Unwritten and Unthunk

State of Origin night seems like a good time to talk about something that's been burbling around in the back of my head for a bit.

A common criticism of the game of Rugby League is that it is two dimensional. It's boring and repetitive, watching men constantly run into each other.

Granted—there is a three-dimensionality to AFL or to soccer that rugby league generally doesn't manage.

But there's no reason why an extra dimension necessarily makes a game more beautiful. That is to say, a square is no less perfectly formed than a cube. The beauty that a sphere has is no less geometric beauty than that of a circle; it merely has a different quality to it.

One of the joys of rugby league is like listening to a symphony slowing unfolding. It is a beauty of subtle variations on a theme. A hit-up here, a solid shoulder-charge there, a sudden sidestep, a burst from dummy-half, a half-break, an unexpected off-load, and the game breaks into full song.

When the game degenerates into broken play, it remains a far prettier sight than AFL. Because movement in one direction is relatively constrained, there is far more order to the chaos (as oxymoronic as that sounds).

Indeed, broken-field running is often pure joy to watch; no longer restrained by the rest of the orchestra, the soloist bursts into glorious song.

For instance, somewhere along the line, I have been taught to believe that the value of an Australian life is greater than that of someone overseas.

Example. My uncle once ran a sandwich shop in the city. To find workers, he advertised, only in Chinese in Chinese newspapers. What sort of applicants and workers did he end up getting?

You guessed it—he had Chinese workers. This offended my Australian nationalism to no end! Why not Australian workers? His reasoning was that Chinese workers (non PRs) would work harder, and for less.

Now my uncle is not an ungenerous man. We ran into him at our local favourite Malaysian restaurant yesterday, and he shouted us lunch out of the blue.

What am I reacting to? I guess I have been fed, taught, subliminally messaged, that the value of an Australian life is more important than that of someone from China.

Why is that? The Australian worker will no doubt spend his money on his mobile phone bill, a couple of drinks at the pub and a night out on Thursday and/or Friday night, and save very little. The guy from China will pay off some debts, send most of it to his family at home, and live on a pittance for the rest of the week. [Gross over-generalization!]

But actually, the latter is probably far more helpful for the world at large, to the extent that one person in a large economy affects much.

Further than that; I am encouraged to buy Australian made. It's "better" that I buy a t-shirt that's made in Australia, rather than something made in a sweatshop overseas. Doesn't that $1 pittance that the little sweatshop worker earns do more good for that person and that third-world economy than the $15 the Australian businessman gets, or the $5 that his employees earn?

Recently, with our Kevin Rudd money, I used some of that to buy some stuff from the US. And I was stricken with a small degree of guilt: aren't I supposed to be using that money to prop up the Australian economy, not the US economy? But then again, there are poor people in the US economy as well. There are poor people in every economy. What makes the welfare of the Australian state more important than that of the US state, or the Botswanan state, or the Indonesian state?

I've just been writing essays on (and thus thinking about) the nationalistic pride of Israel, and the 1st-century Jews. It's one of the things that seems to get rejected in the first-century church throughout Acts (and books like Galatians). Or, what Jesus accomplishes on the cross is healing the nationalistic rift created in Genesis 12 (or perhaps, Exodus), as explicated in Ephesians 2: there is no more Jew and Gentile; rather there is a one humanity, a common united humanity under Christ, where there is no more dividing law or wall.

I could also appeal to the creation account in Genesis 1: the fact is, mankind is mankind. And so, I have more in common with the single mum in Ghana, or the guy selling fake watches to make a living in Thailand, or the guy picking rubbish out of a diner in New York than my neighbourhood cat. Or dog. They're humanity. They're in the image of God.

What makes me prioritise the Australian over anyone else in the world? What make me think that she is more important than anyone else in the world?

Only all the propaganda I've ever been fed in my life.

Sarah and I have been married a bit over 3 years.

Upon hearing this, a single friend asked if I even remembered life before Sarah.

Does it ever work like that? I'm curious what you guys think.

Because I've been thinking: marriage fundamentally changes your state, but does not fundamentally change you as a person. Like fatherhood, I will now, and foreverafter, be Micah's father. But having a son does not mystically generate parenting skills or bonds of affection. Being married is now a more significant thing to me than any other aspect of my life: my car, my house, my job, my education, my friends, my parents [but let us exclude faith from this list]. But I am still the person I was before, and change does not happen overnight. Rather, it creeps up on you, every hour, every day, every second you share, you are marked and are changed, for better and for worse. I am kinder, but lazier. I am more practised at choosing Sarah's needs over mine, but now I am also more dependant on Sarah's reciprocal service; as such I am probably even lazier now at cleaning up (if that were possible).

