Just for the records 
Let's see if I can instigate some discomfort here...  (Again... least important is NOT not important!)
(Rule: only 2 ones, 2 threes and 2 fives allowed,(+ 3 twos and 3 fours))
Importance (1 - Least; 5- Most)
Pulpit Ministry - 1 (From where we come from, there is already others more focused and placing higher priority in this ministry. I feel that i can safely focus on other area)
Evangelism/Mission - 3 (Usually during mission trips I play more of a support role rather than being the front line speaker. It's important to me but I am only the support person)
Discipleship - 4 (Imparted by FES (and RBS) during my undergrad days...)
Worship - 4 (always felt a difference between the style of worship back in my uni days and back here in BMGC)
Prayer - 2 (Neutal)
Sunday School - 5 (Imparted during RBS)
Youth Ministry - 5 (also imparted during RBS)
Visitation - 2 (see ushering. I still make it a point to make it to visit people during wakes and in hospitals though, but I just can't seem to say much)
Hospitality - 2 (Neutal)
Apologetics - 4 (Felt that knowledge and faith is not always incompatible. And it's important that people see it the same way)
Logistics - 3 (Too many a times I am called to help with logistics, and "decided" to give others a chance. I will still help with logistics when i am called for)
Ushering - 1 (Let's face it... I am not a good frontline person; Contrary to what most people think, I can't create conversations out of thin air, I will let the others more gifted than me in this area take up the ministry)
- martianunlimited -
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What is Happiness? BMGC (A Gathering of Happiness - or A Happy Gathering) 30 June 2007 6pm Pls feel free to contact me for details (scheekeong [at] gmail [dot] com) I suspect many of us facing this very simple question will feel a sense of irony deep inside. On one hand, we seem to know that given this or that (money, boyfriend, BETTER boss), we'll be happy, or at least happier. But on the other hand, many of us have perhaps come to term that everytime we expect something and achieve it, we may be happy for a time, but then we'll finally be left with an empty, "What now?" feeling. A very intelligent 4th century thinker said, "My heart is always restless". He meant that there is always a sense of dissatisfaction, emptiness and sorrow no matter how smart he is, no matter how wealthy he is, no matter how influential he is (btw, he was all three, being the leading thinker of his time and guru to the most powerful leaders of the Roman empire). Though many of us are not like him, smart and rich and beautiful and powerful, we all can testify to that experience of emptiness. Our hard work left us dry, with really no guarantee of security, come think of it. The industry is slowing down. Yes ringgit is stronger now, but it only means people buying from us will have to pay more (in USD), which means our competitiveness in the world market diminishes. This may be oversimplification of economics, but who can say for sure she is inevitable to the company? If the world can even do without a Tony Blair (who is btw, stepping down this tomorow with a pretty dissappointing legacy) or George Bush, who are we, what is Dell or Intel, or Agilent or Solectron (well, we all know what happened to Solectron recently)? When all our strength is exhausted, when we lay silent in bed at night, thinking perhaps of our loved ones. Does it cross our mind that family values are diminishing at a quicker rate than our trade competitiveness? Divorce is rampant and probably a disease as old as time, but now, passion killing?? Lovers chopping up lovers, husband killing the wife, wife killing the children. It is not enough that mortal danger is lurking at every moment outside of our home that now the home has lost the familiar security of love and trust? It will not happen to me, we all will think. "Happiness and Peace", all of us say in our heart. But as another leading thinker of history, in 1st AD said, sooner than we say, "Happiness and Peace", many sorrows flood into our lives like an angry tsunami. Well, i have a beautiful house, a flourishing business, a good family, but i cannot control the rain in the sky and the waters in the sea and the movement of the earth. And the next I know, bahh...is there any guarantee to this fleeting life? No woonder the more intelligent among us knew that the hearts of men and women are always restless. How can we not be? The philosopher Nietzsche said, and I paraphrase, I look into the future and all that I can see is bleak darkness . He became insane towards the end of his life and killed himself. He is only being consistent to his own reasoning. What is left for us to live longer in this painful and sorrow and uncertain life, with no gurantee at all of the future except more unexpected pain and sorrows. Some say, happiness is subjective, one woman's prada is another's junk. So don't try to teach me about happiness, others may say. In fact, thank you, I don't need you to SHARE your happiness with me, we may probably feel deep inside towards an eager friend. Subjective as it is, common to all human beings, male and female, is our acknowledgement that there is after all such thing as HAPPINESS, in spite of all the sh*t we are experiencing. Why is that so? Is that a fake hope? Or is that really a pointer (programing students may be familiar with this concept) to a REAL thing, waiting in-between the cracks of life to gush out to those of us who find hard enough? I am sure Nietzche will have some sort of experience of happiness, bleak as life is to him. I remember listening to a group of friends, about 10 of them going up on the stage during a wedding dinner and hands on each others' shoulder, boys and gals all in their early thirties, singing Emil Chau's Friends. Isn't that beautiful? A "friendly" reminder that happiness does exist, there is such thing as beauty in life after all, albeit only glimpses that we can catch. And of course, the second common thing is that all of us seem to believe that it is our inherent right, or as Jefferson and the American founding fathers wrote, our inalienable rights, to pursue HAPPYNESS. Remember the show? The pursuit of happiness is wrote into our being. Unless the whole of humanity is deceived, we all know there is something called happiness and it is our right to pursue it. It will be a very cruel thing to have so passionate a desire for happiness without the thing itself existing. I mean, to put it in another word, if human beings are made to be hungry, it must mean that there is such thing as "food", be it bread or whatever donks. But but, if we cannot find any happiness, or at least any real and permanent happiness here in this world? You have two choices (let me know if there are more), 1. There is no such thing as happiness, we are all deceived to the core - therefore, Nietzsche is for you. 2. I have to find it elsewhere. I choose the second one (it is the most reasonable to me). Another very very intelligent thinker, who is a don at Oxford and Cambridge in the post war years (he wrote the brilliant Chronicles of Narnia) said it most beautifully: If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world
God is a hate word today, too many unnecessary meanings go into that word. But the bible said it plainly, God is love. A loving God he is (for a moment forget all the sh*t religious ppl have done and concentrate on this understanding of God), he desires that all should be happy. And being God, he knew how we all can be happy. I mean you can think of a million thousand ways, but let's say God is infintely more brilliant than us all, he will be the best person we go to to find out about happiness. And as I have said (Oh, i can repeat this many many times, so forgive me), because he is loving (and not like a tyrannical Prime Minister who only serve his only cronies), he wants us to find true and lasting happiness. He knew that because we are created for him (if he is the Creator, he will know why we are created, just like the creator of a pen knew better than anyone what is the purpose of a pen), he knew that only by fulfilling our purpose, only by going back to him that we will find raw, unadulterated, electrifying pleasure. Well, the bible did say, "in his presence there is FULLNESS OF JOY; at his right hand are PLEASURES FOREVERMORE" Why do i say so many things? Because I want to pass you this map to the infinitely rich world of raw unadulterated, electrifying pleasure and joy. I want to invite you to this journey together. There is true beauty, and when we walk together, arms in arms, singing Emil Chau's song, you will certainily catch a glimpse of it and know that I was telling the truth.
