Dear Bono....

I fell in love with my wife the moment I saw her. While I used to think Christianity, weapons of mass destruction and the Easter Bunny were the only imaginary things I believed in – now I had the significantly clichéd ‘love at first sight’ delusion to add to the list. When I first saw my wife, I imagine it felt similar perhaps to that of a regular person seeing a ghost or a UFO. While it was truly an unbelievable experience, the experience was indeed just that – unbelievable. The reaction could so easily be dismissed for something as condescending as sweet-natured elation that it belonged buried deep with all the other dark secrets of the world such as what really happened at Roswell, who shot JFK or the true sexual preference of Richard Wilkins.

At this particular moment in time, it had become apparent to me that the people who fell in love at first sight were no longer deluded or making things up. It was possible, plausible; it had happened. Of course at the time, no poignancy or meaning could be recognized until these feelings could later be confirmed as mutual – otherwise, it would have merely been a boy undergoing a case of the hots; a familiar and pathetic storyline we’ve seen all too often in an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 with Andrea Zuckerman – the only menopausal teenager in California in 1992.

However, this overwhelming sensation of love at first sight is something I would never admit to in public. At the risk of sounding (totally) gay, such an admission can severely damage a reputation I have been dedicated to; a reputation marinated in edginess clinging to an identity founded upon cynicism and loathing. Nevertheless, as my objective now is to discuss love practically for the purposes of achieving a functional and physical outcome, then I should be pardoned on the merits of academia, at least within the parameters of a social science spectrum. While some language might be hard on the senses for the romantically jilted, there should be enough qualification attached to counteract any inclination to regurgitate material formerly once identified as a solid. So here goes…

No good came out of meeting my wife. Since the night I met her she was not only a useless distraction, she was impractical. Not necessarily to me, but the productivity that had the potential to come from me. Now that I’ve had time to think, it made me think of the potential and sheer power and destruction that can come from something so small. A woman, half my weight with poor eyesight and even poorer taste in music, had threatened everything I wanted to do with myself. The day I fell in love, nothing else mattered. The plan to put my guilty conscience to good use was a part of me determined to rid this world of extreme poverty. However, falling in love made me selfish. This ultimately good and invisible power called love that has traditionally led to the continuance of the world as we know it and its population had made me fail to care about anything else anymore. She not only made me want to put all my aspirations on hold, she made me feel no guilt in giving up.

While my wife has done much for me between now and the time I met her, on the night I first saw her, she had done nothing for me. When I was a child, sick, she was not with me as my family was. And in my time of moving house, she was not there to help me shift a couch or a refrigerator like friends had done. Yet the instant I saw her, my loyalties surrendered to her. Like under deep hypnosis, my body’s every fiber would respond to her. For her I would have done anything and with one smile I had no control over my own identity. Her smile was so kind it made me like myself again, as if reacting to kindness somehow made me noble. Of course, luckily it was kindness drawing me in at once leading to a healthy relationship; otherwise I could have been Fred McMurray in Double Indemnity for all I cared.

Now, while this all sounds sporting and romantic – unfortunately this sort of behaviour is neither appropriate nor right. Whether one calls it Mother Nature or something called God, to me, the sensation of love appears almost as a flaw in the scheme of things. While I cannot speak for the animal kingdom, as a man, I feel as though I have been tricked by these impulses and instincts founded upon nothing. Ergo, in order for the world to keep spawning children, baseless love must be a surviving force in this world rousing more and more pointless things such as bouquets of flowers, dinners in restaurants, mixed compilation CDs and any-movie-that’s-playing movies for pointless viewing. To think that we experience love with all its power and all its energy and influence – and all we end up having to show for it is a bunch of movie ticket stubs and the odd piece of amateur poetry in all its embarrassing glory, is a travesty.

There is so much love in the world yet it seems there is nobody qualified to tell us why it is there or how we’re to use it. The most frustrating thing in life is being consumed by love’s power and having nothing to show for it. Like a Trojan horse it deceives us and follows us into the darkest of places. And it is hidden, love, everywhere away from the immaculate and sophisticated of places. It is hidden in the smell of a maternity ward, covered in placenta and God-knows what after months in hiding behind some lady’s vagina. It comes hidden in the smack from a father’s hand or the mistakes we make at work from a lack of sleep from being kept up late by it. It comes hidden in the revenge we take on a person or country when they hurt the ones we love. Everything we do is almost a symptom of love.

