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Thursday, 21 August 2008
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Not yet have the time to continue writing (quite contrary to my expectation in mid July) but I found something written:
God's Will Is That You...Choose For Yourself? | revelife's Revelife Site - WeblogPowered by ShareThis
Friday, 11 July 2008
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Men of God (I): The Arsenal of Love
Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a name which we all feel familiar, without many people knowing who he really was.
Including myself. I did not realize that his message was so powerful.
In the mid 20th Century, he led a non-violent movement which liberated the black in the U.S. However, if it is only the political aspect of his greatness that we see, we are missing the whole point of studying this great man's life.
The true problem of discrimination that Dr. King saw was with the white church at that time. As a band of people worshipping in the name of God, these church-goers proclaimed, from the Bible they read at least once a week, that God loves only white people. "For God so loved the world" becomes "for God so loved the white". They twisted the true meaning of the Bible so that their "theology" can be supported. One of the most far-fetched example was that a tiny detail of the story of Noah became a piece of evidence that the Black is inferior to the white. Some churches even proclaimed that the average IQ of the Black is almost zero.
It causes sorrow to me even I read this some forty years later.
Facing all these, Dr. King said, only love can solve our problem. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that; Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."
He stuck to his Non-violence principle. He believed that only a movement that based on love could prevent the protestors become whom they are protesting against. The law of "an eye for an eye" had worked for thousands of years, and few knew that could not solve the problem. Only love can transform hatred.
And Dr. King proved that his theory works.
Dr. King and his followers used their body, the only thing they had, to spread the teaching of Jesus, "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you". It was this love for their enemy that ultimately led to their success. And it was this sacrificial love that marked the greatness of Dr. King.
Maybe someone will askL how can one possibly love his own enemy? I was the wronged party, the victim, the one who was hurt. I should be loved, how can I love the one who has hurt me so relentlessly?
The answer? "We love men not because we like them, nor because their ways appeal to us, not even because they possess some kind of divine spark. We love every man because God loves him."
Because God loves him!
When I reflect upon this sentence, I remember how hard it was for me to forgive in the past, let alone love my enemy. "This simply does work." I have said. However, Dr. King and his followers, proclaimed through their bodies, that besides Jesus, his disciples can also follow the command "love your enemy".
Dr. King believed the truth of love so deeply because he also believed that the loving God, although unseen, was standing right behind them looking over his sons and daughters.
A God who is love, just and compassionate.
It is no longer just some cold teaching of command after command. The Gospel is no longer a dead book like the "holy" books of other religions.
Some people accused Dr. King of adultery, plagiarism and other sins. He is a card-carrying communist. He is not a true Christian, they said.
But why do you only look at the speck of sawdust in our brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in our own eyes?
Aren't we also sinners? Aren't we also sinners whom God also loves?
True, his sins seem to be more severe. True, it is the standard of men. In God's eyes, the only difference lies with sinful and sinless. There is no such thing as more severe or less severe sin.
And we have all sinned. Dr King had, you have, I have.
Jesus had repeatedly pronounced his mission to be, as prophesized in by the Prophet Isaiah,
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me,
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
As his disciples, how do we show in our behaviour that we bear the same mission as our Master? Do our behaviours tell others that the year of Lord's favour has come, or do they tell people that our God is the One who discriminates, who is relentless, who only loves a particular group of people, be it the white, the black, the stylish, the young, the strong......?Dr. Martin Luther King used his life to say a "No!" loudly and clearly. What about us?
This is the question which all of us to who say that we can cross-bearers should contemplate upon.
Dr. King had apparently got rid of the discrimination aginast the black in the US. However, if I may say for him, he may yet to be satisfied for the situation the world is in today.
It is because although we have got rid of discrimination (at least msot of it) on a macroscopic scale, the subtle form of discrimination still exists in our lives.
