Understanding

Dear All,                                     

I had the first two sessions of physical therapy and that helped me to fully appreciate how much deficiency I have from the surgery.  The therapist assessed the range and strength of my left thigh and leg using some exercises and tools, and set realistic goals.  While I knew that I lost all the adductor muscles (those pull the knee inward), the surprises were how traumatized my quad muscles are (the ones that move the lower leg forward and allow us to squad).  Their weakness prevents me from going up and down stairs the normal way and their limited range prevents me from doing simple tasks such as putting on a sock.  I was put on an exercise bike and could not even paddle all the way around in the forward direction initially. I must do daily exercises to maintain and improve the strength and range. I can’t accelerate it much though because overusing the muscles sets off a storm of painful muscle spasms that can last as long as two or three minutes. It is the classical case of no pain no gain, particularly for increasing the range. Whenever it gets too painful, I would remind myself about the images of those wounded soldiers doing physical therapies in VA hospitals and carry on.  After all, most of them are more damaged than I am. I also got on the treadmill for the first time after the surgery and was able to go 400 meters at a speed of 2 miles per hour. (A very modest achievement for somebody who used to run 5k daily.)

A lung CT scan will be performed on the coming Tu.  Hopefully, the growth of tumors won’t be too significant. The truth could be difficult to swallow at times.

I resumed teaching Monday three and half weeks after the surgery.  It was probably too soon because my leg felt pretty tired afterward and I had to use elastic bandage to control the swelling.  But it is a wonderful class to teach.  The students made a giant get well card and Fedexed it to the hospital.  Even my surgeon was moved by the numerous encouraging messages on it.  They also raised $300 for micro-loan after I mentioned the story of Dr. Yunus.  I am lucky to have them.

A challenge: Even if God does not save us… (Dan 3:18)

In my last sharing, I wrestled with the mystery of God who loves unconditionally does not intervene. I am aware of human limits in the face of divine mysteries.  However, we can’t take the easy and complacent position that this divine mystery is conveniently off-limits because it is within the context of this mystery we have to live our lives and search our choices and options in the face of sufferings. While recognizing that there may be limits to what can be achieved, I firmly believe that this intellectual grappling is not only necessary but also worthwhile.

By pointing out the possibility that God is not exercising much control in this fallen world (1 John 5:19 … and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.), I can bring forth a challenge now.

Our belief system frequently contains an element of “Be good to God, God will be good to me.” Its influence may be small or great, but usually there. The thought of a just God who punishes the wicked gives us much needed sense of security in this world of uncertain suffering and toil. We pay our dues by being good: praying piously, practicing religious rituals, doing good deeds, etc. There is often that component of self-interest and self-righteousness in our belief in divine order.  We develop causality models and moral systems based on our interpretation of the divine order to guide our behavior, explain reality, and benchmark if God is pleased with us, like Job’s three friends.

In such a belief system, the fear of inadequacy and punishment is always there, sometimes small, sometimes great, and that contradicts with what we profess, i.e., God is love and God loves us first.  (We should not fear someone who loves us unconditionally because there should be no fear in love.) We also might think that being good is the condition for love instead of the consequence of it.

The idea that God perhaps is not exercising much active control in this fallen world presents us with a great challenge, i.e., with a world that is not under divine order and therefore no longer open to our causal reasoning and moral calculation, we feel insecure and are confused. We can no longer pay God off according to our understanding of the divine order, and be confident that God will take care of us.  What is left is mostly God’s unconditional love. We do not fear God because there is no fear in love. However we have to largely disclaim our self-interest and self-righteousness in our belief. Our prayers change us, not God. We do not expect God to always respond to our intercessions, to always protect us and to always exercise beneficial influences in our lives. We do good deeds not to avoid God’s punishment or earn His love, but to respond to His unconditional love as we are empowered by that unconditional love, even if our good deeds invite persecutions.  We fight injustice and inhumanity because we become acutely aware of God’s unconditional love for others and are empowered by that conditional love to love one another.  This is the challenge, a very difficult one.

