In Justice and Nature, Thomas Nagel discusses the challenges that a just society needs to balance between correcting inequalities that are due to nature and those due to defective social contructs.

Recently in a discussion with some others, someone noted that Nagel’s observation that the American value for equal access to education for everyone has eroded tremendously in recent years. This can be seen by the serious lack of resources in many areas, especially the inner city, that has been allocated to education. Teachers have had to pay for their own materials, insufficient educational resources and overpopulated classrooms are commonplace in many public school districts.

My observation is that the American public highly prized some values more than others to the detriment of the society as a whole. In Nagel’s words, “Injustice is not just another cost; it is something that must be avoided, if not at all costs, then at any rate without counting the costs too carefully. If a form of inequity in social arrangements is unjust, it should not be tolerated, even if that means giving up things that may be very valuable in other ways.”

Alas, the American public has not taken heed. We instead have pursue aggressively other values more strongly held to be important; values that are affirmed by the framers of the Constitution, namely, life, liberty and happiness. An example of our hedonistic passions, and distorted value system media can be seen by how entertainment, media and sports celebrities are excessively overpaid, while the shapers, molders, and influencers of the nation’s next generation of leaders and thinkers are, relatively speaking, treated like second class citizens.

I wonder whether today’s America would have been any different if the Founding Fathers had paid more attention to the Psalms rather than to Locke and had focused on building the nation on principles of justice, peace and righteousness such as expressed in Psalm 9 and other passages.

Perhaps, the church’s role is to permeate our society and bring these values to the forefront of our society by being “salt” and “light”. One way of doing so would be to encourage our younger generation to take up the call to infuse every strata of society and to bring about transformation from the inside out.

I went to my counseling session today. I was actually looking forward to it, because I missed a session last week, and the week before last, we did not really have a session, because my counselor thought I was too emotionally drained to do any real work, so we had a chat and that was it. The past several weeks, she had been taking me back to my childhood and assisting me in the “healing of my memories.” I was looking forward to trying to do that again today, since in earlier sessions, it had been rather difficult to connect with my “little boy”. At today’s session, it was a little difficult to do so and my memories were all over the place. My counselor later told me that she was praying that the Holy Spirit would lead me to the right memories in order to deal with the pertinent issues that I am ready to face.

It was quite a painful process having to go back and reliving the memories. Some of these memories have haunted me for a long while. They have caused shame, misery, distress, dismay, fear and quite a few tearful moments. Some of them are buried deep in the recesses of my mind and yet they have a way of replaying at the push of an invisible button, and when they do, they traumatize me. I remember some incidents when I was going through a particular tough period in my life. I would be driving along and all of a sudden tears would just flow freely. Other times, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably.

Over the past couple of months, I have been able to distinguish in my mind between on the one hand, what is merely a memory of a past incident, and the feeling of shame, fear, rejection, or whatever that was attached to it, and on the other hand, my present reality. In doing so, I have been able to allow myself to replay those scenes and then allow myself to accept God’s grace for myself. It has helped to alleviate the pain and trauma that had once gripped me but instead have helped me to replay empowering thoughts about learning from my mistakes and reinforcing the idea that “whatever doesn’t kill me makes me a stronger person.”

But, today, as the counselor was letting me explore the relationship between my current (and seemingly chronic) stresses of the body and some of the lingering or undercurrent memories of the past, I came upon a point where I was really conflicted. It has to do with what my mom said (or did not say) to me as a young child. There were a couple of incidents that I remember regarding my mom’s words to me, which have reinforced in my mind regarding my own self worth and self identity. Mom used a lot of reverse psychology in the way she tried to motivate us kids when we were younger. Without realizing it, I had internalized a lot of the things she said about me which in turned had underpinned my own idea of who I thought I was. And, I was surprised that I was finding it difficult to accept, on an emotional level, that she could have been wrong, even though intellectually I knew what I had internalized were untrue.

Having to confront those memories and in essence confront my mom that she was wrong about me was a difficult emotional thing for me to do. I love my mom. Whatever she did she did out of love for me. If I were to reject her words would I be rejecting her? Somehow, I had wired in my mind the connection that if I were to reject her assessment of me, I would be turning my back on her! I have to learn to detach myself from such thoughts and learn to see that my love for my mom and her love for me had nothing to do with the falsehoods that I have absorbed through incorrect messages that I had read through my ineraction with her in my younger days. I have to learn to accept God’s view of who I am, not just intellectually, but also emotionally, and allow His grace to bathe me and embrace me and at the same time allow His love to reinforce my mom’s love for me and my love for my mom without having to accept the lies I had internalized through those early experiences.



