Celebratory Meeting-Ups, Lenten Fasting and the Spirit

It was obvious with


the repeated trips to Double Bay, Raffles City, for good fresh seafood with different folk,


the yummy homecooked braised pork dinners (with sharing and praying for dessert),


the homemade vodka cocktails, chicken liver pate, smoked salmon dip, "stonkingly-expensive" fig balsamic vinegar salad, ham pasta dinners (with hangover-inducing vodka jelly and Seventh Heaven's lovely coconut ice-cream and an unseeming amount of cable telly for dessert),


the catching up over steaming hot (or so it was on arrival but had become merely tepid when the B arrived half an hour later, having gotten very lost attempting to ford crocodile-infested rivers) fish head curry on rainy afternoons,


the sharing of good German nosh and beer at Brotzeit in honour of someone passing through and then a brief but good catch-up chat on the way home,


the sampling of passable dishes at 7atenine but with good company,


the generosity of friends (macarons! with lychee ganache! and hazelnut! and chocolate! with earl grey!),


and the dairy fridge-clearing (cream cheese cottage cheese sour cream poppyseed cheesecake-lets with vodka-soaked raisins), that the traditional Lenten fasting was not a visitor to this household.

2 For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.

3 'Why have we fasted,' they say,
'and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?'
"Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.

4 Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.

5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD ?

6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? (Isaiah 58:2-7)

As meaningless and boring (no fat, no meat, no alcohol, no treats? Oatmeal porridge and grilled unagi for brekkie again?) Lenten fasting per se might be, a daily log of our repenting of sins committed would be a far faster-acting irritant: O Lord, I'm sorry I did this. O Lord, I'm sorry, won't do it again. O Lord, oops I did it again...and that other thing I said I didn't know was a sin? I did that again too.

Yet there is much value to this somewhat impotent struggle against sin.

A majority of humans want to live rightly. Our definition what is "right" is either something that we have already attained or something we will attain in the future through effort. Only Christianity tells us from the outset that the standard of "right"-ness is perfection, God's definition of perfection at that (for he alone created the world and therefore alone defines right and wrong), and that we can't attain it no matter how hard we try, how severe our fasting, even if we give our whole lives for it.

It is an unusual thing that happens in the Christian believer when he first believes - he is at the same time both stricken with guilt and grief at his sin and despair at his inability to escape the accompanying judgement, and also bursting with celebratory joy at the salvic grace of an infinitely loving and merciful God who gave his Son that we might escape his judgement. This duality accompanies us through our lives as Christians as we struggle against our distrust and disobedience of God and his laws and is, in fact, evidence of our continuing to stand under cover of Christ's blood.

And it is the Spirit who works in us to accomplish this (far more useful than, say, inducing people to speak in unintelligible tongues, quack like ducks, fall over and scuff the church carpet). We cannot make any progress towards right living, however miniscule, without him:

(1) The Spirit alone clearly and fully convinces the heart of the evil and guilt and danger of the corruption, lust, or sin to be mortified. Without this conviction, or whilst it is so faint that the heart can wrestle with it or digest it, there will be no thorough work made. An unbelieving heart (as in part we have all such) will shift with any consideration, until it be overpowered by clear and evident convictions. Now this is the proper work of the Spirit: "He convinces of sin," John 16:8; he alone can do it. If men's rational considerations, with the preaching of the letter, were able to convince them of sin, we should, it may be, see more convictions than we do. There comes by the preaching of the word an apprehension upon the understandings of men that they are sinners, that such and such things are sins, that themselves are guilty of them; but this light is not powerful, nor does it lay hold on the practical principles of the soul, so as to conform the mind and will to them, to produce effects suitable to such an apprehension. And therefore it is that wise and knowing men, destitute of the Spirit, do not think those things to be sins at all wherein the chief movings and actings of lust do consist. It is the Spirit alone that can do, that does, this work to the purpose. And this is the first thing that the Spirit does in order to the mortification of any lust whatever, -- it convinces the soul of all the evil of it, cuts off all its pleas, discovers all its deceits, stops all its evasions, answers its pretences, makes the soul own its abomination, and lie down under the sense of it. Unless this be done all that follows is in vain.

(2) The Spirit alone reveals to us the fullness of Christ for our relief; which is the consideration that keeps the heart from false ways and from despairing despondency, 1 Corinthians 2:8.

(3) The Spirit alone establishes the heart in expectation of relief from Christ; which is the great sovereign means of mortification, 2 Corinthians 1:21.

(4) The Spirit alone brings the cross of Christ into our hearts with its sin-killing power; for by the Spirit are we baptised into the death of Christ.

(5) The Spirit is the author and finisher of our sanctification; gives new supplies and influences of grace for holiness and sanctification, when the contrary principle is weakened and abated, Ephesians 3:16-18.

(6) In all the soul's addresses to God in this condition, it has support from the Spirit. Whence is the power, life, and vigour of prayer? whence its efficacy to prevail with God? Is it not from the Spirit? He is the "Spirit of supplications" promised to them "who look on him whom they have pierced," Zechariah 12:10, enabling them "to pray with sighs and groans that cannot be uttered," Romans 8:26. This is confessed to be the great medium or way of faith's prevailing with God. Thus Paul dealt with his temptation, whatever it were: "I besought the Lord that it might depart from me." (John Owen, The Mortification of Sin)

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (The Collect, The First Day of Lent Commonly Called Ash Wednesday, The Book of Common Prayer)

ALMIGHTY God, who sees that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(The Collect, Second Sunday in Lent, The Book of Common Prayer)

Then will come the Day when every man will be judged for what he has done in the flesh. At that time and in that glorious and dreadful day, all our praying and fasting behind closed doors, all our works done for the audience of One, all our puny seemingly futile pounding against the strong brick wall that is sin will not save us, but will stand as testimony that Christ has saved us, and that we will pass into a new world where our rebelliousness will trouble us no longer.

I Long For The Day
I long for the day when faith sees its goal,
When the things now unseen will be seen.
The day when my Saviour comes for his bride,
Whom his blood has washed spotlessly clean.
(Bryon Smith)

Double Bay Australian Dining and Bar
252 North Bridge Road
#01-22 Raffles City Shopping Centre
Tel: 6334 6530

Seventh Heaven
No. 10 Raeburn Park
#01-24/25/26
Singapore 08702
Tel: 6227 7787

Brotzeit
252 North Bridge Road
#01-17 Raffles City Shopping Centre
Singapore 179103
Tel: 6883 1534

John Owen on Why the Flesh Must Be Mortified (and a bit of cheese on the side)

We bid a sad farewell to James (the epistle of). Much straightforward practical wisdom there and much to think about and work out in our lives. Now that manybooks are visible at a glance, have been reunited with the Puritans. They don't profess to be the complete word of God but there's much biblical truth in their writing. A good follow-on from James.

Here's John Owen on Why the Flesh Must Be Mortified* from The Mortification of Sin. Good stuff. Well worth a bunch of friends, accompanied by low GI nibbles (as if there will be any appetite after Owen's punches to the solar plexus), settling in for a mass read:

So Paul challenges the Colossian believers in Colossians 3:5, "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth." To whom does he speak? To those who were "risen with Christ" (3:1); those who were "dead" with him (3:3); those whose life Christ was, and who should "appear with him in glory" (3:4).

Do you mortify**? Do you make mortification your daily work? You must always be at it while you live; cease not a day from this work; always be killing sin or it will be killing you.

Your position of being dead with Christ, your new life with him, will not excuse you from this work. And our Saviour tells us how his Father deals with every branch in him that bears fruit, every true and living branch. "He prunes it, that it may bring forth more fruit," John 15:2. He prunes it and that not for a day or two, but while it is a branch in this world. And the apostle tells you what was his practice, 1 Corinthians 9:27, "I discipline my body and keep it under control" "I do it," says he, "daily; it is the work of my life: I omit it not; this is my business." And if this were the work and business of Paul, who was so incomparably exalted in grace, revelations, enjoyments, privileges, consolations, above the ordinary measure of believers, where may we possibly be exempt from this work and duty*** while we are still in this world?

There are 6 reasons why we need to be at this important work:

1. Indwelling sin always abides while we are in this world; therefore it is always to be mortified.
Some vain, foolish, and ignorant men think they can perfectly keep the commands of God, and attain perfection in this life, and be wholly and perfectly dead to sin. It is more than probable that the men of those abominations never knew what belonged to the keeping of any one of God's commands, and are so much below perfection, that they never attained to a perfection of parts in obedience or universal obedience in sincerity. And, therefore, many in our days who have talked of perfection have been wiser, and have affirmed it to consist in knowing no difference between good and evil. Not that they are perfect in the things we call good, but that all is alike to them, and the height of wickedness is their perfection. Others who have found out a new way to it, by denying original, indwelling sin, and tempering the spirituality of the law of God unto men's carnal hearts, as they have sufficiently discovered themselves to be ignorant of the life of Christ and the power of it in believers, so they have invented a new righteousness that the gospel knows not of, being vainly puffed up by their fleshly minds.

