Bubble Girl

am sick. So sick that I am bedridden. So sick that I risked not going to school (something I haven’t done since high school, when I was confined in the hospital for a viral infection). So sick that I have to pay extra attention to what I’m typing, or else the letters of these words will become jmulbed together. The sad thing is that this is the third time in almost a couple of months that I have been seriously sick. My health has never been that great, but this is a record, even for me. I have a feeling that by the time I graduate from law school (if and when I graduate), I would have collected a variety of diseases that would make me the eighth wonder of the world. The only way I probably could escape from all of these sicknesses is to go and create for myself my own personal uncontaminated space, be a bubble girl, and stay there for the rest of my life – something that I would never do even if you paid me a million bucks. You see, we all need to be exposed to bacteria, viruses, and countless of these other tiny microorganisms so as to strengthen our immune system. Aren’t these what vaccines contain anyway: weaker strains of microbes that are injected in our system to expose our antibodies to them so that they will be able to create some sort of defense for these, and eventually for the actual disease itself? No, this entry is not devoted to the wonders of white blood cells and the study of anatomy. Being sick (again) got me into thinking for even a few seconds what it would be like to be a bubble girl and going into an imposed self-exile for self-preservation, so I won’t get sick anymore. This brought to mind one of the many things that I’ve learned in Bible study when I was still in college: the difference between isolation and insulation. The former refers to a spiritual bubble kid. A person, in his/her zeal to be pure, chooses to isolate himself/herself in his/her own world, not associating with anyone for fear that he/she would become impure because of the contact. Because of this fear, he/she would fold upon himself/herself, and go to a literal or figurative desert or mountaintop and stay there apart from everyone else. In other words, that person would become the quintessential hermit. To go away to meditate and spend time alone with God is not bad. In fact, Jesus Himself occasionally went away to pray (Mt 13:53, 16:4, 19:15, to name a few). However, He did not stay there all throughout His life, because if He did, that would be defeating the purpose that God the Father has given Him, and which He later on gave to us as well. This is said in Jn 17:18: “As You sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world,” or, more directly in Lk 19:10, “Seek and save the lost.” How can we minister to other people if we separate ourselves from them? Not only does that imply selfishness and self-righteousness, it also means we are not living what He has called us to do. 1 Jn 4:7 tells us that we should love each other, for love is of God. How can we love others if we actually have no idea who these “others” are? Sure, we can go and love them as a collective, but that would mean that we know of them only as concepts, and not as actual tangible individuals. Wanting oneself to be holy and pure doesn’t mean isolation. Who did Jesus associate with? Not with the so-called “goody-two-shoes” type of people, but the sinners, the ones who needed Him. The same way that He ministered to them, so should we do it, and that is where insulation comes in. Insulation is vastly different from isolation in that it lets us live God’s Will. To define it more clearly, a good illustration would be that of a polar bear. Instead of just hiding in their caves because of the intense cold, their bodies have adapted to the arctic weather by developing layers of fat for protection (aren’t I scientific today?) We should be like the polar bear, not in the sense that we should go and eat tons of food to have tons of fat, but instead be spiritually insulated. By This is not to say that to share the Gospel to others, we have to adopt to the culture that the world teaches. Au contraire. What I am saying is by reading God’s Word, we become prepared to face the world. Just because we are from it does not necessarily mean that we are of it. There’s a world of difference. As Jn 15:19, says, “If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.” Jesus has taken us already from it, but we are here because we are called to serve Him, and to serve other people by ministering to them and sharing God’s love. One of the reasons why I love the Jesuits is because of the training they give to their acolytes. No, I wasn’t actually one (perish the thought!), but I have had four Jesuits as professors before, as well as teachers whose have members of that religious order as close friends, and they would tell stories of the education the “trainees” have received. Part of their “syllabus” includes reading on philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Jean Paul Sartre and others whose main propositions are that of absurdity, atheism, and agnosticism. It is not so they would be discouraged to join the order, but to expose them to literature such as these to prepare them for what waits outside. Sure, there’s little or no chance that they would actually encounter situations such as that seen in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” or Sartre’s “No Exit,” but sometimes, the sad thing is that what happens in the real world is harsher than what fiction portrays. That, however, is not sufficient a reason to go and hide from the rest of humanity for fear of one’s soul. That would be way too much like M. Night Shyamalan’s film “The Village,” where they created their own private world because they are scared of feeling pain. It’s relativistic: you only care about your own perspective and no one else’s. Basically, it just means that you are too self-centered that you want to protect only yourself. Never mind that you don’t get to share God’s love to those who especially need it. Yes, the world contains a lot of evil and sin. Ephesians 2:1-3 says, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you once lived following the age of this world, following the ruler of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the desires of our flesh and the impulses, and we were by nature children of wrath like the rest.” Instead of following God, we become vessels of darkness by Satan, and the sad thing is that a lot of times, it is by our very own choice that led us there. We might think that we are spiritually equipped to go and fight our personal war against evil, but it is when we have these thoughts that we actually fail, because we rely on our strength. The result? Our pride will be our undoing, because the harsh truth is that we cannot do it alone. If we try and conquer sin by our strength, we’ll always fail. The good news is that we are not alone. Ph 4:13 says, “I have the strength for everything through Him who empowers me.” He is on our side, and He will be the One to help us fight our battle. He is the One who provides for our strength. We might be afraid that we might be influenced by the world if we go out into it, but God will be the One who will provide the strength and the words we will need to minister. All we have to do is to open ourselves to serve Him. Personal bubbles are well and good, but that is not really fulfilling His call for us.