One surprising discovery for me was that in my struggle I found myself feeling distrust towards my counselor! Suspicions turned to alarm, then bordering on anger and even hatred! Emotionally, I had the feeling that she was trying to turn me against my own mom! I had to get a grip of myself and realize that what she was doing was to let me re-evaluate some of the undercurrent and internalized feelings of myself with how God Himself sees me and reassess myself from God’s perspective rather than from the perspective of my need for mother’s approval. I didn’t tell her of the conflicts I was experiencing inside me as she was helping me to see myself as God sees me. The session soon ended without me really resolving much in my mind, but Jan(the counselor)’s parting words to me were that she would pray that the Holy Spirit will continue to work in my heart to help me process this.



I think I am beginning to get it now.

I see that my earlier post is causing quite a ruckus over at Messy Christian’s. It seems that while Christians are uncomfortable with the idea of manipulating God, we also would like to cling on to the hope and belief that God is responsible for many of the good things that we do experience in this life. When we hear testimonies of good things happening to various Christian people, we want to give Him the glory and praise for it.

When things go particularly well, we think that God must have had a hand in it since He is our Father, and He looks after His own. Yet when things do go awry, we get confused. Sometimes we blame it on ourselves. Perhaps we do not have sufficient faith. Perhaps we have not done the proper confession, or have incorrect teaching about the promises of God. We have failed to claim what is rightfully ours. We are ignorant, or we are lazy, or we have not given God His due. We play the roles of Job’s friends upon ourselves so well that even George Lucas would be impressed. Or perhaps, we put the blame on the Devil. After all, his purpose is to thwart the plans of God. Yet at other time we point the finger at other Christians. Sadly, sometimes we turn against God, slide into despair and unbelief.

Oh, we so want to be blessed by God. Therefore, we make it a point to pray for blessing. God, bless our home. Bless our church. Bless our family. Bless our business. I have blogged about blessing in my previous post, so I will not belabor the point here, although from some of the responses at Messy’s I think I have not been able to get my view across clearly. In any case, I shall move on…

Closely related to misconception #2 (which should have been the title of this series… oh well…) is misconception #3 - how God answers our prayer.

We pray for all sorts of things in our lives. Because we believe in prayer. We believe, and rightly so, that in prayer we are inviting God into our lives, or rather, we are accepting God’s invitation to share in His life.

The problem is that we take it for granted that God is going to answer our prayers in the way we have packaged for Him. We give God multiple-choice answers and say, choose one, Lord: “Yes”, “No” or “Wait”. Don’t mark outside the box, don’t pick more than one answer, or our scantron will not pick it up. So, we believe that God answers our prayers in one of the three ways, yet we only ever acknowledge it when He says “Yes” to our prayers.

A few years ago, my wife and I newly arrived in Western Australia and were looking for housing. Within a couple of weeks, we found a lovely home that we could afford in a nice suburb close to all the amenities we cared for. Leaving the realtor’s office and as we were getting into our car, my wife exclaimed, “Praise God for His swift anwer to our prayer!” I shared my wife’s elation, but I was a little concerned about the reason.

I looked at her and gently asked, “Honey, what if God had given us a “No”?”

She was quick on the draw, “I would have just praised Him!”

“Really?” I challenged.

We went on to discuss our thoughts on the matter. In depth. I don’t remember clearly most of the rest of that conversation. But I do remember that it was the beginning of a long dialog that has continued to this day as we grapple with the issues surrounding these reflections.

I don’t know if I have ever heard someone praise God or even acknowledge a “No” answer to a prayer. Perhaps the only time I can think of is in Corinthians, or I can imagine, in resignation. We only give God thanks when the answer to our prayer is in the affirmative.

Why is that?

I believe it is because our expectations about prayer and how God works in prayer are wrong-headed. For in prayer we do not go to God with a wish-list and expect to have him check off our list. In prayer we go to engage in the life of God and the result is that our lives are transformed.