For us, who dare not be wise above what is written, nor boast by other men's conjectures of what God has not done for us, we say that indwelling sin lives in us, in some measure and degree, while we are in this world. We dare not speak as "though we had already attained, or were already perfect," Philippians 3:12. Our "inward man is to be renewed day by day" while we live, 2 Corinthians 4:16; and according to the renovations of the new are the breaches and decays of the old. While we are here we "know but in part," 1 Cor. 13:12, having a remaining darkness to be gradually removed by our "growth in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ," 2 Peter 3:18; and "the flesh lusts against the Spirit, so that we cannot do the things that we would," Galatians 5:17; and are therefore defective in our obedience as well as in our light, 1 John 1:8. We have a "body of death," Romans 7:24; from whence we are not delivered but by the death of our bodies, Philippians 3:21. Now, it being our duty to mortify, to be killing of sin while it is in us, we must be at work. He that is appointed to kill an enemy, if he quits before the other ceases living, does only half his work, Galatians 6:9; Hebrews 12:1; 2 Corinthians 7:1.

2. Sin not only still abides in us, but is still acting, still labouring to bring forth the deeds of the flesh.
When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it to be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion. Sin not only abides in us, but "the law of the members is still rebelling against the law of the mind," Romans 7:23; and "the spirit that dwells in us lusts to envy," James 4:5. It is always in continual work; "the flesh lusts against the Spirit," Galatians 5:17; lust is still tempting and conceiving sin, James 1:14; in every moral action it is always either inclining to evil, or hindering from that which is good, or disframing the spirit from communion with God. It inclines to evil. "The evil which I would not, that I do," says Paul, Romans 7:19. Why is that? Why, "Because in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells no good thing." And it hinders from good: "The good that I would do, that I do not," verse 19;-- "Upon the same account, either I do it not, or not as I should; all my holy things being defiled by this sin." "The flesh lusts against the Spirit, so that you cannot do the things that you would," Galatians 5:17. And it unframes our spirit, and is called "The sin that so grievous complaints that the apostle makes of it, Romans 7. So that sin is always acting, always conceiving, always seducing and tempting. Who can say that he had ever any thing to do with God or for God, that indwelling sin had not a hand in the corrupting of what he did? And this trade will it drive more or less all our days.

If, then, sin will be always acting, if we be not always mortifying, we are lost creatures. He that stands still and suffers his enemies to double blows upon him without resistance, will undoubtedly be conquered in the issue. If sin is subtle, watchful, strong, and always at work in the business of killing our souls, and we are slothful, negligent, foolish, in bringing about the ruin of sin, can we expect a favourable outcome? There is not a day but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed on; and it will be so while we live in this world.

The saints know there is no safety against sin but only that to be found in a constant warfare.

3. Sin will not only be striving, acting, rebelling, troubling, disquieting, but if let alone, if not continually mortified, it will bring forth great, cursed, scandalous, soul-destroying sins.
Paul tells us what the works and fruits of sin are, Galatians 5:19-21, "The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like." You know what sin did in David and many others. Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt or entice, might it have its own course, it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could; every covetous desire would be oppression, every thought of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head.

Sin may not be heard speaking a scandalous word in man's hearts, it may not seem to be provoking him to any great scandal; but yet every rise of lust, it is taking its course, and will soon come to the height of villainy: it is like the grave, it is never satisfied.

And herein lies the deceitfulness of sin, by which it prevails in hardening the hearts of men and so bring them to their ruin, Hebrews 3:13. It is modest in its first motions and proposals, but having once got footing in the heart by them, it constantly makes advances and presses on further. The advancement of sin makes the soul take little notice of how much it has already fallen away from God. The soul is ndifferent to sin and is hardened as sin continues to grow. And sin still presses forward because it has no bounds but the utter relinquishment of God and opposition to him; that it proceeds towards its height by degrees, making good the ground it has gotten by hardness, is not from its nature, but its deceitfulness.

Now nothing can prevent this but mortification; that withers the root and strikes at the head of sin every hour, so that whatever it aims at it is crossed in. There is not the best saint in the world but, if he should give over this duty, would fall into as many cursed sins as ever any did of his kind.

4. This is one main reason why the Spirit and the new nature is given to us, that we may have a principle within whereby to oppose sin and lust.
"The flesh lusts against the Spirit." Well! and what then? Why, "The Spirit also lusts against the flesh," Galatians 5:17. There is a propensity in the Spirit, or spiritual new nature, to be acting against the flesh, as well as in the flesh to be acting against the Spirit: so 2 Peter 1:4,5. It is our participation in the divine nature that gives us an escape from the pollutions that are in the world through lust; and, Romans 7:23, there is a law of the mind, as well as a law of the members.

Now this is, first, the most unjust and unreasonable thing in the world, when two combatants are engaged, to bind one and keep him up from doing his utmost, and to leave the other at liberty to wound him at his pleasure; and, secondly, the foolishest thing in the world to bind him who fights for our eternal condition, and to let him alone who seeks and violently attempts our everlasting ruin. The contest is for our lives and souls. Not to be daily employing the Spirit and new nature for the mortifying of sin, is to neglect that excellent succour which God has given us against our greatest enemy. If we neglect to make use of what we have received, God may justly hold his hand from giving us more. His graces, as well as his gifts, are bestowed on us to use, exercise, and trade with. Not to be daily mortifying sin, is to sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace, and love of God, who has furnished us with a principle of doing it.

5. Negligence in this duty casts the soul into a perfect contrary condition to that which the apostle affirms was his, 2 Corinthians 4:16, "Though our outward man perishes, yet the inward man is renewed day by day."
Neglience in the duty of mortification ensures that the inward man perishes, and the outward man is renewed day by day. Exercise and success are the two main cherishers of grace in the heart; when it is suffered to lie still, it withers and decays: the things of it are ready to die, Revelations 3:2; and sin gets ground towards the hardening of the heart, Hebrews 3:13. By the omission of the duty of mortification, grace withers, lust flourishes, and the frame of the heart grows worse and worse. And the Lord knows what desperate and fearful issues it has had with many. Where sin, through the neglect of mortification, gets a considerable victory, it breaks the bones of the soul, Psalm 31:10, and makes a man weak, sick, and ready to die, Psalm 38:3-5, so that he cannot look up, Psalm 60:12, Isaiah 33:24. And when poor creatures will take blow by blow, wound after wound, foil after foil, and never rouse up themselves to a vigorous opposition, can they expect any thing but to be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, and that their souls should bleed to death? 2 John 8. Indeed, it is a sad thing to consider the fearful issues of this neglect, which lie under our eyes every day. Do we not see those, whom we knew humble, melting, broken-hearted Christians, tender and fearful to offend, zealous for God and all his ways, his Sabbaths and ordinances, grown, through neglect of watching unto this duty, earthly, carnal, cold, wrathful, complying with the men of the world and things of the world, to the scandal of religion and the fearful temptation of them that know them?

True evangelical mortification is all but lost between a rigid, stubborn frame of spirit, which is for the most part earthly, legal, censorious, partial, consistent with wrath, envy, malice, pride, on the one hand, and pretences of liberty, grace, and I know not what, on the other.

6. It is our duty to be "perfecting holiness in the fear of God," 2 Corinthians 7:1; to be "growing in grace" every day, 1 Peter 2:3, 2 Peter 3:18; to be "renewing our inward man day by day," 2 Corinthians 4:16.
Now, this cannot be done without the daily mortifying of sin. Sin sets its strength against every act of holiness, and against every degree we grow to. Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. He who does not kill sin in his way takes no steps towards his journey's end. He who finds no opposition from it, and who sets not himself in every particular to its mortification, is at peace with it, not dying to it.

