Faith

Mack once told me that he used to speak his mind more freely in his younger years, but he admitted that most of such talk was a survival mechanism to cover his hurts; he often ended up spewing his pain on everyone around him. He says that he had a way of pointing out people’s faults and humiliating them while maintaining his own sense of false power and control. Not too endearing.

(From The Shack – this description’s perhaps a little too painfully familiar.)

I’ve been curious about the book for the longest time, but only got down to reading it today. While the premise seemed interesting enough, the writing style was just too dreary for me to endure. I attempted to quickly flip to the conversations between God and the protagonist, but even that was pretty much filled with simplistic un-biblical theology.

Not that I’ve really got anything against un-biblical theology, just that it wasn’t anything particularly impressive – if I’d wanted personally-crafted versions of the Christian theology, I’ve got plenty already.

All in all, I pretty much agree with John’s review of the book. Though there were some good bits, it was overall (from what I read) dull and rather lacklustre – I don’t quite understand how it’s achieved its tremendous sales figures. Although I suppose anything that gets people thinking about their faith (whatever they decide) is probably a good thing. I guess.

But God had proceeded quite differently. He had devised a rule and then found a way of persuading someone to break it, merely in order to invent Punishment. He knew that Adam and Eve would become bored with perfection and would, sooner or later, test His patience. He set a trap, perhaps because He, Almighty God, was also bored with everything going so smoothly: if Eve had not eaten the apple, nothing of any interest would have happened in the last few billion years.

When the law was broken, God – the Omnipotent Judge – even pretended to pursue them, as if he did not already know every possible hiding place. With the angels looking on, amused by the game (life must have been very dreary for them since Lucifer left Heaven), he began to walk about the garden. Mari thought what a wonderful scene in a suspense movie that episode from the Bible would make: God’s footsteps, the couple exchanging frightened glances, the feet suddenly stopping by their hiding place.

‘Where art thou?’ asked God.

‘I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself,’ Adam replied, without knowing that by making this statement, he had confessed himself guilty of a crime.

So, by means of a simple trick, pretending not to know where Adam was nor why he had run away, God got what he wanted. Even so, in order to leave no doubts amongst the audience of angels who were intently watching the episode, he decided to go further.

‘Who told thee that thou was naked?’ said God, knowing that this question could have only one possible response: because I ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

With that question, God demonstrated to his angels that he was a just god, and that his condemnation of the couple was based on solid evidence. From then on, it wasn’t a matter of whether it was the woman’s fault or of their asking for forgiveness: God needed an example, so that no other being, earthly or heavenly, would ever again dare to go against his decisions.

God expelled the couple, and their children paid for the crime too (as still happens with the children of criminals) and thus the judiciary system was invented: the law, the transgressions of the law (no matter how illogical or absurd), judgement (in which the more experienced triumphs over the ingenuous) and punishment.

-Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho

Coelho probably meant for this line of thought (by a former lawyer in his novel) to be primarily a humorous one (or maybe not), but these few paragraphs managed to stir up within me some curiosity on the nature of God. Now I know that from a Christian perspective, the nature of God is beyond mortal men to comprehend (and why not? I can’t even get my head around the dual nature of light), but that doesn’t really stop me from trying to use my limited human intellect to approach it (and coming up with rather heretical ideas in the process).

Does God really know everything that’s going to happen? Doesn’t that mean we have no true free will to speak of? Why does he allow such awful things to happen? Why does he, in the Bible, repeatedly make offers to us knowing that we’ll simply fail to meet the required standards? In my mind, the simple answer might be this – the omniscience is selective in nature.

Knowing everything before it happens would probably be extremely boring. This is of course a rather human point of view, but it’s the only one I know. Besides, we’re supposed to be made in his image anyway, so it might not be that much of a stretch to presume a similar psyche. The solution would thus be to not utilise the ability until required to, like somebody who follows a TV series but occasionally searches the internet for spoiler information.

Or maybe God’s more like a certain someone I know who actually reads up quite a bit on the TV series she follows, and often seems to have a pretty good idea of what’s to come. I don’t know for sure – I only know that if I were an omnipotent being with all eternity to enjoy the progress of the human race (as long as they don’t nuke themselves to death anyway), I’d only look at the script when making press releases (aka prophecies), or perhaps when making wagers with fellow immortals.

