Life is a loaded dice

The decision of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to fight to death instead of stepping down from power at the height of the Libyan people's uprising against his 41-year rule reminds me of the Bible's counsel not to love the world.
"Do not love the world, or what is in it. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him," says the Bible in 1 John 2:15-17. The scripture does not talk here about simple love but about obsession for the flesh, wealth, power and fame
The next verse (16) provides the explanation. "For everything in the world - the craving of the flesh, the greed of the eyes and people boasting of their superiority - all this belong to this world, not the father."
The scripture is warning us about worldly temptations - the lust for the flesh and greed for wealth, fame and power - that drives many of us to abandon God and make us forget that life in this world is just a pilgrimage to the life beyond. It is telling us that these are not the ways of the divine.
When Gaddafi decided to fight at all cost, he was driven by his obsession for power which he seized from King Idrs in 1969 military coup. This is the same case with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad who refuses to step down despite the widespread protest against his rule.
The way I look at it, the scripture is tying to tell us that this world is not our permanent home and that we have to try rising above our mundane ways because our journey is a struggle between the flesh and the soul.
Religion has been telling us that this is a struggle between good and evil, but the idea does not appeal to many of us because it conjures images of angels and devils, which is not within the realm of human experience.
If we take an honest, deeper look into our own experiences and what's going on around us, we will know that life in this world is a struggle between our mundane ways and our lofty dreams and that life is a loaded dice, weighted in favor of our worldly desires.
Take the case of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was accused by a hotel maid in the United States of forcing her to do oral sex with him. Apparently, he succumbed to the call of the flesh. Although he was freed by the court mainly on the grounds that there was an attempt to extort money from him, there were reported evidence like semen on the woman's dress to prove that there was an attempt to force her to have sex with him, oral or whatever.
There have been a slew of world leaders known to have illicit affairs with women outside matrimony. There was Hitler, former US president Bill Clinton and the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, to name a few. Despite their stature in life, they had not been immune to the call of the flesh.
To some people, the obsession to amass material wealth, despite the Bible's advise not to hoard riches that rust, comes stronger. Politicians, in both the developed and Third World nations, are handy examples, along with the owners of corporate giants whose legendary greed for profit is obscene.
We often react with revulsion when he hear or read about people in high places getting involved in grave wrongdoings and yet if we take an honest look into our own experiences we will realize that we ourselves have succumbed to earthly temptation, one way or another, but most commonly, I am sure, to "boasting of our superiority."
The counterweight against obsession for worldly ways is our conscience, our sense of right and wrong and our concern for others, human virtues serving as proofs that we are more than flesh and bones and for which evolutionists grope for explanation.


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