What is discrimination? Discrimination is the thought that we are more superiour to some group of people. We think that we deserve better treatment, and still more, think that it should be like that. Therefore discrimination is always the best friend of self-pride. A humble person would not discriminate others. Therefore discrimation is more that a sociological provblem. It is a moral problem as well. Don't forget that the Dr. Martin Luther King, or Rev. Martin Luther King who led the black out of the midst of discrimination was a pastor. He was not a sociologist nor a politician. Discrimination is not a political bargaining chip which many politicians used to promote the idea of anti-discrimination against homosexuals or other equally meaningless movements.
Discrimination is also an inter-personal problem. When one thinks that as s/he is more superior to another person and therefore s/he deserves some better treatment, to that "another person", there is already discrimination against him/her. This may be a person who has received higher education thinks that s/he deserves more right to speak. This may also be a person who has worked for longer time in a corporation thinks that he has a right to ignore people who have not worked as long as he does. This may also be that when one think that if s/he (or others) is in a higher office, s/he must be smarter.
And so on and so forth.
To recognize Dr. King's achievements only as far as resolving the conflicts between the white and the black is underestimating his power. It also leaves something that Dr. King insisted upon such as the principle of non-violence beyond explanation.
What lesson can we learn from Dr. King to resolve the discrimination we have against the people around us? Moreover, what is the source of power that fuelled the whole campaign Dr. King had started?
What made a man who said,"I am tired of the threat of death. I want to live. I don't want to be a martyr. And there are moments when I doubt if I am going to make it through. I am tired of getting hit, tired of being beaten, tired of going to jail" to the one who finally proclaimed that "But I am not concerned about [longevity] now. I just want to do God's will"
and ultimately devoted his life to solving the discrimination problem, both macroscopically and interpersonally?
Many biographies or recounts of Dr. King's life point to one single event in his life that makes him a spiritual giant. It was a message he received from God. An author said, "......the simplicity of the message he received: "I am with you" Those words convey an underlying theme of the Bible: the Immanuel ('God with us') presence of God. Over the next thirteen years of his career, King had......many moments of crisis......This one word sufficed." (From Soul Suvivor)
God with us, it is as simple as that. God is love, and it is His love that should fuelled our passion towards others. Only Him can give us the power and strength to overcome our weakness and instinctive repulsion against the concept of love and non-violence (change the person who is now beating me through being beaten more?)
May God bless all of us.
Thursday, 10 July 2008
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Be happy and do good under the sun
A few years ago I was avoiding the Ecclesiastes because I heard that if not read with care, people can be easily distracted from its true meaning and get the wrong message instead. Now I have read it over and over for a few times and I guess it is time to share some of my thoughts about it.
The theme of the Ecclesiastes, in my opinion, is "live a holy life in a worldly world.". In other words, it is how to live a Christian life in a worldly world. Therefore the readers can always find sentences with "under the sun" attached them, because it is talking about our worldly lives, which is, of course, under the sun.
The Ecclesiastes did make me feel a little bit confused at the outset. There are sentences that I simply could not understand, such as those teaching people to enjoy their lives as they wish (Ecclesiastes 9:7) How could the Bible teach us to enjoy our materialistic world? Aren't we " foreigners and strangers on earth"? (Hebrews 11:13) And besides, the wisdom which was said to be precious in the previous book the Proverbs, now becomes something bad (Ecclesiastes 1:18) In addition, King Solomon said that we cannot gain anything from our work (Ecclesiastes 2:11)
These are what made me feel confused. The reason why I WAS confused then but now anymore NOW is because I realize that the book of Ecclesiastes cannot be read in disjointedly, especially when you feel confused. For example, wisdom was said to be causing sorrow, but it does not mean what the Proverbs says about wisdom is wrong. It is true that wisdom can teach us a lot of things and help us to make the right choices (Proverbs) but in a fallen world like the one we are inhibiting, knowing more or making correct choices (in the eyes of God) will indeed bring sorrow because others do not sanction what you do (Ecclesiastes). What we have to do is to understand the central message of the book first:
"Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the [duty] of every human being."Ecclesiastes 12:13
What does that mean? It means that our pleasure or our relaxation are not wrong per se (by themselves), provided that we do them in the spirit of fearing God, they are legitimate. King Solomon has made it clear when he said in our lives, "there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live." (Ecclesiastes 3:12)
Be happy AND do good. It is not be happy or do good. The two are not mutually exclusive.