I know I’d just said that resolutions aren’t really my thing, but I’ve been feeling kinda aimless lately, with no real short-term goal to work towards. I’m starting to stagnate (and perhaps have been for months already), which is definitely not what I want to be doing. So here’s a list of things I want to work on this year, in (approximately) descending order of importance.

Faith

It’s been maybe 2 years since I’d practically declared myself Christian instead of simply agnostic, but it feels like I haven’t made much progress since then. Maybe it’s my immensely sceptical nature, or maybe my resistance towards doing anything requiring too much effort, but that’s just the way it’s happened.

I’ve actually signed up for a BSF course starting in February, which I guess is a step towards developing my faith, but somehow I feel like I need to do so much more..

Fitness

I’ve recently been assigned to a Holding List for NS, which basically means I have no proper role for now, but they can suddenly dump me anywhere as long as I’m not 40 years old yet. I’m hoping that my services aren’t required of course, but the immediate consequence is that I now have to clear my IPPT annually. I’m aiming to train up and get silver by this October – I stand to net a cool S$400 (2x $200) for myself. I think that’s a pretty good motivator! Plus, just to continue (restart, rather) the exercise habit.

Save

I’d actually like to get my own place as soon as possible, but housing’s pretty expensive in Singapore so I doubt I’ll be able to get something anytime soon. You usually need to fork out 20% of the total sum as a deposit, meaning to get something that’s $300,000 I’ll need… $60,000 on hand?

So I’ll aim to save up that much in the next two years – even if I don’t actually end up getting housing then, I’ll be better prepared for whenever it happens. I’ll probably be pumping money into buying STI ETF and perhaps some other vehicles, so the actual sum accumulated will probably vary somewhat – hopefully the economy’s on the way to recovery 2-3 years later!

Teaching

I’ve not been taking my NIE course all too seriously, and my average grade for the last semester is just slightly under the required to get a Credit for the diploma. This semester I have some slightly more interesting modules (if laden with more difficult work), so I figured I should take the chance to work on elevating myself from a simple pass grade. It might not actually be all that important in the long run, but I might as well try a little, huh?

More importantly, though, I hope to be a good teacher when I’m finally posted to school, but that’s probably a longer-term goal and kinda difficult to quantify.

Guitar

I really enjoyed playing in an ensemble in the past, and though (I’d like to think) I was one of the better players back then, I was never really good at going solo. I’d thought about taking formal classical guitar lessons before, and I think it might be time to finally put those plans into action.

Holiday

This doesn’t actually gel well with the earlier-mentioned goal of saving money, but it’s still something I’d like to do. I’m not sure if I’ll have enough time to pull this off, but if possible I’d like to take that trip to Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic that I wasn’t able to last year. Possibly in late May/early June before I get posted to my school? Depending on my NIE schedule, I guess.

I’m not too optimistic about this right now, but if the opportunity presents itself, maybe it’s time to go ahead with it! (Especially before I lose that KrisFlyer Elite Gold status…)

I’ve never been a big fan of predestiny, since I’d much rather believe in free will and fail to see how these two ideas can coexist. In fact, I’m not particularly confident of the common Christian concept that God has a specific plan for all of us. Of course, this personal slant of mine is based mostly on preference rather than any empirical evidence (I don’t think we’ve figured out any method to confirm it, one way or the other). On the other hand, I occasionally encounter a series of events which seem so creepily coincidental and sometimes surprisingly fortuitous that I start to reconsider the possibility of such a plan.

Today I went to SNGS (my sister’s school) for a parent briefing session – my parents weren’t particularly keen on going, and I figured that I’d take the chance to check out what today’s secondary schools were offering the students. I bumped into my former army officer there, which was really weird since I’d recently (on New Year’s Day) re-read an email he’d sent me. So, it turns out his daughter is actually my sister’s classmate this year!

His wife was there as well, so we made some self-introductions. I remember hearing that she was a school principal back when I still worked with her husband, but she’s been working at the HQ for some time now – having recently taken charge of a psychology-related department. It’s actually really great that I’ve met her, since after some discussion with Ailin I’ve come to reconsider utilising my psychology degree and becoming a specialist in MOE rather than pursuing the leadership track, and it never hurts having someone I could ask for advice from.

