Liberté. Toujours.

"Freedom. Always." That's the advertising slogan the cigarette brand Gauloises use here in Germany. The picture shows a couple of young people relaxing on a roof terrace overlooking Paris smoking cigarettes. It reminds me a lot of an old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Watching commercials on TV Calvin observes sarcastically that the attractive role model in the ad asserts his individuality by conforming to the brand he's advertising for. So, you're free smoking Gauloises? I wonder how free you feel being addicted to the stuff, as I know friends of mine are. Or you can feel cool and attractive because the poster shows other cool and attractive people smoking Gauloises? Of course, we know it's just a poster, right? And how free are we if we need to do what a poster tells us to be happy? Then again the air around Gauloises smokers does smell a bit like the Parisian smog.

Epiphany

I've been thinking a lot recently. I've had the time.
I've met many religious people - Christians, Muslims, Buddhists. So, I've been thinking about religion. I've never been very religious. Still, at some point, in rainy, lonely Qingdao I went to a German-built Protestant church and prayed. I prayed for my friend, a girl that meant and means a lot to me, who believes in God herself. That was my first thought, I wanted to go and pray to the god she believed in and ask him to help her. It turned out quite different. This was only the first step. Afterwards, I would stop at every church that I happened to pass and pray for her. Slowly, other things entered my prayers. I would pray for other friends, my family, and finally myself, too. I would say thanks for the good things that had happened to me. It felt liberating to talk to somebody without having to watch my words - the assumption is that God knows everything about me anyway, I just acknowledge things. Finally, I would even speak to Him when not in a church. But still I enjoy entering His house and having - making - the peace and quiet for my dialogue with God. I wouldn't count myself a pious man nor a good Christian but I've started thinking whether that is something worth attaining, working towards.
The thing is, what I don't like, have never liked, about Christianity is not the idea of God but the church. I think Terry Pratchett once said that God was basically a good idea until He got religion. That essentially sums up my reservations. The Churches and their doctrines are man-made. Even now, since I'm in the process of finding my way to God many religious people I meet tell me to go and see a priest. But what is the point of that? The priest is human. I get annoyed listening to sermons and other people's accounts of God. Sermons, organisations like the Church have often proven that they are motivated by very mundane, earthly matters - money, politics, power. So, why should I let somebody else tell me what and how to believe. Is somebody that wears a priest's robe automatically holy. Too many priests around the world have done too many too unchristly things. Besides, as another extremely religious Christian friend told me, my faith is a relationship between me and God. I don't need an intermediary. And why should I sit in mass every Sunday? As a Buddhist friend told me: If you have Buddha (or in my case God) in your heart you don't need to go to the temple. If I want to go to church to feel nearer to God then I'd much rather go when it's quiet and I can talk to Him alone.
Then for some reason today I was thinking about another reason for my continuous scepticism. Science. I had a long talk with a Muslim friend. A very pious man, too. He said he believed that we - humans - are Allah's creation and so must serve him. How could he be so certain? His boat, he said, somebody built that boat. It can't have built itself. Everybody would accept that. But us humans, he continued, who made us? Evolution, I wanted to say. I didn't argue the point with him at the time. This is his faith - whatever I say will not change his conviction. But, I thought, we know where we come from. Biology tells us we're descended from apes in a process that lasted millions of years. Before that there were mammals, before them were reptiles and before those were fish. Astrophysics tells us about the origins of our planet and its solar system and even about the history of our galaxy and the universe itself. We can trace back the evolution of the universe to several theories about its very beginnings. God doesn't come into these. No Adam and Eve. Science can explain everything. We technically don't need religion. Then, today, I realised there is still one question that science cannot answer: What was before the universe? The theory of the Big Bang tells us that the universe began in a burst of energy originating from a single point. The expansion of the universe even today supports this theory. But where did the energy come from? That we cannot answer. But come to think of it, this is exactly the way the Genesis begins. In the beginning there was only God and darkness. God separated darkness from light and called the dark night and the light day and so on. What if the burst of energy at the moment of creation was God's intervention? The energy is Him.