And love is disguised everywhere. It is disguised in hate and in jealousy, in violence and sorrow; but ultimately it is disguised in confusion. It is hard to know what to do in moments of clarity let alone when we have just had a baby, fallen in love or somehow been inspired. Perhaps we should quit our jobs when we find love. Perhaps we should re-evaluate our priorities when we fall in love. Perhaps we should question the world and learn how to make it turn differently. It is hard not to get caught in the rhetoric ourselves, (what does making the world turn differently even mean?) but there will never be another time in our lives when materialistic things will matter less. Things certainly cease to be important when our children are sick or we make grave mistakes hurting the ones we love.

Whether it be our husbands, wives, children or teachers – everyone has dormant inspiration. It derives from our families, our children, our favourite songs and movies. It comes from our education, our friendships and our hometowns. As tacky as it might sound, if we addressed this love more practically and used its power then there is the possibility it could actually hold some sort of meaning in our lives. Traditionally, romance has always been about as useful as a Jewish sculptor in a Nazi concentration camp. Yet when we are in love, we continue to take on the concept and roll with it. Throughout centuries, the western world has learnt how to be romantic. We have learnt what is considered romantic through history and literature. Kings abdicating thrones for true loves and Shakespearean teenagers defying the wishes of their parents and killing themselves are all extreme examples of how we might act when we are in love.

In this context, romance is almost a dirty word, stripping away love’s potential. But I do not believe it is romance that fades in relationships as much as mere creativity. Shah Jehan was so in love with his wife he spent 20 years building her the Taj Mahal. The only thing I ever built was a CD rack in woodwork in the eighth grade. While my mum loved the CD rack, I’m sure she would have been stoked with the Taj Mahal. My point is that for love to be such a powerful concept in this world, for it to only produce selfish inspiration that creates nothing – seems a waste of its energy.

Master poet William Butler Yeats addresses this issue in one of my favourite poems, Brown Penny. It reads as follows:

I whispered ‘I am too young,’

And then, ‘I am old enough’;

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love.

‘Go and love, go and love young man,

If the lady be young and fair.’

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O Love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love

Till the stars had run away

And the shadows had eaten the moon.

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

One cannot begin it too soon.

Only the second stanza of Yeats’ poem applies to my point, however, each line is too categorically beautiful to remove from its natural habitat – and the only thing worse than news omission is stanza omission. I love poems that refer to discovering love. Not necessarily someone discovering the person they are in love with, but the notion of trying to make sense of love and coming to terms with the ramifications that inevitably follow. Yeats alludes to an irony where nobody can really find anything out about love once they are in it, because they become distracted by it where that is all they can think about. Ergo, to demystify the contradiction a little, there is nobody wise enough to find practical use for love because they immediately lose objectivity when they come face to face with it. I suppose it can be compared to trying to learn the art of hypnotism while under hypnosis – any agenda in relation to what is to be learnt is left in the hands of the hypnotist.

So it would seem there is no purpose involved with the selfishness of love. It is a broken cog in life’s larger-than-life production line. It is counterproductive. It is the emotion which fakes illness when we don’t want to go to work. It makes us go for walks that lead nowhere. Love makes us eat at numerous restaurants – gradually educating us to which wines we like, which wines we don’t like and which wines we like so much we say we have to write the name down so we can get them again another time which, interestingly enough, has never happened in the history of relationships and pretentious wine-drinking.

Love requires restaurants so much that even when an abundance of leftovers sit in our fridge, they cannot be eaten by people in love. Love also gives us insecurities we never knew we had and compels us to imagine ghastly hypothetical situations more unlikely than the end of an M. Night Shyamalan film. It slows us down and slows down the objectives of those around us – all because we do not know what else to do with it.

To speak a little about myself for a moment, as a Catholic, the history of my guild-ridden conscious over extreme poverty neglect has been deemed by many a professional, as unhealthy. This guilt has, in turn, manifested a severe low self esteem which presents, somehow, as a paradox of sorts, through the actuality that I sincerely believe I am no better than anyone. No matter how flawed a person might be, I immediately see in them ways in which they are better. This is a paradox of sorts, because while I automatically take on this poor self esteem, it allows me to see the good in everyone else, which in turn, makes me kind, which in turn, makes me content in embracing whatever it is that makes me kind; even if it happens to be low self esteem. Therefore, tending to personal issues relating to self esteem and guilt have always felt in no-one’s best interests as any sort of change would have the potential to make me less kind, make me worry less about neglect and take away the only part of my identity I actually attribute to being likable.