This, then, is the first general principle of our ensuing discourse: Notwithstanding the meritorious mortification, if I may so speak, of all and every sin the cross of Christ; notwithstanding the real foundation of universal mortification laid in our first conversion, by conviction of sin, humiliation for sin, and the implantation of a new principle opposite to it and destructive of it; yet sin does so remain, so act and work in the best of believers, while they live in this world, that the constant daily mortification of it is all their days incumbent on them. Before I proceed to the consideration of the next principle, I cannot but by the way complain of many professors of these days, who, instead of bringing forth such great and evident fruits of mortification as are expected, scarce bear any leaves of it. There is, indeed, a broad light fallen upon the men of this generation, and together with many spiritual gifts communicated, which, with some other considerations, have wonderfully enlarged the bounds of professors and profession****; both they and it are exceedingly multiplied and increased. Hence there is a noise of religion and religious duties in every corner, preaching in abundance, and that not in an empty, light, trivial, and vain manner, as formerly, but to a good proportion of a spiritual gift, so that if you will measure the number of believers by light, gifts, and profession, the church may have cause to say, "Who hath born me all these?" But now if you will take the measure of them by this great discriminating grace of Christians, perhaps you will find their number not so multiplied. Where almost is that professor who owes his conversion to these days of light, and so talks and professes at such a rate of spirituality as few in former days were, in any measure, acquainted with (I will not judge them, but perhaps boasting what the Lord has done in them), that does not give evidence of a miserably unmortified heart? If vain spending of time, idleness, unprofitableness in men's places, envy, strife, variance, emulations, wrath, pride, worldliness, selfishness, 1 Corinthians 1, be badges of Christians, we have them on us and amongst us in abundance. And if it be so with them who have much light, and which, we hope, is saving, what shall we say of some who would be accounted religious and yet despise the gospel light, and for the duty we have in hand, know no more of it but what consists in men's denying themselves sometimes in outward enjoyments, which is one of the outmost branches of it, which they will seldom practice? The good Lord send out a spirit of mortification to cure our distempers, or we are in a sad condition!

There are two evils which certainly attend every unmortified professor - the first, in himself; the other, in respect of others:
1. In himself. Let him pretend what he will, he has slight thoughts of sin; at least, of sins of daily infirmity. The root of an unmortified course is the digestion of sin without bitterness in the heart. When a man imagines he has such apprehension of grace and mercy as to be able, without bitterness, to swallow and digest daily sins, that man is at the very brink of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Neither is there a greater evidence of a false and rotten heart in the world than to drive such a trade. To use the blood of Christ, which is given to cleanse us, 1 John 1:7, Titus 2:14; the exaltation of Christ, which is to give us repentance, Acts 5:31; the doctrine of grace, which teaches us to deny all ungodliness, Titus 2:11,12 to countenance sin, is a rebellion that in the issue will break the bones.

At this door have gone out from us most of the professors that have apostatised in the days wherein we live. For a while they were most of them under convictions; these kept them to their duties, and brought them to profession; so they "escaped the pollutions that are in the world, through the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ," 2 Peter 2:20: but having got an acquaintance with the doctrine of the gospel, and being weary of duty, for which they had no true desire, they began to allow themselves to neglect these things because of the doctrine of grace. Now, when once this evil had laid hold of them, they speedily tumbled into perdition.

2. To others. Unmortified professors have an evil influence on others in two ways:
(1.) It hardens them, by persuading them that they are in as good condition as the best professors whenever they see that their want of mortification does not concern them. These unmortified professors have a zeal for religion; but it is accompanied with want of forbearance and universal righteousness. They deny prodigality, but with worldliness; they separate from the world, but live wholly to themselves, taking no care to exercise loving-kindness in the earth; or they talk spiritually, and live vainly; mention communion with God, and are every way conformed to the world; boasting of forgiveness of sin, and never forgiving others. And with such considerations do poor creatures harden their hearts in their unregeneracy.

(2.) They deceive them, in making them believe that if they can come up to their standard of "holiness" it shall be well with them; and so it grows an easy thing to have the great temptation of repute in religion to wrestle withal, when they may go far beyond them as to what appears in them, and yet come short of eternal life.

*taken from Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Have tried to update the language a bit and have abridged the work slightly.

**mortify = putting a living thing to death, to take away all of its strength, vigour and power so that it cannot act, or exert, or put forth any proper actings of its own. Indwelling sin is compared to a person, a living person, called "the old man", with his faculties, and properties, his wisdom, craft, subtlety and strength. The "old man" is utterly mortified and slain by the cross of Christ. He is said to be "crucified with Christ" (Romans 6:6) and ourselves to be dead with him (v8). This takes place in regeneration. The work of the Holy Spirit, who is planted in our hearts, also opposes the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:17). This whole work is done by degrees, and is to be carried on towards perfection all of our days. (from John Owen, Introduction to The Mortification of Sin, as abridged and made easy to read by Richard Rushing)

***duty = "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13)
"the body" = "the flesh" = indwelling sin

****professors - those who profess to have faith in Christ, not those worrying about their tenure
profession - profession of faith, not the career that is cast in jeopardy by this creditcrunchglobalfinancialcrisis

Cheese, Music, Marriage, and God and the Church

Long-standing love affairs.

As the blame-passing scab-picking garden-variety of psychotherapy will have you know, the seeds of dysfunction were sowed in childhood, with the thin foil and red tabs of The Laughing Cow. By 13, cheese was so much part of my life, so spinach to Popeye, that "Je mange du fromage avec du pain" was de rigueur in any self-description. The hardcore hard-rind stuff came mostly in England, home to the Wensleydale-chomping Wallace and with him, a whole nation of nibblers who must have, through centuries of communal nibbling (and thousands of cups of tea), created the Cheddar Gorge. Countryside-living was inevitably dairy-related: a shortcut to a particular pub for weekly smoky chats on philosophy meant sneaking through a muddy paddock, running if chased by the resident bull. Sunny summer days meant cows, expressing their great satisfaction with the sweet grass, interrupting lectures. And there was always a crumb of curdled and fermented milk to be had about town. Cheese, like good farmhouse artisanal mould, was unhindered in its blue-green veining through the creamy curds of my life: one summer, lost in a storm on Ben Nevis, it was a little package of Scottish mature cheddar and highland oatcakes that (as they often say in British stories about adventures of sorts) kept my spirits up. And back in Singapore, Monsieur Gérard Poulard's early incursions suggested that a long-term stay here might just have the right kind of stink about it after all.

Two fromageries opened in Singapore in the last few months: a little walk-in cupboard at Jones the Grocer's and another simply called La Fromagerie along Mohamed Sultan. ("Chi-chi cheese-shopping" someone sniffed. But unlike some overpriced frivolities (I'm talkin' about you, S$20 Persian candy floss), much cheese is honest-to-goodness stuff, like hot crusty bread and cold beer. Plus, since Ramadan's just over, dried figs and dates, with which Muslims usually break their fast, still abound. The possibilities (BVM surprise guest-appearance on grilled cheese sandwich excepted)!) But they are only a small whiff of the great heaven that is Neal's Yard Dairy, stockist of 200 cheeses piled high to the sky, exuding promises of casomorphine opiates.

Perhaps, I said to someone, cheese is my raisin cake. Or perhaps strawberries are my raisin cake. But I came to strawberries later in life than cheese. You are going all postmodern on me, he said. I am going to leave you now, very quietly, and shut the door behind me. And I will make no sudden movements. I might even throw you some Babybel once I am safely outside.

Or perhaps, music is my raisin cake, came the realisation, as Wang Jian sawed through the third movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor. An indiscriminate love that knows no bounds: Gregorian plainchant, polyphonic counterpointy Baroque, coquettish Classical, OTT opera, hep-hoppin' jazz, moshpit metal, eccentric 80s, SNAG soft-rock, blingbling hiphop, college indie, bouncy Bollywood, cheesy Chinese...I love them all from the bottom of my pencilcase. I can live without cheese and strawberries, but if I never hear even soppy songs with my ears again, I promise you that I shall never breathe again, breathe again, that I shall never breathe again.

Soppy songs. It is the season for weddings again.

Floating on the top of the breaking curl that was the series on Hosea, boosted by the talks imported by kind friends from this year's London's Men's Convention (fetchingly titled "liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons"?), weddings have never looked more beautiful.

Weddings: the smile of sunshine, the white satin train of the bride's gown, the fragrance of bouquets, the smell of cologne and new suits, the back-patting, the teary farewells, the walk-in, the giving-away of the bride, the cameras, the sermon on love, the solemnisation, what God has brought together let no man put asunder, the unveiling, the kiss, the signing of the marriage register, the hand-in-hand walk-out as husband and wife, the thrown rice and popped confetti, the photos for the family album, the hearty hugs and grinned best wishes, the happy whispers of how great the new couple look together.