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health

Previous updates can be found in http://highspirit.blog.com/

Dear All,                                                                                                   

My surgeon was satisfied with the healing enough to remove the stitches last Tuesday. I finally had a shower and it felt great. Follow-ups will have to be done at three-month intervals to catch possible recurrence of the tumor in spite of the negative margins (the type is known for its reoccurrence).  Physical therapy was also prescribed and it will start next Wed.  The swelling has improved slightly.  However, I was told it might be chronicle because of the radiation.  Only time will tell.  The knee is stronger but still too weak to do the stairs and it gets tired easily.  Bending it more than 80 degrees feels like stretching a rigid cable inside.

I have gained back about 4 pounds so far. The chemo is going to start in two weeks. The doctors are finalizing the recipe and the timing.  A C-T scan will be done prior to the chemo to establish a base line as well as assess the growth over the last two months.  While the surgery I had was not a minor one, it is the easy part because its benefits and risks are mostly predictable and logical unless there were major complications which thankfully have not happened.  On the other hand, it is difficult to predict how I will respond to the chemo cocktail.

God in control?

In Daniel Chap 6, when Daniel was thrown into a lions’ den, God sent His angel to shut the mouth of lions in order to save him.  However, this is more an exception than the norm even in the Bible. In OT time, when God intervened more frequently than NT time, God more often than not allowed His people to sin at will and then expressed His anger and grief about what happened afterward. When God did intervene, it was mostly dishing out punishments after fact instead of stopping the sinful act in its track.

In 2005, a man abducted a nine-year-old girl from her bedroom 150 yards away from his home, raped her and buried her alive only yards away from her home.  She was in the dark, terrified and in pain, as she suffocated slowly.  Surely, she cried out, perhaps eventually in silence, for help.  Why didn’t God intervene?

On a much larger scale, During WWII, six millions Jews were exterminated systematically by German during Holocaust, and 18 millions Chinese were slaughtered by Japanese army in the Chinese front.  Together, 24 million lives got snuffed out, promises un-fulfilled, and families destroyed.  The magnitude of inhumanity is beyond comprehension. Counting from 1 to 24 million would be a starting point. Such inhumanity can be found almost all the time.  Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions have been displaced in Darfur, Sudan and the genocide continues while we go on with our life. Again, God, like us, have not really intervened. Closer to home, the loss of 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech provoked the same question.

As I shared in the recent weeks, I believe firmly in God that loves unconditionally and the incarnation happened because God loved us so much that He chose to be with us and opt into the reality of human life: the great struggle, the temptation, the suffering, and the death. What I don’t understand is God’s inactions. In my own experience, God does not normally exercise coercive power to have His way. For me, it is a mystery God loves unconditionally does not intervene.  Personally, admitting the mystery is facing the reality that God is bigger than my understanding; not admitting it is escaping from it.

Some may argue that God permissive will allows things for whatever good reasons that we can not understand.  Frankly, I am not convinced.  It sounds like hand waving.  Some goodness has almost always come out of suffering but that rarely justifies, let alone explains it.  Some may argue that we should just trust and obey. However, that hardly helps because it is within the context of this mystery we have to live our lives and search our choices and options in the face of sufferings.  What to obey if I don’t know God’s will in terms of my options and choices?

1. Does God have the power to intervene? What is the point of pain and anguish frequently displayed by God if He has the power to intervene? Perhaps, like in the book of Job, God has temporarily given up His control by authorizing Satan to do whatever is necessary because HE and Satan have a bet on every and each believer, i.e., each is fighting a battle that has a great implication in the spiritual realm? If that is the case, in whose interest it is done?  God, being omniscience, already foresees the outcome. Only Satan and I have yet to find out.  Perhaps, God’s intervention and our freewill are mostly mutually exclusive and God has to limit His intervention for us to have a genuine free will.

2. Has God delegated the fight against injustice to us (Lord’s prayer: your will be done on earth as it is in heaven) and hence takes a hands off approach?  When our society collectively fails to protect a nine-year-old from a sexual predator, is it too much to ask God to fix it at the last minute? Are we asking God to do what we can’t do when we demand divine intervention?

3. Does believing in final judgment and divine justice makes it better?  I don’t think so because healing can only come from forgiving the offenders.

4. If somebody insists that God is in control, how come God is not responsible for not intervening?  If we should do the good we ought to do, God should do it even better.