Ah, but then a smile from my wife changed everything. I couldn’t begin to imagine how something so trivial could be so commanding. She was dazzling. Involuntarily I felt grateful just for seeing her, like an astronaut with the privilege of seeing the stars firsthand. Anything from that moment on should have been a disappointment as nothing could become more perfect. But it wasn’t. She was beautiful. And since then every word she has said has been sung and every step she has taken, was, what else, but a dance. Her smile is like a prayer and her voice as spellbinding as if whispered. If beauty were indeed in the eyes of the beholder, then mine, I’m afraid, were stunning.

There is nothing romantic about being in love. There is nothing vague or indeterminate. There is nothing ambiguous or uncertain or hazy. Falling in love is as practical and obvious and as real as catching a cold or being called up for jury duty. There is no choice. There is no waiting its passing. It consumes and influences us. It changes our priorities, changes our opinions and therefore should have the power to change the world.

As soon as I met Julia I was grateful. To say it was a religious experience would be a little corny, had it not made me so grateful. I was in love, I needed to at least thank someone. I wanted to be religious just so I could have it on the record that the loveliest thing that ever happened to me had not gone unnoticed. I wanted to pray, but even now, still do not know if praying is a practical method of channeling such gratitude.

Renowned atheist Richard Dawkins discusses the argument of beauty made by others to prove God’s existence in his bestseller The God Delusion. He argues that beautiful things do not prove God exists, it only proves that there happens to be beautiful things. He writes:

Another character in the Aldous Huxley novel just mentioned proved the existence of God by playing Beethoven’s string quartet no. 15 in A Minor (‘heiliger Dankgesang’) on a gramophone. Unconvincing as that sounds, it does represent a popular strand of argument. I have given up counting the number of times I receive the more or less truculent challenge: ‘How do you account for Shakespeare, then?’ (Substitute Schubert, Michelangelo, etc. to taste.) The argument will be so familiar, I needn’t document it further. But the logic behind it is never spelled out, and the more you think about it the more vacuous you realize it to be. Obviously Beethoven’s late quartets are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn’t. They do not prove the existence of God; they prove the existence of Beethoven and of Shakespeare. A great conductor is credited with saying: ‘If you have Mozart to listen to, why would you need God?’ (The God Delusion; Dawkins R; Chapter 3, Arguments for God’s existence, p 110)

While Dawkins is probably right about God, what he doesn’t go into detail is the human need to be grateful. As we see from extreme poverty, the world is indeed an awful, awful place; discriminative, unforgiving and laden with misery. Even in the developed world we must deal with cancers, car accidents, drug addiction, illness and loss. Therefore, when life throws at us something truly beautiful, something wonderful and truly poetic – then there becomes a deep yearning to be grateful. Of course this is no argument maintaining the plausibility of God, but if Dawkins wants us all to become atheists then he’ll have to address the appreciation issue. Because as we all crave meaning, if there is no one to thank, then we become further away from experiencing any sense of meaning. This is not to say it isn’t stupid to be grateful toward something that isn’t there, quite the contrary, but atheism will not stop the emptiness that ensues when we do not know who or what it is to be grateful to. Religion, with all its flaws, at least gives us some suggestion, even if it’s imaginary.

But Dawkins goes on in his book to talk about morality as a way of creating meaning. In a chapter titled The Roots of Morality: Why are we good? Dawkins markets atheism to those fearing the world could be destroyed without the recognition of God. He makes a convincing argument that we should be moral and good for the mere sake of being good and that we should not merely be good for the sake of being under God’s watchful eye. He writes:

If there is no God, why be good? Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: ‘Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God’s approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That’s not morality, that’s just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.’ As Einstein said, ‘If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.’ Michael Shermer, in The Science of Good and Evil,’ calls it a debate stopper. If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would ‘commit robbery, rape, and murder’, you reveal yourself as an immoral person, ‘and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you’. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue o be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good. I suspect that quite a lot of religious people do think religion is what motivates them to be good, especially if they belong to one of those faiths that systematically exploits personal guilt.

