15 – Ibid., 63.

16 – St John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul. (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library), 17.

17 – Taken from The Cloud of Unknowing edited with introduction

by Evelyn Underhill (London: John M. Watkins, 1922), 28.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Kang is a Christian theologian and contemplative. He has

lectured at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia and

Nan Tien Institute in Wollongong, Australia. From 1997, he has

taught Buddhist meditation practices and led meditation retreats

until his encounter with Christ in 2014. He is author of several

books, including Reclaiming the Dhamma: Teachings on Critical

Buddhism (2014), Dhamma Stream: A Garland of Writings on

Dhamma, Self and Society (2013) and Wise Mind Warm Heart

(2010). He is co-editor of The Meditative Way: Readings in the

Theory and Practice of Buddhist Meditation (1997).

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