It makes me sigh that today while many, because of the influence of postmodernism, pursue happiness with all their might. On the other hand, some also because of some twisted or rotten theology, prevent happiness also with all their might. They think that by living more bitterly, with less pleasure, they are automatically more spiritual. They did not only forget what comment Jesus got from the Pharisees when He was on earth ('a glutton and a drunkard", Luke 7:34) but they also forget that one of the characteristics of the fruit of Spirit is joy. Many Christians do not realize that the two can co-exist together. It is of course wrong to pursue only happiness and forget about doing good, but the vice versa is also untrue. Don't make yourself bitter when you don't need to be.
The reading of the Ecclesiastes makes me think of a great Christian writer, G.K.Chesterton.
The churches at the time of Chesterton emphasized greatly (and they still are today) the danger of the world, especially the pleasure part of it. All the teachings of joy and of the wonders of creation were virtually banned from the pulpit or Christian media. Chesterton pointed out a very important fact to his contemporaries: Everything that is pleasurable, in fact everything in this world, was created by the God we worship, and it was whom who "saw that it was good". God himself was delighted in His creation, how can we not be?
The writings of Chesterton also gave us some insights into what it means to "fear God" and "be happy" at the same time. He said we have to remember everything that delights us was the creation of God, who made them to make us happy, who supply to our needs freely and generously. We should use them with joy. We should worship the God who gave all these to us while using them.
The problem of this world, who forgets to "fear God" is they treasure the ring but forget their spouse. That is what separates us from the hedonist: we do not over-use them. We worship while using them. By this we can generate pleasure, but not tragedy from the excess of it.
That is where the real danger lies. It is not the pleausre itself, it is the abuse of it. We who have left the pure and sinless Eden also lost the ability to distinguish what is enough because we have left and forgotten the One who created all these. Therefore we abuse. Pleasure from good food becomes gluttony; pure love becomes lust; joy becomes ectasy. It is all because of the fact that we have placed the creation above the Creator. With the adjustment, the creation is of course for our use.
Wednesday, 09 July 2008
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God, where are you? (III, end)
What is faith? I read a book whose author said that faith is two-handed. He used an example to illustrate this concept of two-handed faith.
Suppose you have a very good friend and there was meeting in which you two must participate. Your friend is always punctual to all activities he takes part in but this time he was late, for quite a lot of time. What would you be thinking while waiting? Would that be "Oh, what kind of a world that this! Even [your friend's name] is late!"? Or would that be "Oh, he may be in the mist of a traffic jam that makes him unable to get to here on time."?
I would say the latter one.
Why? It seems that I am exonerating him. However, that conclusion was not arrived without my understanding to his past, who has never been late for any activity. The conclusion was not blindly drawn.
We can quickly draw an analogy from our example with our relationship with God. We have quite a lot of his deeds that we don't understand (Question: Why was my friend late?), but I know that in past He has always been good to me and he loves me so much that he died for me on the cross (Past understanding: but I know my friend has never been late.) True it is that the present situation is confusing (that my friend was really late), but I know He must have his perfectly legitimate reasons (My friend may be in the mist of a traffic jam.) It is because of this we believe in God even when we don't understand the present situation, and it is not blind faith.