But. Far more than the entertainment value afforded by the perfect execution of meticulous plans and aesthetically-pleasing couples set in dreamily-romantic mis-en-scenes, the tear-inducing heart-bursting beauty of weddings lies in that of which they are but mere shadows: God and his people, Christ and the church.

The tender love exhibited by the wedding couple that makes the rheumy hearts of many an old aunt flutter is but a puny birthday candle to the great hot furnace that is God's love for his people and Christ's love for the church.

We think that a wedding is one of the most lovely, most romantic things in the world. But, step right up step right up! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Plato might have said had he known, you have all been obsessed with mere shadows! What's that? A heart full of love you say, sir? Filled your days with endless wonder did he eh, lady? Well! You haven't seen anything yet.

The story, good folk, the real story is that of the divine husband and his adulterous wife; a wife so stupid, so greedy, so lewd, that even though married to the perfect husband, she abandoned him to strut her stuff openly before lascivious male eyes. Lacking even the remnant of decorum of whores, who allow themselves to be approached by customers, in a frenzy of desperate lust, she pursued her would-be lovers.

So Hosea indicted Israel, who'd chased after the Baals in crazed delusion that they had been responsible for her prosperity and abundance. What inexcusable stupidity. She, of all people, ought to have been familiar with her true husband. Centuries of Israelite history, written down in God's word and repeated by prophet after prophet, should have taught her that God alone was her creator and her sustainer. No one apart from him was able to give and take away life and all the trappings of existence.

Through Hosea, Yahweh contrasted her thirst for spiritual adultery, for the Baals, with her treatment of him:"But me she forgot." She had courted their favour and adorned herself for mute idols, but neglected and slighted her real benefactor and true lover.

The LORD swore that her betrayal of his love would not succeed. Israel's misuse of God's gifts to her would prompt him to withdraw them. At the time of the harvest, the crop and wine would fail. Her vines and fig-trees would be laid barren. Her people would starve and die.

But God did not intend to send Israel away as a bad job, or win custody of the children and then look for a much better mother for them. Instead, amazingly, he wished to allure rotten old Israel once more, to rekindle the romance they'd enjoyed in their honeymoon years, to draw her back into union with himself. The image was not just of renewal or renovation of the old marriage but a completely new betrothal, with Israel starting out again as a fresh-faced virgin bride. And unlike the complete mess of the old marriage, the new marriage would last forever, secured by steadfast love and mutual faithfulness. And it'd be God who would impart to Israel the qualities that will ensure a marriage for all eternity.

The institution of marriage is not a convenient metaphor co-opted to describe the relationship between God and his people. Rather, God instituted marriage for the very purpose of demonstrating to dimwitted humans some faint shadow of the mindblowing relationship Christ would have with his church (Ephesians 5:32).

So human marriage is not a useless Victorian social construct to be thrown out with yesterday's kitschy fridge magnets but an institution weaved into our human fabric to be a meaningful display of the love relationship between Christ and his body. We preserve marriages not because of shared family values nor so that the children won't grow up splashing out money on psychiatrists' couches nor so as to give Dr James Dobson a point of pontification, as if marriages were valuable in and of themselves; we preserve marriages because Creator made them so that when a man and a woman come together in matrimony, they do, by his design and in a way we cannot fully comprehend, truly become one flesh.

And if God designed marriage, then he alone knows how best they are meant to work. And they work best in imitation of Christ's loving relationship with the church (Ephesians 5).

Extremely elegant equations. Our math teacher (who ever-despaired of us brutally hacking our way to the correct answer) would have applauded.

Yet if our relationship with God is not an armslength schoolteacher-badstudent one, but one even more intimate than a marriage, then raisin cakes are no laughing matter. Sins, trivial though they seem, aren't just about cheekily breaking a window and running away or copying someone else's homework; they are about having our lives and our decisions revolve around things other than the one whom they should rightfully revolve around: God, in place of God; they are acts of adultery, they constitute the vomitous betrayal of a relationship, the cuckolding of the perfect husband, the tearing away at an entity that has since been constituted organically as one flesh.

Whoredom, Raymond C Ortlund Jr
Marriage: Sex in the Service of God, Christopher Ash

Jones the Grocer
Dempsey Hill
Block 9 Dempsey Road #01-12

La Fromagerie
5 Mohamed Sultan Road
Singapore 239014
Tel: 6732 6269

Celebrating Birthdays

The month has been a completely mad rush of Bible study prep, actual Bible studies, recce-ing camp locales, writing seminars during conference calls, re-writing talks, late-night meetings, rescheduling timetable clashes, planning games, all on top of the usual workweek featuring a rash of board meetings and an outbreak of crossborder negotiations.

But still. November was for birthdays. And there were birthday boys and birthday girls and celebrations galore.
At Rochester Park, the numero sette of the Da Paolo stable: a bistro and bar in and around a colonial black-and-white, with an outdoor showkitchen and a line of chef whites, like dancers in a modern ballet, bustling to the music of anchovies thick on brushetta and stolid dependable pastas and meats. "Excuse me," said someone, looking around distractedly after the Lilliputian portions'd been polished off,"did I accidentally inhale something?"

On another celebratory night, the allegedly JIA/OPIA-inspired Graze next door: silent black-and-white films, pre-dinner aperitifs at Mint Bar for the tough day at work, a mound of thick hot chips and fierce portions of barbecued meat and fish (which put paid to all rabbit-nibbling grass-munching fears). After the excitement over presents and a surprise! birthday cake, into the night and under the stars we went, spilling the dirt on our own lives, in full joyful assurance of being kicked swiftly in the ass as needed but also of being loved unconditionally nonetheless.

Over in the area-formerly-known-as-Dempsey: the mushrooming of new watering holes; ordered trendiness, courtesy, alas, of a Singapore Land Authority initiative. Apparently sprouting fully-formed from the same minds that thought "good class bungalows" a thoroughly fetching description and "nestled in the lush greenery of" a glowing literary turn of phrase, the area was renamed Tanglin Village, much to the derision of the spirits haunting the institutions of Wine Network, The Wine Company, P.S. Café and Highwood and Samy's Curry, whose leasehold days are numbered.

At Michael Lu's Hacienda: white tentage, lazy ceiling fans, rows of deck chairs, cosy cul-de-sacs, downtempo chillout sounds, passable pints, decent kir royales, very watery watermelon margaritas and al fresco attempts to fly to the moon on a squeaky swing. The watery watermelon margaritas were sent back to the bartender and they returned just as watery. "Maybe," said a wag as we peered condescendingly at the contents of the glass,"it's just that watermelon, you know, like, water.melon. has water?" And he beamed smugly at his own genius.

On another night, Yeow of Whitelabel, fresh from his New York trip, thumped out great tunes for all amongst the red heliconias and under the giant banyan tree, for the hipsters who wore nothing but cologne, structured cotton jackets and skinny jeans, and for the alluring tanned transcontinentals with mixed-up accents and mixed-up features and new clothes shops in the offing - guerrilla like Comme des Garçons, and for us who sauntered in shamelessly, togged most fashionably in old T-shirts and flipflops.

On yet another night, at The Wine Company, there was much wine and cheese and gesturing and then more wine and cheese and gesturing until we were hustled out at 1am, whereupon we took the remains of the wine and cheese and gestures round to the front and sat by the road drinking and nibbling and talking and gesturing until the cheese spiked the wine, or was it the wine that spiked the cheese.

And on still yet another night, at Oosh, with Bjork on the screens and outdoor terraces still wrapped in plastic, a waiter, when asked how big a portion of dessert was, pointed politely with his thumb at the empty plates on the next table and replied confidently,"Exactly that size."

Down by the Singapore River, at the Esmirada-owned Brasserie Wolf: easy-going Philippe Nouzillat, mopping up the remains of demi-douzaine d’escargots au beurre d'ail with pieces of bread, pan-fried foie gras better than the most recent chunks at Saint Pierre, stealing bits of other people's carré d'agneau, blindsiding the coq au vin and trashing out, with many detours, the structure of a talk (itself, a detour from other discussions on a kaleidoscope of topics). Later, by the Singapore River, the path was shiny like a road of fairy lights, an umbrella was opened for spin-drying, an empty 1-litre Evian bottle was brandished threateningly to halt the stream of effusive thanks, and we strolled along, laughing, like viva la compagnie:

Let every good fellow now join in a song
Viva la compagnie!
Success to each other and pass it along
Viva la compagnie!

Viva la, viva la, viva l'amour
Viva la, viva la, viva l'amour
Viva l'amour, viva l'amour
Viva la compagnie.

A friend on the left and a friend on the right
Viva la compagnie!
In love and good fellowship, let us unite
Viva la compagnie!