God doesn’t answer our prayers with a “Yes,” “No,” or “Wait!” Instead, He answers our prayers with “You…” When we approach God, rather than looking for His answers to our prayers, we had better tuned in our ears to listen to His voice. There is a difference, I believe. A huge difference.



UPDATE: Since posting this article, I have an updated post on what I call my “theology of prayer” which of course is a “work-in-progress”. See it here.

Last week, I was pondering on the issue of law and grace, and its implications. Today I want to think about this idea of “blessing”. Actually I am not sure if I have ever believed this lie, but I hear about it all the time, hence, I have changed the series title to Lies We Have Bought Into. Something that I hear very often in Christian circles is the notion that God’s blessings upon our lives equate to material success, a life of ease, comfort and joy. Often I hear testimonies from Christian people, and part way through their story, they will say something like, “The Lord blessed us and we have success in our business…”

When I was a little boy accompanying my mom to the Chinese temples, we had a very familiar ritual. We would go before the idols of the God of War, the Legendary General-God Kwan Kong with his fiery awesome face and impressive military regalia, burn incense and pray to Kwan Kong for protection and prosperity. We would go before the goddess of mercy Kwan Yin (no relation to the other Kwan or for that matter, to Michelle!) and ask for her protection and wisdom for my dad to run his business successfully. And my mom will take out a cup and roll pieces of paper on which are written numbers. She would hand me the cup and I would place the cup in my hands and with a praying motion ask the gods and goddesses to guide my motion, and then I would shake the cup with the pieces of paper rattling inside until one fell out. I would repeat the process until there are enough numbers for my mom to play the lottery game that week. You see, mom believed that the gods and goddesses would answer her prayer for wealth and prosperity by allowing her to win the lottery jackpot. Although it never happened, yet her faith would be unflagging. Every so often, usually, when she is ready to give up on a series of numbers, we would go through the same ritual and she would continue to believe that the numbers given were signs from on high for her windfall. Most times these rituals were accompanied by burning of incense and sacrifices of chickens and roast pork. The numbers almost always do not come out initially, but eventually one or two of the series would match, however, by then either there were just too many numbers for mom and dad to play, or they have given up with that series of numbers! That only validated their belief that the gods smiled on them, but it is their impatience (or lack of faith, or insufficient incense or pork or whatever) for not having steadfastly played the same numbers in the lottery. My point is, my mom believed in her gods (and so did I at the time), the gods of wood and stones, and that belief includes the provision of divine protection and material wealth and prosperity.

Now, it seems to me that most Christians approach their God in more or less the same manner. God is supposed to look after us, protect us from harm, help us in getting the right job, finding the misplaced key, healing from the latest bout of the flu, relieving us from the discomforts and suffering of life, and provide us with success and material wealth. We even ask God to help us win that war against those enemies of the nation. Oh, it is not so much explicitly taught as implicitly practiced. That is why we go about life praying for fine weather for the church picnic, blessing for the job interview, and praising him whenever little Johnny comes home with the straight-A report card. Just this morning, I heard someone making reference to how God blessed him in his business by giving him success. No wonder when the Western missionaries first entered China to preach their gospel, the Chinese did not see a difference between their gods and goddesses and the Western god. Both seemed to be doing the same thing, meeting the same needs. The only difference is that the Western God-followers claimed theirs to be the One True God. It is no wonder then that some Asians believed that this could be explained by cultural imperialism.

There are at least two reasons to believe why it is so easy to assume that God does bless us materially, and to believe that our physical well-being is a reflection of our relationship with God. One, it seems that this message can be found in the Old Testament. God does say that we will be prosperous and that He will bless us along the way, if we were to walk according to His law and obey Him. Doesn’t it say as much in Psalm 1:3 that if we delight ourselves in the law of the Lord …whatever we do we will prosper? Such promises abound, especially in the Psalms. Some may answer that the way of God in the Old Testament is contrary to the way of God in the New Testament, but if I were to accept that, then it would contradict my previous complaint! Even in the New Testament, didn’t Jesus Himself promised that He has come so that we might have abundant life? What does it mean to have abundant life but to live to the full, to enjoy all that this world has to offer, in short, to be successful, rich, prosperous, to be blessed?