It seems to me to require a low self-regard to think that, should belief in God suddenly vanish from the world, we would all become callous and selfish hedonists, with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would deserve the name of goodness. (The God Delusion; Dawkins R; Chapter 6, The roots of morality: Why are we good? p 259)

The problem with this argument is that rape, robbery and murder are highly clean-cut black and white immoral acts. Robin Hood’s stealing from the rich and giving to the poor becomes more of a grey area as is embezzling from one’s boss who happens to be a dick. After that comes lying about having to visit a sick aunt to get out of going to a baby shower, making it that little bit easier to tell the fat guy from work we can most definitely see the weight she’s lost. This of course then leads to three serious aforementioned crimes starting with lying about not knowing the girl was under 18; to getting a job at Hoyts and robbing movie-goers with ‘value deals’; to slipping the neighbour’s cat an unfortunate micky. Ergo, textbook examples of rape, robbery and murder never ring true unless we look at the smaller social problems we face which can eventually lead to society’s downfall – hence, social problems such as materialism.

If I have learnt but one thing by now, it is that materialism destroys our soul. It is not the most profound of discoveries, granted, however, materialism is important to discuss in relation to our relationship with our own happiness. Materialism has become more than just for the spoilt these days, it has infected the hippies and the thinkers; the soldiers and the soccer mums; the politicians and the poets. And it isn’t just about commodities these days – it is about possession – wanting more out of life; more money, more freedom, more spirituality, more happiness. In the western world we like to collect things. Not unlike serial killers, it gives us immense satisfaction to have an entire set of our favourite belongings. In the beginning, we collected vinyl records which were replaced by cassette tapes which were then superseded by compact discs which have now been replaced by iPods. But it is not necessarily technology that is spawning materialism but the smooth adaptation to the technology.

In the old days the humble Super 8 video camera was originally used by our dads in the 70s to take family movies of birthday parties and barbecues. These family videos in conjunction with photo albums are Priority One possessions – ergo, the first items packed in vehicles belonging to bushfire evacuees. They should be our most treasured possessions. But today, for some reason, I have Humphrey Bogart’s The Big Sleep along with many others of my favourite films on VHS, DVD, box set DVD and special edition DVD with special features, deleted scenes, director’s commentaries and anything else I thought I might care about but actually couldn’t give a shit about. If we freeze time for a moment, and at the risk of some dated trappings to cringe about in this paragraph, we are currently living in the age of the DVD box set Christmas gift. And this materialism which is unavoidable at Christmas time is by far one of the worst traditions we embrace in the western world.

Despite by no means being a people person and unreservedly hating all men, women and children equally, one of my favourite things in the world, funnily enough, is the humble wedding. While there is no denying all weddings suck with their built-up pressure, ultra contrived photographs and ridiculous midnight curfews – there is a small window of time on the wedding day that is the most poignant of all. It occurs on the dance floor while your mind is elsewhere, trying to remember the Bus Stop and the Macarena. And it is the moment you might glance over and see people from both sides of two families dancing together. Friends dancing with family; family dancing with friends; in-laws dancing with workmates – whether they’ve met once before or never before, there is a certain stillness to it and a particular emotiveness to it.

At a wedding, although there is little elegance in a conga line of intoxicated and sweaty people dressed in rentals dancing to Brown Eyed Girl, the metaphor actually provides some credibility to the tradition of the western wedding. If you endeavour to look closely at the mess, you will find, in random order of course, your aunty on your father’s side connected to your uncle on your mother’s side, connected to your second cousin, connected to a close mate from high school; connected to the grandmother on the bride’s side, connected to the bloke you go to work with eight hours a day – and behind him are more and more aunties and uncles, relatives and friends. The conga line always inhabits laughter and any sign of worry or slight suggestion of life’s problems are temporarily non-existent. In those clichéd dire moments before death we hear about where images of people’s lives flash before their eyes – I am positive that wedding dance floors make an appearance regularly. I, for one, would certainly take comfort in them.

These are the moments that collectively make us who we are. As we have learnt from concepts such as the six degrees of separation and games like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, we learn that everybody is connected. The wedding conga line symbolizes this. And if we are all connected then looking after one another must be the answer. Whether He exists or not, the character of ‘God’ traditionally wanted us to do good, and doing good was supposedly the work of ‘God’. Therefore, doing good should technically tie up every loose end in relation to the search for closure as such deeds would demonstrate the symbol of gratitude for ‘God’s’ so-called gifts. Using personal loves and passions in life to act responsibly towards our neighbours and make a difference in this world is the answer to dormant gratitude. Looking after one another should be the practical component to praying.