On a more macroscopic scale, I believe that He is in control and He loves us no matter what and He is trustworthy. It is because of my understanding to the history of the interactions between God and men i.e. those stories of the faith heroes (Hebrews 11:1-12:1) Besides, the birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of the begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ is a guarantee that I am on the right track. That is what two-handed faith means: We can praise God for anything that touches our hearts, but be slow to condemn Him for things we don't understand and which frustrate us because there are simply too many factors that are beyond our reach. And that is exactly what faith does: it bridges up the two worlds, the seen one and the unseen one. It helps us to comprehend what we do not understand about the unseen world. If everything is comprehensible and reasonable; if everything can be seen in broad day light and leaves no room for doubt, what is the use of faith?
People may find the above approach still a bit "religious": only you Christian would exonerate God like this. Oh, wait a minute. Actually many of us, Christians and non-Christians alike, do the same thing when we get to know the world around us as well. It is just that we have not realized that.
My limited knowledge of biology tells me that the command centre, the control room of our body, our brain is completely isolated from the outside world. All that it knows comes in the form of electrical impulses. It cannot see, hear, touch, smell and taste. We think we can taste because the stimuli of flavour is transformed into electrical impulses which are then transmitted to the brain through the nerves and the brain knows that "Oh, the body is tasting something!"
But is our feelings reliable? Could there be a possibility that we are not tasting food at all even when our brain tells us that we are. Delusion patients are experiencing exactly this. We cannot prove it and in some sense, we "believe" it without verification. Is the guy now standing in front of me really looks the way I think he does? Was the voice music I heard last night really that sweet? Is it really that hot outside.......by the way, how can you know that I exist? Can't this article be a computer-made product? I have not even mentioned others' thoughts!
We just cannot prove it. We have believed it all along. Proving is not the natural act, it is the unnatural one.
We thought perceiving the world we can "see" is easier. It is only so when we don't know even we cannot verify the sensation of sight. It is not some philisophically artificial argument. Much of the thoughts above was the thoguhts of a doctor, a professional of practical health science, whom I respect. And even if that does not convince you, then I have to say, to doubt what I say above about God is equally philosophically artificial.
How can we have a good personal relationship with God? It is not by understanding the way He does things but by trusting Him regardless of the present external circumstances because of what He already did in the past.
Trust is the bridge between the worlds. It is difficult to find God the way we want Him to be. It can be disappointing at times. If you are disappointed, my advice would be to wait, and wait for a little while more. The day will come when we can see Him face to face. The day will come when He explains everything. The day will come that we cannot have a doubt that He hopes for the best for us. You know what the good point of trusting now? It is that when this Big Day of the Lord comes, we won't regret not having done so.
Acknowledgment: Much thanks to a beloved author of mine, Mr. Philip Yancey and the books he wrote, especially Reaching for the Invisible God. Much thanks also to Dr. Paul Brand, the world-famous surgeon. Without them, I could not have possibly thought of inspirations like this.
Tuesday, 08 July 2008
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God, where are you? (II)
We don't know what to expect of God. It seems that it is hopeless to expect him to supernaturally intervene into our lives. It seems that we can at most treat supernatural intervention as an unexpected gift, but how can an unexpected gift affect our everyday lives?
Some may say what I said above is a self-centred faith, a faith that only focuses on ourselves. Actually it is not true. In order to have a personal relationship with God, we must have expectations, we must have feelings, we must know what exactly we are believing in and what are the aspects that are about to change in our lives. Jesus has said the kingdom of God is in our hearts (Luke 19:21) and unless we experience what it is and be changed, the Gospel is no better than other be-a-good-guy-and-live-a-good-life doctrines of other religions to us.
The major reason why we feel unconnected to God is because we are beings in two different worlds. We are mortals in this physical world where we breath in oxygen to sustain our lives. God is in the invisible world. Things that are normal in one world may not be normal in the other. (Do the angels need to breath in oxygen to sustain their lives?) We don't understand what God is doing, therefore we have doubts over what God does. It is this doubt that becomes the major obstacle in the relationship building process. What makes it worse is our immediate response to this doubt: we want to cast it away. In this process of casting away our doubts, we generate more and more doubts....and to no end. Therefore I love a sentence in the Gospel very much. It says, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24)
We put our trust in God regardless of the external circumstances first, before we deal with our doubts. And be prepared that there are stuffs that we will never understand in this life. With our trust, these remaining doubts should not serve as obstacles to our faith.