It is this underlying belief that God gets the blame so much when things don’t exactly go according to our wishes, hopes or fantasies. We believe that good things are practically our birthright. When things don’t work out, we accuse God of injustice. Or we blame our faith or lack of it. Like the disciples who saw the man who was blind from birth, we ask, “Is it our fault or our parents fault that this bad luck has befallen us?” In other words, things should have gone smoothly, and if it did not go smoothly, some one must have been at fault–someone needs to be blamed. The thing is, atheists also take this premise as a given in the argument from evil. Except that Christians believe that since we belonged to the Lord, He surely must look after his own?

Allied to this same view is the idea that “everything works for good” so we must “give thanks for everything” in our life.

A few years ago, I was driving a lemon of a car. It worked quite well until I took a trip outside of town. The longer distance coupled with the day’s temperature (it was a hot Australian summer), strained the engine too much, and the head gasket blew. Since then I spent quite a lot of money repairing the dang thing. From then on, no matter how many mechanics worked on the car, there was always something wrong with the engine or the radiator. It would often heat up, especially during those long summer months. In hindsight, I should have given up on it, but I stuck with it, wasting much money in the process.

A very kind hearted and sincere sister in Christ one day recommended me to a mechanic she knew. She was taking me to see this new mechanic when she tried to explain to me why I was having so much problems with it.

“R, have you ever stopped to give thanks for this car?” she queried.

“What?” I was stumped.

“The Bible said to give thanks for everything, and you must give thanks for this car before your troubles can be lifted away.”

I probably had such an incredulous look on my face, that it was a good thing it was quite dark in the car.

“No,” I said softly, “that is something I cannot do. I don’t believe I can give thanks to God for the problems I’ve had with this car. I can give thanks that it at least have been a reliable mode of transport for me for a little while, but I cannot sincerely give thanks to God for having had all these trouble with its radiator, its engine, and the money I have spent on it.”

“Believe me, brother,” continued the kind and patient sister, “this is the way for victory in the situation. You must give thanks for the car, and for everything you have experienced with it. Claim it by faith and you will see how God will work wonders and bring glory to His name.”

“I believe the verse says in everything give thanks,” I muttered, “which is quite different from for everything.”

“There’s no difference! You must give thanks in your situation about your car! If you do, you will find God will begin to release His power to work out your situation for the best. Taste and see the power of God, R!”

I didn’t reply.

Somehow, I didn’t buy that. For if I did, it would have been no different to what mom used to do for her gods. Only that, in my case, there is no need to burn any incense, sacrifice any chickens or roast pork, but merely to give thanks (No wonder they say grace is free!). It just sounded too suspiciously me-centered, although I could always rationalize it by giving thanks and asking for the miracle to be a demonstration of His glory!

Does this mean I do not believe that God works in our lives to bring about wealth, health, prosperity and other good things? I am not necessarily implying that God does not, although what I am saying is that He is more concerned with other virtues that He wants to develop in us, which may sometimes result in material success as a by-product. However, being short sighted as we are, we often take the shortcuts and focus only on the by-product. However, as a famous Australian ex-Prime Minister used to say, “There are no free lunches.”

A few weeks ago, I pondered the question What or who is a Leader and then asked, “Do you consider Hitler a Leader? I didn’t get many responses (either people were avoiding trick questions, or they just don’t feel like commenting on my blog, or I have too few interactive readers!), but the ones who posted a comment considered Hitler to be a leader, albeit a bad one. I guess when I asked whether Hitler could be considered a leader, I framed the question wrong. Let me try again.

I believe that leadership has moral implications. That is, embedded in the definition of leadership are ethical considerations and implications that cannot be avoided. For leadership involve vision casting — lifting people up to a higher level, and motivation — inspiring people to go beyond themselves, to reach for and achieve the group’s objectives or vision, rather than aiming for personal gain and to direct a group or community to fulfill a purpose higher than each member individually.

Perhaps another way to look at the question is to ask ourselves, “Do we consider Hitler to be a dictator? Or a tyrant? What about a manipulator?” If we say “yes” to all or even one of the previous questions, then the follow-up question is, “Can we say a dictator is a leader?” I suppose you might say, “Yes, just not a very good one.” I then would like you to consider this: that leadership has moral implications such that there cannot be a bad leader. For the qualities of leadership are intrinsically good and worhty of high esteem. We may say, for instance, that a bad person may have exhibited a few of the characteristics of leadership, but by definition, we cannot say that this person is a leader.

