The movie Contagion is
trending right now. I saw it in the theater when it first came out. I didn’t
really like it at the time. It was a bit boring compared to other apocalyptic
movies. But when I watched it again just now, it was really captivating even
though I still remember the plot and ending. ABC News had a segment on this,
trying to identify the facts and fictions in this movie. It turned out that most
things are fair games: the mass causality, the sacrifice of health care workers,
the riot and violence, etc. But the only fictional part in the movie is that “vaccines
cannot be developed in such short amount of time”.
No one actually knows how many people will be
killed in this “war”. The social and economic chaos will cause even more dire
and lasting damages than the virus itself. Most
of the articles I wrote within these 1-2 weeks are no longer meaningful. The “hopes”
and “good news” that I tried to give are no longer applicable. For example, the
experimental drug Remdesivir is not as
effective as previously believed; Taiwan is no longer in a comfortable position
as thousands of citizens are returning from abroad; China’s second surge is on
the horizon as the country is rebooting its economy. I
saw a video of a woman in China crying “I will never see him again!” as she was
clinging onto the back of a vehicle containing her husband’s body. It was absolutely
heart broken. Besides feeling sad for her, I also felt sad for the fact that
for many people like her, death was believed to be the end. That video prompted
me to write this article, probably the last article on Covid19. But
the Hope and Good News that I am offering in this article will not expire.
As I was brainstorming about this article, I
remember something that I wrote three years ago. In September 2017, I was a
volunteer at my church’s Alpha program (a program for people who are exploring
Christianity). During our first session, I was sitting beside an 80-years-old
Japanese man. His name is Toyo. He is a University professor. He has published
many books on Suicides. He’s an expert in that field and he is quite famous in
Japan. He came to Alpha as a “scientist”. On his second session, he gave me a
piece of paper with 5 questions, two of them being, “What are the definitive scientific
proofs of God’s existence?” and “Why is there so much suffering in the world?”
These two questions are probably in your mind as well. I tried to answer them
by saying:
Jesus
was born 2000 years ago. There were no pictures of him and no videos of him.
But we have testimonies from people in his life and eye witnesses of his
resurrection documented in the bible. If these “evidence” are not convincing
enough, then for some people, I guess no amount of scientific evidence is enough
unless Jesus Christ is standing right in front of them. But for many of us, 2.2
billion Christians around the world, we really don’t need to see Jesus Christ
in person to believe in his existence. We believe in him because all the
evidences in our own life, we believe in God when we see lives being created,
restored, and changed through faith in Him. To us, these evidences are qualified as “proofs”.
Christianity is based on Faith. “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and
assurance about what we do not see (Hebrew 11:1)”.
But if
there is a God, then why is there so much suffering in the world?
I heard this great parable about a
priest getting a haircut at a barbershop. The barber asked the priest, “Look at
all the violence in the world, natural disasters and people dying. Where is God
in the midst of these? Does God even exist?” The priest walked out of the
barbershop and found a beggar on the street, he was all hairy, his beard was
really long and messy. The priest brought the beggar into the barbershop and
said, “there is no barber in this world.”
Do you have one of these smart phones
that people use all the time? 10 years ago, the invention of iPhone by Steve
Jobs changed the world. From then on, a cellphone not only makes phone calls,
it is a mini computer, it can do everything. Now, if I tell you that something
so smart, so innovative, and so technically advanced just came out of nowhere,
it came to its own existence without a creator, would you believe that? Of
course no, Steve Jobs was its creator. When we drop our iPhone in the toilet,
when we break its screen or when it’s lost, do we blame Steve Jobs for it?
Our world and our universe are so
intricate, so smart and so complicated. To me, the birth of an infant is a
miracle, when a tiny egg and a tiny sperm combines together, a life is created,
a child is born and it has the potential to grow into a 6-feet tall person. Yet
the person originated from two tiny sperm and egg. The hairs on our head, eye
lashes, eye brows, they all play different roles, the brows absorb and channel
away sweats so they don’t fall into our eyes. Our hairs always grow but our
lashes don’t, otherwise they will block our vision. The universe has infinite
number of stars, planets, solar systems and galaxies, who set all of them in
motion? Do you know that if the sun were 1 meter closer to the earth, we would
have all been burnt to death, life would not have been possible in the first
place? What about the snowflakes under microscope, they are all uniquely
beautiful. I am a woman of Science. I believe in Evolution, I have a good
understanding of Natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest, and the fact that
animals and plants will adapt to different environments by modifying their
features and appearances. But I don’t believe Evolution is anti-Creation. I
think that when God designed a life, He made it adaptable and flexible. Just
like the iPhone, it is programmed to receive an upgrade every once in a while in
order for it to perform better.
I believe that Science and God are not
contradicting. Science provides an explanation, a window into God’s mechanisms.