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Passover 2.0 http://jack.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2007/5/27/2978388.html (an expanded version of the reflection i wrote during our passover celebration) Passover is a one of the main festival of the Jewish people, a celebration commemorating a strange event thousands of years ago. In the prosperity of Goshen which god has given them, the Hebrew people had become slaves. The powers and structures of the world, Egypt, became suspicious of them, and therefore had rejected them and treated them a little above animals. Goshen was a blessing, but now it became a curse. Phithom and Raames, the cities of the king's wealth were built on the jewish sweat and tears. The great river Nile, red with the jewish blood, cried out to the heavens. But for centuries, those blood and sweat and tears and cries seemed to fall on the deafness of the vast Egyptian sky...(click above link to read on)
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From Babel to Pentecost: How God overcomes a confused world (and how we can tag along?) (Original title given: How to be faithful to Christ in a plural society) Passover and Easter have just passed, but let us not even begin to take this most profound event as merely a tick in our yearly calendar. Mind you, after the Resurrection and the Ascension, the disciples were up in the upper room praying and anticipating, though not without a deep sense of uncertainty and fear. Let us now begin to journey towards Pentecost, and perhaps beyond. I want to begin our journey by this very ancient story: At one time, the whole Earth spoke the same language. It so happened that as they moved out of the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled down. They said to one another, "Come, let's make bricks and fire them well." They used brick for stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let's make ourselves famous so we won't be scattered here and there across the Earth." God came down to look over the city and the tower those people had built. God took one look and said, "One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they'll come up with next-they'll stop at nothing! Come, we'll go down and garble their speech so they won't understand each other." Then God scattered them from there all over the world. And they had to quit building the city. That's how it came to be called Babel, because there God turned their language into "babble." From there God scattered them all over the world.
GOD confused the language of men and thereby creating different language groups. I believe, we have here the story of how the earliest stage of pluralism came about. Of course, we are probably now at a very advance stage of pluralism and there are just so many categories for this Babel phenomenon. But for the purpose of our journey, I would like to define pluralistic society simply as a society with multiple cultural, social, political, religious views. To us in Malaysia, such a society is given and taken for granted. We are reminded very early in school, by the government, by our parents and by our experience that we are with people from different cultures and ideologies and we are expected to live in peace with one another. Because of the giveness of our situation, we were constantly told that to be in a pluralistic society is a good thing, or at least it is something we have to learn to live with, for better or worst. I am sure there are good points about being in a pluralistic society, but I do not think it is our intention here today to discuss them. So what are the problems of pluralism? I wish to highlight two: The first issue is that Christianity is no longer holding the monopoly of ideology such as in the West. Even in the West today, there is a trend of decline in the popularity of Christianity. The Christian claims have to vie with Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Marxism, Atheism and all sorts of 'ism' within a multi-ism society. The second issue, which i believe is more critical, is that in today's pluralistic society, we usually elevate tolerant above truth and has unfortunately equate tolerant with keeping quiet. Sociologists often define our times into modern and postmodern. The modern man, like the folks in Babel, was self-sufficient and believed that given time, he will be able to achieve great heights, even heaven. Progress made by humanity in all areas since the Enlightenment seemed to agree with this and continue to become the fuel for the project of modernity. But come two world wars and all the turmoils of our dark 20th century, the tower is now collapsed. And suddenly, the many different ideologies of man become for him "babble". The great-great-grandchild of Babel is postmodernism and all her posterity. When the egoistic tower of modernity was crushed, we have become utterly confused . Having so many different contenders to Truth, the postmodern man finally gave up and resort to rejecting all sorts of objective claims to truth. Therefore in a pluralistic society, when a multiple choices of 'ism' is offered, it is virtue to consider all of them and accept none of them. All roads lead to Rome, and truth depends on how we look at it. Exclusive claims, such as the Christian claims of one way to god, are from the egoistic modern past. Truth, if objective, becomes oppresive they say. Therefore, lead us tear down the tower project and be contended with our ideolog ical confusion. And these problems often leave the Church paralysed with the question, what then shall we do to be saved? Relook If we are to be faithful to the call of the gospel in this age, we must begin to understand what the gospel really is. Yes, the glorious gospel was proclaimed to us firstly by the blood and sweat and tears of faithful missionaries from the West. But we do not want an inherited gospel. The