But marriage (unlike conversion), is not a fresh start. I am the same person I was before, with the same baggage I had before. Marriage prep is often not about clearing away your collective baggage, but helping you to shoulder each others' burdens.

For instance, I touched various scars the other day, prodding and poking and wondering if they were still there. And it surprised me to notice that they still hurt. They were remarkably poignant, even though I am in a far happier place now than I have ever been. Perhaps, like most ingrates, I am only truly appreciate what I have when its gone. Showing lack of contentment, I want what I had, rather than being content with what I have now. Except... I don't! I have more now than I ever had.

Because the nature of joy is far different to that of disappointment, hurt, regret. Joy is like being on caffeine. I feel generally warm and fuzzy, but when it is gone, I long and long for the feeling to return.

I have not yet, then, truly mastered contentment, nor the ability to rejoice, actively, in all circumstances.

Normally I wouldn't post one of my SMBC assignments on my blog, but every now and again you do something you just need to be a bit self-indulgent. My blog is probably a good place to show I'm, occasionally, a smart-arse.

So, just prior to Micah being born, I was working on this OT assignment. The assignment: "Read and respond* to one of the following OT books". (* Be as creative as you like, but interact with the text!)

I did mine on Numbers:

• Haoran's Reading Log Book

The Homogeneous Unit Principle (The HUP) is the idea that, in terms of evangelism and church-planting, a certain group of people will attract people who are relatively similar to them. So, university students are more likely to have friends who are university students, and so a church targeted at university students will work well by starting with a large pool of university students.

In some sense, that's basic human nature. People like people who are like them. That's why Vietnamese people tend to be found around Cabramatta, Chinese people tend to be found around Ashfield, and so forth. And in some ways, that makes good sense. A Mandarin-speaking church is able to do ministry that an English-speaking church can't. Similarly, a Korean church, a Persian church, and so forth.

The reason that's relevant is that a minister yesterday tried to convince me that I should work in an Chinese church, because of the HUP. "Culture", he said, "is bigger than language". So, his argument goes, even for the 2nd generation Chinese person, who speaks English fluently, is still more Chinese culturally, than Australian. He felt that at bible college (for him) there was still a visible cultural divide between him and the Anglo people at college.

Now the argument was brief because I had to go to class, but nevertheless, experientially, I think that's bollocks.

But then again, this guy didn't really know me.

I know there's ABCs who have more Chinese friends than Anglo friends. Maybe for them it's a good idea, because in order to reach their friends, a church of English-speaking Chinese would be the best way to reach them.

But that's hardly my experience. I strongly associate as an Australian. I don't reject my Chinese-ness, but I don't live in a Chinese world. I live in an Australian world. Which, by the way, is extraordinarily multi-cultural, and not necessarily Anglo. Nevertheless, for what its worth, I've lived with Anglos, and gone to "Anglo" churches, and married one. I am as Australian as I want to be. Australian as I need to be. I feel entirely comfortable in an Anglo church. (In fact, my mother, who is far more culturally Chinese than I am, also far prefers to go to an Anglo church.)

I'll admit that there was a time in my youth when I rejected my Chinese-ness, to embrace Australian-ness as much as I could. But I still have many element of Chinese-ness in me. I love my Chinese name (which is my Christian name, thankyouverymuch) and I made sure we gave Micah a Chinese name too. I know a phenomenal amount about Chinese cuisine, thanks to my parents (who love eating in restaurants), and I have the rudiments of Chinese bouncing around in my brain.

But all that aside, I think Culture is and should be subservient to the gospel. I'll be whatever I need to be, to serve the Lord Jesus and the Gospel. To the Aussies, I become Aussie, but to the Chinese, I become Chinese. When I speak to Aussies (especially those that strike me as potentially dubious) I'll speak with as much of an Aussie twang in my voice as possible, and tell them I was born in Australia. When I speak to a mainland Chinese student, I'll make as best use as I can of my 6 words of Chinese (which I don't speak with an Aussie accent), and tell them my parents are Malaysian-Chinese.

I need to run off to class, so I'll leave it there, but at the end of the day, it seems to me like the HUP is more like good pragmatics and bad theology.

More anon.

