Third World Writer

I’m gonna take a break from my faith-themed posts for a while (I was starting a trend, if you hadn’t noticed) to announce that once again, November is nearly upon us! This means that in a few days’ time, National Novel Writing Month will begin! Woohoo!!

If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, then you’re probably not a writer and so this post will not interest you. But since my zee got me a shirt that proclaimed me to be “Feeling Writer”, I feel obligated to at least try to write something this month. It’ll be my first time participating in NaNoWriMo (I signed up just today), and while the task does seem daunting – to write a 50,000-word novel in one month, that’s 1,667 words a day – I think I should be able to manage.

If you’ve ever thought for a moment that you had a story in your head that you wanted to see in actual words, I suggest you visit nanowrimo.org and give it a try. The goal of the activity is simply to churn out word after word, with little or no regard for quality, just to have your very own first rough draft. Don’t worry about your messed up prose, that can be fixed in December. The important thing is not to let the story stagnate in your brain. It could run out of food and die.

It is nice to know that the people at nanowrimo aren’t professional novel authors. They’re normal people like you and me, with regular classes and day jobs, trying to churn out the stories they fell in love with.They’re funny, supportive and admirably positive, even though a lot of them have failed at hitting 50,000 year after year after year. They vent their frustration with adorable little haikus, ask for mentors to nag them when they’ve been idle, and even have meet-ups and chat sessions for people in your region. (The Asia::Philippines region had a meet-up last Saturday, which I unfortunately missed.) If you’ve tried and failed at getting very far into your stories, there’s no better month than November to try again.

And if you feel like giving up along the way, check out the pep talk by some famous authors, like this one from Neil Gaiman. It’s nice to know that even the most successful writers feel like losers sometimes too. ^_^

So.

What to write?

A few days ago I heard an interesting story on the MRT speakers. You might have heard something similar.

One day, a ship sank, leaving a single survivor stranded alone on a deserted island. Having lost everything, the man prayed to God to save him as he scanned the horizons looking for rescue boats. None came. He built himself some shelter, gathered some food, and continued praying and praying and scanning the horizons, day after day after day. Still no one came. Finally, after gathering some fruit from the forest, he returned to his hut to find it in flames, sending a thick dark column of smoke into the blue sky. Now thoroughly frustrated and angry at God, the man cursed and cried “How could you abandon me in my greatest time of need?!” But then after a few hours, to his surprise, a ship approached his island and came to his rescue.

“How did you find me here?” he asked the ship’s captain.

“Why, we saw your smoke signal of course!”

The lesson of the story, according to the narrator, was that when life gets you down, don’t lose faith; what may seem like a disaster to you might actually be life’s smoke signal beckoning the grace of God.

Aww.

What a ridiculous lesson.

This story, though most people might not notice, actually illustrates three things I would think of as some forms of sin, in one way or another: an abuse of prayer, an over-dependence on God, and gross inaction as a result of faith. And because these three things aren’t directly addressed in the story, it’ll come as a subliminal message to those who haven’t been paying attention that they might be acceptable behavior, just as long as one doesn’t lose faith. Which is why I find stories like this one quite irresponsible.

I’m not about to go so far as to suggest that these are exclusively Christian behaviors, no sir. But having grown up among Catholics and having been surrounded by devout Christians for most of my life, I can’t help but notice that I know a lot of people who are as faithfully helpless as the man in the story. In times of dire difficulty their first instinct is to pray and have faith that He will provide, and if that doesn’t work they increase their devotion by going to church more often, or asking friends to pray for them. Only when things get unbearable, or when they “lose faith” do they take things into their own hands, and by that time there’s little that can be done.

I have nothing against faith, I want to make that clear. Neither do I have anything against God or prayer. I happen to think quite highly of the three. But when the things you believe cultivate a mentality of dependence and helplessness, I have to think perhaps we have different perspectives on faith, God and prayer. So allow me to offer another story, and a different lesson, about a man with a different kind of faith.

One day, a ship sank, leaving a single survivor stranded alone on a deserted island. Believing that God would not leave him stranded without the means to get himself home, he prayed for the clarity of mind to recognize the things that God had provided him. He then set off to search the island. Before long he found leaves with which he built a hut, and flint to start a small fire. Realizing that the smoke from his fire stood out distinctly against the blue sky, he threw in more fuel to make a smoke signal. Shortly after, a rescue ship came and took him home, but not before he offered a prayer of thanks to God.

Aww.

There are a number of lessons to this story:

God is not your slave. He does not “provide” when you call, because he “has already provided” before you even asked. If you believe that God “provides”, faith becomes a license to do nothing. If you believe that God “has provided”, faith becomes the confidence that you can do anything.

Times of difficulty are not troubles, they are trials which you are expected to overcome using all that God has provided – your resources, your skills, and your own understanding. I like to think that if God needs to bail you out of your trial, you have probably failed miserably.

Prayer is a direct phone line to God and should not be used to ask for the blessings he has already provided. Do not ask for shortcuts, he has provided a road. Do not ask for answers, he has provided your mind. Do not ask for perfection, he has provided hope. Ask only for inspiration and patience.

