Jonathan Bha­gan

Hav­ing done writ­ten ad­vo­ca­cy for the re­duc­tion and elim­i­na­tion of fire­works be­fore, I will in­tro­duce the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts in­to the de­bate in a hy­per­bol­ic man­ner to stop my­self from be­ing bored and frus­trat­ed while writ­ing this piece. Let us start this col­umn by first delv­ing in­to the the­ol­o­gy of love.

When you love some­one, you care deeply for their wel­fare and can­not bear the thought of them ex­pe­ri­enc­ing suf­fer­ing. Love, there­fore, re­quires you to hate any­thing that would cause harm to the beloved. 

This is an er­ror some new age gu­rus and writ­ers make when they try to write about God in a sense that ex­cludes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of di­vine jus­tice or hell. Some writ­ers will ar­gue that God can­not pun­ish be­cause they con­ceive of love as a weak af­fec­tion that is pas­sive. Love in Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy is pow­er­ful and will seek to pro­tect the ob­ject of love from harm in the in­ter­ests of jus­tice. 

Love in the bib­li­cal sense is bloody—God the Fa­ther re­quired the sac­ri­fice of Je­sus, his son, as a pro­pi­ti­a­tion for sin (1 John 2:2). Since the wages of sin are death, a sub­sti­tu­tion­ary death was re­quired for jus­tice to be sat­is­fied. God re­quired the death of Je­sus be­cause God hates in­jus­tice (Prov 17:15). 

In the the­ol­o­gy of St Isaac the Syr­i­an, the pain of hell is ac­tu­al­ly the re­gret sin­ners feel for hav­ing failed God’s love. St Isaac wrote: Those who are pun­ished in Gehen­na are scourged by the scourge of love. Nay, what is so bit­ter and ve­he­ment as the tor­ment of love? I mean that those who have be­come con­scious that they have sinned against love suf­fer greater tor­ment from this than from any fear of pun­ish­ment. For the sor­row caused in the heart by sin against love is more poignant than any tor­ment. It would be im­prop­er for a man to think that sin­ners in Gehen­na are de­prived of the love of God. Love is the off­spring of knowl­edge of the truth, which, as is com­mon­ly con­fessed, is giv­en to all. The pow­er of love works in two ways: it tor­ments sin­ners, even as hap­pens here when a friend suf­fers from a friend; but it be­comes a source of joy for those who have ob­served its du­ties. Thus I say that this is the tor­ment of Gehen­na: bit­ter re­gret.”  

I love dogs, peo­ple and have a pass­ing fond­ness for cats that don’t bite. Be­cause I love dogs, I hate ob­jects that cause pain to dogs, specif­i­cal­ly my Ital­ian Mas­tiffs. 

I wax philo­soph­i­cal this week to ex­plain to read­ers that I hate fire­works and wish di­vine tor­ment on those who throw scratch bombs at peo­ple and dogs. In an econ­o­my that is run­ning out of for­eign ex­change, it is ab­surd that the state spends US dol­lars on potas­si­um ni­trate ex­plo­sives im­port­ed from Chi­na for a few min­utes of friv­o­li­ty. 

I would pre­fer a com­plete ban on fire­works; how­ev­er, the lat­est news that the present ad­min­is­tra­tion is not hav­ing fire­works for In­de­pen­dence Day this year has brought me joy. Not on­ly will the state be sav­ing mon­ey, but an­i­mals na­tion­wide will avoid the as­sault of ex­plo­sions that harm their well-be­ing. 

I would like to use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther ad­vo­cate for a se­ri­ous cur­tail­ing of fire­works sales to save for­eign ex­change and re­move the risk to life and limb that these ex­plo­sives rep­re­sent.  

Busi­ness­es have been de­stroyed and fam­i­lies ren­dered home­less by fire­works in re­cent years. In Jan­u­ary 2023, Rishard Khan wrote in the T&T Guardian: ”At least three busi­ness­es on the cor­ner of Nel­son and Duke Streets in Port-of-Spain were set on fire ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing due to the mis­use of fire­works.” 

In Jan­u­ary 2022, Looptt re­port­ed: “A fire, be­lieved to have been start­ed by a fire­work land­ing on the roof of a house, en­gulfed sev­er­al homes along Quar­ry Street, East Port-of-Spain, min­utes af­ter peo­ple rang in the new year. The ear­ly-morn­ing blaze left 20 peo­ple home­less.” 

There are al­so news sto­ries of women and chil­dren los­ing fin­gers to scratch bombs over the past decade. Giv­en that the state pro­vides free health­care, every fire­work-re­lat­ed in­jury is a cost to tax­pay­ers for sur­gi­cal in­ter­ven­tion and or med­ica­tion, on top of the ini­tial cost of im­port­ing the fire­works them­selves. 

Giv­en the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed above, it is log­i­cal to con­clude that a ma­jor cur­tail­ment of fire­works or even an out­right ban would be ben­e­fi­cial for so­ci­ety. For those of us who tru­ly love our na­tion, its peo­ple and the an­i­mals who live here, we would al­so not want the harm that fire­works can cause to come up­on in­no­cent civil­ians and our an­i­mals. 

The on­ly crit­i­cism I can give of the present ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­ci­sion not to have fire­works for In­de­pen­dence Day is that it does not go far enough. I would en­cour­age a com­plete ban on all fire­works for state-spon­sored events and a cur­tail­ing of fire­works im­ports na­tion­wide. 

It is unlov­ing and un­just for our na­tion’s lim­it­ed forex re­serves to be spent on ex­plo­sives that kill an­i­mals, in­jure cit­i­zens and ren­der per­sons home­less.