[[How has been]]

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

[[]]

I have a couple of posts trying to make the finer distinctions within Christianity. Yet on some days, some periods it seems that these finer distinctions are so academic, so inapplicable.

Maybe the word isn't inapplicable. I cannot place it. Something like emotions can easily overrun the best academic work in where it matters, the heart and the subsequent actions taken.

Knowing, elucidating the best way or methods to lead the triumphant Christian life is great work that needs to be done. Answering the how question. Doing it is more important, however. You can do what you don't know, I think. Meaning to say you don't have to know it in-depth to do it just by applying broad principles.

I think I'm going to uninstall dota. It clouds my mind.

It is really like a murky haze. Like a thick fog. Like the darkness of the Brunei jungle. Feel lost, feel disoriented. But when you look at the kingdom of God it pierces the fog for a glorious moment or two. Can't wait to join the saints in heaven seriously.

[[I wrote this at]]*|5:19 PM|

Saturday, July 25, 2015

[[]]

I need to be pushed in order to achieve more I think. To make better use of my time.

Yet I am a little lazy, left to my own devices, to push myself. And I guess, I rather detest other people pushing me if it feels like they are pushing me to do things I don't wanna do.

What is the solution then?

[[I wrote this at]]*|11:17 PM|

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

[[A sinner is a pimple]]

Just last night I went for a poetry workshop, some 2 hour crash course on poetry which was interesting, I have never written poetry or been exposed to eat before. Mostly due to Ms Abbey I believe. (Lol). Poetry seems to be easier and less concrete than philosophy, many 'open to interpretation' kinda thing and it probably evokes emotion more than philosophy. And since Boon attempted poetry, it seems fun. *insert self-deprecating thingum about first try*

A sinner is a pimple

A thin layer of skin

conceals the pus within

A constant itch

that can scarce be reached

fed by a pore always open

Putridness flows

Bacteria festers

Pressure grows

as the walls are tested

But I am not steel, only skin

(and) skin cannot seal the darkness in

The vile and foul hidden

will soon be open

open for all to see

With a prick and some pressure

the filth is drained and I am clean

The gaping void

is purified

Leaving the mark of sin

I am grateful and my heart will sing

Yet until the pore

is finally no more

I will again be swollen

Swell, burst and clean

the cycle of being born in sin

Yet hope abounds I am found

in the hand on which I depend

Sounds like a children's rhyme more than a poem but whatever.

[[I wrote this at]]*|1:41 PM|

Sunday, July 19, 2015

[[On flash games]]

A good game is like a good fantasy story.

Starting off, you do not know the character. The character is weak, unpolished, perhaps he is uncertain of himself, perhaps he has not discovered his strengths (generic. Slowly, you begin the get the feel of the character, how the character operates. You start to form an awareness of what situations suit the character, what are his weaknesses.

You see the character develop. You see the paths that he chooses and the consequences it has. You see the mistakes that he makes and how well he learns from these mistakes. You see the people he interacts with and how he interacts, the people that come and go in his life. His enemies, his friends and his lovers/acquaintances/shopkeepers. You see him overcome, set his teeth in determination and whatnot (typical hero Im presuming). You gradually get a sense of where the character is heading, what the resolution will be.

Then, you reach the climax. The source of the conflict. The epic boss battle or the showdown with the self. You see the character teeter on the brink of failing and eventually overcome. The world is saved, people live happily ever after until the next sequel. The credits roll.

You disengage yourself from the fantasy world and think about how much time you have spent, how much homework you could have done and yet, you have a happy feeling having shared that journey with that character. You decide that it was time well spent. You sigh and, I dunno, go to sleep at 4am or something.

[[I wrote this at]]*|11:04 PM|

[[Things that could disprove Christianity (or almost any religion actually)]]

So this is a non-exhaustive list of things that can possibly disprove or at least shed a great deal of doubt on Christianity if proven. That being said, their not being proven is arguably statistical support for Christianity given human progress (so as time drags longer on and we still are unable to prove them to be true, they are likely false, and hence Christianity is probabilistically more likely to be true.

1. Immortality
The wages of sin is death. All men will die because of sin, it is promised in the Bible. If one man never dies (though you can't really prove never eh, only haven't) the Bible is wrong. Of course there are people recorded in the Bible as directly taken up into heaven, I'm not talking about that.

2. Time travel
Firstly, one can travel to the past and interview Jesus or any other being in the Bible. Heck, one might as well reverse time all the way to Adam in the garden of Eden and talk to Satan in snake form. Not sure what the results of that would yield though. Secondly, a time traveller is essentially immortal (see point 1).
Obviously time travel is plagued with all sorts of paradoxes so.. no surprises that it is not possible as of now.