[Chorus]

Now wider and wider our circle expands
Viva la compagnie!
We sing to our comrades in far away lands
Viva la compagnie!

[Chorus]

Should time or occasion compel us to part
Vive la compagnie!
These days shall forever enliven our heart
Vive la compagnie!

[Chorus]

And on some other occasion, Zouk hosted the crazy chicks from Chicks On Speed, whom, it has been said, are all electroclash, electro-trash, punk-rock, new wave, synth-pop, indie design, avant-garde paper and leather clothing, deconstructed art, interactive gigs and cutting-edge vibes.

Whatever, we said. "Creatives" we are not.

So for the last Heineken Green Room session of 2006, there was making like a universal blank canvas and drawing and painting everywhere: the clear panel outside, the white walls around the dancefloor, the lean bodies of a male and female model each on a pedestal, our faces with black mascara and garish body paint, the T-shirts...

About the T-shirts: because there were cardboard robots bleeping "Customise. Customise. Customise." before they tripped over each other in the dim light, and because there was a station to accessorise one's couture with rips and tears and pompoms and feathers and clothes pegs and fluorescent markers and light sticks, and then another for feather boas and tiaras and aviator glasses, and then yet another for wigs of all colours (sometimes more than one on each wig), there was an excess of people with afros and, on their backs, downward arrows of glowing tape. One read so enthusiastically and so pleadingly:"Hi! I'm Edmund! Touch my butt!", that we reached out a charitable leg to kick him.

It is possible that "bitch" has not been uttered so affectionately in one place in Singapore by so many happy men as that fateful night. On stage, the crazy Chicks were prancing, dancing, jiiving, screaming, stripping, mixing, clanging paint strippers. On the multimedia screen: rappinghoodgirlmonsters and several minutes of "Woah. Was that a full-frontal pre-Brazilian?!" before the management hastily pulled the plug. On the dancefloor: rainbow wigs, arms in the air, strawberry smokes, Heineken glugging and penguin-shuffling while clutching jugs of Long Island Tea. And then, a moment of feather boa envy as a German snuck mine off and twirled it around his neck like a trophy, grinning triumphantly.

And when the revelry'd wrapped up, the birthday boys and the birthday girls were snug and quiet in their passenger seats, eyelashes soft on their cheeks, like the happy tiredness of a good night out.

Celebrating Birthdays
If birthday celebrations are nothing more than a bit of vacuous existentialist fun, why do we even bother with them?

Jehovah Witnesses abstain from birthday celebrations. Their topical Bible guidebook, "Reasoning from the Scriptures" notes that the Bible makes reference to only two birthday celebrations and in both cases they are held in a somewhat negative light: (1) the Pharaoh's birthday when he has his chief baker hanged (Genesis 40:20-22); and (2) Herod's birthday when John the Baptist is beheaded (Matthew 14:6-10). It then concludes that God isn't too keen on birthday celebrations and officially forbids them as a result. Origen, writing in 245AD reached a similar conclusion, saying:

A certain one of those before us has observed what is written in Genesis about the birthday of Pharaoh, and has told that the worthless man who loves things connected with birth keeps birthday festivals; and we, taking this suggestion from him, find in no Scripture that a birthday was kept by a righteous man. (Second Tome of the Commentary on Matthew, Book X, Chapter 22)

(Job 1:4, on this matter, seems pretty inconclusive.)

However, the JW's use of the Genesis and Matthew passages seems to be a misreading of a descriptive as a prescriptive. In any case, like much of the glorious freedom of a Christian's life, it is not rules and regulations that please God but the heart and mind behind our actions: do we follow the ways of the world, the magisterium of materialism, that presents birthdays as excuses for self-centredness and self-glorification? Or do we see them as occasions for centering on and glorifying God?

Immense joy can be derived from having the birthday boys and girls in our lives and we are right to rejoice in such stupendous serendipity.

Yet, life is not something manufactured by the hands of man, nor relationships by a nebulous concept called "fate". All life and all joy in life are ultimately gifts from God and it is right that we celebrate his goodness in forming us and continuing to sustain us with lifebreath each passing year, month, day, hour, minute and second. So the psalmist waxes lyrical in Psalm 139:

you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

If any one should be celebrated on the anniversaries of the dates of our biological births, it should be God, for only he is truly deserving of such celebration. We did nothing to give ourselves life. Additionally, as Christians, our biological birthdates point us to our spiritual birthdates for the Bible delights in using the universal phenomena of birth and life as metaphors to speak of our salvation:

Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.(John 3:5-6)

since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God (1 Peter 1:23)

So even as we celebrate the God who gave us lifebreath, we also celebrate the God who chose us before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight (Ephesians 1:4) and we celebrate Jesus our Christ, who gave himself up for us, that by believing in him we shall not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Furthermore, as children of God, assured of our place in the new heavens and new earth, we celebrate each passing year as a year nearer to glory. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul speaks of the importance of the historical veracity of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead:

if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

"Death is swallowed up in victory."
"O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?"

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We celebrate our lives and the lives of our brothers and sisters in full gratitude to the Creator and Sustainer of all creation, who provides us with all good things - family, friendships, our bodies, our minds, our senses, loving relationships, food, drink, yea, even the undeserved forgiveness of our rebellion against him and so, eternal life in relationship with him. We celebrate our confidence and the confidence of our brothers and sisters that because of the historical truthfulness of the death and resurrection of Jesus, there will come a day when death will be no more and our painful struggle with sin will be no more and our perishable dishonourable bodies will be raised imperishable and glorious forever.

*************
DA PAOLO BISTRO BAR
3 Rochester Park, Singapore 139214
Tel: (65) 6774 5537

GRAZE
4 Rochester Park, Singapore 139215
Tel: (65) 6775 9000

HACIENDA
13A Dempsey Road, Singapore 249674
Tel: (65) 6476 2922

THE WINE COMPANY
Block 14-3 Dempsey Road, Singapore 249688
Tel: (65) 6479 9341

OOSH
22 Dempsey Road, Singapore 249679
Tel: (65)

BRASSERIE WOLF
#01-13 The Pier at Robertson
80 Mohamed Sultan Road, Singapore 239013
Tel: (65) 6835 7818

Existentialism: Exit Stage Left, Hotly Pursued By A Lobster (Boiled and Slathered with Butter. The lobster, that is.)

The nights (and days even) this last week were cold and dark and cold, bitter wind howling through the eaves, roof creaking under the heavy drumming of the rain, thunder rumbling grumbling nearby.

So we took a break from wanting to throttle a really rather garrulous apostle and writing a talk to horse around messily with a 1 kg slab of chocolate, a hot oven and the last bits of a punnet of raspberries.

Late in the week, family friends were doing their own horsing around (an intense programme of Beethoven's "Kreutzer" and Prokofiev's "Sonata No.2 in D Major", with a pretty Paganini Cantabile and Wieniawski's showpiece "Scherzo-Tarantella" thrown in for good measure), on their own instruments of choice, for a good cause. After strings were spectacularly broken and manicured hands were wrung and big taitai hair was bobbed about, there were 5 ovations and a cheeky section of the audience demanding an encore.

Later still, thanks to someone's generosity and a timetable swept clear by the rain, there was the drapping of bodies over cushy armchairs and picking up where we'd left off in our distant past, bridging that gap between the cold harsh plateau where Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche were encamped, and the psychedelic drug-addled bivouac of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S Burrough. After much girding of loins (the loins, that is, of the lamb that was in the stew - with splashes of red wine), there was settling into the stacks of Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger tottering beckoningly on the table. And in the wee hours of the morning, when the storm had exhausted itself into a tired sullen patter, we moved onto the sea of Jean-Paul Sartre (also garrulous), Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus (well, if Dubya can...), Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Fyodor Dostoevsky spread across the floor. Balanced precariously on one pile was a healthy snifter of single malt whisky, neat, for mouthwash, because existentialists leave behind a nauseating blandness in the oral cavities.

In between readings, there was some cheese and port for fortification (pun fully intended). And, because of Sartre's smoky underground St.-Germain-des-Prés dancehalls and "Le jazz, c’est comme les bananes, ça se mange sur place" ("Jazz is like a banana. It has to be consumed on the spot."), there was very bad jitterbugging to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Benny Goodman and Miles Davies. Then bhangra-ing and slowdancing to Nouvelle Vague. Then also, because it is only by making decisions that we become significant, there was hilarious pretendingtobeinthethroesofunrequitedlove singing along to Maurice Chevalier, Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Yves Montand.