Stephen Hawkins once said, "Before we understood
science, it was natural to believe that God created the universe, but now
science offers a more convincing explanation." When you use a microscope to examine a
tiny cell, when you use a telescope to look beyond our galaxy, you will be marveled
by how smart the designer is. I believe that there is a God behind all
creations, but similar to a broken iPhone, when the world goes wrong, can we
blame our creator?
Why is there so much suffering in this
world right now? Jesus’s answer to this question is, “this world is temporary”.
The Book of Revelation says that on the last days, there will be so many natural
disasters, plagues, wild fires, earth quakes, wars and rumours of wars. It’s
like a woman about to give birth, the earth will experience excruciating amount
of pain, but when Jesus returns, it’s like a child being born, the joy of a
newborn will make the woman forget about her suffering just moments ago. Have
you witnessed how a real Christian deals with their suffering and lost? My favorite
pastor Greg Laurie from Harvest Ministry lost his 28-year old son in a
motorcycle collision. He was devastated, for a while he was mad at God. But it
was through the lost of his son that he was able to minister to other parents
who have lost a child. He soon found a divine reason for his lost. And because
he has faith in God and the hope of Heaven, he is sure that he will see his son
again. That gives him strength to overcome his lost.
Jesus spent 1/3 of his ministry talking
about Heaven and his second coming. The entire bible devotes a great amount of
text and prophecies on God’s judgment day and the end of the world. As
Christians, our hope is not in this life, a finite amount of time that is too
short compared to eternity in Heaven. This might sound like a fairy tale to
unbelievers, it was ridiculous to me before. But now, Why don’t I want to
believe in Heaven? Why would anyone rather believe that death is the end? How
can anyone prove that death is the end, they would have to die to find out for
real, right?
Though I cannot definitively prove that
there is heaven, there are evidences of heaven provided by people who have
actually gone to heaven, or have had those near death experience. Working at a
hospital with people who had traumatic injuries, I have 4 friends who had that
near dead experience. I believe in them, because they have all been transformed
by that experience. Though all of them are living with different degrees of
physical disabilities, the fact that they saw God and Heaven gave them hope to endure
the suffering in this life.
That was part of my 8-page
answers to his questions, but I doubt if he actually read it all. By the end of
the Alpha program, he was still “searching”. But many months later, my friend
told me that she saw Toyo coming to the service every Sunday and sometime he
even went up to the front to ask for prayers. I don’t think he believed because
he found his answers about God through logic and reasons. He simply gave God a chance
with his blind faith, however small it was.
I thought it was God’s arrangement
for me to sit next to Toyo. We broke the ice real quick when I told him that I
am in a wheelchair because of a suicidal attempt. When I was 18 years old, I started
to experience my first clinical episode of bipolar disorder. Not knowing anything
about mental illness, I was untreated. Without sleep for 2 months, I was
completely insane and suicidal. I tried to commit suicide by jumping off my
condo’s balcony from the 8th floor. Miraculously, I survived. But
because of a spinal cord injury, I have been using a wheelchair since. I am now
35 years old, I have never been happier and joyful in my life. The source of my
hope is Jesus. My parent and I were hard core atheists before, but my injury
humbled us and opened our eyes to the existence of God and His Grace. It was at
that darkest period in our lives, when we were dealing with death, that we
found our hope. You can read a full version of my story here:
I used to have phobias for
many things as someone who lives with an untreated mental illness. I used to
have a phobia for death. It’s actually a real condition like when people are
afraid of height and closed space. It would trigger a panic attack when I thought
about Death. But being a Christian has completely transformed me and healed me.
My faith in Christ has totally eliminated that fear for death. Surely, I will still
dread the process of dying, but death itself has been replaced by the hope of
life, life eternally.
I am sure you have been preached on by someone
before: a small pamphlet stretched out to you from a stranger, a friend that
once invited you to their church, or a miraculous story that you heard before.
At the time, you might not think that they meant nothing. You were too busy to
pursue your goals in life, and you had too much to give up for. Now that everything
people built their hopes on has failed rather quickly, everything is placed on
hold, even Sin City has turned its lights off, will you spend some time revisiting
the idea?
If you read this article
before the pandemic, you probably would not have made it this far. But now, considered
the circumstances, will you give God a chance? Will you explore the possibility
of His existence? Will you do some Googling on real scientific evidences of a
historical Jesus? Will you start seeking with an open heart and mind? The
fatality rate of LIFE is 100% anyway. Perhaps, this ordeal prompts us to think
about our inevitable death now rather than later.
Here are some additional
resources for you to get started:
1)
Alpha’s first
episode, which gives a lot of scientific evidence of a historical Jesus. Please
try to watch the entire series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMMD5C0k-s
2)
My friend Chris
and Ning each has a supernatural near-death experience. You can read their
stories here: https://elevensummers.blogspot.com/search/label/Spiritual
3)
You can also
follow Greg Laurie’s Ministry. His teaching is always interesting, practical
and timely. His viewers have quadrupled in the past two weeks. https://www.youtube.com/user/HarvestTV
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