My mom used to say that I was a very good reader of her face. When I was younger, apparently, I only needed one look at her face to realize whether or not she approved of my behavior at the time, or whether it was safe for me to do whatever I had in mind to do. This was especially so when we were in public, and I needed to know whether it was ok for me to accept any thing that was then being offered to me by the adults. Apparently, I was able to read her face and get the message from her whether I was supposed to say “Yes” or “No” to the offer. I was also able to change my behavior according to how her face looked to me. If I was misbehaving, I needn’t be told, apparently. Her look of disapproval was enough to make me chnage my behavior. I don’t know how true that is, but that was what Mom said I was when I was younger. Perhaps, that explains why I have so much work to do with my psychoanalyst, but that is another story. What I wanted to share today is this ability to read faces. I was reminding of it again by a couple of incidents this morning at home.

I was in the kitchen helping my wife prepare a dish for dinner tonight. We are going to have some friends over and my wife has chosen to prepare a couple of kampung favorites - dishes from home (which for us could have several meanings, but this time, it means from the land of our birth. The two dishes are beef rendang, beef stew with thick coconut curry sauce (what we call “dry curry” but no, it is not dry at all, but delicious is what it is!) and nasi lemak (which our Hong Kong friends sometimes transliterate it to mean something quite nasty in Cantonese - is you are a Cantonese speaker you might be able to decipher that one, but I won’t let on here what it is…). It is a delicious rice that has been boiled in a coconut base, with fried dried fish cooked in a rich chilly sauce with lots of onions and tomatoes and dried shrimp, served with cut fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and boiled eggs. Yummilicious!

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In corporate America today, servant leadership is tauted as the key to revolutionizing the way American corporations manage their people. Specifically, servant leadership is taught as the way the new manager needs to learn to relate to their reports. No longer are they to structure the organization heirarchically in the traditional manner, but they are encouraged to collaborate, to involve, to engage, and to serve their consituencies, their stakeholders. This new way of relating to each other in the corporation will ensure that everyone buys into the corporate vision, and that the corporation will be faster able to achieve its goals.

Several times in the gospels, Jesus also admonished His followers that those who would lead are to be the servants of all. Often I hear that this means that a leader must first be the servant. One is first a servant, says one consultant, and then he or she is chosen to lead. Somehow, I think that is not exactly what the Master Servant said. Nor is it what Robert K. Greenleaf, the father of the contemporary Servant Leadership movement had in mind when he penned the words of the seminal article, “The Servant as Leader.”

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The headline is unmistakable: “Government and Church reject couple’s marriage deemed as unlawful and unholy.” For it was the marriage between a man who changed his gender three years ago to a woman and another man. The government does not approve of the change of gender, apparently, and the Church too rejected the medical procedure as “unbiblical”.

However, according to the story, the ceremony was celebrated by no less than three pastors, and while the “Church” that rejected the marriage belonged to a particular group of churches, another representative from another consortium that could also be identified as “the Church” accepts it, or at least, encourages non-discrimination “against a person if he or she has proof of being born with imbalance hormones; was undergoing counselling; that his or her parents do not object to the sex change; and the operation was carried out in a proper medical institution.”

Interestingly, the spokesperson from the Church that condemns their union said that “It’s clearly stated in the Bible. There is no such thing as creation of half-half. Therefore, biologically and genetically, there is only male and female.”

More, related stories:

“I’m Happy With What I’m Doing”, Says Jessie Chung
Sex change won’t validate same gender marriage: Tan
Emotional ‘I do’ at wedding
Million ringgit fairy-tale wedding the talk of the town

As you read the various accounts of this story, I wonder if you see a marked difference between this story and the usual stories related to same-gender marriage.

Let’s talk about it.

Stephen Covey wrote in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People something to the effect that it is not important if, as a leader, you make mistakes. People can, and do, forgive mistakes. What is more critical, what people find unforgiveable, is the reluctance to admit that you were wrong. Such reluctance reflect a duplicity and an acute lack of courage and transparency that betray the toxic leader.

Earlier in my brief analysis of Kings Saul and David of the Old Testament, in trying to understand leadership principles from their lives, I suggested that this quality-the willingness to admit your wrongs-was key to authentic leadership. So, when John Edwards wrote this piece in the Washington Post, was he practising good, principled, servant leadership? Or was he displaying characteristics of toxicity? What do you think?

A while back I wrote a couple of posts about Buddhism and Christianity, and generally about our missional activities being less antagonistic towards “non-Christian” religions, to accentuate the similarities, and to point people to follow Christ without first necessarily undergoing a set of creedal transformations.

Recently, a couple of new readers found these posts and started conversing with one another a bout them, so I thought I’d bring them up here in case anyone else would like to chime in. First, “k.k.” has this to say in response to my “How can a Buddhist be Christian” post:

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Apparently, some Australian politicians are pushing for the National Anthem to include a reference to “God” to reflect the “nation’s Chrisian values.” While there are some support from politicians who are Christians, some other, even prominent, Christian politicians do not support the move.

Perhaps those who are pushing to include a reference to “God” in the National Anthem will make Australia a more “Christian” nation than it currently is. Those who disagree think that the shapers of the Australian constitution wisely excluded the establishment of religion in Australia, and that such wisdom should prevail now. Probably they think that it is more important for politicians to spend their time and energy on the influencing and helping to shape policies and actions that more reflect Christian values.