Church has to read and experience afresh the good news, not least from the word of god and from the illumination of the Holy Spirit our everlasting and everpresent Teacher. We are often caught up with the notion of the gospel being a fast track, non-stop bullet train on a one-way journey to shangri-la. The Church saw that the world as Titanic sinking and therefore there it is meaningless to reorder the tables and chairs and put up decorations. The vital task is to rescue as many folks as possible into the life-boats. Oh, has god rejected the world and only wish to save as many possible to heaven? The Creation story tells us that god has not! Oh, god created the world and he created man and woman and he declared that it is good. And indeed it was strangely very good as he look lovingly at the newly created creatures bearing his image walking clumsily on the first grass of the world. The experience of the ancient Hebrews tells us that god has not abandoned the world! God did not give them zap them out of Egypt to heaven somewhere. No, god gave them laws, lands and rites. These are earthly things. Yes, they may be shadows of greater things to come, but god has not found it obscene to use earthly physical things to be infused with heavenly meaning. It is not heaven destroying or overtaking earth, it is the meeting of heaven and earth. The redeemed nation of god was to live out god's rule on this earth. Israel was called to be god's servant, god's light to the world, to proclaim and to dispense his blessings and of course reciprocally his judgements. The Incarnation tells us that god has not rejected the world! For god so loved the world, this physical world, he gave us himself, whosoever believes in him will have life abundantly. The Cross tells us that has not abandoned the world ! Look at the bread and the cup. Again, these are earthly things, heaven and earth meet in perfect harmony. Oh, Paul tells us that the Creator god has not abandoned the world! He tells us that not only man and woman, but the WHOLE Creation is longing for god's redemption (Rom 8:18-25). If god did not plan to redeem Creation, the holy writers will not say so. Or else, the Creation groan in vain! No, and indeed Paul himself told us that in Jesus Christ, god has reconciled the world, man and woman and the WHOLE Creation to himself (2 Cor 5:18-19; Col 1:19-20) But note another great thing about Paul; When the ancient Greek declared that the body is the prison of our spirit, when the chinese despise d the body as useless leather baggage, when Buddhism taught that the body is an obstacle to spiritual attainment, Paul tells us, of course by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: You body is god's temple! What revolutionary idea! The physical world which god created is not evil perse. And this is the gospel, that the Creator god loved the world, man and woman, and has intiated a rescue operation to right what was wrong! (I would love to elaborate on this, about the gospel!!! But i have to move on) Finally, John the Seer tells us what god ultimately meant to do, no it is not bringing people up to a disembodied heaven somewhere. No, there is no white robed winged angels on harps flying slowly across the clouds and the redeemed eating heavenly grapes all day long singing boring slow songs. No! There will be blood - see the lamb who was slained. There will be a choir, a loud choir! There will be a war and yes, there will be resurrection - of the body! We will be given back this flesh, this body, redeemed, but flesh and body nonetheless - like Jesus on Easter morning. And there is the finale of the great city coming down to earth, a picture of heaven and earth united, not the one destroying the other. May I sum up what the prophet Isaiah said about the redeemed Creation in a poem I wrote some time back: A Spectre is haunting the world
To rule with iron fist and band
With mercy great, justice unnegotiable
To create a classless land
Where nations shall not rise against nations
Where the people live in peace
The lambs shall lie with the lions
The tigers amongst the kids
Forgive me for using Communist terms, but the redeemed world will be a world of land and farm and nations and people and animals. Just like what we have today, only much much much better. Alleluia! So What? How does all that help us to even survive this babelistic world? As we have seen, the gospel is about a god who has not given up, who is not powerless and who has finally acted to right what went wrong. Easter is just that! God took on himself the burden and wrongs of the world, faced evil in its darkest and worst alone outside the gate of the city. And going through death, he returned from the other side - bodily - declaring to us that the new morning of the new Creation has begun (which explained the action of Jesus late the first Easter day, breathing the Holy Spirit and telling them about forgiveness of sins). But it does not end there. The new age will be implemented by god's power through his people - the Church. What sort of power and how? Let us continue to the Babel story i read in the begining of this message: When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force-no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them. There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn't for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, "Aren't these all Galileans? How come we're hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?
Parthians, Medes, and Elamites;
Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene;
Immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes;
Even Cretans and Arabs!
"They're speaking our languages, describing God's mighty works!" Their heads were spinning; they couldn't make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: "What's going on here?" Others joked, "They're drunk on cheap wine."
