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My hard disk crashed. I hope my data is still retrievable. Please pray that it is. God help me. People pray for me. Argh. I am lost for words. :(

Relationships: What's in a name?

As humans we are relational creatures and our identity is rooted in relation to others or certain attributes. Take my name for example :"Celestine"; it brings little meaning by itself because it is just a mere word but when it's in relation to other words/images such as: "male", "Catholic", "psychology student", "Tan", "Chinese" and so on, I have built some sort of identity for myself. Notice that I am in relation to my gender, religious beliefs, major, surname (i.e. clan/family) and race (i.e. my features/culture); without these I have virtually no identity - which goes to show how relational we are and how we are dependent on relationships just for the mere sake of establishing an identity.

Interestingly when Moses asks God for His name to convey to the Israelites (Exodus 3:13), God answered ""I am who I am." and God told Moses to tell his people that "I AM" sent him (Exodus 3:14, NIV). Both "I AM" statements are very significant because it shows how independent God is from all creation; perhaps this is because God Himself is already relational within (i.e. the Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) and as God He is never lacking.

Now let's make a detour back to topic of us being in relation to words/images. These words which we use to establish our identity are also in relation to other words/images. For instance, the word: "Catholic" conjures up words/images such as "univeral", "crucifix", "nun", "priest", etc. And these words which are related to the word "Catholic" have other words in relation to it also. So you see words are also dependent on other words/images to establish its meaning - or else words would be meaningless.

In the same way this applies to us. If our identity is rooted in things which are dependent on other things for meaning, we lose our identity as soon as these things loses its own meaning or its meaning becomes ambiguous. A common example would be the issue of race; What makes one Chinese? Almond-shaped eye? Fair-skinned? What about people whose mother is Chinese and father is Indian - what race are they? Should they follow the race of their mother's or their father's? etc.

My whole point is this: what better way to establish one's identity than in relation to God who is, who was and always will be eternal and forever? :)

I am first and foremost a Child of God.

Amen.

Agape

The idea of Christian love is agape (selfless love). It is an unconditional kind of love and those who love in this manner, loves despite the shortcomings of another. God loves us with agape, He loves us despite our sin ("While we are still sinners, Christ died for us.", Romans 5:8). Ironically the reason we see the manifestation of God's agape love for us is because of Man's separation from God (i.e. sin). Perhaps the author of the Exultet realises this and included the following line:

O happy fault,

O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

Oh, how great is our God!

Exclusive interview with Opus Dei!

For ONE Night Only @ KDU College, Petaling Jaya.

RM5 Cover Charge, includes refreshments.

Interested? Contact me at celestinetan@gmail.com