3. More intelligent life or intelligenter life
Here I am not talking about Angels or demons or the nephilim. If we were to discover that ants were actually dominating us subtly through whatever mechanism (e.g mind control) then God's claim that man was created in his image and given stewardship over all of creation sounds very much like a deluded human's claim.
There is also the question of intelligent life in outer space. If one accepts the Big bang theory and evolution and spontaneous life creation .etc, it is calculated that there must be much life elsewhere and probably much more advanced than us. Of course there are theories to defend why there is this lack of intelligent life in our space exploration thus far; such as there will surely be theories to defend why intelligent life is compatible with the Bible (if there is). I think, however, it is more likely that these theories are less than adequate and the base assumptions (Big Bang + Spontaneous life creation or Biblical creation) is wrong if the evidence for intelligent other life swings either way. I am not ruling out that these defensive theories might be right, I just think they are likely to not be right.
Additionally, communication with more advanced life forms will shed way way way way way more information than we could ever hope to discover slowly. I would be so excited to communicate with one, assuming that it is willing to communicate me and not like, vaporise me or something. Maybe they are the aforementioned angels? maybe.

I shall just stop at these 3 because perhaps these are the most clear cut cases and the most direct contradiction to something in the Bible (which is the basis of truth for all Christians). There are other developments that might be considered even though the cases are much less clear cut. There is the issue of cloning (of humans), colonisation of another planet/solar system, really advanced artificial intelligence (if it hits 'sentient' especially. I shan't define sentient here.) .etc.

Thoughts?

[[I wrote this at]]*|10:16 PM|

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

[[]]

Conceived in sin is such a sad thing to be.

[[I wrote this at]]*|12:48 AM|

Saturday, July 11, 2015

[[On my ah gong]]

My grandfather likes to tell people, in hokkien, that he is 86 years old 我八十六岁了，老了 (sounds better in hokkien). But he is not, he is only 84, 85 if you go by the Chinese method of babies being born 1 year old. He gets the 86 years from the birthdate recorded on his IC which was what he or his parents declared to some clerk during Singapore's earlier years.

My grandfather was a strong man. He used to have these exercise springs (basically like resistor bands) that he did every morning at 0530 until like, he turned 80 or something. When I was young, in primary school, I remember dangling from one of his arms which he would maintain parallel to the floor like a tree branch. I was 20+ kg, more than a full jerry can. I think up to p4 he still allowed me to punch him and I think resulted in my hands hurting more than his. That was during his early 70s I believe.

Just today, when eating breakfast with him I was reminded that he didn't dare to carry me. He was afraid that he would accidentally hurt me with his 牛力 bull strength. According to my mum he didn't dare to pinch my nose with a tissue for fear of pulling my nose off so he would just dab at the nostrils repeatedly. I believe he also refused to cane us and graciously left that job to his wife. According to him, he beat up policemen in his younger wilder days, I don't really doubt that story.

My grandfather was creative too. When I was ~7 years old, he painted a table blue with a chequered chess board in the middle and collected beer bottle caps in a bucket to play checkers with. I seem to recall that Tiger and Carlsberg were the most common brands picked so it was usually team tiger against team Carlsberg. Alternatively one team had the caps flipped upside down. Having come from a kampung he used to do a decent amount of construction work and gardening. Sadly, I was not born then, only my parents have such memories.

Only in recent years did I notice that my grandfather is actually quite a small man, smaller than me (why do you think I'm so small). Of course he says that 老了缩水 but for much of my childhood he was very much larger than life, a constant solid presence picking me up from school for example. Externally, my grandpa was fit until his late seventies, thereafter and with some overlap he was fat, in the past year, he became small. My grandma, on the other hand, was fat all the way (I believe). They are my 大肥妈/公. Maybe that is why I call people I like fat and chubby.

Anyway, my grandfather is dying from cancer. He was a heavy smoker up till his 50s and mutations to the tumour suppressing genes do not unmutate when left to fallow. He was supposed to die (according to people who call themselves doctors) by Chinese new year this year. So as of now he has outlived his initial prognosis by 5 months. Nonetheless, it is obvious that his health is failing. He can no longer carry the groceries alone. Now, he would rather take a feeder bus loop that takes 20 extra minutes than cross the road to get to the opposite bus stop.

His mind is also affected. We were worried about him developing severe Alzheimer's disease when he started showing early signs. Once, he forgot to alight the bus (my grandmother alighted alone). This caused a decent panic in my household and my sister and I were activated to hunt for about 2 hours for him (My sister cycled the whole of Kovan, impressive eh). Thankfully he still had the frame of mind to cross the road and take bus back home. He calls it 老人变小孩 old person turns into a child. This was most evident during his hospital stays when he kept insisting on eating duck drumstick and fried oyster, the anathema of hospital food (which he threw away like some spoilt kid saying it tasted bland). Even as his mind turns into a child, he is still the patriarch of the family and you can't really beat an old man right?