Did you see how the story has progressed? God righted all the terrible evils and wrongs of the world, but he took special attention of what he did at Babel. We, or at least I, would have expected that the plan to undo Babel was to make everyone speak the same language again. Well, this was what our Muslim friends thought - the redeemed must worship god in the same language, read the holy book in the same language, greet one another in the same language. But thank god his ways are higher than ours! The Holy Spirit did not turn the Galilieans into a monotonous loud speaker, instead, he orchestraed them to become a choir singing beautiful choruses of praise. This is god's act of overturning Babel. And therefore, the task of the Church is to declare this overturning; 1) By prayers and worship and rigourous studies, let us recognize that because god has not given up the world, we ought not give up the world. Yes, Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world, but he does not mean his kingdom will not have impact in this world. The source of Jesus' kingdom is heavenly, but the operation of his kingdom is here. With much trembling and fear, the Church must constantly pray, "Let thy kingdom come, Let thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". 2) And as we pray that prayer, by the mighty power of god's Spirit, we must have boldness to proclaim the good news of the kingdom, that Jesus is Lord and pluralism is not, Jesus is Lord and modernity and postmodernity is not, Jesus is Lord and the other "ism" are not! And by proclaiming the good news, I do not mean merely by speech as we often do. Just as Francis of Asisi, go preach the gospel always, and if it's really necessary you can even use words. 3) And the Church must rise above the confusion of Babel, not by exerting uniformity, but by the unity of love: the love for Jesus Christ and the love for one another. Jesus said, it is this fellowship of love that will distinguish us as his followers. Let us set aside false facade of tolerance but instead put on this love, a love which will not curse or harm, but a love which turn the other cheek and go the extra mile. This is the love which will unite us not merely by external uniformity but in the heart to be like-minded, speak the same thing, to be one in spirit and purpose. And this love have as its sole source the being of god even Jesus Christ our Saviour. Let the love of Christ flow through us to one another and to the world so that Pentecost may overtake Babel. (2 cor 13:11; Phi 2:1-4) Some will still be confused - just like the crowd on Pentecost, but we must remember, our boldness, our strength and confidence in the gospel must not be translated into violent swords. He who live by the sword shall perish by the sword. Do not get me wrong, we must not make the same mistake as often the chinese make, this is a self-critic I assure you, to just chicken out and go by the flow. No, there is a definitely a cost when we speak to a confused world and when we try to reorder the confusion. There are some who will mock us and defame us, the disciples were said to be in a drunken spree, but let us remember that we did not receive a spirit of slavery to fear, but we have the spirit of sonship in order to be heirs with Jesus through suffering with him (Rom 8:14-17). Like the disciples, like Peter, we must stand above the crowd and declare the story of god's rescue operation, blessing the world with invitation to be part of this project and declaring judgment to those who would refuse. When I say, "judgment to those who would refuse", make no mistake again, he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword. We must have the courage to face the blows of evil and do not retaliate. We must walk the way of our Saviour, the lamb who was silent on his way to his shearer - We must walk the way of the Cross. So help us god
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Through the dark night in the garden, To the kangaroo courts Through the abuses and scorns To the cross Through the darkness of the tomb To a new morning tomorow Through suffering and death, To life and a whole new world My lord and my god, my soul cries to thee! ---- Will you go to Gethsamane And tear with a lonely figure there? Will you keep him company, Will you his bitter cup share? Will you make his sorrow yours As he your sorrow bears? Will you stay a lil' more To pray with him and trust his pray'r? Will you go down Jerusalem's street, And trail him along that bloody road? Will you follow your Saviour meek And take his burden and his yoke? Will you go to Calvary's mont And behold there the throne of love? Will you silence your scornful taunt And look at the dying One above? Will you go to the garden tomb Where the soldiers' vigil kept? There the shadow of the boulder loomed Where the sacred angels wept. There a body cold and still, The Giver of Life met with Death; There the world's madness and endless ills Was laid to peaceful quiet rest. Will you rise to a new morn And rush through the land still dark with gloom? To the mercy seat the cherubs adorned, In god's Sabbath resting room. There, will you greet the world's true light That shines through darkness deep; And see Creation aflame with life Refreshed by god's loving Speech. O' wipe your tears and turn around And behold Mary's beloved Gardener; Who has healed and blessed the ground No more sweat and tears, thorns and thistles. Jack Said
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Passover 2.0 This April 2nd, the Jews will celebrate Passover, a celebration commemorating a strange event thousands of years ago. In the prosperity of Goshen which god has given them, the Hebrew people had become slaves. The powers and structures of the world, Egypt, has rejected them and treated them a little above the animals. In the midst of this national calamity, Passover is a celebration of a visitation. God visited his people in a strange and mysterious way. Passover is a celebration of liberation. God set his people free, echoed in the cries of Moses to the Pharoah of Egypt. Passover is a celebration of compassion. God will have mercy on whom he has mercy. Visitation, liberation and compassion, the very powerful themes of this strange celebration. I am judging the gods of Egypt. I am establishing a lasting covenant (ordinance) with you; kill the lamb, apply its blood. Commemorate this death and proclaim it to the generations to come (Exodus 12) Like Israel, humanity, men and women are like strangers in our own land. The ecosystem, the Creation refuses to cooperate with us, the structure and system which we put in place rejects humanity and all our values. We are in exile even though at home. We have become slaves to sin and powerful forces of darkness. Yet, Israel's god is also the god of the whole world. For thousands of years, Israel celebrated this poignant feast of Passover and performed the act of sacrifice. Remembering and declaring with every celebration the three poignant and powerful message of god's visitation, liberation and compassion. And when one day, a young Israelite, with his friends sat down on the table to eat the Passover meal, with all its symbolism, and on the wrong day at that, he infused new, though no less powerful, and wonderful, meanings into those themes. I am eager to eat this Passover meal with you before I suffer in the hands of my enemies - this is how I judge them, and finally defeat them, by suffering in their hands. I will not eat this until the enemy is finally defeated. I am establishing a new covenant with you; therefore, eat my body, drink my blood. Remember my death, proclaim it (cf. Luke 22, Matt 26, 1 Cor 11) Did we even realize the madness of the occasion: Passover 2.0.?? Sometimes, we are too distant from the physical experience of the Israelites to even begin to appreciate the significant of this strange meal. This Lent, let us begin to meditate on Passover, the meal that Jesus had, and of course, being brethrens, this is our favourite part, the meal Jesus gave us (in the words of Tom Wright). Mac 31, just moments to the celebration of Passover by religious Jews all over the world, YACHT will be organizing a meal as a reflection and meditation on Passover and the last supper. We may not be doing it on the exact day or using all the correct apparatus, but so did Jesus. We want to come and sit down on the table of fellowship, refreshing ourselves with the food, god's earthly blessings, and the Scripture, god's powerful word to the world. Will you join us? (Time: tentatively 7pm) Prepare your hearts...just in case, great and strange things happen. In the Messiah
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What is the impact of the gospel to us and our world?