Imagine the evolution of life, the universe and everything as me setting up domino pieces in a long row - the way I used to as a child. As they fall imagine the domino pieces as sentient beings. They can only see themselves and the previous and next pieces. Where do we come from, they ask. Why do we fall over? Pious ones answer, it's a god that sets you up and topples you over. Then some do research. They find the long chain of pieces that have fallen over before them and they say, look, it's a chain. It's not a god that makes you fall over but kinetic energy. Look at the long chain of pieces before you. It has been happened like this for ages and it will always be like that. Nothing mystical about that. And in the beginning there was a tremendous burst of kinetic energy that threw over the first primordial piece. Where did that energy come from then, some clever ones ask. The answer is in the law of preservation of energy. Energy cannot be lost or used or created, only converted like , e.g.heat into motion. So, it was always there. But what, I now realised, if that energy was God? What the little imaginary domino pieces don't see is that I set up the chain and toppled the first piece, then everything else just happened according to my setup. Why couldn't the universe also be like that?
Human research has shown that we are not all an inbred race descended from two individuals. We've observed the origins of stars, planets, even galaxies. We've found traces of a huge burst of energy at the very beginning of the universe. But since God is omnipotent this could all be His design. Why should make things as simple as people two thousand years ago believed. That's as old as the origins of the Bible are. The Bible just sees things from their limited view point. It was later changed, updated, by humans. I don't believe in creation the way it is written in the Book. But science has not eliminated creationism. It has enriched it. With every new scientific discovery we can understand how incredibly complex the system of rules is that God built into his creation. Why should God not be like me setting up my domino pieces? Why would an omnipotent but also omniscient (read: intelligent) God bother with making the apple fall every time nothing holds it up. Why not just build in a rule that says: If nothing is holding you up you fall. That is the clever solution. The evolution of life, the universe and everything is all the plan that God laid out in preparation. Then He just needed one nudge and everything just happened. The Big Bang would then be the only evidence of divine intervention in our creation. But isn't it an epic one? Everything that happened afterwards is God's prepared plan, the laws of physics, chemistry, biology etc. that our scientists discover are algorithms that He built in so that things would happen the way He wants them to. They are, if you want, direct evidence of His will.
Should we then abandon science and resort to faith like some pious people demand? I say, NO! (with an exclamation mark!) Science allows us to understand God's creation better. It allows us to make better use of the clevernesses He has built in and so further our goals, improve our lives. Finally, every discovery allows us to marvel anew at the intricacy, the cleverness of His work. I refuse to believe that God would want us to stumble blindfolded through his creation after he spent so much effort on it. We can see other planets, stars, galaxies. We see how they work. Why stick to the belief the earth is flat just because an old book says so. But even if we discover how to warp space and travel to distant worlds, even if we encounter other intelligent life, all that does not preclude the involvement of God. He laid it all out in advance and then just gave it a push. That is the greatness of His creation and that is what makes it so amazing.

The Nature of Love

Love is a monster that lives in your chest. While chained it lies quiet, dormant, but once unleashed it demands to be fed.
Well fed it purs like a cat, gives you strength and courage, warms you like the sun and makes every day seem more beautiful than the last. But if abandoned or left hungry it rages with fangs of steel and claws of ice and slowly eats at your heart from the inside until it finally starves, lonely in the dark and only a shadow of its former self.
My love is that monster called Passion. I want to kiss her again and again and again, make up for the time that we lost. I can't get enough of her even though I'm scared of smothering her. Every little tenderness she imparts on me makes my heart want to burst with happiness and I can't stop smiling. But the monster howls, knowing what is to come, knowing that the soothing radiance of her presence cannot last for long. And the thought of leaving her, the thought that this has to soon come to an end is like a burning knife in my chest. I can't breathe, I can't eat; I want to scream but I have no voice, I want to cry but I have no tears. I don't know what to do.