He is also getting lazier (or more tired, depending on how you want to look at it). In the past he used to read the newspapers in the morning before anyone else awoke (wake at ~5 exercise and newspapers done by 6, even more disciplined than army life). Now he sleeps in until ~8 and is lazy to even read his bible. The number of naps he takes increased drastically as well. He still makes it a point to watch the news, though. Traces of his former disciplined self still show such as in how he always leaves the house in long pants with belt and shoes, polo shirt with inner singlet and a handkerchief with a metal pocketwatch. He is usually ready to leave the house 15 minutes before time too, something my generation (and myself) could do well to learn.

Point is, my beloved grandfather is dying.

I keep telling people no fear in death and I really believe it. Apart from some worries about his fundamental beliefs, I really think there is nothing to be afraid of him dying. Heaven is a better place than earth anyway. We will all meet again! Then I can show him my kids/grandkids (if I ever do get married and have kids, that is). There is no despair. No eternal end. No void of nothingness. No teetering on the edge of the abyss.

He says if he doesn't die we cannot grow up. That is true, and in some sense, he is already dying as we are growing, the old making way for the new.

Still, I think I have learnt much from him and he has had a relatively large influence on who I am today. How he treats my grandma is also a relatively good example (they still hold hands and walk nowadays which is like, cute and all).

[[I wrote this at]]*|1:07 AM|

Thursday, July 9, 2015

[[CF camp]]

So I got distracted by the previous post, and it became too long so it was posted separately. And anyway since it is almost midnight, it will not look like double posting! EDIT: Sigh, it is now past the next midnight. Edit: now 9/7/15 lolol.

Anyway, on CF camp. Sigh, I feel sleepy but I really wanna do this properly. Hmmmm.

So I went to VCF camp from 1-4 July. VCF stands for varsity christian fellowship, in case you didn't know. I think it went well. I mean, I expected it to go well, but yeah, it was refreshing to have it actually go well as well. Such a well of wells.

I signed up for the camp mainly because I had enjoyed last year's camp and wanted to contribute back to the next batch of CF campers. Sounds like blessed to bless eh? that didn't actually cross my mind then luh. It was more of paying it forward kinda thing. I think last year's camp was the main reason why I chose to join VCF without considering the other Christian ministries that much. Secondarily, I had hoped to meet (new) fellow Christians and to spend more time with God, within a camp it is much easier to focus on God and other humans as distractions are kept to a minimum. Tertiarily (lol), I had nothing better to do anyway.

Well, I forgot how tiring camps were. Like seriously. And CF camp is probably one of the slackest camp, raw energy speaking, around. For people like myself who are loathe to spend energy and time on meaningless stuff (unless it is by choice? like my wasting of time on various games), going to a camp is quite an investment. I slept for 15 hours straight after the camp so that has to be counted into the cost as well eh. Still, I think it was a great investment of time and energy.

Honestly I think the camp was more of the people than anything else. That is not to say that the programs or message is unimportant, they are important and I think the organising committee did a decently good job in handling that. Of course there is room for improvement, especially on the areas that were highlighted but overall it was a decent attempt. Back to the people. I think the best part about CF camp in particular is that it brings together people who are willing and able to seek Christ, that we may do it together. Being 100% voluntary (sorta), this is opposed to even church where it seems, not everyone is willing (personal opinion, personal p.o.v). When people gather together in and for Christ, great things happen. I am thankful, to God, for the people in this camp.

The camp theme verse was Mark 8:34 "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Something that I (we?) have been struggling with. I am a proud person and sadly, my identity, I think, is still not rooted fully in Christ. It is a work in progress. I occasionally grasp at straws, at worldly definitions of success and momentarily am entirely absorbed in it and blindsided to Christ.

To deny the self is really hard. I remember when I was rationalising my constant rejection from universities/courses, I consoled myself with the concept of "I am". Basically, I appealed to the idea that what I am is innate in myself, that it is independent of what course or school I studied in (and the schools/courses were retarded to reject me, but not the point). This line of reasoning basically protected my sense of worth, self-worth at least. Being rejected is painful stuff, threatens the identity, especially one that was built up on, like, societal and familial approval. But while obviously identity cannot lie in what course or school or any external thing, identity cannot even lie in the I am of myself. To think that identity lies within my innate abilities or whatnot sounds wise in a secular, worldly sense but it is not complete. This is because I am not.