Today, "religious" seems to be a curse word. At best it describes a person who is mostly cut off from the "real" world of material and reason into the semi-magical world of faith, spirituality and private morality; at worst, being religious can mean being a (murderous?) fanatic of an other worldly ideology. If religion is understood as such, it came as no surprise then when someone says, "I am not huge on religion". But as we have discussed, the gospel is not a private announcement to individuals to retreat from the world, nor is it a one-way ticket to a faraway planet called "heaven" where angels float and babies do not grow up. Make no mistake, YAHWEH may be a personal god, but he is not a private god. He is not a god contented to be enshrined in amulets, sacred places, temples, churches, mosques. Solomon did not at any time believe that the magnificient temple he built can contain god. The gospel speaks of the beginning of god's reign, in all the world. And someone said that, if god is to be king at all, god must be king of all. There is no separation of sacred and secular from god's point of view. This is my Father's world - that is the claim of the gospel. Some Christians believe that the world belonged to the devil. True, Jesus' kingdom is not of this world, the source of the kingdom is god himself, the values of the kingdom are not like those of earthly kings, yet the rule of god, the kingdom, is here, in the world. Jesus did not accept the devil's offer of the authority over the world because he knew he will at last receive it, not by the way of bowing down to the devil, but by defeating him, and defeating him on the cross - the throne of love. Paul, therefore, can say this, that Jesus Christ has reconciled the world to god (cf 2 Cor 5:18-19 and especially Col 1:19-20). The preached gospel then demands two responses, surrender and loyalty, or in words more familiar to us: repentance and obedience. It has been highlighted that the Greek word which we normally translate as "to repent" (metanoia) was used by Josephus as implying "surrender" and "turning away" and can be used in a military surrender context (JVG - NT Wright). Although this does not discount our understanding of repentance as being turning away from sin and turning to piety, such usage of the word as Josephus' helps us to grasp further the significance of the gospel relating to god's rule. It is a call to surrender and give up our worthless struggle. God is already king, we are now called to recognize this fact and give our allegiance to him. Either that, or one day, when every knee shall bend in submission to King Jesus, we may find ourselves being subjected as defeated prisoners. Every man and woman is called to join the revolution on god's side, and as we do certain things such as displaying the crucifix or celebrating the lord's supper, we are in essence like a group of people in USA gathered now and then to celebrate Saddam Hussein's death as a chief revolutionary, declaring that he was right after all and Bush was wrong, that he loved his people, gave up his life for them and the scary thing (to Bush anyway) is he will come back triumphant! And as we give up our vain cause to pursue god's (that is perhaps what is meant by "a man after god's own heart", we find ourselves being drawn to praying, "your will be done", and yes, "on earth as it is done in heaven". This is submission and obedience; loyalty to the king and his agenda. Of course, if our view of the gospel is that "the world is going down the drain and let's go to heaven", then god's will may be merely picking up as many passengers into our supersonic speed one-way train to shangrila. But if our gospel is about god's rescue operation, in that through becoming a servant to all, not least the suffering servant of Isaiah's prophecies, he became king of all, our obedience to the true king of the world, the rightful owner of the vineyard is to declare his good and pleasant reign and to act against the power and principalities (whether flesh or spirit) that go against this reign. We are to go out, in all the world, saying with Abraham Kuyper, "there is not an inch of realm which Jesus does not say, 'tis mine'". This means, not only becoming a more moral person, though that is true, but also standing up against god's enemy, the evil which threaten to continue the destruction of god's beautiful Creation. We are to go all out against sin; lying, cheating, adultery, murder. But the same, we are to go all out against structural evils, injustice, corruptions; in short, all unrighteousness - everything which is not right. How do we do that? We do that by first declaring, not always by words though, Jesus is lord and Caesar is not! Just as Caesar was offering a parody of Jesus' righteous rule, today, we have many different powers-to-be who offered the same package - justice and peace. Be it George Bush or Osama Bin Laden, be it IMF or World Bank, be it China or EU, be it our politicians or our employers, let this be clear, Jesus is lord and they are not! We are called to raise the flag of the Jesus-revolution, declaring he is king and then living as if he is king. In order to do this, Christians are to be diligent, to go into vigorous training and study in law, economics, politics, science, history, philosphy and every inch of realm of human living (where Christ claimed "tis mine" - include of course seemly insignificance things such as homemaking, cooking, washing the dishes, doing the laundry) and be the light in the darkness which sometimes charaterize these fields. But are we called to hit everyone on the head with our gospel rod, labelling everyone and everthing useless and evil unless they have the label "christian" on them? No! Paul, while proclaiming his subversive message did not forget to remind the Roman church that they are to submit to the civil authority (and I believe he implied all other sorts of authorities) which was established over them by god's sovereign will (Rom 13). Like the Caesar in Rome, god is ruling through the local authorities he set up to preserve order and prevent anarchy. We know perfectly well however who the real boss is. And this is what will give us strength when we face the lesser bosses and kings. Knowing who is in charge ultimately and who has the real power, the choice should be clear whom we are to obey in the final analysis. How then can such a gospel be seen as irrelevant to everything about a human being? If this is religion, no one can say, "I am not huge on religion" without being silly, because religion, as exemplified by the gospel we preached, is about the god and all the world, every facets of life, every nooks and corners, without exception.