At this stage of parenthood, a large part of communicating with Micah is entirely guesswork. When he cries, does it mean:

1. I'm hungry!
2. Please change me.
3. I'm tired!
4. My tummy hurts!!
5. I'm sick of lying on my back, can I lie on my side now?
6. I'm lonely, come back and talk to me!
7. I've just had a nightmare. Waaa! I dreamed you guys were abducted by aliens from the planet Blorgon
8. (and so forth)

And because we're still several months of beginning proper verbal communication, I was pondering this communication black-hole.

Hitherto, I've always thought of Genesis 11 as a fundamental descriptor to the human state. The urge to succeed, the need to reach for the skies, the ingenuity to make technological advance, the power and hubris of a collective humanity, and the judgement (and perhaps blessing) of miscommunication.

The latter's the big one: we communication is no longer perfect, and foreverafter have this post-modernist disconnect between the speaker and the hearer. What the speaker intends is not necessarily what the hearer interprets. It's not just about creating different languages: God's intent (and therefore his achieved purpose) is so that "they will not understand each other".

I've always taken that to mean that communication worked before Babel. Actually, communication works now (flawed as it is) but I mean: without misunderstanding.

That's not necessarily far-fetched. Do dogs struggle to understand each other? Do whales?

But prior to Babel, babies still had to grow up. But... did Adam have to learn language? Did he and Eve have language planted straight onto their brain?

I am not a particularly clucky person.

I've never had a burning desire to pick up other people's babies, and have only done so reluctantly when they were foisted onto me. I don't quite get the joy of cuddling babies—I prefer to interact with them when I can talk intelligibly to them, or better yet, intelligently. Or better yet, play computer games with them.

But since having Micah, and having quite a number of friends and family meet him for the first time, I am struck by exactly how clucky the people around me are!

Everyone says how gorgeous Micah is (a sentiment I agree with, albeit with a good deal of bias), everyone wants to hold him and coo and cluck and cuddle him.

And that's pretty much been unanimous—male and female, young and old. Perhaps its because all the people who hate children have been slow to want to come and meet him, but nevertheless, people who, in Uni, were avowedly of the opinion, "I never want to have children ever!" now gaze adoringly and proclaim, "oh, how cute!"

It is simply because Micah is in the top percentile of cuteness? Is it simply stage of life?

And yet, even now, being a doting father, I don't feel a tremendous need to hold friends' babies, to fuss over them. The only baby I've ever been affectionate with, or indeed had a burning desire to pick up and cuddle, is my own.

Is there something I'm missing?

Determinism is the idea that everything that happens can and must happen, as a result of other things happening. It is the logical outcome of imagining a world which is a closed system of causes and effects. A computer program is deterministic, because given the same set of inputs, it will always return the same output.

The same set of thinking can dominate the mind of young parents.

Having read much of the literature, each of which recommends one technique or method over another, you start to feel that every action or misdeed could have serious repercussions down the track.

Parents who allow the children to dictate the times and durations of their feeds will get children who are willful, disobedient and used to getting their own way, and so they do not obey instruction or correction.

Parents who feed their children sweets too young will engender in them a sweet tooth, forever consigning them to a life of tooth decay, obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and a host of heart diseases.

Parents who bottle-feed instead of breast-feed will have babies who are more sickly, more overweight, less healthy, and less responsive to routine.

Parents who subject their children to unsupervised TV-watching will have kids who have no morals, are suckered in by advertising forever-after, love crime, drugs, and free love, and who believe life has happy endings.

And so forth.

Rampant is this idea of determinism: that something right or something wrong, even at this tender young age (Micah is 3.5 weeks old and counting) could destroy his future. (What if I were to drop him, and he were to forever after walk with a limp? What if I bang his head too many times, and by so-doing I have downgraded his future HD-Average to a Credit-Average?)

The comfort is this: that we believe in a sovereign, loving, Creator-God who loves, cares, and has ordained every day of Micah's life before his birth, before his conception, and before the beginning of the world.

We believe in a Sovereign Ruler-God, whose deeds throughout all ages have been mighty, whose words are powerful and which accomplish every task he intends for them. We believe in a God who ordains and plans, and whom no mortal man can thwart. We believe in a God who is carefully, intricately, precisely, bringing all things in heaven and on earth, throughout all of history, under one head: Christ.

Wich means that woven into our world of cause and effect is a God who plans rules, ordains, and weaves in an our of our causes and effects. From each cause, he choose one of a myriad effects to come to be. And this will be for the good of those who love him, and for the ultimate glorification of his Son, Jesus.

And so parents can take comfort. Our mistakes—which we WILL make, because we're human, and fallible, and sinful—will almost certainly scar Micah for life (every child remembers their parents imperfections) but will nevertheless NOT thwart the plans and purposes of God for Micah's life.