But if making decisions to please only ourselves and instant gratification are the only things that give us value in life, then we would be very sad gits indeed. No wonder Sartre and Beauvoir spent a good bit of their lives hepped up on caffeine, drugs and whisky (well, Sartre more than Beauvoir: late in life, he was haunted by the delusion that he was being stalked by a giant lobster).

(The story about reading existentialists is this: that just like how it is by living abroad for a period that one understands more distinctly what it is to be a born and bred Singaporean, so it is by touring (touring only hor, correctives welcome!) foreign worldviews that one sees more clearly, by contrast, contradiction and negation, what it means to be Christian.)

Lots of things need more thinking about than there was time for, just me 2¢:
Rude First Intro
I first knew of Simone de Beauvoir, in the most unlikely of ways, as the woman who denied A.J. Liebling (famed, amongst other things, for his Rabelaisian appetite and memorable gastronomic descriptions of Parisian meals, a journalist of a golden generation) a pleasant dinner at Mme. G.'s. Mme. G's, according to Liebling had been "more than a place to eat, although one ate superbly there...Madame was a bosomy woman - voluble, tawny, with a big nose and lank black hair - who made one think of a Saracen...Her conversation was a chronicle of letters and the theater" ("Between Meals"). Returning to Mme. G's some months later, Liebling was distraught to find that the original restaurant had been replaced by poor pretenders to the throne. Upon enquiry, he confirmed that Mme. G., ill, had sold the lease and the good will and had definitely retired.

"What is the matter with her?" I asked in a tone appropriate to fatal disease.
"I think it was trying to read Simone de Beauvoir," he said. "A syncope."

(A.J. Liebling, "Between Meals")

Nihilism
Understandably, those historically categorised as existentialists do not seem to have agreed to a definition of existentialism amongst themselves. If we go with Sartre, whose name is unremittingly linked to the philosophy, existentialism is "the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism".

Assume as Nietzsche's soundbyte goes, "God is dead" and matter is all there is and we live in a closed universe, then humans are the only conscious beings. But we have no way of knowing that it is true that matter is all there is or that we live in a closed universe; we have no way of knowing what is reality. Then, there is also no such thing as right or wrong, moral or immoral, and everything is meaningless. Life and death are meaningless. Suicide is a mere act amongst many other acts like ordering food in a restaurant or writing a note. There is no value, significance, dignity or worth in anything. The examined life is not worth living. Complete nihilism.

Atheistic Existentialism
However, very few people can continue to subscribe to nihilism and live. Enter stage right: the atheistic existentialists. James Sire elucidates his understanding of the basic beliefs of atheistic existentialists and how they attempt to save themselves from the dark void of nihilism, from a universe devoid of any meaning:

1. The cosmos is composed solely of matter, but to human beings reality appears in two forms - subjective and objective. The objective world is the world of material, of inexorable law, of cause and effect, of chronology, of flux, of mechanism. Human beings know of the external, objective world by virtue of careful observation, recording, hypothesizing, checking hypotheses by experiment and ever refining theories and proving guesses about the lay of the cosmos we live in. The subjective world is the world of the mind, of consciousness, of awareness, of freedom, of stability. Because, Sartre says, "the effect of all materialism is to treat all men, including the one philosophising, as objects, that is, as an ensemble of determined reactions in no way distinguished from the ensemble of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table or a chair or a stone" ("Existentialism") and yet, the one philosophising is self-conscious and self-aware (unlike the unconsciousness of the machinery of the universe), so self-conscious and self-aware beings are to find their value and meaning and significance in the subjective world. Our significance is not dependent on the facts of the material objective world over which we have no control, but on the consciousness of the subjective world over which we have complete control.
   
2. For human beings alone, existence precedes essence; people make themselves who they are. "If God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept and...this being is man. First of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself" (Sartre, "Existentialism"). Remember the distinction drawn between the objective and the subjective worlds. The objective world is a world of essences - everything comes bearing its nature: salt is salt, trees are tree, ants are ant. Only human beings are not human before they make themselves to be so. Each of us makes himself to be human by what we do with our self-consciousness and our self-determinacy. "At first [man] is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he himself will have made him what he will be" (Sartre, "Existentialism").
   
3. It follows from proposition 2 that each person is totally free as regards their nature and destiny. Each of us is uncoerced, radically capable of doing anything imaginable with our subjectivity. We can think, will, imagine, dream, project visions, consider, ponder, invent. Each of us is king in our own subjective world.
4. However, the highly wrought and tightly organised objective world stands over against human beings and appears absurd. To us subjective beings, the facticity, the hard coldness, of the objective world seems alien. As we make ourselves to be by fashioning our subjective world, we see the objective world as absurd: it does not fit us. Our dreams and visions, our desires, all our inner world of value runs smack up against a universe that is impervious to our wishes. The toughest fact to transcend is the ultimate absurdity - death. We are free only as long as we are alive. When we die, each of us is just an object among other objects.
5. In full recognition of and against the absurdity of the objective world, the authentic person must revolt and create value. Because nothing is of value in the objective world in which we become conscious, we are free to choose our meanings and our significance. We are "condemned to be free", but in this freedom, while we are conscious, we can create value for ourselves and affirm our own worth. Our objective should be to live an "authentic" existence by keeping ever aware of the absurdity of the cosmos but rebelling against that absurdity by creating meaning in life. "The meaning of a man's life consists in proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key" (Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Notes From Underground"). A good action, therefore, is a consciously chosen action. "To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good" (Sartre, "Existentialism"). So the good is whatever a person chooses; the good is part of subjectivity, it is not measured by a standard outside the individual's consciousness.
   

Though I knew not existentialism by name, I was greatly attracted to it, for a short while, as a kid. Thanks, amongst other things, to a S$5 copy of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (unearthed in a secondhand bookshop in Holland Village while hiding from wrath of the school principal) and its logical consequences, I was very early on appraised of the nihilistic notion that life was meaningless and therefore not worth living. However, while systematically thinking about the suicide option and methodically researching various methods of committing it, I came upon Rollo May, an existential psychologist. Having already wandered through various psychological texts by the end of primary school and having thought rather poorly of the likes of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Rollo May came as the proverbial breath of fresh air because, to my puny nub of grey matter, his theories considered situations that identified with my perception of reality and offered solutions that majored neither in self-help superficiality nor wayout weirdity. (He also disagreed somewhat with Freud and itching ears like these things.) Yes, he said, the lack of absolutes in the world does necessarily cause uncertainty and despair. Yes, there is evil in everyone. But we find our value in having the courage to move forward inspite of our despair, in taking responsibility for our anxiety. We are to live a radical, passionate, authentic existence - life without passion and risk and commitment is phony. (See, for example, Albert Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus")

Problems With Existentialism
Enamoured as I was for, maybe, 2 months, it was distasteful to live life purposefully when, infact, in reality, there was no purpose to be found. That was phony. It smacked of both the blinkered positive-thinking and pearlywhite dentalwork of American motivational speakers and the ineffectual intellectual games one plays to mess with the minds of school discipline masters. (Kierkgaard's prescription of a "leap of faith" in face of the absurd, posited by many a vocational religious, seemed no better. Pascal's wager seemed a common-sensical enough way to proceed, but the question in this pluralistic society would be: which God or gods? Sartre simply condemned all these practices as "bad faith", and they are rather cowardly self-delusions.)

Solipsism
Also, various practical problems are associated with the universal subjectivity of ultimate worth (other than the issue of whether existentialism itself is subject to subjectivity). What follows on from subjectivity is solipsism, the affirmation that each person alone is the determiner of values and there are thus as many centers of value as there are persons in the cosmos at any one time.

Sartre countered this objection by insisting that every person in meeting other persons encounters a recognisable center of subjectivity. So others like us must be involved in making meaning for themselves. We are all in this absurd world together and our actions affect each other in such a way that "nothing can be good for us without being good for all" (Sartre, "Existentialism"). Moreover, as I act and think and effect my subjectivity, I am engaged in a social activity:"I am creating a certain image of a man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man" (Sartre, "Existentialism"). People living authentic lives create value not only for themselves, but for others too (Sire, "The Universe Next Door").

Ethics
In a Sartrean universe, the definitions of "good" and "evil" are turned on their heads. Good means the creation of value by choosing. Evil, then is not-choosing; it is passivity, living by the direction of others, being blown around by one's society, not recognising the absurdity of the universe.

Sartre assumes the existence of some standard of morality, even if such morality is on his terms. But his philosophical structure disallows him from having any basis or foundation for such a morality.