Maybe we don't realize that there are numerous instances of our Faith Giants who just did the same. Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah.....There were times when they put their trust in the Lord even when they didn't understand a bit what He was doing. They even went on to question Him loudly. But they never assumed He was not there or not trustworthy. They demanded an answer, because they believed God to be reasonable and in existence.
It is normal that we cannot figure everything God does out. At the face of stuffs we simply could not possibly comprehend, don't try to comprehend. I am not saying we just ignore the difficult parts of our faith, but to deal first with the fundamentals, before we get to them. We believe that a God created us in the beginning, we sinned, and He loves us so much that He died for our sins on a cross and He resurrected on the third day. That is good enough to be a Christian. Why let those difficult doctrines such as "I am that I am", "Trinity", "What was there before God existed?" to bother us so much that we eventually abandon the most fundamental truth which we already believed in the first place?
I understand the truth of this very deeply after that Physics lecture. When I was still in Form Four (10th grade), some of my classmates and myself were invited to a Physics lecture hosted by a local university. Talks were delivered by top academics in the field of Physics, one of them was even a nobel laureate. They talked about quantum machanics, relativity and some very difficult mathematical and physics concepts. I did not understand even 10% of what they said, but did I leave the lecture hall refusing to study physics again because I could not understand what the Professors said? No, because I know the problem lies with my limited understanding (or knowledge) and I already knew some very fundamental theories of Physics that make sense. The same is true when we feel the way of God is difficult to understand: the problem lies with our limited understanding (or knowledge) to the spiritual world and we already knew some very fundamental theological theories that make sense (God loves me and died for me). I trusted that the professors' physics make sense, and so do I when I face the difficulty of God's "physics".
(To be continued....)
Monday, 07 July 2008
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God, where are you? (I)
We are created in the image of God. It is very normal that we wish to have some connections with our own Creator, and on the face of it seems not difficult at all. After all we pray everyday, so, we talk to God everyday. We read the Bible everyday, so, we listen to Him everyday as well. We have a lot of jargons telling people how to build a relationship with God. Even ourselves believe that God is just out there for us to reach. Some people even think that our faith is a contract-like thing: We be the good guy, and God will be the good God, repaying us for what we have done. God has some amazing things in store for us. Christian life is, simply, a life of miracles. \
Instead of having a life of miracles, these people have lives of disappointment. It is because they expect what I described above (or something slightly less, but still very promising) and God did not fulfill their imaginations, they were disappointed because they thought God did not do what he promised. In fact, no such promises were ever made. What happened was: we signed a fake-cheque in God's name, the Bank of Heaven did not cash in that for us.
A Christian only needs to be a little bit more mature and he will know what the Christian life I described above is just out of some very naive thoughts. However, building a personal relationship with God is not a simple problem that can be dismissed easily by the word "naive". I heard of an old man who had devoted his whole life to the Christian faith, the sort of Christians who read the Bible everyday, the sort who pray for hours everyday, the sort who follow the commandments according to the letter, or simply, the sort of perfect Christians. In theory, his life should be blessed. However, the story I head was not like this. His wife died at an early age. He could not walk because of diseases attacking his legs. He could not hear clearly and was a bit paranoid at times. His grandson said that he simply could not find a sign of God in his grandfather's life. What he saw was an old man just waiting to get into heaven. These paradoxical stories are just around us. The problems and frustration of building a personal relationship are also around us. It is not a sentence or a word like "naive" can dismiss. We have found the Fountain of Life, the Bread of Life, the God of riches, but we cannot tap Him into our lives, and paradoxically, we die of thirst at the side of a Fountain, or of hunger at the door of a Bread Factory.