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| The Euangelion We often hear Christians say, we must "spread the gospel", or "share the gospel" (I would personally use the more pompous words "proclaim or declare the gospel" . But as with the usage of other words in any languages, familarity breeds contempt, or rather familarity breeds complacency. Christians may take it for granted that we know and understand this term well. And often, the meaning of words may be diluted in our over-usage. When Josephus (Jewish War book 4) wrote of the ascension of Vespanian as the new caesar (emperor), with subordinate kingdoms coming to pay tribute of congratulation to him, he used the word euangelion (good news) When a new emperor was crowned in Rome, his emissaries will go into all the Roman colonies (i.e. "to all the world" to proclaim the euangelion to all the nations that a new king reigns, a new saviour has come to the world to bring peace and to establish justice among the people. When Isaiah (Isa 52:7) spoke of his beautiful prophetic message, of god's people who brought the good news, who says to Zion: "Your God reigns", the translators of Septuagint (Greek Old Testatment which is popular during Jesus' time) found it fit to use the word euangelion Similarly, in the psalm celebrating the kingship of Yahweh, the Septuagint used the word euangelion (Ps 39:9-10). One of the earliest versions of the record of Jesus' life (or "gospel", which incidently is the latinized version of the greek word "euangelion" , the book of Mark, begins with these unpretentiuos words: The beginning of the euangelion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mk 1:1). Christianity was based on and breathed the euangelion. The following three questions shall form our discussion on the euangelion: 1) One cannot take for granted the habitual usage of a word and be too sure that everyone understood the meaning of the word in the same way. We'll ask the preliminary question of what is the meaning of gospel (euangelion)? 2) "I am not huge on religion", a dear friend commented recently. Let us explore what is the significant of the gospel in our lives and the world around us. in other words, we shall ask what is the impact of the gospel to man/woman and his/her world. 3) Evangelism - this has come to be understood as the primary task of the church to the world. Evangelism simply means "proclaiming the euangelion (or evangel)". How do we then go about doing it? Some key themes which come to mind "4 spiritual laws", Francis of Asisi, social gospel, saving souls, etc. In this question, we also want to explore what is the requirement of the gospel to the christian and to her world. What is the euangelion? Christians were long taught to say that the gospel is about god's love and is summed up in John 3:16. While it is correct and beautiful, this does not do justice to the many layered meaning of the word. During our discussion, the different layers surfaced when each of us began to share what we understood by the gospel: 1. The gospel is about god's love 2. The gospel is John 3:16 3. The gospel is about the life and work and death of Jesus 4. The gospel is about the Christ 5. The gospel is a mystery When put together, each begin to form a clearer picture for us to even begin to grasp what the gospel is all about. Without doubt, the gospel is about the love of a Creator god, and rightly, John 3:16 is the summary of the story of this god and his love. It has to do with a battered world where pain and suffering, evil and sin and death plagued mankind and the rest of the Creation (i.e. "the world". There is obviously something terribly wrong with the world as it is. And the Creator god, out of his great love, has initiated and executed a rescue plan to make things right. This involved god sending the son whom he loved, to come into his own, to claim (or "to redeem" his vineyard from the stubborn evil usurpers. The king has come into his holy temple to judge the nations. But instead of waging a violent war, or organizing a bloody revolution (because he said "my kingdom is not of this world", the Son, Israel's true king went to face his enemy, represented by the superpower of the age - Rome and all her claims of glory and greatness - like a lamb led to its shearer. Israel was called to be both a blessing and a judgement to the world. She was to be the primary people of god, through whom YAHWEH will reach out to the world. But alas, how many times she has failed. Yet, through Jesus, her king, the chosen one (or the Christ), the promised heir to the davidic throne, she did. He went out against her enemies, suffered in their hands and died in her stead, and painfully acting out at every steps the will of god for Israel. This is the double twist of the story - on one hand, Jesus was taking up the judgement on behalf of Israel the stubborn nation, on the other hand, Jesus was fulfilling the old promise where YAHWEH himself will come to rescue his people. In the former, Jesus proved to be the representative of Israel, the suffering servant who will go out on her behalf - her king, the crucified "king of the jews". And in becoming and doing for Israel what only YAHWEH can be and do, Jesus becomes a blessing to the whole world, because when Israel's god finally act, the whole world shall see and experience the reign of his true king (c.f. Isaiah 52:10). We then come back to the question, what is the euangelion? Let us consider what sort of message did Paul expect to hit on his readers, when at the begining of his letter to the people of god in Rome, he greeted them saying: Paul, in the service of King Jesus, called to be an emissary, given the task to proclaim the good news of god which he promised beforehand through his messangers in the holy book, concerning his Son, who is of the royal line of David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, King Jesus our Lord, through whom we have received grace and the appointment as emissaries to bring about faithful loyalty for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to King Jesus (Rom 1:1-6) We must remember that to Rome, the superpower of 1st century world, there is only one King; the Emperor, the Caesar and there is only one Lord; the Emperor, the Caesar. And Jesus, being sentenced to the most terrible punishment of the Roman empire as "King of the Jews", will be seen as punished for act of treason and rebellion against the Emperor, for setting himself as an opposing King. And Paul wrote to the capital of the superpower, declaring, as it were, he is the ambassador, the emissary in the service of this subversive King and his task was to proclaim the euangelion, the good news concerning this King. If anything, Paul's words were risky, dangerous if not outright outrageous and subversive. His gospel was not merely a set of points about the world going into the drain and let us say some prayers so that we all can escape the world and go to heaven, wheverever that is. His gospel, his euangelion is about the ascension of Israel's annointed one, her true King and therefore the world's true Lord. And as we have seen above about Jesus acting on behalf of Israel and becoming and doing only what YAHWEH promise to do himself, Paul's gospel is saying "Israel's god reigns" (or "the kingdom of god is at hand". It is setting up one king against the others, god against the powers and principalities, represented by Caesar's empire. It is god claiming ownership of ALL the world and righting all wrongs. And therefore we will all sound weird to Paul if we go around telling people that there is a problem with the world and we should all go somewhere else, "go to heaven", when god's agenda was clearly to get hold of the world and to work out his rule in this his Creation. Next: What is the impact of the gospel to us and our world? - Are we, as the church, in our task of proclaiming the good news, aware of the risky and dangerous message we are bringing to the world?