This does not explain our universal innate sense of right and wrong, of fairness and justice, of the value of another human life. If goodness is authenticity and authenticity is being true to one's own conscience, integrity, spirit, or character, despite external pressures to the contrary, then I choose whatever pleases me and me alone. But my choice may not be the desired choice of others though in my choosing I choose for others. Therefore, the Nazis, were praiseworthily authentic when they systematically ferreted out and killed Jewish men, women and children; therefore, the Khmer Rouge were doing "good" in wiping out 1.7 - 3 million of their own people.

Even in matters not directly related to life and death, Beauvoir's characters experience the painful consequences of the choices of another - they are taut, nervy, watchful, frantic, manic, depressive and lonely. The lack of values or morals means that no one can be trusted because everyone acts purely for their own pleasure and comfort. Everyone lies to each other. Their husbands while assuring them of transparency and honesty were not, in fact, faithful and, even when their wives were understanding of their dalliances, the husbands did not deign to tell the truth about their affairs. The wives are left yearning for relational stability, significance, value and certainty of the future. (Beauvoir's answer to this seems to be that they too should inflict themselves on others in similar ways.)

The truth is that we live life predicated on the unconscious tenet that there is an objective standard external to ourselves and that standard necessarily shapes the proper actions and relationships between subjects.

(Also, the mere methods by which Sartre conveys his thoughts on existentialism - essays, novels, plays, lectures, suggest a deterministic world where there are rules about communication and language. How self-stultifying.)

Greatness of Nihilism and Existentialism
The greatness of nihilism, though, is that it courageously and clearly presents the implications of a world without God. It honestly acknowledges that people do actually live as though God is non-existent or dead. No faffing about, no hiding behind pretty intellectual theories. The basic truth about man and his condition in a world without God is that life is meaningless and bleak. And what is interesting about existentialism is that underlying all the variations on a theme is the concept that man is somehow estranged from his essential nature.

But existentialism as salvation from nihilism is, to put it mildly and politely, both externally and internally incoherent and practically untenable.

Exit Stage Left

Ultimately, Sartre's pour-soi philosophy seems more a lifetime's work of justifying his rebellious urge, intellectual posturing and selfish self-indulgence than vice versa. The diaries, letters and autobiographies of Sartre and Beauvoir show that in real life, they sought to attain their worth not from their own choices or being true to that which was internal and within them, but to the external pleasures and affirmation that those choices afforded - young lovers to stave off the fear of mortality, aging and death, attention and approval from others. Beauvoir said of one of her lovers, Claude Lanzmann, 17 years her junior, that above all, he gave her "freedom from [her] age" (note, not freedom from oppressive societal values etc). Despair and depression ensued when the result of their choices was not as they desired, and drugs and alcohol were abused to rid them of this ennui, this meaningless void in themselves and the hollow emptiness they saw at the heart of all things.

Existentialists lived, communicated, felt and made decisions according to certain values that were not the direct outworking of their philosophy. Even if atheistic existentialists say they are more moral or ethical than theists, by their own stated beliefs, they have no claim on any system of morality or ethics. Arguably, this does not necessarily prove that there is a higher moral order or a higher being; social contract, Darwanian social theory, utilitarianism or one's pick-and-mix of sociological-ethical theories might be able to explain perceived social codes without resorting to the presence of a god.

But...

...while it may not be a terribly intellectually-sexy observation, if human beings do actually live according to certain epistemologies even if they cannot theoretically prove the truth of such epistemologies, then whatever the niceties and fetching intricacies of these epistemologies, they cannot practically hold water unless they assume that however absurd the objective world, it cannot be ignored. For if you think the world is illusory or that you can out-think the law of gravity, and you step off the top of a tall building, you can be sure that you'll end up a sorry splat on the pavement below.

And of all the competing worldviews, the Christian one contains an eminently viable epistemology based on historical facts. It is deliciously coherent both externally and internally. Christians are given a strong foundation for ultimate knowledge, meaning, love, hope, truth, joy, and assurance for the future. But it is not mere cowardly "bad faith" or wishful thinking or living on Cloud Cuckoo Land, it is based on objective facts, the same facts that we depend upon throughout our daily lives. Fierce!

...

In the morning, the air was fresh. The Planetshakers were "Arise"-ing (for the textured, layered sound; definitely not for the existential saturated-self lyrics) and Jack Johnson's "In Between Dreams" was discovered in between the pages of a book where someone at some point in spacetime had co-opted it as a bookmark. There was basking in the sunshine, birds in the azure sky, croissants and a tin of crème de marrons chestnut spread each (yay, Clement Faugier!) and strong coffee.

Jabba the Hutt exits stage right

Righto. So much for me 2¢. Now that that's been pensieved, back to writing that elusive talk.

PS: One is immensely tempted to pun "the wall-eyed Sartre", but that, even to the existentialist, would be cruel.

"Shoe As World", Singapore Biennale and Contemporary Installation Art

"Shoe As World: Inability of Different Worlds to Coexist"

The thing about being home, sick, but with energy to spare is that you fiddle around in that heavy-headed twilight zone between (1) acetaminophen-codeine-prednisolone-loratadine drowsiness where both reading and playing musical instruments musically are impossible; and (2) raging high feverishness where there are nightmares about existential problems and irresolvable space-time relativities, and you thus create the monstrosity above.

And while we're at it, why not? In the spirit of Singapore Biennale 2006, an amateur curator's writeup of thatwhichwasaperfectlynormalshoemindingitsownbusiness is this:

A new world within the world of the human is created by the mere choice of the artist: the world of the shoe. A member of the audience, existing in the human world, is tempted to conform to the basis and assumptions of his world by imposing his own values on the shoe world by putting his foot in the shoe (so that he can go to school) and so "stamp out" this other, different, world. In this seemingly simple piece, the artist explores the complex questions of race, religion, politics, the war in the Middle East, the oppressiveness of the idea that wine and cheese go together and the tyranny of the innumerable decimal places of pi. However, this piece has no one meaning and the audience is invited to interpret it any way they want.

Or something.

Or I could have just filled a whole lot of shoes with butter and left them around the top of Bukit Timah hill:
Yu Xiuzhen, "Shoes With Butter" (1996)

but then, likedat, sure kenna corrective work order.

Or I could just have made like a conceptual artist and written a set of instructions describing the work. To be shortlisted for the Turner Prize, however, would require far less work:

• unmade bed? Check.
• holiday video? Check.
• room with faulty on-off switch? Not yet but I can fix that.
  

Now about that bovine and formaldehyde I ordered...

Singapore Biennale (Tanglin Camp)
The real accredited stuff was at the Singapore Biennale. And the wanderup to Tanglin Camp went like this:

first, was P.S. Café at Harding Road for afterwork fortification and for the gorgeous cake display. There was catching up and foccacia and different types of humus and fork-waving discussions about sermons and meltinyourmouth beef tenderloin and nattering and mash and holding aloft mushrooms as big as your palm and then some respectful quiet for the deadly chocolate cake lying stickily in its sticky chocolate sauce.

Then, feeling our way through the pitch-blackness to Tanglin Camp, someone looked down at the pitch-black ground and tried not to see undead people things. And I fought the urge to tap her ghostily on the shoulder just to hear her scream.

Safe under the lights of Tanglin Camp without a pontianak on a bad hair day in sight, we came first to Agathe de Bailliencourt's "Occupation Bleue"

Allegedly illegible scribbles of the word "Belief"

In the Exhibition Short Guide, Roger McDonald says:

Using existing smears and old marks on the walls and floors, she has intervened into this space, layering images and markings.

Right.

De Bailliencourt explains a bit more herself:

Why we look the way we do?
The rationale behind the creative concept of the Singapore Biennale 2006 stems from the strong belief of marrying visual art with street culture. An intervention of art into public spaces, allowing art to be an integral part of everyday life. This non-conformist mode of execution will reflect the omnipresence of art in almost every imaginable place or object and will evoke positive participation and interest from the general public.

Said Scornful Pleb: isn't that generally known as vandalism? If her art really "intervened" into our clean public spaces, the men in blue would have "intervened" with her - a fat rotan on her French butt. Besides, don't you think Banksy, Arofish and even our local The Killer Gerbil and White Dog Bobby deserve far more recognition by actually doing something on public property?

In the next room was Younès Rahmoun's "Ghorfa", supposedly a replica of the artist's meditation room under the stairwell in his Moroccan home.

Beyond formal and spiritual questions, the artist proposes the experience of the work and invites the public into a "recreated" intimate space. In this identical reproduction of his workspace (ghorfa), we may also perceive the care for symmetry that is so present in the Arab arts and sciences. Younès Rahmoun claims this practice, donating his imaginary and exchanging his workspace for a time of encounter with the other.