Leadership is a quality, not a description of a rank, title or position. So, it may be true that some dictator, or despot exhibited qualities of leadership at some point in time, but in general, such people cannot be considered to be true leaders. What do you think? (Come, on now, don’t be shy leave me your comments! :))

In reflecting over my post on one of the lies that I used to believe in, that OT law is opposed to NT grace, it occured to me that I did not make myself clear why it was so important to understand the centrality of the grace of God throughout Scriptures, from the first pages of the Bible, when God clothed Adam and Eve with the animal skins to cover their shame, through to the final pages of Revelation when the Lamb of God is gather the redeemed together in the new heaven and new earth. It came back home to me when I read the JollyBlogger’s struggle with his understanding of the gospel.

He tells how, as a younger Christian, he was under the impression that while it was by faith through grace that he was saved, it was through the works of obedience that he was to maintain his standing in Christ. Then, later in life, a pastor lovingly and gently took him aside and helped him to grasp the truth of the gospel:

“He explained to me that salvation was all of grace but so was sanctification. In thinking that the gospel justifies, but obedience sanctifies I had gone down an inevitable road of legalism that was destined to ruin my relationships, sap my joy in following Christ and hear me out.”

I believe the problem the dichotomous idea of law vs. grace gives rise to an inaccurate understanding of law and grace. When Paul says that we are no longer under law, too often we equate this idea that “law” belongs to the Old Testament. We get this idea that in the Old Testament, God desired that his people should keep the Law in order to attain a proper relationship with Him. However, since people failed time and gain to do this, Christ came to fulfill the law. However, now that Christ has come and has given us this free gift of salvation, and imparted in us the free gift of the Holy Spirit, we should now be empowered by the Holy Spirit to keep His law and obey His word. Right? If we failed, then there must have it is because there is something wrong with our faith, or lack thereof.

We mistakenly hold onto the view as the JollyBlogger says, even though the gospel is free, sanctification is not. So, we come to Christ and salvation by faith through grace, but we must attain our relationship with God, and our “goal” and “rewards” through faithful works of obedience. So we fill up our lives with lists of do’s and don’t’s and false measurements of spirituality, such as keeping our devotions, church attendance, not smoking, not drinking, and so on… After all, didn’t Paul say that we have to work out our salvation? And James say that without works our faith is dead? But, when Paul contrasted the Law as opposed to Grace, he was not contrasting the way of the New Testament against the way of the Old. He was contrasting the way of Christ against the religion of the Judaizers and the Pharisees



That’s why it is so important to understand that grace permeated throughout scripture and it is always through grace that God relates to us. Grace is about relationship, intimacy with God, getting to know Him, and walking with Him, the way He did with Adam ian the garden. Law on the other hand is about meeting external standards, unrealistic measurements, and it’s about me and whether or not I measure up.

When we come to fully appreciate this Grace that is given to us through Christ, we see how blessed we are each day of our lives, that we have the privilege to know God, and to relate to Him and to let Him be involved in our lives. We see that throughout Scriptures, God’s greatest desire is to know us, and for us in turn, to know Him. Intimately.

I was going to blog about leadership and what it means to be a leader, but came upon this fun little quiz and thought I’d pass it on. You might have come across it though, but I thought you might like to try it yourself. Post your findings in the comments and let’s see which past leader you are?

But, beware! You might not like what you find out! Here’s my result:

What Famous Leader Are You?

personality tests by similarminds.com

Someone once said, “Everything You’ve Heard is Wrong”. Actually, it was Tony Campolo, one of my favorite mentors. I call him my ‘mentor’ because I have learned quite a few things from him over the years, and continue to do so, both personally as well as through his books, talks and articles. And the saying is actually the title of one of his books. In the spirit of “Everything… wrong” I decided to run through some of the things that I used to believe in, but have since discovered that the truth is somewhat different than what the “official received version” that was handed down by the church(es) I have attended, or by the teachings in Christianity I have received:

Lie #1: Salvation in the Old Testament is through works of the Law while in the New Testament it is through faith by grace… (Law Vs Grace, OT Vs NT, etc. etc.)