But we do not all hold the same loves and passions. Sometimes our loves lie in more than just the stereotypical families and friends. One discourse community using their passion to help make a conscious decision to act responsibly and acknowledge that children are entitled to a lifespan of more than five years, are the surfers. In August 2007, the gnarly bosses and grommets of humanitarian organisation SurfAid International went into partnership with surf company Billabong to kick-start a schools program educating students on the health and living conditions of the people of the Mentawai Islands. The Mentawai Islands are a group of about 70 islands located off the west coast of Indonesia, approximately 100 to 200 kilometres from Sumatra. In conjunction with producing some of the greatest waves for experienced surfers, the region also has one of the highest child mortality rates on the planet, with expectant mothers from the village of Betumonga experiencing 220 baby-deaths per 1000 births. Research commissioned by SurfAid presented that out of these child deaths, 30 per cent were dying from pneumonia, 25 per cent from diarrhea and 25 per cent from unhygienic labours, with malnutrition being the underlying cause of 60 per cent of these deaths.

The SurfAid International Billabong Schools Program has since engaged with students from Australia, New Zealand, the US and Europe. While the teachings have been described as focused on the "geography, economy, culture, health and living conditions of the 70,000 people of the Mentawai Islands" – SurfAid also educates these students on SurfAid’s humanitarian accomplishments, therefore, enhancing the reputations of the surfing community. Between the months of March and May, 2007, SurfAid has delivered malaria education and 9,000 mosquito nets to be used by 22,000 Mentawai villagers. Within the same three months the organisation has conducted seven programs in the region including the scientific testing of the level of malaria-carrying parasites in the villages for children under the age of nine and has completed more than 4,600 blood tests in the same three-month period.

SurfAid even undertook an education program at the islands itself, basing the organisation at Betumonga and educating villagers on why their children were dying. Most had thought the islands were merely a "bad environment" saying no one had ever given them health education before. Rather than blindly writing cheques or mirroring the traditional missionaries who taught the savages to find Jesus (or else!) – these surfers educated locals on the islands that their families’ deaths were in fact preventable. They put into practice a practical and achievable plan that has worked and should be influenced by other industries. And the results have proven commendable.

With a reputation of being more territorial than guinea pigs and religious fanatics, the surfing community’s representative body of goodwill has almost given their vices meaning. They were using free-of-charge, the hometowns of a group of people to surf in, which, in turn, sparked the sensation of obligation to (insert cliché here) give something back to the community. SurfAid’s actions are of course kind but they are also empathic. For example, how do I feel when tourists surf at my beach? Their humanitarian work then provides them a sense of meaning; and that meaning, in turn, generates a sense of happiness.

I like the story of the surfing organisation helping the coastal third world village as it gives a middle-ground perspective to extreme poverty. Most westerners are materialistic and see humanitarian aid as a necessary conscience-easer for buying expensive cars and eating at expensive restaurants. The romantic notion of the humble surfer is a window into the simple life. While they are perceived collectively as existing detached to the real world, their love is for an unfeeling strip of nature – not a man-made commodity or piece of technological wizardry. And therefore, the bohemian surfer would probably believe the ocean would be enough reason to bring a child into this world. And the reason I like the analogy of the surfer over perhaps the hippy or the lefty is because of the lack of political agenda associated with the surfer. Although I for one personally hate nature, many people do not. Many city people love the beach or the mountains or have fond childhood memories camping. However, back to reality and our reasons for living are somewhat carbon copies of each other. Unless we are religious or our ambitions lie in being anything but conventional and mainstream, we tend to live for peer approval and success. The religious, on the other hand, love to be inspired.

God-fearing aside, I think the reason Christians are so mad about their faith is because of the book. The Holy Bible is kind of like Billy Joel’s Piano Man – if it wasn’t for the radio playing it every half hour then we’d probably come to realize that the lyrics are actually quite pretty. An entertainer slowly becoming intoxicated at his piano is not just drinking his gin and tonic – he’s making love to it. What a lovely way to describe a bloke slowly getting drunk on alcohol. Thirty years ago alcoholics and romantics alike would have fallen in love with Billy Joel merely by being able to relate to this poetic depiction. It is the same for all our favourite lyrics; they are descriptive yet ambiguous; insightful yet abstract; certain yet interpretive. They mean nothing, yet mean everything.