Scornful Pleb: Cheh. And I got all excited thinking it was aliens, I did. Right. Nothing to see here, move on, move on.


Then there was Charles Juhász-Alvarado's "Escala" (Stopover): a gigantic fooseball table installed in a room.

Under colonisation came Christianity. In vibrantly multi-racial Puerto Rico, Indians and Africans were obliged to practice Catholicism. Ancestral rites were considered pagan and banned; Indians couldn't practice their ritual ball game (similar to football) while Africans were taught to pray to the Spanish saints. These impositions generated survival strategies, which are explored in Juhász-Alvarado's work for the biennale. "Escala" is a site-specific installation consisting of a gigantic table football game. Spectators interact with all the elements. The pieces are abstractions of the Christian saints worshipped by the Africans because their features were similar to those of the Yoruba's. This is how they fooled the Spaniards and maintained their own beliefs.

Juhász-Alvarado often invites his peers to make interventions into his pieces. For "Escala" he has invited five artists to create mini-installations exhibited on top of the tables and on the walls. All the invited artists have suffered because of their beliefs.

The third element of the installation, consists of two vast heads facing each other. Spectators can get inside them, and have the oppotunity to assume or possess different identities while they journey through the array of possibilities that "getting into another's head" suggests.

Three plots, three schemes, three strategies, three scales, three beliefs. The space is transformed into a confrontational zone that is simultaneously flexible, transformative and adaptable. It alludes to the Indian ritual ball game; to the African shift of beliefs, to the "3 Bs"; to the richness of Caribbean's hubrid culture; to all the manoeuvres Puerto Ricans have in order to believe in ourselves and deal with the burden of colonization. Enjoy this complicated game!

In another block was Brian Gothong Tan's "We Live In a Dangerous World"

When visitors enter the space, they will step up onto a small slop that leads to a platform which divides the room into two sides. This division of space is a metaphor for two visions which are in the Western context - the binary oppositions, and in the Eastern context - Yin and Yang philosophy. There will be sculptures dressed in white, a small Merlion (Singapore's invented national symbol), photographic images, LCD monitors, forests, the Virgin Mary and a Kuan Yin Buddha statue, a figure wearing a burkha and more.

Tan's intention is to mix things up semiotically, so that a sculpture or any one element in his installation doesn't necessarily have one meaning, but can be interpreted in multiple ways. The message of his artworks cannot be reduced to a single monolithic statement about a subject that he is exploring, but is rathr a multitude of poetic statements, rambling personal observations and refreshing insights. In this way, he effectively questions complex issues like religions, humanity, war, spirituality and the present situation of the life of people in Asia by drawing unexpected connections and without being simplistic or reductive.

He also uses humour and design to make his art accessible and more easily "consumable", which is a strategy he often deploys to communicate with and engage his audience. As he says,"In fact, sometimes all it takes is a shift of perspective to re-interpret old problems, to see things in new ways. This shift is something that I hope to achieve in my audience."

Drawn by some terribly repetitive Glam music, we opened a door to the glare of Philip Brophy's "Fluorescent" with the artist in full camp glory starring in a luridly-coloured installation.

In the possibly-trusty Exhibition Short Guide, Russell Storer says:

Fluorescent is a music video, starring the artist himself as the embodiment of a Glam Rock hero: the sexually slippery icon that turned macho Hard Rock on its head in the early 1970s and never looked back. For Glam was about the future: a glittering, tin-foil future of space travel and fluid identity, where anyone could fly to the moon or be a star as long as they had the right outfits. Glam's celebration of surfaces prefigured the explosion of music video in the early 1980s, a form that experienced a brief flowering of intense, raw-edged creativity before sinking into a generic soup of expensive effects and glossy marketing campaigns. In the spirit of this early moment, Brophy's pop star is riotously rough, favouring pancake make-up over airbrushing and swagger over choreography.

Driven by throbbing surround-sound and split across three screens, Flourescent plays with the crucial yet awkward relationship between music and image. Featuring both the full mix and remixed versions of the song, the work severs this connection at several points when the sound drops out as the video performance continues, throwing a focus on the elaborate artificiality of Brophy's act and the constructed-ness of our aural and visual perceptions. A widely published writer and theorist on sound and cinema as well as a film-maker and sound artist, Brophy encourages one to "think with one's ears" when watching a film to appreciate the sensory and psychological properties of sound, transcending its generally conceived supporting role to the image.

Fluorescent also derives from Brophy's long-held fascination with genre-busting cultural forms - manga, horror films, Glam, pornogrpahy - as well as their insidious influence, seeping into and transfiguring so-called "High Art" and popular culture alike. Each form stretches or dissolves the body in one way or another, reducing it to a amorphous, polysexual entity that defies easy categorisation and forces a reconsideration of our own drives and mortality.

Ah Beng: Eh, so if I download pron, then I superimpose Osama's face, then photoshop him some mascara and lipstick, then cut MTV, means I artist liao lor.

Happily for one increasing grumpy visitor, the next installation, Takashi Kuribayashi's "Aquarium: I feel like I am in a fishbowl", was both "interactive" and "fun" (as promised by NAC CEO Lee Suan Hiang). More "total installation" some would say, where one is simultaneously a viewer and a "victim". Victimising or not, it was, naturally, co-opted into participating in many a phone-cam-photo-for-my-blog photo.

From http://blog.so-net.ne.jp/bowmao/ cos cannot use my photo lah!

For once the curator note seemed far more confused than our little plebian audience. Fortunately, Kuribayashi explains in a separate interview:

When you experience this art work, you'll feel like you're looking into an aquarium, but at the same time, someone is looking back at you. For example, when you go to the zoo, you think you are looking at animals, but actually the animals are watching the human beings. I'm dealing with that kind of changing perceptions and situations here.

And She-Who-Was-About-To-Slink-Away thoroughly enjoyed Hiroyuki Matsukage's "STAR" (even though no one was quite sure what it was supposed to mean), glamming it up for her 5 minutes of fame.

"Thank you, thank you all of you fans. Thank you for flying in from Japan and America. You love me, I know you love me. I am the best in Singapore, JB and some say, Batam! I love you too! Oooh! Yes, I love all of you! C'mon, let me hear you scream for me!"

Explains Fumio Nanjo:

The piece reacts according to how audiences scream into a microphone. Directly in front of the mic, there is a photograph of 200 girls, who scream back at the screamer as if he or she is a star on a stage. This work symbolises the desire of many people to be a star, which reminds us of Andy Warhol's prediction:"In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes".

The last stop was Otto Karvonen's "Belief Board", which was basically a hut supplied with pens of different coloured ink, pieces of paper headed "Offered" or "Wanted" and thumbtacks to hold up the paper.

Marita Muukkonen puts it more curatorishly:

For the Biennale, Karvonen will create a "temple" in a small building of 12 square metres at Tanglin Camp, where people can seach for and offer advice for problems with the help of various saints and gods. Visitors can try to figure out what to do about the downswing of their portfolio, their love lives or unemployment. When Karvonen travelled to Singapore recently he visited temples filled with colours and sounds where people went to pray regardless of their religion. Religions as well as ideologies move the masses, yet the world in all its complexity rests on the tiniest of entities. Karvonen invites us to make leaps of thought that might help us connect with these realities.

Err...whatever. In any case, we offered salvation via Two Ways To Live.

Contemporary Installation Art
Contemporary installation art we are told, is meant to transport a person into a place that is strange and familiar at the same time. It is supposed to offer us new ways of looking at an old world. That's true if (1) the man-in-the-corner-kopi-tiam even recognises it as art in the first place (some people thought Yayoi Kusama's white-polka-dots-on-red wrapped trees along Orchard Road were advertisements for OCBC Bank); and (2) when they manage to recognise it as art (maybe it's hanging in a gallery or museum, or people pay loads of money for it, or there's a little white plaque beside it), if they can actually understand what the artist is trying to say.

As a medium, the installation art is vague and imprecise. It is difficult to grasp what exactly is meant, eg. by cups of urine lined up in a row or 7,000 trees planted in an empty field or disfigured dolls, without some explanation. But thus enlightened, it is possible to go back and look at the installation and feel an impact on the heart and mind greater than the mere words of the explanation. Or not.

It is possible that for this very reason, God ordained that the most precious message of all, the good news of the forgiveness of sins and the salvation from eternal death, the gospel of eternal life and a restored relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, should be transmitted not visually in paintings or sculptures, nor by installations or ornaments, but in language, in words, whether set to music or otherwise.