In a nutshell this lie causes a contrast between the nature and purpose of the law and the function and understanding of God’s grace. On the one hand, we say that in the New Testament era we are under grace, and on the other hand, we say that the Old Testament law doesn’t apply to us anymore. Yet, we still draw upon the Old Testament legalistic approach and some decidedly Old Testament practices as the norm in our spiritual commitments. For instance, most Christians and churches encourage the practice of tithing and we do appeal to the OT from time to time to support our Christian beliefs, customs and practices.

One thing we do not carry over from the Old Testament is its alleged emphasis on Law. And, for sound biblical reasons too. After all, didn’t Paul say in Romans that we are not under law, but under grace? From verses like these we have too quickly extrapolated to believe that in OT times the nation of Israel was under law but now in NT times, the church is under grace. We also get this from John 1: 17: “For law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” From these passages, we somehow extrapolated that in OT times, God was standing by ranking his people by their obedience to the law, and accepting those who by their dedication and superhuman powers were able to keep the whole law. Based on Romans 7, I doubt anyone qualified! That means, no one in the Old Testament would have met God’s standards. So, no one was “saved” (although according to my OT professor at college, salvation in the OT is decidedly a very different concept from our post-NT understanding - but I shall leave that for another post), or no one had right relationship with God in the OT, at least not in the period since the introduction of the law of Moses.

Yet, we do know that there were people who found favor in God’s eyes and that they were those who we anticipate one day meeting as part of the roll of the saints. So, what gives? Did God deal with people differently in the OT? Did He change the way He relates to His people? What about the concept of “Jesus the same, today, yesterday and forever?” Oh, His essence does not change, but the way He deals with His people has changed! Is that so?

I rather doubt it!

The Old Testament law is a grand testimony to the grace of God! And I learned this from a Moody Bible Institute class many years ago! Yep! That institution which champions dispensationalism, and the rightly dividing the word of truth, of understanding the contrast between the dispensation of grace against the dispensation of law, etc! While taking an Old Testament course from MBI, I came upon the lesson of Leviticus 16: the day of atonement. The lecture was on the centrality of the Day of Atonement. Every year the High Priest must offer a sin offering and a burnt for himself and his family. And then he must offer a sin offering for the people in the form of a goat. The elaborate ritual culminates with the High Priest laying hands on the head of a live goat and confessing over it “all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites-all their sins” and then release of the scapegoat- the goat that shall “carry on itself all their sins”-into the desert. Finally, all of the remains of the bull and the goat that were the sin and burnt offerings were to be all carried outside the camp and everything to be burned up.

This is a solemn ritual and a critical part of the Old Testament religion. The Day of Atonement is the quintessential expression of grace in Old Testament law. It points to Final Day of Atonement when Christ is offered up as the ultimate sacrifice. But each year that the Day of Atonement was celebrated in Old Testament times, it is another year of reminder of God’s grace and His acceptance of his people who chose to walk according to His ways. So, works of the law did not achieve peace with God for the OT faithful, but keeping the law did! For keeping the law includes the Day of Atonement when ALL their sins were confessed and taken outside the camp as a symbolism that God has removed their sins from them as far as the east is from the west… Did you get that? Keeping the OT Law actually ’saves’! Not through the works of the law, but through the grace of God! And the grace of God was revealed through the Law of Moses

The point is the God of Moses is the same God revealed through Jesus Christ. A God full of grace and mercy. A God who does not count our sins against us because He is gracious to give to us a way out and restores us to Himself, and a God who does not deliver us our just deserts because He has offered a Substitute for us to receive At-one-ment - peace - with Himself.

What a God! The same, yesterday, today and forever!

There are two things I have noticed with Messy Christian. One, she seems to have a lot of zing. Second, whenever she rants, I find that I can relate, very well. It is clear that I am not alone in this. She seems to be voicing the blinding obvious that many other Christians have experienced but have failed to either notice the injustice, the wrong, the situation-not-to-be-tolerated, or simply we have been lulled by the status quo to realize any different. It is as if we are stupefied frogs in the proverbial boiling kettle, and as the temperature raised, we have not felt the discomfort, so we remain in the kettle waiting to be boiled alive. But, in jumps this little spunky froggie from the other pond, and she is shrieking and making a hell of a noise. Slowly but most certainly, we begin to wake from our slumber, our skin begin to feel the sting and the discomfort of the heat ooze the sweat out of our pores so we too start to join in the ruckus. Hopefully it is not too late for us to get out of this boiling water that would have killed us, or for us to make enough commotion so that someone hears and turns down the heat!

