Colours
of Love
the nature of the Perfect Man
Keywords: church, god, life, words, music, missionary, time, spectrum, spiritual
During the following week I spoke to everyone I knew about God. My South African audience must understand that trying to speak to a post-modern German society, which has largely turned its back on Mother Church for spiritual guidance, about Jesus as the ONLY way to heaven does not come easy. I devised a plan to tell the whole world within two weeks about Jesus. Alas, I could not keep up the ecstacy – a week later I was again hospitalised. This time I spent 2 months in the Albertien Krankenhaus in Hamburg. I was diagnosed with schizo-affected depression. During this time I could not sleep at all. In the mornings I was on a "high" and around lunchtime I crashed into a depression. Despite a total lack of concentration and coordination, due to the medication I was given, I kept myself going by reading the whole of the New Testament. It was a very lonely time for me – the summer holidays had just started and my family understandably did not grant members of Anskar church permission to visit me. My brother from London visited me twice and it was he who recognised the symptoms of Bipolar Disorder in me first.
You will notice that the previous paragraph is repeated in the following one. When I originally wrote this article I read it through at least 20 times before publishing it. From the content of this web site and the quality of its design, you will notice that I am meticulous about the finest detail and that a structural error would not easily go unnoticed by me. A few months after publishing it, I noticed that this paragraph was repeated. Annoyed by the fact that I did not notice it before, I deleted the repetition immediately and updated the web site. Another few months went by. Recently I updated this article with new content and when I read it through I discovered, to my amazement, that the duplication was back! I decided to leave it in place because it seems that this repetition has decided all by itself that "it wants to be here". I think the reason why it has come back again is because it wants to draw attention to itself: the content of my original vision in 1993. It also showed me again what I have suspected at first and later experienced many times: that things most Westerners would consider utterly dead, like the computer you are using, actually have a life and seemingly also a mind all of its own. I know this sound impossible to most people, but reality is not always what it seems... reality is an illusion! :) (18 April 2004)
During the following week I spoke to everyone I knew about God. My South African audience must understand that trying to speak to a post-modern German society, which has largely turned its back on Mother Church for spiritual guidance, about Jesus as the ONLY way to heaven does not come easy. I devised a plan to tell the whole world within two weeks about Jesus. Alas, I could not keep up the ecstacy – a week later I was again hospitalised. This time I spent 2 months in the Albertien Krankenhaus in Hamburg. I was diagnosed with schizo-affected depression. During this time I could not sleep at all. In the mornings I was on a "high" and around lunchtime I crashed into a depression. Despite a total lack of concentration and coordination, due to the medication I was given, I kept myself going by reading the whole of the New Testament. It was a very lonely time for me – the summer holidays had just started and my family understandably did not grant members of Anskar church permission to visit me. My brother from London visited me twice and it was he who recognised the symptoms of Bipolar Disorder in me first.
One morning while I was getting dressed I noticed something very odd. The label of my favourite shirt contained the same "error" on the third and fourth letters as my own first name. When I saw this I experienced a sensation like an electrical shock going through my whole body and the sound of a little bell ringing once.
"Jaco" (from Jacobus or James the Righteous, the brother of Jesus), quite a common name in South Africa, is normally spelt with one "c". My name that I was given at birth is "Jacco". This has always been an intriguing aspect of myself. In South Africa I have never met another "Jacco", though I later discovered plenty Jacco's living in Holland and Belgium on the Internet. Incidentally this was also what caused me 2 years before to believe that I was the Antichrist. I believed that the extra "c" in my name was a sign, which identified me as the Antichrist to the world. This time round I believed that it was a sign that I was a great prophet.
Finally my brother came to Hamburg to pack my things, because it was decided for me that I should return permanently to South Africa for at least a few years. Back home I was finally branded with the classification: Bipolar. It took me again about six months to get my health back. When I felt better I decided, inspired by Bruce Olson’s story, to become a missionary. I wrote all my friends what I was planning to do nexxt. While I was waiting on literature from various missionary organizations I received the following letter, the most beautiful letter anyone in this life has ever written me, from the mother of my cello teacher, in Hamburg. I translated it into English recently and titled it:
"I
was very happy to hear from my daughter-in-law, who recently sent me your
regards, that you are well. It might have gone up and down and these birth
pains are absolutely normal in the life of a Christian. Satan’s
attack with the question: 'Did God really say?', is also normal. The battle
against the resistance inside us regarding our illusions about how we
should follow Christ is probably the toughest of all. One feels ecstatic,
often in euphoria we want to change careers or we want to become a missionary.
In such a condition one should first of all 'ground' the 'antenna'; as
Paul says: 'become sober', don’t switch off your intellect! Which
talents, which calling does my Creator bring into my life with which I
can become a witness for Christ? Why go and look so far when what is good
lies so close? It should not require any psychological or physical gymnastics
to decipher God’s special will for my life: believing parents, a
musical education, linguistic talents, experience in foreign countries,
etc.
"When I now consider what the greatest is that He gave us through the Apostle Paul, anointed by the Holy Spirit, then it is 1 Corinthians 13! All these humbling characteristics He wants to give us. Implied is not something that can only be found somewhere beyond the human experience, much rather it is about hard work at one’s own character, the 'self', the 'I'. Because it is only God's Love speaking through us that will resonate in others and could bring change to their lives. And if we were to apply our music to achieve just that? Doesn't music offer itself as an international language of understanding? For us musicians music is after all the way to express ourselves! What other powerful expression could bring the glory of God to life?
"Faith-Hope-Love – and Love as the greatest of all things. Henry Drummond (English scientist) once dissected Love in the following way during a ceremony for sending out young missioners to Africa.
'Like a ray of light, when passing through a crystal prism, is split up into the colours of which it consists: red and blue and violet and yellow and orange and all the colours of the rainbow; so Paul allows this thing we call Love, to pass through the wonderful prism of his enlightened mind; and on the other side Love comes out split up into the elements it consists of. And in these few words we have what we could call the Divisions of Love. Observe that these elements have very normal names; they consist of a multitude of lesser things and plain virtues.
The Spectrum of Love has 9 components:
Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love does not envy.
Love does not boast. It is not proud.
Love is not rude.
Love is not self-seeking.
Love is not easily angered.
Love keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.Patience, kindness, generosity, humility (modesty, meekness6), courtesy (politeness), unselfishness (self-sacrificial), equanimity (calmness), mercy (clemency, forgiveness, unquestioning, unwariness, guileless, innocence, unsuspicious), truthfulness (honesty, integrity, uprightness) – these together make the greatest gift, the nature of the perfect man.'"
With these words as foundation for the rest of my life, I decided in 1994 not to become a missionary in the normal sense of the word, but to use my musical talent, in the words of Don Quixote, "to add a measure of Grace to the world". My bow crossing the 4 strings of my cello has become my only "sword".
6 The synonyms are my own additions.
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