Strip the Holy Bible of its reputations of maniacal rants and strip ourselves from the trauma associated with memories of having the good book shoved down our throats and what we are left with is an ancient book of poetry. Whether those twenty million pages of light reading found in both New and Old Testaments are, in effect, fact or fiction is not the point. What is the point is that no one writes like this anymore. And the reason so many Christians are hung up on scripture is because it is marketed as a commodity providing the answers in life. And since meaning is the one thing in the world everybody collectively craves, its popularity has inevitably soared. The world craves meaning more than anything the shopping channel can sell us. We crave meaning more than toned abs, flawless skin, a knife that can cut through a shoe or the Chuck Norris Total Gym.

If you perform a Google search on all the favourite bible passages of all the crazy people in all the world who believe in God, the results can be quite astonishing. Like a Marx Brothers comedy, you have to check your brain at the door, but doing so can gives us much insight into what people yearn for in life; what they connect to; and what they take comfort in. Forget about whether it’s Luke, John, Exodus or Revelations – the men who wrote the Bible those thousands of years ago were poets. While they no doubt bored the odd stonemason at parties with their latest project about a cluster of Kings or a hippy claiming to be the Messiah – these writers were not irritating anyone with their denominational clichés, Halleluiahs and door-knocking like they are today. Their passion was new; it was fresh. Whether it was the writers using their imaginations or the key-players actually spitting out the dialogue and performing the miracles – there is little wonder why so many people have flocked to Christianity like rats to the Pied Piper. In a few random flicks through the pages of the Bible, let us take a look at some of the passages in this book and the metaphors used in order to tell something differently:

Psalms, 88:18 - You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.

This passage sounds like something from a Shakespearean play – Macbeth or Hamlet perhaps. It expresses sorrow and grief but it also tells us of the repercussions of sorrow and grief. It tells us (through a metaphor) why we rob banks and develop heroin addictions and sexually assault people. It tells us why we seek revenge. It tells us the reason we hurt people is because someone has hurt us. This power then to hurt others when we are hurt is as comforting as a friend when we end up having no one. The words are not literal, they are interpretive. The line is almost like the lyrics to a Nick Cave song – depressing but beautiful. And why is it beautiful – because it is true.

1 John 3:18 – Let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

This time the words sound like the wisdom you might find in a fortune cookie at a Chinese Restaurant. It tells us there is a difference between saying things and doing things. It tells us we need to be acting more rather than talking. But it also isn’t saying that mere talk is useless. This passage, 14 words in length, gives us many answers to the question, ‘what are we supposed to be doing?’ It tells us we need to say ‘I love you’ to our wives but it tells us we need to be taking out the bins as well. It tells us not to lie to our loved ones even though it would make things a whole lot easier if we did. But it could also be talking about the other people we are supposed to be protecting. Here I was thinking it was our families we were meant to be loving with words and actions when another passage earlier on said we should be ‘loving thy neighbours’ as well. So then the interpretation expands even more. Now we are being told to not only say we are going to help others but actually perform the deed as well. And performing a deed means doing something that concludes in resolution.

Sirach 11:7-8 Before investigating, find no fault; examine first, then criticize. Before hearing, answer not, and interrupt no one in the middle of his speech.

Now this has the same ring to it as a piece of old legislation. A literary pillar of our justice system written centuries ago with ideals that now translate into something like "innocent until proven guilty" or "get your facts straight first, buddio." Or it might resemble a journalistic code of ethics one might find in any civilized country with a free press. Even if the Bible is complete and total horseshit – it really can’t all be horseshit if it is saying things like these.

Philippians 2:3,4 - Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

This time they are words of wisdom. We all remember the words of Yoda’s wisdom in Star Wars because he phrased what he was saying in an interesting and unusual way: "Use the force, you must" or "Believe in yourself, you will" – the Philippians too, are giving their readers advice. Like an old man speaking to his grandson on his deathbed or the answer to a question posed to a married couple of 50 years on how to make a relationship last. The point is that people respond to poetry. They respond to unorthodox ways of transmitting information that contains poignancy and beauty. To end extreme poverty, such poetry can be used via advocacy journalism. As the fourth estate, all journalism must be about rectifying flaws in our world. This is the new way of relaying information to the masses. This is the diamond in the rough of sensational reporting and news agenda with improper and disproportionate emphasis on unimportant news.