On top of all that, I’ve discovered that I can try looking Mr Tan JC up should I ever need another job – he’s recently started his very own tuition centre.

It was a coincidental day indeed, involving a pleasant chance encounter with someone I rather like and respect (even if we’ve never been particularly close), as well as completely unintentional (but very useful) networking.

God, are you trying to tell me something?

School’s actually (practically) been over for a week already for me, and you’d have thought that meant more time for blogging, but between playing with a new phone (which I’ll probably blog about this week) and playing old uncompleted games (finally completed Neverwinter Nights 2 two years after its release, and got started on the expansion), there’s actually been very little leftover time (or incentive) to write. Somehow I’ve gained the motivation to write on this rainy Sunday evening, so here goes.

I’ve been going to Wesley Methodist Church these past few weeks, and though I’m not sure I’ll be making it a permanent home, it’s been a comfortable place to go for service. Anyway, they hand out a church bulletin booklet every week, which is probably a phenomenal waste of paper, but something nice about that is the prayer request section they have at the back. Basically, anybody who has requests they’ll like people to pray for could submit them to be printed in the booklet.

I don’t usually read that section in detail, but I do occasionally skim through it, and when I do, the thing that strikes me is the wide range in nature of the requests. On the one hand, you have people dying from leukaemia, lying comatose, and on the other you have requests for exam results and the like. I don’t think I’d have dared to submit a public prayer request for such (relatively) trivial matters when others’ lives are hanging in the balance, but I guess when believing in an infinite God, you’re supposed to assume that he can deal with your little requests without diminishing his ability to tackle the big ones.

I’ve realised, though, that this is a philosophy I take into my private prayer habits. I seldom pray for things, unless they’re things I feel to be really important. I know in theory that an omnipotent God should be able to deal with it all, but I guess I’m unable to actually comprehend this rationally, and decide not to bring my unworthy desires before God. This has always bothered me somewhat, though – especially upon meeting Ailin’s fellowship group in Japan and observing how each one of them always had stuff to pray about when they met weekly. It’s like, all the normal Christians are bringing their various requests to God, what are you, too good to ask for anything?

I wonder, though, whether I should be trying to change this perception by force, or whether I should be trying to reach an understanding of God that I can naturally accept? The Bible says to ask in order to receive (though it later qualifies that the intent behind the asking is important too), but if I don’t want it enough to trouble God about it (even though he probably won’t be troubled by it at all), that’s not really a problem, is it?

(And yes, I know supplication shouldn’t be all that’s involved in prayer, but I’m not particularly talky with God right now so it’s still the main component for me. Yes, I’m working on it.)

On a bit of a whim, I went for a course organised by Wesley Methodist Church on ‘How to tell others about Jesus’. It was a rather light course (about 2h long), and I appreciated that the speaker actually discouraged overt in-your-face evangelism (which I’ve always found rather ineffective), but rather encouraged laypeople to be ready to answer questions and be sensitive to situations where people’s curiosities might be expressed.

He didn’t recommend heavily using the Bible either, which I’ve always thought was a rather silly technique when trying to reach non-believers (especially lapsed Christians who already have some familiarity with it), and one that I’d encountered A LOT while I was in York. I can understand the optimistic belief that God’s word will never return empty (Isaiah 55:11), but at the same time I found it frustratingly annoying to be constantly quoted scriptural verses, such as the absolute favourite “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching…” (2 Timothy 3:16).

Hello? I’m telling you that I’ve got doubts about the validity of the Bible, and you decide to cite the Bible… in support of the Bible? Thankfully things worked out for me in the end, but I shudder to think how such inflexibility has actually hampered the spread of Christianity in these modern times.

I don’t think I’m really in any position to bring anyone to God, though. I’m happy to do whatever I’m able to, but after attending the course I find I still have many things to sort out before I’ll have useful advice for friends curious about seeking God.

So I didn’t get it.

I was somewhat disappointed for awhile, but I’ve got over it. Staying in education isn’t actually terrible to me, and has actually been my preferred choice all the while, just that I’d have liked to experience work at another ministry for a bit. Oh well, no matter.