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"How do you know your God is real? If I were to ask a buddhist, hindu, muslim etc they will all give me a common answer that their God(s) is real. Can you tell me from a Christian standpoint as well as logical point of view that your God is real" Someone in the forum asked the above question. My own response is to first ask the question about epistemology (theory of knowledge). As the response may become irrelevant in the forum because it does not essentially answer the question posted, I decided to post my response here as a blog entry on "epistemology". --------------------- Thanks for your provocative question. In your post, there are two points which i want to highlight: 1) Real - I assume, it is a pure assumption, that the question to christians about their "knowledge" of the reality of the christian god and observation that folks frm other religion will equally affirm the reality of their god/s, is more of an experiential and existential question. This means, more often than not, each religion, christianity included, approach the issue of reality of the divine in a personal experience and encounter, i.e., my god is real because of what he did in my life, my god is real because i feel his presence all the time. This may not be the case of your question, but from the tone of it, this is my assumption (see no. 2 below). And this is my observation from dialogue with most laities of different faith concerning the reality of their worldview about god/s. 2) standpoint - Perhaps you did not mean it this way, but the way you structured the question, are you pitting the christian point of view against the logical point of view? This is what led me to my first assumption above. But this is not my point here...As above was a question about approaching god/s tru exprience, this is approaching the god/s question tru logic. Now in my humble opinion, experience and logic cannot be a perfect instrument. in fact, far from perfect. Firstly, our experience can be deceiving. No one experience is wrong, as individuals approaches reality differently, therefore respond differently and retain the knowledge of all these differently. I cannot say that your experience is wrong, but i can say that it is bad. One may experience pleasure in pain while the other may not, to give a simplistic example. Both experience are not logical fallacies as in a logical "wrong". Therefore, it does nothing to my knowledge of truth if the whole bunch of religionists, including christians, ALL claim that their exprience is the true one. If experience CANNOT be wrong, it cannot be true either. Experience can only be good or bad experience. And as we all know, bad experience may not necessarily be false, because experience cannot be true/false and as we all know so well, they are so often a valuable lesson in life. Therefore, good and bad experience tells me little (if not nothing - my friend Joshua pointed out that experience does tell us something about the Truth) about the Truth. Logic, can famously be flawed. Logic is not equivalent to Truth. It is only an instrument to arrive at conclusions. It is a useful instrument, no doubt, but used wrongly, the conclusion of logic can be disasterous. Take this statement: A square circle. Logic tells us that a thing cannot be a square in the same sense and time as it is a circle. Therefore, a square circle cannot exist, it is false. But what about, a pink elephant? Here logic is helpless? If we push for logic to operate, we will probably get a wrong result. Just because no one has seen a pink elephant, does it mean it does not exist? Logic tells us that it is totally okie for an elephant to be pink. These simple illustration is to highlight my concern about knowledge, experience, logic, reality and truth. I am not saying the experience and logic cannot be continued to be instruments by which we receive truth, no far from it. What i am suggesting is that we must discard them as instruments to MEASURE truth. To receive yes, but to measure, no. Having said that, what is the epistemology (theory of knowledge) which i hold to? I first propose four aphroisms: 1) Truth is that which conforms to reality, or that which explains reality as it is. 2) Human limitation means that our best knowledge of the Truth can only an approximation
3) Doubt is not necessarily evil, in fact it is inevitable 4) We live in a storied world and the only possible way of knowing is within the context of a story Then, allow me to suggest that, there are three layers of stories: 1) The overarching story - the Metanarrative 2) The personal stories 3) The community stories The Metanarrative, is the story about the world. We have to come to realize that Truth is more complex than one liner statement: There is one god. Propositions such as this one cannot be disembodied from the story they exist and operate in. Without further story-telling, no one can REALLY understand, the pregnant reality symbolized by words such as "one god". One another level, there is the personal or individual stories. Stories which each person receive and retain as they interact with the Metanarrative: When water reaches a certain degree of temperature, it changes into gas. We knew it as a story, there is a context, there are actors, and storyline. And we know that touching the boiling kettle will scald the hand, this is a story among many many stories which we receive and retain as we approache reality. And among these stories which we retain, each of them could be detrimental to one another, e.g. we could hold on to two stories which are totally ironical and still held both to be true to reality. Having said that, we come to the question, what sorts of stories are the right stories? Man (and woman) encountering the story of the world, becomes part of the story itself. We are not detached observers, looking into a microscope into reality. And unless we presume to be the whole of reality or larger than reality, then we definitely cannot peer into it like a scientist on a bacteria. We become involved in the story, both individual stories and the Metanarrative. The Metanarrative - the whole story - will force us to comply as much as possible to it. Like the hot kettle, we can choose to believe that it does not scalp, but as we act in the story, we cannot but to know it does and if we still refuse to change our story, we will taste the bitter fruit of pain and torture for living against reality. The personal stories, gained tru the instruments of senses, experience, mind (logic?) are formed within the Metanarrative, never without it, and are formed as man and woman act within the Metanarrative, not as passive audiences of it. So when Sakyamuni taught the four noble truth: 1) The reality of sufferings 2) The cause of sufferings 3) The cessation of sufferings 4) The path of cessation of sufferings he discovered the first two as part of his involvment in the storied world. There is pain and there is pain. The persons who say that all is fine is living in an illusion, against the Metanarrative. The reality of pain and suffering is a story