MANTALK: Mysteries of life

Biko reflects on the baffling questions of life, spirituality and why good people die, leaving the bad ones alive. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • I think God understands us because we are made in his image and likeness. And I think God finds it extremely phony when we adopt a sombre voice to address him.
  • I speak to him like he’s my father – a cool father with a sense of humour and a big staff, which I suspect Jesus borrows, sometimes, when he wants to make an impression.
  • Anyway, now I pray in my heart, often, and in the most unlikely of places, like when I’m driving or when I’m in a meeting with those boring people who love to be listened to.

Sometimes when the year comes to an end, like it’s about to, don’t you wonder why you made it the end yet some didn’t? It’s not like you are more pious than the next man. It’s not like you pray harder or longer or louder. You are not even a terribly nice person who feeds the homeless or visits a children’s home or rescues stray animals. You don’t even tithe for crying out loud; you spend all your money on fluffy hedonism and senseless capitalistic orgies – buying stuff you will never use, investing furiously to get ahead, posting completely embarrassing pictures of yourself at a beach with your ashen knees for the Joneses to notice. Yet you remained alive while better men didn’t. Men who all fell on the swords of life and turned to dust.

I always wonder why I am still alive yet I’m not terribly deserving. There is a guy I I went to high school with many moons ago. He was in the Christian Union, you remember the CU, don’t you? Those smug bunch of goody-two-shoes who looked at the rest of us like Judas’ nephews. He kept at it after high school, right up to the point when a car hit him by the roadside one dawn and sped off. I was shell-shocked. I was like, “God, are you kidding me now? You take this guy and leave land-grabbers and the crooked politicians? Come on, now!” Or children who die of cancer. These little kids aged six to eight years, who suffer unimaginable pain and then curl up and die, living their parents bereft of any will and strength. We say it’s God’s will. It’s only God who knows why he does certain things, and we trust him implicitly. Yet while children die and good people perish clutching their goodness in their stiff lifeless hands, we – the largely undeserving – continue to remain on earth, refusing to even tip waiters.

It’s totally amazing that God continues to honour us with life even though  we are spectacularly unworthy of that favour. We drink because Jesus drank wine. We covet other people’s cars and pay slips and (wide) hips that belong to other people’s wives. We forget to pray all the time. We lie to ourselves and others yet God looks at us lovingly and grants us many favours; our children remain healthy, our spouses stop checking our pockets for strange things that we might have picked in the streets, we continue keeping our jobs even though all we do in the afternoons is Facebook and we forget God right up until we need him. Yet we continue to live.

I haven’t been to church in ages. I used to go to this extremely boring church where the pastor droned in a monotone, wishing hailstone upon us should we fail to repent and follow the light. It was exhausting so I stopped going.  But before I stopped I explained to God, “You know I’m grateful for everything you have done for me, and I praise you and honour you, but that church? Hapana. That church is boring; that messenger of yours is killing the soul of that church with his big stick.”

I think God understands us because we are made in his image and likeness. And I think God finds it extremely phony when we adopt a sombre voice to address him. I speak to him like he’s my father – a cool father with a sense of humour and a big staff, which I suspect Jesus borrows, sometimes, when he wants to make an impression. Anyway, now I pray in my heart, often, and in the most unlikely of places, like when I’m driving or when I’m in a meeting with those boring people who love to be listened to. I tell God, “I forgot to thank you for yesterday and for today’s good health and sound mind. I also pray for this guy here in a green tie and bushy eyebrows. I know he’s your child, but he’s boring and is tiring everybody around this table with his degree in sociology.”

I realise that it’s fruitless to question God’s plan for us. He knows why we end up celebrating another new year while the rest don’t. It’s also futile to fear not getting to the end of the year or even getting here with a broken body and a failing mind. It’s like freefall, all we do is wait. And pray.

Tonight, like every New Year’s Eve, I will go to bed at 9.30pm like I have every year for the past decade or so. I will be reading a new book I just bought: Lunch with the FT: 52 Classic Interviews. At 10.30pm I will say a prayer, for God’s continued graciousness and favour to myself and my closest. I will promise to be a better man. Then I will sleep after reciting Isaiah, 40: 30-31: “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength...

Have yourself a happy New Year and thanks for reading me this past year. Be blessed.