And if there is any one welcome reason to call, it should be to thank him.

“Larakhel. When you look upon this tiny planet, tell me, what do you see?”

“I see the earth, my Lord. I see the wonder of your creations and the grandeur of your design.”

“My father’s asleep, Larakhel, there’s no need to kiss ass.”

“I see a bunch of people, my Lord.”

“That’s better.”

“Why do you ask?”

“A long, long time ago, my father created this world. He breathed life into nothingness and spawned its mountains, seas and skies. He labored for long days moulding its infinite variety of trees and creatures, including his most beautiful creation yet — people.”

“Yes?”

“And I may have ruined it.”

“Impossible!”

“Not so. Do you know what a soul is, Larakhel?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s.. uhm.. something like an undying part of humans, right?”

“It’s free will. The ability to function contrary to your design. You don’t have one so you wouldn’t understand it, but these humans, when my father gave them to me as a gift, I gave them souls. I gave them the ability to do things father hadn’t intended them to do. I messed with his design so that they could design their own fates. How stupid is that?”

“Uhm.. It’s.. ”

“Father was pissed. The one arbitraty rule he put in the garden I gave them the ability to break, and, wonder of wonders, they broke it. That’s why this garden is up here and not down there. And that’s why his patience for them is so short. Every little thing used to piss him off. Mock him and there’s a flood. Defile his image and it rains fire. Only when I went down there to save them did he finally stop lashing out at them. He was so afraid I’d go down there again.”

“What was it like down there?”

“It was terrible.. It was so, so scary..”

“But you’re God, right? How scary can it be?”

“I am God and the Son of God, I am the beginning and the end, but when I am down there I am human, and the son of humans.. Being God and Man at the same time, destined to die for them but wanting, by my free will, to live – it was all so very confusing. Not to mention this thing they call love..”

“Love? Don’t we have that up here too?”

“Not in the same way. The love we have up here – the love you show me and my father, the love we have for angels and humans – it is so much more understandable than what they have down there. Free will has enabled them to create a complex mix of emotions even they themselves don’t even understand. They have hate, desire, anger, lust, envy, jealousy, sorrow, and all these they mix into their little version of love. It amazes me that they are able to thrive on what little they know.. and it scares me that the reason they thrive might be because they know so little.”

“Uh.. Lord? Mind if I ask – ”

“Go ahead.”

“What’s with all the drama?”

“The day is fast approaching, Larakhel, when I will have to take these humans and present them to my father.. and I fear that when that day comes he will not find them worthy.”

“Oh.. Bummer.”

“Bummer indeed.”

“Can’t you fix them then?”

“I could. I very well could. I could command them in ways that would compel them to obey. But then they would be no different from the air, or the beasts, or even the rocks beneath their feet, mindless creations who know nothing but what I command. I don’t want that.”

“Haven’t you already given them a number of commandments though? Like when you visited them?”

“Just a few hints and tips, really. More like guidelines rather than real rules. A few of them have gotten my drift, thankfully, but a number of them have taken a lot of things out of context, or have taken to strictly enforcing them. It takes the freedom out of free will, which is sorely disappointing.”

“Huh.. ”

“Something on your mind?”

“Yeah.. Well, you see.. I’m confused. You want them to obey, yet you give them the freedom to disobey, and you worry that their disobedience will earn the disfavor of your father, and yet you insist on leaving them free to continually disobey.. I don’t get it. Do you want them saved or not?”

“Larakhel, let me ask you this. What if I were to ask a favor of you?”

“You need only command it, my lord.”

“And you would obey?”

“Of course.”

“No matter what I command?”

“Absolutely.”

“Why?”

“Hmm.. Because you command it.”

“Why else?”

“Uhh.. I don’t know. Do I need any other reasons?”

“No, you do not. And do you know why?”

“Because I was made that way?”

“Exactly. You would follow my command not because it is right and not because you respect me, but because my father designed you that way. Your ‘will’, your ‘purpose’ has been programmed into you, and you cannot even imagine an original desire of your own.”

“Huh?”

“You are a slave, Larakhel. When you follow my commands without knowing why, without caring why, and without deciding for yourself whether it is the right thing to do, you are a slave. ”

“Like the rocks beneath human feet?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say, quite frankly.”

“I know. And that is the reason why, no matter what awful things they do, I will never deny these humans their souls. They are children, struggling to define what is right and wrong, hurting themselves and others as they grow. But I would prefer for them to be my children rather than my slaves, although unfortunately slaves are what some of them have become.”

“Uhm.. Hmm.. ”

“Yes?”

“These children of yours.. How will they be judged? I mean, your father must have some sort of criteria, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know for sure. He may decide to pass them all, he may decide to fail them all on a whim. Or if he were me – which he is, really – he may decide to judge them according to what they have been given in the beginning, and what they still have in the end.”

“‘What they’ve been given in the beginning’.. You mean the world? You mean their souls?”

“Yes. And one more thing.”

“What?”

“Each other.”