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health

Dear All,                                                                                       

The recovery from the surgery has been on track. For the first 10 days, there was a marked milestone daily. However, it has entered a more stable period when progress occurs with smaller increments. There is no infection and the wound looks good and dry. The pain has been less than what was expected from such a large wound.  The only problem has been the swelling of lower left thigh and leg.  While it has not gotten worse, it has not gotten better either since hospital discharge.  The doctors ordered an ultrasound this past Thursday to rule out blood clot and none was found. Hopefully, the swelling will eventually go away.  Another important good news is that the pathology report confirmed a complete negative margin around the tumor and that means it is likely that the tumor was removed completely.

I still need crutches due to the lack of stability of my left knee, which still can’t be bent more than 50 degrees either. I have to keep my leg elevated as much as possible to reduce swelling. However, if I remain sitting down more than half an hour, the lower calf becomes painful. Hence, I have to alternate between sitting and walking in circles and therefore appear to be restless for anybody who preaches longer than half an hour.

I lost 10 pounds during the hospital stay in spite of the abundant food brought in by brothers and sisters (Many thanks from the bottom of my heart).  Assuming 5 of those are the tumor and muscles removed.  I still have a deficit of 5 pounds and I am trying my best to eliminate it (while the majority out there probably wouldn’t mind).  So far, I have gained back between 2 and 3 pounds.

Our inferior existence?

Last week, I shared that God might have gone ahead with the creation of such a messed up world because HE loved each and every one of us unconditionally. This week, I like to continue with something related to that. 

Most of us were taught to believe that in the beginning and at the end, the mankind and world are radically better than now.  After all, the Bible tells us that in the beginning; God saw all that he had made, and it was very good (Gen 1:31), and at the end: … God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (Rev 7:17).

In traditional teaching, there is no shortage of suggestions that the current state of mankind and the world is so messed up that there is no way this is what God has wanted, and hence we shouldn’t want it either.  When this idea is taken to the extreme, our life, so helpless in the face of suffering, might be regarded as a nightmare and a quick passing would be a blessing, as I have been told repeatedly after my cancer diagnosis. A number of cults have exploited this idea successfully to convince their followers to give up their worldly possessing and even suicide.

While I might have the least to lose if our current world ceases to exist, I believe the aforementioned picture is incomplete and unbalanced. If God went ahead with the creation knowing exactly what would be the outcome, He must have His reasons.  I don’t believe human being, as it is, is either accidental or undesired (hence unlovable), like an unplanned pregnancy.

1.  This world perhaps presents the greatest challenge for doing good. Limited by space and time, and having great needs and wants well beyond our means in all the four dimensions of body, mind, soul and spirit, we undoubtedly have the most constant, complex and difficult moral struggles. The greater the struggle is, the more valuable for doing the right thing. In the face of great sufferings, there might be unbelievable nobility. Incarnation can be looked at from many perspectives such as love, redemption, forgiveness, and Emanuel.  The last one is God loved us so much that He chose to be with us and opt into the reality of human life: the great struggle, the temptation, the sacrifice, the death and the resurrection. (Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 5:8  Although Jesus was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.)

This world and this life are where the battles are fought, the choices are made, the victories are won, the lives and souls are saved, the redemption was carried out, and His kingdom began (Luke 17:21 because the kingdom of God is within you.).  No serious believer can ignore his/her responsibility here. In fact, this is the only place and life where we have a chance to do something that will echo in eternity.

2.  This is where our character is shaped.  While not all sufferings are ennobling, some are, and we won’t find them in a utopia. (Rom 3: 3-4 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope.)

3.  Unconditional love is about who we are, not who we were and who we might become. Out of God’s love, forgiveness flows and salvation follows.  In this love, there is no fear of inadequacy nor need to earn the love by doing good.  We do good when we are empowered by the unconditional love to respond to it. We are here by God’s deliberate act and we are lovable as who we are. 

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health

Dear All,                                                         

First, let me give a brief description of my surgery since there were questions about it.  Simply speaking, human thighs have three groups of muscles: the hamstring muscles in the back, the quadriceps muscles in the front, and the adductor muscles on the inside. The quadriceps and hamstring muscle sets work together to straighten and bend the leg to enable, e.g., walking. The adductor muscles pull the thighs and legs together.  The adductor muscles of my left thigh, a sensory and a motor nerves were removed to reset the tumor with, hopefully, enough negative margins around it.

