On Predestination

Guernica, Pablo Picasso

I do believe in destiny or fate. Not in the sense that what I had for lunch today was determined by God before I was born, but in the sense that our birth has largely determined our education, socioeconomic status, and even longevity… And it’s difficult to cope with that reality, with the fact that some people were born with a silver spoon and some just to suffer and die. 

Beyond the epicurean paradox, I want to offer you some of my delusions. You are a child of God, the highest status there is. As a child of God, you have inalienable rights to freedom and happiness, inalienable dignity as a human being, and, perhaps most importantly, the capacity to love and exercise divinity as a member of the society.

God’s unconditional, omnipresent love is liberating. It does not discriminate, and it does not dictate. It does not mean that you should commit whatever crime you want, but it does mean that you are loved for who you are and your potential for good has no bounds. However deviant and rejected, God embraces you. However ugly and sick, God loves you. However subjugated and confined, God liberates you.

Of course, I am not oblivious to the reality that faith alone would not save you from all the crimes and vices in this world. But I offer you this delusion, nonetheless, in the hope that it would be an illusory harbor during this tumultuous time.

“O! Reason not the need; our basest beggars

Are in the poorest thing superfluous;

Allow not nature more than nature needs

Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.”

– William Shakespeare, “King Lear”