which is shared by all major religions and taught by the great sages of different times and cultures. But the Indian philosophical mind led Sakyamuni to the 3rd and 4th noble truth. They are the logical conclusion from the 1st and 2nd noble truth. But as we have noted, logic may be flawed, it may lead to the wrong conclusion and still be perfectly logical (how this is so in the 3rd and 4th noble truth, shall occupy another discussion). Bearing this in mind, I have no problem to understand why and to say that there is some truth in every religions. Therefore, as we begin to examine our stories, our lives, we will begin to pit one story against another, comparing them to the Metanarrative. It is in this process that we begin to strike out and discard stories which are not conformed to reality. Finally, there is the level of community stories, stories shared by people who form a community, whether religious or cultural or political. Stories shared by christians, buddhists, democrats, republicans, communists, stamp collectors, lawyers, housewives. We may as well call them traditions. Of course, traditions or community stories can be wrong, well a whole community may live in illusion (and commit suicide en masse?), therefore the warnings to not follow traditions blindly are sound and valid. Yet, let us also realize that most of the time, our stories do not come from nowhere. I cannot possible conduct every experiment or experience every events in the whole of reality to be able to construct a meaning story about the Truth. No, i am the beneficieary of the community stories. These are stories which 1) are formed with each individuals contributing their personal stories, 2) are formed with the whole community acting out the Metanarrative together. Stories which I bring into a community will be challenged by and will challenge the stories which are already treasured in it. The community stories will then help to form my understanding and shape it in the way acceptable to them. How then can we know the truth? I propose within the Christian community, three active actions:
1) Rigorous study - incl. reading and dialogue
2) Rigorous prayers
3) Community
I believe this is how we should apply in studies the injunction by Jesus when he said, be perfect for your Father is perfect. We are to go all out to search for the truth, like the man who found a field of buried treasures and sold all he has to purchase the field. As we engage in studies, in reading, in discussions, in dialogue, we are in essence allowing our stories to be challenged by the possibly different stories we will encounter. There will be a mental clash in which the stories wihch conform most to the Metanarrative will prevail. Of course, the more stories we have, the more coherence story we will form. In fact i would love to think of the stories we retain not as building blocks, one above another, but as pieces of jigsaw puzzle, forming together to give us a picture of reality. As we engage, the awkward pieces will be moved to the right places and the wrong pieces will be discarded. Prayers, as Christians, we believe in a god who is Wisdom and who claims to be the Truth and who is our Teacher. We believe that there is no reality apart from god and therefore, it is imperative that we should seek him rigorously in our quest for the Truth. Community, the Church has treasured community stories and will continue to have new and fresh stories as she goes tru different ages and times. It is within this community that we should allow ourselves to be humbled and challenged and taught. This is what is means to sharpen one another, to edify one another as we assemble as god's people.
May god have mercy on our petty minds. Let us exercise our minds and exercise our minds in the service of the Lord.
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Worship One sister shared, Romans 12:1, Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2012:1&version=31 This raised more questions instead: What are living sacrifices? A brother shared that in the traditional sense sacrifices are to be dead and wholy devoted to God. This context is an oxymoron, but it parallels with what Pauls exhorts with Christians being dead to sin. Another quote used was from the Westminster Catechism, which says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. While this may sound "egoistic" of God to create beings only so that they can worship Him, but it is proper of God to do so, because He deserves the highest worship and the only way man to find true joy is by worshipping God.
This was meant to be a personal question but in the end it became a comparison between other religion's form of worship. To put it simply, a Christian Worship is worship to the Christian God through the open relationship we can have with God through Christ.
Acts 2:42-47: They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%202:42-47;&version=31; We compared the early form of the Church, and ultimately concluded that the main purpose of worship in the early Church was to remember Christ's death, resurrection and return.
Quite simply, because that's what are are made to do. Just as a pen is made to write, and if it doesn't write it is fit for the fire. Man are made to worship and because of that we should.
In every human culture, there exists a form of music. This implies that man are musical beings. Nature itself implies that God is musical and it's not surprising that man being made in the image of God should also be musical. Hence why music in worship? Music involves the functionality of man of the heart (emotions), mind (intellect), soul (essence) and strength (physical). Music, like poetry and art allows the full expression of being. In scripture we see many occasions where the saints of old broke forth in new songs praising God. Music also allows a convinient corporate praise to God A speaker once said this. The Jews and the Christians are (rather now used to be) the only people to sing to God, because they are the only ones with reason to.
Although some may disagree... we don't think so. There may be some association with certain musical instruments with satanism, but personally I don't think some of the associations are valid.
Worship with the Heart, the Mind, the Soul, and the Strength Hymnus est laus Dei cum cantico; canticum autem exultatio mentis de aeternis habita, prorumpens in vocem."
A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice. – Thomas Aquinas When we sing, we are singing unto God and to praise God. Hence when we sing, we sing with joy and emote accordingly, that's what is meant by an exultation. When we sing, we meditate on the words sung, and internalize the meaning to the words, that is dwelling our minds on the eternal meaning. And when we sing, we sing heartily with our strenght, because God is worthy to be sung. We sing with our hearts. We sing with our mind. We sing with our strenght, so that we can sing with our spirit. This to me is how we can love God with ALL of our heart, ALL of our mind, ALL of our spirit, ALL of our strenght
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