God is the only one that can say I am who I am (and he does say it somewhere in Exodus I believe). Namely because he is God, an uncreated being that is in himself. What "I" am is not a freestanding fact, it is dependent. What God is is a brute fact, independent on anything. "I" am dependent on the genes I inherited, on my upbringing, so on and so forth, on being not run over by a car in the thousand times I've crossed the road. So shifting the "I" from external validation to internal abilities hardly solves the matter for these internal abilities are as transient as the external (of course, I am assuming that being transient is not what identity should lie in, maybe an argument for that can be attempted in the future). Good looks, musical ability, memory, even your very existence .etc. all can be removed by one good punch.

Ok long story short, identity should be in Christ and Christ alone. Such an easy statement to say, so hard to do, impossible without the holy spirit and all that.

Oh and another part that I specifically remembered and hope to internalise is what the speaker said about "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added onto you". What he said is that first doesn't mean primarily, so kingdom of God number one, family number 2, grades number 3, social life number 4 .etc. It means seek only the kingdom of God. Well done! But you can seek the kingdom of God in all the other things mentioned, just make sure it is the kingdom of God that you are seeking and not the things in themselves, however good they may be. Seek only, sounds simple eh.

And also that the mission of Jesus, missio dei apparently. I thought it was an ancient term but when I googled it seemed relatively new. Ohwell. The speaker proposes that it is to instate the kingdom of God. I guess we can take him at face value, it is one of the mission of Jesus I guess, not going to waddle into an argument here.

To be honest I'm surprised at how freshie-centric this camp was (I mean, FOC right? Duh). Perhaps I had not noticed the specific catering when I was a freshman but I felt it to be like quite impressive, the amount of effort dedicated to making it freshie-centric.

Sigh, I feel that I never end or complete my writings properly, I just write based on the stream of consciousness. I lack effort and discipline to make my writings reader-centric. Or to put it in a more honest, ugly manner, I am being self-centered and refuse to put in the effort to make it easier for others (obviously I assume that my writing is of some value to someone).

[[I wrote this at]]*|11:54 PM|

Monday, July 6, 2015

[[On using Jesus's name]]

I must first state that I get slightly irked when people (usually pastors or preachers), take creative licence with what a biblical character said, especially if that character is Jesus or God. That is, they say stuff like Jesus said ... I do believe that none of them are doing this out of malicious intent, trying intentionally to distort the content. Yet why do they put stuff into other people's mouth? Why can't they phrase it more accurately, that Jesus's teaching point towards ...

Like in this passage by Ortberg in the book "All the places to go how will you know". I quote "before he ascended into heaven, Jesus said to his students, to his graduates (I understand this is not actually in the book, that Matthew forgot to write it down, but I'm pretty sure what got said was this): "Oh the places you'll go! ... ... You'll have absolutely no money and be outrageously happy. You'll be beaten for your faith and count yourself honoured to have suffered for the name. You'll have nothing. You have no (American stuff)... "

I'm sure that Ortberg is semi-joking and has taken some effort to signpost it such as in "Matthew forgetting" and that his point is that Jesus sent his disciples out asking them to depend on him (and the holy spirit) in faith. Definitely valid and good point. . Idk man. Maybe it is the American (sorry for my slight anti-america-culture bias, sighs) way of speaking, of exaggerating a little, maybe it is cultural, maybe the audience/ intended audience will understand the point to be made and nothing else, maybe I am nitpicking.

But the problem is that Jesus is infallible and he didn't say that (at least it is not recorded and again, Jesus arguably didn't care for America more than any other nation).

Two points, first it is exaggerated to the point of being arguably untrue. Maybe it is the philo 'watertight argument' thinking but I am sure his disciples did not have absolutely no money and weren't outrageously happy (happy, not even joyful). Jesus certainly wouldn't lie.

Secondly, while it sounds more authoritative to say Jesus said, I dunno, are you very sure that it is what Jesus would have wanted said, nothing more nothing less? Can't you say I think Jesus wants you to know? Really sounds like I am nitpicking or that there is not much difference but there is. Jesus's words are authoritative like full authoritative, no argument. (of course there can be argument about interpretation but no argument on whether it is sound doctrine). Yours on the other hand, is not. Idk, Maybe you guys already understand, but yeah, I would hopefully be more careful with using such big words around.

Like how the ancient Jewish writers saw the name of God as so holy that they avoid using it where they can (hence kingdom of heaven, instead of kingdom of God for example) to show reverence, perhaps we ought to show more reverence for God's name and God's words instead of chucking your well-intentioned, modern, catered to a specific audience of culture conception into God's mouth.

Im making a fine distinction luh. Im not slamming them intensely or whatever. Just thought it would be better if they didn't use it with so ... carelessly?

[[I wrote this at]]*|11:49 PM|