As of this morning, I've been a father for 3 weeks.

Micah is sleeping next to me in the pram while Sarah's sleeping upstairs.

(live photo!)

There are guys out there who are clucky about children in general—my dad is the biggest culprit, but Guan has also been surprisingly clucky in recent times—but I'm not one of them. Little babies are cute, but they don't particularly stir any strong emotions in me one way or another. I don't feel compelled to goo, to cuddle, or to hold them endlessly.

Thankfully, I'm glad to report that it's entirely different with your own child, just like I was told. I feel completely at ease holding Micah, kissing him, cuddling him, and singing him stupid songs.

Perhaps the magic moment was seeing him fresh from the womb, looking at this little face which looked, uncannily, like me (just the way Sarah wanted). Perhaps it was sitting up at weird hours in a hospital (which is already a twilight zone) and saying repeatedly to Sarah, "Hey baby, we have a baby!" (which is funny when you're extremely tired, even for the hundredth time.)

In any case, he wears my face (although not exclusively so: as has been analysed to death by various other people, he has Sarah's chin, and my dad's forehead, and my brother's temperament, and a colouring somewhere in between Sarah and I), he has my genes—which is probably the more important thing— and I am (not unhelpfully) reminded that I am responsible for him, for his being here, for his care and upbringing and education and discipline.

[Micah stirs, and it is empowering to know that he is comforted when I hold him. It's not a magic formula, but it is nice to be reminded that I can look after him.]

But I can also understand why fathers who, "did not ask to be fathers!" can get so unhappy about it. Not are you only incredibly responsible, but you are also incredibly helpless.

[Micah illustrates this point, by bursting into tears right now....

I can type one-handed...

but his mother comes and decides now is a good time to feed, so I am back to two hands]

There is a large extent to which childbirth and early childhood reveals the husbands to be particularly useless and helpless. There is no wonder why so many cultures and periods have regarded childbirth as "secret women's business"; because it is a business which makes guys realise: a) they are helpless, b) their poor weak wives are a great deal stronger than they think, c) that it's extremely painful to witness their strong powerful wives going through extraordinary pain, and d) they would rather be having a beer somewhere.

Cynicism aside, you really do feel helpless. I mean, you can participate to a certain extent: I held Sarah's hand, supported her as she walked around the hospital room, ran a bath and a shower for her, reminded her to breath, talked coherently to midwives and doctors on her behalf... but ultimately, that's it. At the end of the day, the success, or the speed, or the ease of the delivery is not up to you.

You realise the one useful thing you can do... and it makes you incredibly prayerful.

Similarly, Micah had issues breast-feeding early on: this is a common phenomena. But once again, the average garden-variety man without milk-producing breasts (i.e., the entire of the population) is entirely helpless here. I can change nappies, I can settle our baby to sleep, I can give him a bath, change his clothes... but I can't feed him. So when he loses 12% of his body weight in the first 3 days because he's not feeding properly... all you can do is pray.

In case you missed it, Micah Tian Xiang Un was born on the 21st March.

He's very cute. I find myself wondering how strongly I hold to the doctrine of original sin.

There's a school of thought that says that hearing a mother's labour cries are quite traumatic to a baby being born. Scientologists are especially infamous for espousing this.

But I was thinking that the pain a mother goes through in birth is a tangible reminder that The Curse, Genesis 3 is still in effect. There will be great pain in childbirth (although, He actually says, "I will increase your pains"—does this imply that there is already pain in childbirth?).

The cries the baby hears are a reminder to him, on the day of his birth, that he lives in a fallen, sinful, broken, painful world.

In the hospital, I was looking after Micah in the TV room so Sarah could have a few hours of much-needed rest.

In the room was another dad, and we chatted briefly. He had just had his second child; his first is currently navigating the "Terrible Twos".

I have always taken the Terrible Twos as evidence of original sin. I think quite apt the Paul Colman lyric:

I've never grown out of the terrible twos,
I've just learnt to hide it from all of you
- Selfish Song

I quoted this lyric to him. But he demurred, saying that the thought it was really good that his children learnt to be assertive, to express themselves, to tell people what they thought, so that they wouldn't be children who would be pushed around or bullied.

Maybe I don't spend enough time with non-Christian parents, but I thought that thinking totally remarkable and different!

I still musing about this stuff, so don't shoot me down for heresy.

I've been reading Henri Blocher's In The Beginning and it's tremendously illuminating and mind-stretching.

