PROBLEMS

K.L.Biakchungnunga

          No one can avoid having problems.

          Being born as human, we have to struggle for our survival. Right from our entry into this world from our mother’s womb, our struggle for survival starts. It is a deadly struggle not only for the baby, but for the mother as well. Many a mother died in the struggle to deliver a baby. Many a baby died too in its struggle to come out of the mother’s womb.

          Problem is what necessitates struggles. The word ‘struggle’ presupposes problem. It is what makes struggle struggle-some. Take away all the problems and the need to struggle will disappear automatically.

          The size of a problem cannot be measured by what it is. It has no objective validity. The bigness or smallness of a problem is determined by how it affects us. We may have what seems to be the same experience. But the degree of our vulnerability to the experience may vary. While my normal life goes on as usual under the weight and pressure of the experience, it may be ‘a matter of life and death’ for you. So, the size of a problem does not consist in what it is in itself, but how it affects us as the victims.

          I remember one young beautiful girl admitted to the Hospital in my home town. I was a small boy then. She was lying adjacent to my sister-in-law. The reason she was admitted to the Hospital was more of mental than physical illness. Her boyfriend dumped her. Since then, she did not take any food. She didn’t respond when she was talked to. Even the doctors couldn’t make her talk. She would simply stare at them with her blank eyes.

One morning, she was isolated with a wall of curtains hanging around her bed. There was a small opening through which I was watching her and I saw the doctor hitting her on the face trying to awaken her senses by means of physical pains. She died soon after that. ‘Being dumped’ may be a common teenage-experience. Many of us survived the experience somehow, no matter how deep the cut was. For some, it takes months for the wounds to get healed. For others, it is only a matter of a day or two before they find a new mate to go steady with. May be, they are not really in love, I don’t know. But for this poor girl, the experience proved fatal.

The size of a problem is subjective. Its substantiality is measured in relation to the strength of our resistance. If we take it lightly with our emotions under control, its size is thought to be small. If our strength drains under its weight, we think the problem is big.

The subjective reality of problems is what makes education important. The primary focus of education is, as I understand, to prepare us for life’s challenges, for the problems we are going to wrestle with and for the storms of hardships that will invade our lives. Education prepares us to solve not only mathematical problems, but the problems in real life. The education that produces intellectual giants who easily succumb to life’s challenges fails in its mission. When an educated man commits suicide, I always question the validity of education for the making of one’s personality.

If education is insufficient to equip one for the battle against frustrations in life, that is where God must step in.When I was very young in my journey of faith, I believed that God would take away all the problems and troubles that stand my way. Of course, He did just that many a time. But now I am quite mature in faith compared to those days. Many of my prayers for God to remove my problems go unanswered. At first, I was wondering why. Had God forsaken me?

Paul had a thorn in his flesh. He asked God to take away the thorn from his flesh. He asked three times. Each time, God gave him the same answer – “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). Slowly I realize that this is what God is doing in my life. Instead of taking away my problems, He is strengthening me with His grace to overcome my problems.

How can God’s grace become enduring in our lives?

I can never become bigger than my self. I am the size of my self. More often than not, my problems are bigger than my size and I feel immobilized and defeated. If only I could become bigger than my self, then, I could overcome my problems. It is the purpose of God to make us bigger than our ‘selves’. Our natural self has growth limits. Once its limit is reached, it is no use to try to expand its boundaries. To make it bigger, it has to be broken. That is what the cross is all about – brokenness. Brokenness of self.

Once the self is broken, the brokenness will be substantiated by the grace of God. Grace in this context can imply peace, humility, serenity and equanimity that come from God. The grace of God dwelling in us, we have a deep sense of peace within us. Now the sea of our lives is calm and serene, we feel organized and integrated. We not only become one with God, we become one with ourselves.

Now we are ready to face any mountain of problems with grace. Fear is frozen. Confusion is consumed. We are filled with calmness and peace. We are filled with grace. We can face any challenge, any problem, any trial with a sense of equanimity. There’s no too high a mountain we cannot climb. There’s no too gigantic a problem we cannot conquer. That is what being bigger than one’s self is all about. We become more than who and what we are. We become one with the universe. Then, the problems melt within us. They are like a good food properly digested for nourishment and energy. Then we feel stronger and activated. We grow and expand. We become bigger still.   

 Problems can be compared to weight-lifting. It can be both destructive and constructive. For a weak person, the weight can be too heavy, it can crush him down and pin him to the ground. But for a strong and healthy person, the weight develops muscles and it builds the body to become even stronger. The heavier the weight, the stronger it makes him grow. For weight-lifting to be constructive and body-building, the lifter has to go to the limit, to the extent of screaming in pains and tears. To lift an extra lift when no more strength is left is a prayer for more strength, it is a step for stronger strength.

Problems can be both a trial and a triumph.

Jesus talks about two house builders in his sermon on the mount. One builds his house on rock and the other builds on sand. The rains poured down, the rivers overflowed and the wind blew hard against both houses. The one built on sand collapsed to the ground. The one built on rock stood firm and withstood the winds and storms. In this parable, problems are talked about in the form of rains, tides, winds and storms. The acid test of the quality of both houses come in the form of problems. Problems bring to light the hidden quality of both the houses. Both houses are tested and validated. In the end, the house on rock withstands the trials – it wins the victory.

The strength of a rope is determined by its weakest point.

I think the two houses are similar in all respects. The materials used for their construction are of the same kind and quality. Both houses have the same size and height with the same design. Their only difference lies in the foundation. One has rock for its foundation and the other is founded on sand. For the first house, the foundation is its strong point and for the second house, the foundation becomes its weak point. Just as a rope when pulled from both ends breaks at its weakest point, the house built on sand breaks and collapses under trial and pressure.