A little (philosophical?) pondering that arose from this – is there any point in trying to interpret the things that happen to be signs from higher powers? I’ve so often heard Christians advising each other to treat miscellaneous events as directions/hints from God, but every event can be interpreted in a multitude of different ways! It seems to me that people tend to interpret events in ways that tend to agree with their preconceived notions of how things are, and if that really is the case, is there really any point in doing so in the first place?

I’ve been informed that apparently this page can be found quite easily if you were to google my full name. The content is highly embarrassing (woobie-lovers rejoice!), but at the same time is highly amusing, so I’m in a bit of a fix whether or not I should get it removed (in case future students start stumbling upon my shameful past) or not (because it is simply hilarious).

I’ve actually stopped being a SingNet customer for almost a decade already, and am a little surprised the website’s still up. I guess that’s what happens when you itchy-finger go design webpage when everyone else was doing cool things like… err, being cool, whatever that entailed back then.

Some tidbits I gathered after doing a quick tour of the defunct website…

1. Ailin would be delighted to note that I’d described myself as ‘possessing a large nose’ almost a decade ago.
2. Apparently I was quite good at generating high-scoring narrative essays back in the day (although I sometimes pilfered the storyline from short stories I’d read), no wonder I want to go back and teach English!
3. I’d actually plotted out the backstory of an entire game series. Probably inspired by Jiunwei, I’m a little sad that I never actually got started on attempting game design at all though. On the other hand, I’d actually written a short story based on that backstory, the standard of which I doubt I can duplicate now.
4. Interestingly I’d described myself as ‘officially Roman Catholic, disagree with some beliefs, but definitely Christian’ way back then, which is pretty much my religious stance now – only I’d thought I wasn’t all that definite back in 2000!
5. The mysterious jeeraffe makes an appearance (and is kind of explained) on this page.

I usually have no qualms leaving my old web footprints online (like my old blog posts), simply because I know I’ve changed since then, they help remind me of what I used to be like back then, and most importantly – I don’t mind (and rather enjoy, actually) laughing at myself. Such self-depracating humour might not exactly be the best thing for building student-teacher respect, however.

So, should it stay, or should it go?

I recently let slip (in front of an aunt of mine) that I’d been exploring Protestant churches, so she’s gone on a mini-crusade to get me back on that good ol’ Catholic path. Part of this mini-crusade involved passing me a little booklet to read, summarising the main beliefs of Catholicism.

This isn’t an inter-denominatory comparison, though. While looking through the booklet, somehow I’d started thinking about the issue of morality, especially in the context of Christianity. Specifically, I thought back on a lesson on the Ten Commandments I had a number of years ago – to make a long story short, they were taught in the context of absolute morality, as rules that must never be broken (or you would have sinned)! I was apparently a bit of a contrarian even back then, because I remember asking if there were exceptions to this. As an example, I brought up the hypothetical example of a crazed gunman holding hostages, threatening to execute them unless you were willing to tell lies. I suppose a more real-world scenario might be how a police officer/negotiator might state some non-truths while in the process of persuading the gunman to release the hostages. Basically, was it acceptable to break these laws in order to save lives?

My hypothetical scenario was at the time dismissed as being too extreme and impractical, and the underlying question was essentially ignored. Even in the case of the police negotiations, Christians might argue that negotiations can be conducted without any explicit lies being told. More recently though, I’ve read the novel Silence in which a similar scenario pops up. Granted that the story is a fictional one, but it was based on historical events and it isn’t too hard to imagine the events happening in real life – basically, Japanese believers were being tortured in a bid to make a foreign priest publicly renounce his faith, with the promise of the torture being halted if he were to do so.

I’m sure there are many arguments against caving in to such a demand, but it seemed to me that in agreeing to make a public display of renouncing one’s faith (even if privately that faith is still adhered to), lives would be saved. Although there are other implications at work here (e.g. the effect of a religious leader renouncing his faith), in my head the possibility of lives being saved by deviating from “God’s law” is indication enough that there cannot be a simple black and white morality, that there are always exceptions to rules, that it is impossible to come up with a definitive list of rules that one might follow in order to lead a good life.