The reason people personally respond to figures of speech, lyrics in music and verses in poetry is because they are connecting with someone else in an unorthodox manner. It is the same as the conga line at the wedding. A monotonous message is paid attention to best when it is transmitted in a cryptic, unusual or aesthetic way. Like a poem or our favourite dialogue in a movie, The Christian’s Bible does exactly the same thing, providing the same kind of narrative through an interesting medium. However, the Bible goes that one step further to merely containing good dialogue, it attempts, or claims to provide, answers to life’s burdening questions. Even if these answers are wrong, they are still someone’s answers. And it might not be what everyone has connected to but it is certainly what the Christians have. However, this is the part in the paragraph where my own metaphor could be lost in the clichés associated with the words ‘Bible’ and ‘Christianity’ making my own readers question the motives behind their humble scribe. Be careful of anyone who spells ‘he’ with a capital ‘H’ when talking about God, I say. The point is, we hate clichés but we love identity. And Goebbels was right – for journalism to be paid heed, the stories needs to be interesting. And they need to be interesting in order for audiences to connect with.

The irony, however, throughout the Christian faith is that these initial messages the Christians and born-again Christians fell in love with, innovatively written through symbolism, metaphor, prophecies and wisdom (aka poetry) are being marketed today with no such originality or ingenuity. The Christian message has become so lost in cliché that the messengers are seldom taken seriously. Sometimes I wonder if these ambassadors of their faith even listen to what they are saying or if the automation of the catch phrase just happens to take over. Phrases like ‘Jesus is Lord’, ‘Filled by the Holy Spirit’, ‘Touched by the Holy Spirit’, just plain old ‘Holy Spirit’, ‘Jesus in our hearts’, ‘Glory in Jesus’ name’, ‘dying for our sins’, ‘lift up our hearts’. What the hell has ‘lift up our hearts’ ever meant? Even if all these phrases did have symbolic meaning, it has become impossible not to switch off immediately when hearing them.

From the point of view of a man raised as a Christian, the overuse of such clichés has led to a demise in understanding and a demise in interest from myself and a lot of new-age secularists dismissing the so called ‘Truth’. And the sad part is that these originally gorgeous words founded in the Oh-so Good Book have now turned into clichés because of the crazy born again Bible-bashers whose motives, rather frustratingly, are to do nothing but absolute good. And meanwhile, the Christian broadcasting industry makes hundreds of millions of dollars cashing in on spreading this so-called Word, questioning the credibility of the Church even further. The message on the severity of extreme poverty has disappeared in similar clichés, which we have discussed in Chapter 3.

Even the educated trendy religious people don’t believe in God anymore. They use phrases like "I believe in an overall force" or "I believe in an entity" or "I believe in a God per se". The ones afraid of offending absolutely anyone say they believe in a faceless god that some people interpret as Buddha or Christ or Allah or Genghis Khan or whoever it is people are praying to these days. I don’t know how we can be so self-absorbed in navel-gazing, wondering what our opinions on God are should we one day be asked at a dinner party for some insight into our own philosophies when we have children all over the world suffering chronic hunger pains and dying in the masses from a lack of basic human rights. Whether there is a God or not, we are never going to find out the answer in this lifetime, so we need to quit the useless rites and rites of passage and minimize the torture affecting the human beings we are connected to. Once the hundreds of millions of people are being fed and hydrated each day can we then take some time out to preach and work out how we can praise God and lift up our hearts that so desperately need lifting.

If we married ourselves, with no other half, only half the people would have showed up to our weddings. But being in love with someone else connects us to more people. The idea that we should only have sympathy for people we know or meet is unreasonable. Whichever continent we live on, we are all connected somehow. Therefore, we all need each other. I am so in love with my wife that the only way I can express that productively is to be kind to others. And everyone else is as special as she is because we are all connected and the man up the street probably loves his wife as much as I do mine.

The gift I am most grateful for is my wife and whoever gave me this gift, I love. To this day I cannot wait for her novelty to wear off so I can concentrate again; carry on routinely and walk five yards without thinking of her. She is my motivation for change as her smile is enough inspiration to conquer three Roman Empires, swim five English Channels. But with these romantic notions there leads to no action and therefore there is no meaning. Which means all that is left then is to act.