We need foundation for our lives. The foundation has to be firm and secure like a solid rock. What can give us a secure and firm foundation for our lives? There are moral virtues which are enduring – honesty, truth and justice – for instance. Honesty is to be who and what one is. It requires one to say what is, not what one feels like saying nor what one wants to say. We don’t need to pretend to be someone we are not. For that is hypocrisy. We simply have to be just the persons we are. That requires humility to accept who and what we are. It requires courage to expose our true selves no matter the price we have to pay.

The best definition of truth is – what is. Appearance is not truth. Sometimes, things are not what they appear to be. Truth often hides behind the appearances. Truth is the essence of things and beings. It is the core meaning of all things – material and immaterial. In order to know truths, we need to seek them. To seek is a matter of the heart and mind. To become a seeker of truths, we need to ask questions, fundamental questions of life. We need to become meditative and contemplative. We need to listen not only to what people say, but what they mean to say and even what they don’t say. We need to listen to their silence too. To become seekers of truth, we need to understand why people say what they say and more importantly, what makes them say what they say.

In every experience in life, we need to seek truths we have to live by, truths to guide our decisions. When you are falsely accused, you need truth to control your boiling emotions. When someone supersedes you in your profession, you need truth to guide your steps to make things right. When you face temptations, you need truth to give you courage to say ‘no’. When you feel compelled to have a voice on important moral issues like abortion, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, gay rights, stem-cell research, live-in relationships, euthanasia, pornography, feminist movements, total prohibition, sexual abuse, substance abuse, family planning, etc. you need truths to guide your thoughts and frame your ideas. That’s why we say we must be seekers of truths. 

Truth never changes. Therefore, seekers of truths are solid and firm like a rock. They are responsible, accountable and trustworthy. They can be trusted for their words and promises. They cannot be bought and bribed to violate truths. Truth is truth. It can never compromise. So are the seekers of truth, they cannot compromise. A student who applies for scholarship with false statements is not a seeker of truth. A man who takes the interests of government’s money invested in the bank can never be called a man of truth. Both of them are like a house built on sand. They will not withstand trials and tests. They will collapse in the face of trials and hardships.

Justice has no relatives. It is human nature to favor our relatives. It is easy to do justice to those who are not related to us in matters that demand punishment for crimes. To live a life of justice is costly. There is a price we have to pay. We may have to lose our friends, we may have to lose the love of our dear ones. We may have to live lonely lives. Looking through the spectacles of justice, there are no friends or foes, relatives or strangers. There are only two groups of people – the innocent and the guilty. The sense of justice constrains us to give each individual in question what is due to him. Compromise has no room in the kingdom of justice.

If your life is driven by sense of honesty, sense of truth and sense of justice – you will withstand the trials of life, no matter how insurmountable they appear to be. Having these moral virtues as your life’s foundation, your integrity will remain unchallenged, come what may. Your self-image will develop self-respect and you will feel good about yourself. You will be proud of who you are. This sense of pride in being yourself will command your environment. And you will have serenity of heart to accept problems in all their sizes. You will have moral courage to seize them by the horns and keep them under control.

We human beings are the only creatures God did not finish. We’ve got to finish our own creation. We will decide who and what we will be. Adam and Eve decided to eat the forbidden fruit. Their decision turned their lives upside-down which ultimately led them out of Eden. Samson decided to have Delilah as his darling and he was eventually hypnotized by her charms and beauty. Her tender care lulled him to a false sense of security. She then hushed him to a deep sleep till his super-natural strength was drained to dregs. His decision made him blind at the prime of his youth. King David decided to sleep with Bathsheba, the wife of his General Uriah. His momentary decision made his life topsy-turvy till the day he died. To a rather frightening degree, we are what we decide to be. A wrong decision is always followed by dire consequences.

You might not decide what problems you will face, but you can decide how you will face them. You may not chose your experiences, but you can decide how you are going to interpret them. You cannot direct how people will treat you, but you can decide how you are going to react.

Struggle comes with problems. Struggle is a natural process of our evolution.

Once a science teacher brought a cocoon to the classroom. He told the students that they were going to watch a real drama of how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. He told them not to help but simply watch as the butterfly struggles to come out of the cocoon. He left the classroom to come back after an hour. With enthusiasm and curiosity, the children watched as the butterfly struggled to come out.

It looked like a helpless struggle for the butterfly had to stop in the process a number of times. Filled with pity and care, one boy stepped forward, tore the cocoon open and took the butterfly out. By the time the teacher returned, the butterfly was lying dead near its torn cocoon. The students told him what had happened. With calmness and concern, the teacher explained to the bunch of students that it is the law of nature for the butterfly to struggle because as it struggles to come out of the cocoon, the struggle helps develop and strengthen the wings. And by the time it comes out, it would be ready to fly. Now it lies dead because the boy had deprived the butterfly of its struggle to strengthen its wings.

There is a ‘butterfly’ in all of us. By the time of our birth, we had struggled to come out from the cocoon of mother’s womb. That is the law of nature. We came out crying because that is how we inhale and exhale the air for our survival. It is the law of nature that we have to struggle from one problem to another in the process of our evolution from one stage of life to another. The more we struggle, the stronger we become. The stronger we become, the better is our chance for survival. Survival is not a matter of life and death only, it is rather a matter of degree – from crawling to toddling, from toddling to walking, from walking to running, from running to flying – right from the cradle to the grave till we reach Heaven which is the highest state of life.