Well, the latest rant from Messy inspired my recall a not-too-dissimilar recent experience, although not along the same lines as Messy’s. In my case, the senior pastor I encounter doesn’t hide behind the CEO’s trappings, although he is still entrapped by similar malaise - the busy-ness of managing a large church and the success of ministry taking time away from people & relationship. In my case, I don’t have much to complain much about my pastor, but I have to blog about this regarding my own journey as this is in a way part of my own therapy. Okay, enough philosophizing already, let me relate my experience, which must be related in the context of a couple of past experiences. Here goes:

My wife and I have had a couple of traumatic, soul-wrenching type experiences involving a couple of our children. Both of them involved people with whom we have entrusted our children, and both times our trust had been violated, and our children had suffered, bringing us much grief and angst. Both times, my impulse was to sue, or to seek reparations of some form. Both times, we decided to do the “Christian” thing and be gracious and not take any action. Yet, both times we did not know how to grieve. Christian friends did not help either. Instead of rallying around us, we have friends who questioned our actions, intentions and choices, even our fitness as parents. We were devastated, alone, anguished, pained, and not knowing where to turn. In those days, we were attending what would be considered very much a “fundamentalist” church even though there were signs of progressiveness in it. However, when it comes to counseling, it was considered a “no-no” for Christians as that would be relying on man-centered psychological theory. We are to have faith and trust in God to solve all our problems. And if we continue to have problems, then the problem is with our faith or lack thereof. So, there we were left to cope with our struggles, and even though we tried, through much prayer, many spiritual songs and psalms later, we were still left with a huge emotional scar that even time failed to heal properly.

Recently we encountered another situation. The church where we are attending hired a new junior high pastor. During the three months that he was at the church, he was well loved by many, including our son. After three months, there was a sudden change. The pastor sent out a letter saying that because of personal reasons he has had to to take up counseling and “personal mentoring” and that he had to leave the ministry. Nothing more was said. The church did not make any formal announcements. No one talked about it. In fact, because my wife and I worked closely with him and because he is closely connected to our child, we organized a farewell party for him during the last Sunday of his tenure. We begin to realize that something was amiss when most of the parents just failed to show up for the party.

Alarm bells started to ring in our minds. We were in a daze. Did they all know something we don’t know? My wife says this reminded her so much of our previous experiences, as we had initially supported the people who were accused of abusing the children under their care. These were not just carers of our children but also our friends. Sure we would support them. But, then the Department of Social Services contacted us and informed us that they have evidence that our own child was also involved. That sent us reeling. How could we have been so careless? So blind? How could we have been so trusting and not acted to protect our child? We cried, we had sleepless nights, in fact, we nearly lost it all and went separate ways ourselves. Is this going to happen all over again? This time, though, we have a counselor. She advised us to confront the problem head on and seek out the senior pastor to talk to him and ask what the exact problem is this time. Our junior higher had spent extended time with the youth pastor. Did he violate our trust and were there any abuse? We need to know. We had not been good at confronting those who had harmed our children before. We had trusted people and they had taken advantage of this trust, and we had been helpless before. Now we need to act on this. So the counselor asked me to call the Senior Pastor to meet with him and talk about this.

I called the church office, and left a message for the Pastor. Later that day, I got a call back from his PA. What is this about? Can someone else help you? A day or two later, the pastor himself e-mailed me. He was going to be busy for the next three weeks. Do I have a cell phone? Can he call me on the cell? No, I said. I don’t have a cell. It is too personal a problem to discuss over the phone, when can we meet? Unfortunately I did not get a reply after that. He was indeed busy. Then I sank into my depression (not only due to this problem, but due to my continued battle with this disease) and I failed to call the pastor. One month drag on to the next. Summer came and everyone is on vacation. The issue is still not resolved. That has been almost four or five months ago now. Still no one had spoken about the pastor’s resignation. We are still in the dark. In the meantime, I have been observing my child. Trying to see if there are signs of abuse. Is there inappropriate anger? Withdrawal? Hurt? I am not sure, he is a growing adolescent, soon to be teenager. The hormones are swirling and his moods do swing back and forth. Should I still meet with the pastor? The counselor think for my own mental health, and for my own facing with my own demons, I should still do it. Will my pastor be still too busy for me? Should I call him? What if it was nothing as serious as we are imagining? Maybe I am just extrapolating from my own previous experiences. What should I do? I am still conflicted. I really don’t know what to do.