That means I can no longer pull my left thigh/knee inward with any strength.  It could have been worse.  If it were any one of the other two sets of muscles, I would not be able to walk normally. With complex and lengthy physical therapies, other muscles eventually should learn to compensate to a degree with a slower response time. It would be a career ending operation if I were an athlete.

It has been ten days since my five plus hour surgery.  The best way I can describe the last ten days is “a process of waking up”.  There were two intertwined parts in my recovery, the wound care, and waking up that restarts different body sub-systems after the shut-down caused by the general anesthesia.  The former went pretty smoothly with antibiotics, pain medication, blood thinner and a 24/7 leg massage machine.  Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the latter.

While anesthesia can put somebody into sleep in a matter of seconds, the waking up of different body systems has to happen by itself after the withdraw of anesthetic drugs.  While some can be helped by medications, most can only be expedited by deliberate repetitive efforts.

For example, when I first woke up, in addition to the expected loss of sensation and motor functions, I could not move my lower left leg forward at all.  The surgeon assured me that there was no functional reason for that and it will come back eventually but couldn’t predict when exactly.  After repeated trials day after day, I finally was able to move it a little four days after the surgery.  With more exercising, I was able to swing my lower left leg back and forth about 20 degrees eight days after. Still, it lacks the strength and the knee buckles easily unless locked straight.

Another example is the bowel movement. I passed gas the night after surgery and therefore was allowed to go back to normal diet next morning. Throughout the day, I enjoyed the meals because the food of this hospital was good.  The day after that was a totally different story. I lost my appetite almost completely and was bloated because of the back up in my solid waste system.  The discomfort from the constipation increased by the hour and I gradually had nothing else in mind but dumping the waste.  But, I couldn’t.  Hence, the nurse and I made this the goal of the next day.

I was given milk magnesia (a laxative) at 6 am, no success after nearly two-hour exhausting and painful (from the almost one foot long incision) effort. I was given an even stronger laxative around 1pm and a suppository around 3pm. Two hours of hard push was still futile. Eventually, it took some human touch to resolve the issue. I went back to bed near 5pm and was soaking wet due to all the sweating.  But I was delivered from my suffering.  I got a sponge bath and felt wonderful.  The physical therapist even allowed me to skip the walk when she learned that I was working so hard already.

Unconditionally loved?

There were three questions in my last sharing, i.e.,

Which offers more meaning and a better purpose: believing in God, not believing, or being unsure?

Which offers a better light and vision, believing, not believing or not being sure?

Which offers more dynamics and energy, believing, not believing or not being sure?

Being a believer, I believe God created us.  I can’t prove it but I believe it. I acknowledge the possibility that everything just came into existence by chance although the odds of that is very long as I argued in an earlier sharing.  Where does this belief take us?

If God is omni-science, HE would foresee the fall of mankind even before the creation. HE would have foreseen what a messed-up world we are in now. Most religions including Christianity think this is not the place we ought to be. Last century was filled with deaths and destructions in spite of dazzling scientific and engineering accomplishments.  The lives lost to war and major atrocities range from 170 millions to 220 millions, i.e., 1.7 millions to 2.2 millions per year in average. This does not include “structural violence”: deaths in under-developed nations because of crime, poverty, environmental degradation, disease, malnutrition not part of famine, contaminated water and lack of available medicine. One estimate is that this reaches 17 or 18 million per year by 2000.  In addition to man-made pain and suffering, natural disasters and diseases caused additional death, pain and suffering.

God knew the outcome and did it anyway. Why? What does HE see in us that makes us worthwhile the creation? To answer this question, let each one of us ask the following question about myself: If I were God, knowing the few positives and many negatives including my sins, blind spots, faults and failures, etc., about myself, would I create myself?  I would guess most of us would answer Yes. It is not unreasonable to infer that if I can find something lovable in me worthwhile the creation, God should be able to do the same, only better.  If God can find something lovable in each and every one of us regardless, perhaps God loves us un-conditionally and loved us first.

Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.  Isaiah 43:4.

If I believe in God, then I see that God loves me unconditionally which means I am loved for who I am and the way I am.  I don’t have to earn that love and there is no fear in that love.  I can’t prove it and I can’t prove the unbelievers are wrong (just like they can’t prove me wrong).  But a world without unconditional love is just too harsh and demanding and ultimately cruel and I do feel that I am loved un-conditionally.

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health

Previous updates can be found in http://highspirit.blog.com/