We said we believe in a Living God, but where is He? People we have relationships with expect something of us, and we do likewise to them. If we say we got a relationship with God, besides eternal life, what should be expect of God, in this life?
In a more macroscopic scale, the church seems not to be testifying to the world the abundance of God, instead, on the contrary, the lack of it. It does not take a distinction in World History for us to know how many people were killed in the name of God. the Dark Ages, the Crusade, Inquisition Jon of Arc, Copernicus, Galilei......Just around us we have seen the pious Christians in Retreat Camps or Churches are in fact the most evil figure in his office, school, or peers. C.S Lewis was wise when he said, Christians are better than the world not because we are better people, or we live a better life. We are better because we know we are fallen people living in a fallen world. And God is nowhere to be seen, letting the church and Christians humiliating him repeatedly.
(To be continued......)
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It's not easy to be Christians
This morning when I had my devotions, I came across with two verses in the Bible which inspired me a lot over the topic of Christian life.
I did a very simple search on the New Testament before I realized that the Bible writers did love to use Sports Games (or running) to describe our Christian lives.
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.....No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave..."
1 Corinthians 9:24-25, 27
Verses 24 and 25 were the verses I read in this morning's devotions. Paul was crystal clear that our lives shall not be easy ones. Tough lives they will be. Anyone who thought that his/her own Christian life does not need effort is going down a wrong path. Definitely.
The Olympics Games that is going to be held in Beijing of China may give us some insights into how hard athletes work before their achievements can be seen by the whole world. There is not one of them who has not spent his/her days and nights practicing some apparently very dull and boring exercises. There is not one of them who has not stretched himself/herself to the fullest in the games and devoted every single drop of sweat to the games. Everything they do, from practicing to the competition, is their very best.
And what did Paul say? "Run in such a way" In other words, we should do the same as what the athletes do. Do our best in the "participation" to our game of life. Is it hard? Do we need to sacrifice? Oh, you bet it is and we do. Again, Paul made it very clear in the words "Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training." Strict training, of course, is by no means comfortable. We need to do such to an extent as if we are saying to ourselves "I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave."
And it is by no means easy.
It requires of us our greatest attention and the very best efforts.
"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13-14
A few brothers and sisters got baptized yesterday. For them, a new life has started. Two days ago I had Bible Studies in my church and one of the topics we have discussed is the feeling of guilt. Admittedly, it is a difficult problem to resolve. Jesus has wiped us clean, but before we realize that and fully accept that from our rational selves to our emotional selves, we cannot move on. My brothers and sisters have declared to the world and to us that they do not need to cling onto their pasts anymore through the act of baptism. Every Christian, baptized or not, need to do the same in their hearts, with the strength of their Lord. My Lord.
Paul also mentioned "toward the goal" in the verses. There are many distractions on our path towards the "goal" we want to get. Besides worldly attractions, our pasts, our regrets, the lack of confidence and so on can all be distractions. Some Christians are even unclear about what goal they are about to get. I am not prepared to say anything on this topic in this entry, but one thing I am sure of: You won't know what you are gonna get if you don't read the Bible, which is the words of the One who gives you the goal.
"For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing." 2 Timothy 4:6-8
This is a blessing. In the long path, marathon-like running, there must be countless difficulties ahead of us. There will be numerous moments in which we feel so frustrated and disappointed. This I say to the brothers and sisters who were baptized yesterday, and also to fellow brothers and sisters in Christ: I hope when our lives end, what we see is not only our sweats and tears, but also flowers all along the path, nurtured by the grace of God and the sweats and tears of us. How much we are willing to put in determined how much we are going to get on the great day of our Lord. I hope we all can say what Paul said at his dying moments above. Yes, behold, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked."
Amen.
skywalker
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- Name: Alex, Ka Shun
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