Just turned on the “link field” that has stumped me for a little while. Tell me what you think - do you like it (that’s the feature that allows you to click on the title of the post as a link. Not sure what difference it is with the “permalink” at the bottom of the post. Maybe someone can enlighten me). Also I added Haloscan to my blog yesterday and learned what a “Trackback” is. Will go back and edit some of my posts so that I can add the Trackback to other articles. Blogging is so cool! Also learned something that is not-so-cool though. When I installed HaloScan to my blog, I destroyed all the comments that was left on the system! I wonder if there is a way to get them back? Can someone tell me?? If you read this, and you had a comment removed from the system, I truly am sorry. If you wish, please re-send your comment. As you can see, I am still a novice in this type of things. But I am enjoying it! It is good therapy!

Several years ago. I was having breakfast before work with my colleagues and our sales manager. We were chatting away, bonding with each other. After breakfast, as we were walking back to our office, my manager stopped me and said, “I was interested listening to you talk about your church activities… don’t tell me you are one of those fundamentalists who believe in the existence of a heaven up there and a hell down there…” he smirked… I stopped to think for a moment, then looked him in the eye, and then said, attemtping to do so with a twinkle of an eye (how exactly do you try that?), “I cannot say for sure whether one is up there and the other is down there. For all we know, there might be a metaphysical heaven and a metaphysical hell that is beyond space and time, yet I beleive that both are nonetheless both as real as you and I are standing here.” His smirk disappeared from his face. He looked a away and thoughfully muttered, “Hmm… interesting, never thought of it that way before. Perhaps you do have a point…”

The answer I gave him still causes me to wonder about the reality and mystery of heaven and hell and how we can share this as a life changing truth in our lives today, so that our friends and children understand the importance of the reality of life as God intends for us to live. In a society where people often openly deny the existence of God, or at least claim ignorance about the question, they sure openly declare their beliefs or hopes that their loved ones are in heaven. Yet, they would deny the possibility of a hell. How important is the concept of heaven and hell to post-moderns? I remember many years ago, one of my Chrsitian friends told me that he was “frightened” into the flock by the fire-and-brimstone messages he heard earlier in life. Is the message of heaven and hell still relevant in this post-modern, post-foundationalist, post-authoritarian age of skepticism and pragmatism? If so, what is the nature of this message? Perhaps the important thing is not so much that there are identifiable places, or even that that is the ultimate destination for everyone that should be the emphasis, but what it means for us here on earth, living the here and now and how that should impact our lives now. If that is the case, then how exactly should the message be framed?

Today is my daugther’s fifteenth. I wrote her a blessing. I will lay hands on her and read the blessing out to her tonight during dinner. It goes like this:

A Blessing for My Daughter _______

As you enter your fifteenth year, my dearest daughter _______, I want to bless you with God’s richest blessings for a year of adventure, flourishing and celebration. I pray that you will sense the guidance of the Holy Spirit as you walk with Him, and allow Him to show you who you are and the blessings God has prepared for you in Christ Jesus, as He promised in Psalm 89:15: “Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O LORD.�

_______, God has given you many qualities of a special young lady. You have a big compassionate heart, you are conscientious and your creative spirit permeates everything about you.Your family has enjoyed your sense of humor, your energetic, caring and adventurous spirit. As you grow and develop into the beautiful young woman that you will become, I pray that you will continue to sense the guiding hand of your God and that you will draw from the wealth of gifts and resources that you have in your Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that you will discover ways to bless others with the special talents and gifts that God has endowed you.

May your caring nature and love bless all those whose lives you touch, may your diligence be rewarded many times over and may your creativity expand the imaginations of all those whose lives you impact. I pray that this year will be a year of tremendous blessing and that you will see how special you are in the eyes of Your Father God.

- From Dad,

Sept. 18, 2004

I printed it on parchment paper and will hand the blessing to her in a scroll. I started this tradition when my oldest celebrated her twentieth a few months ago. I believe it is a biblical practice that allows the head of the family to share his (or in the case of single parent families, her) vision upon his/her child to live the life that God has prepared for that child.

Let me know what you think.