What got me started was Genesis 3:21:

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

Blocher quotes E.J. Young saying that imagining God sewing clothes with his fingers is absurd.

But I wonder: is it? One imagines that God could have clicked his fingers and made the clothes appear out of nowhere... but does he?

Does he ever?

It may appear like that in Genesis 1, but as we replay the creation of man in Genesis 2, God is a careful craftsman. He shapes man with his bare hands, he breathes his own breath into man.

I have the quote of GK Chesterton bumping around as well:

It may not be automatic necessity that makes the daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them...The repetition in Nature may not be mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

It seems to me that God never just "makes things appear"; and I suspect he quite likes the process of creation. Why did God take 6 days to make the world? He could have made it in one, but he took his time, and crafted the world as we know it. And when his hands were finished, he saw it was good: not a moral judgement but an aesthetic judgement; the creation was precisely the way he wanted it. It was the way he had envisaged before he started his work of creation.

The reason man alone was "not good" was because he is only half-way through; the creation of mankind is not complete without woman.

So much as God could have made made a Versace suit appear with a click of his fingers, I can imagine him lovingly making man clothes out of animal skins, sewing them just so.

Something else I was pondering was how God experiences the world. I think a lot of people have a transcendent view of God; he must be all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present.

But even humans are able to "live in the moment". Even though we know that the song will come to an end, that the dance will eventually stop, that the film has an ending and a book has a "The End", even though we know death is the final "The End", we know how to live in the moment. We blot out life and its cares when we enter into the world of a movie. We forget about the minutae and millions on our todo lists.

If wonder if God is able to live in the moment as he experiences his own creation. He knows that Adam and Eve will ultimately sin (as he knew my name and all my deeds and misdeeds before the world even began) but he can still enjoy his walk through the garden.

I wonder if he enjoyed dwelling with the Israelites in a tent (Numbers 9). Indeed, I love the picture of God's whimsy:

Whenever the cloud lifted from above the Tent, the Israelites set out; wherever the cloud settled, the Israelites encamped...When the cloud remained over the tabernacle a long time, the Israelites obeyed the LORD's order and did not set out. Sometimes the cloud was over the tabernacle only a few days;... Sometimes the cloud stayed only from evening till morning, and when it lifted in the morning, they set out. Whether by day or by night, whenever the cloud lifted, they set out. Whether the cloud stayed over the tabernacle for two days or a month or a year, the Israelites would remain in camp and not set out; but when it lifted, they would set out. At the LORD's command they encamped, and at the LORD's command they set out.

Okay, enough heresy.

Yesterday, I realised that, several months shy of 30, I will have achieved all of my childhood ambitions.

I wasn't a particularly ambitious child. I didn't dream of being a scientist, or a famous sportsman, or a musician, or being rich, or being "successful". I had smarts, but a lack of ambition, which generally meant I wasn't driven to do anything particularly much particularly fast.

So as a gentle quiet child, I simply dreamed of suburbia: a wife and kids and a nice house (no dogs, wasn't a big fan of dogs back then). A comfortable life, not particularly ostentatious. My God was comfort.

When I became a Christian, I became comfortable for the fact that God had other plans in store for me, and to him I gave not just all I had and all I was, but also all my dreams: all I might be, and all I might become.

But, because I suspect God is the ultimate poet, (and his justice is without question), by the end of this month, I will have comfortably achieved all of the above childhood dreams, comfortably before the age of 30.

Which leads me to be slightly wary of what God has in store for the rest of my life. How much of this creature comfort would I be willing to give up for the sake of the gospel?

Sarah has been reading Job recently. In my mind hovers Mark 8:34-38.

Also, I'm curious of what my father dreamed of being. I'll have to ask him.

"Hey everyone", I said, "This is W. He's the sort of guy who would bring tea as a housewarming present."

"Nice work," said S, who is a tea snob of some renown.

"Well," said W, "at the housewarming if one of the biggest coffee snobs I know, I thought it was appropriate to bring tea."

"You realise Haoran is a tea snob, as well as a coffee snob, right?"

G interjects, "I think Haoran is just a snob, generally speaking."

I paused. "Actually, that's pretty accurate."

I like good things. I like to think of it as the spiritual gift of discernment.

Satan: 46
Devil: 32
Tempter: 2
Accuser: 5
Beelzebub: 7
TOTAL: 92

God: 3508*
Jesus: 1226
TOTAL: 4734

I think the stats speak for themselves.

* I haven't even included mentions of LORD, because (just searching quickly in an English translation of the Bible) its too hard to separate LORD from Lord. I'm sure it's a lot higher.