There is some parallel in this country, for instance, in the push for the posting of the ten commandments on some public buildings, about the inclusion (or exclusion, as the case may be) of “under God” in the oath of allegiance. The difference is that in this country those symbolisms are already entrenched in the public spaces and there are moves by those who object to these to remove them. Do you think Christians ought to spend their time, energy and resources to ensure that national or public images and symbolisms reflect Christian values? Or do you think it is better to spend it where it is most needed to resource the underresourced, to promote justice and to build bridges to the unreconciled? What ought Chrisitans to do in the public sphere?

Quite a while ago, I complained about spam. Since then I have been looking for a solution. Wordpress has many different default ways to deal with spam, but it still necessited constant monitoring, and quite a few spam still gets through the crack.

So much so, that I still have to delete about 10 or so spam that goes through a week. Finally, I resorted to switching off allowing comments and pings on some posts that seem to attract the most spam. That is not desirable, as I would rather make it easier, not harder, for my readers to comment on my posts. Finally, I found Akismet, a plugin that not only traps 99% of spam but is intelligent enough to learn. I installed it last weekend, and held my breath. It seemed to work quite well, and after the first couple of days, I got brave enough to turn on comments and pings on those posts that were most affected previously.

It has been a week now, and it is still working. I have not had a spam slip through. Akismet reported that it had trapped 24 since it was installed. So, I am hopeful. If you run Wordpress, you will need to have an account on wp.com to get an API key (installing Flock will also do the trick) in order to activate Akismet. It is well worth the effort. I highly recommend that you get it.

When my wife and I married, as I sometimes tell friends, it was the marriage of Miss Always Right with Mr Never Wrong. As it turned out, the early years of our marriage were filled with lots of battles and the outcome of those clashes often hurt. Both parties. It was never a good idea to fight for your right when the one you are fighting with is the one you love. For someone is bound to get hurt as a result.

In recent years I have mellowed quite a bit, but also I have grown to appreciate that life is about relationships. I think that is also a Biblical imperative. Rather than seek to be right, I have learned that it is more important to seek right relationships.

A case in point is something that happened at work recently. My colleague maintained that a mistake has been made in a calculation of costs in a sale I recently made. It was a really busy day, and I was trying to concentrate on the next sale that i have to make. However, my colleague was adamant that I help him to sort out the error (the implication being: if you fouled up, dude, you better clean it up). I looked at the figures and it was actually correct, but I wasn’t able to convince my colleague. For one thing, I saw his working and I did not understand the way he had done the calculation, so I tried to explain it to him using my way of calculation which worked out the figures correctly. However, he could not understand my way of calculation.

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The blogger over at Eternal Revolution, Chad Hamilton, is has a lot of stamina or perhaps he is suffering from insomnia. In any case, he has very ably handled two Carnivals back-to-back this week. First it was the God or Not carnival of posts culled from both sides of the theistic belief fence and then it is the Christian Carnival.

My entry for the Christian Carnival this week is More on Old and New Testament Moralities. I missed posting about last week’s Christian Carnival which was held at the Wittenberg Gate, to which I managed to submit a late entry. Lots of good blog reading to be had. Enjoy!

Recently while thinking through the narrative of Israel and the selection of Saul as king, I highlighted the Scriptural account indicated that God considered what Israel did amounted to treason of the ultimate kind. I suggested that this is an indication that God’s original plan was for Israel to be a theocracy, but in rejecting God, Israel frustrated God’s original plan by preferring a human monarch; yet God’s ultimate purposes were fulfilled in spite of Israel’s waywardness and rebellion. This I said underscored the perseverance of God’s grace and mercy and His sovereignty in human history. In spite of allowing us our freedom of choice, God’s ultimate purposes will be fulfilled because His Holy Spirit constantly works to cajole, to woo, to convict and to inspire the spirits within His creatures. And, in the end, His will will be accomplished but He chooses to work through His people who are willing.

One of my commenters (Jeremy Peirce) pointed out correctly that this was prefigured in Deuteronomy, so on that basis, he didn’t think my characterizing it as Israel thwarting God’s original plan was completely accurate. In other words, it could well be within God’s plan for Israel to reject God, and for God to select Saul as king, for Saul to fail and then for God to raise up David as a replacement. Actually, whether or not that was God’s original plan, I think the more important point is that even though Israel rejected God by wanting to have a human king, God’s mercy, grace and longsuffering shone through in this account of Him working with Israel in spite of the fact that what they wanted was contrary to what He thought was best for them. God used their folly to glorify Himself and fulfill His purposes for their lives through their story.

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The latest edition of the God or Not carnival is presented by Eternal Revolution on the topic “Proof”. This is a unique carnival of blogposts from both sides of the theistic belief fence, fostering dialog on various topics. In the post that I submitted to the carnival, I question whether the demand for proofs as evidence for belief is really necessary. There are quite a collection of posts from both sides. The inaugural God or Not carnival was held on the topic of sin at the Skeptic Rant.

According to Gone to the Dogs website, this is the little doggie in me (to watch, click the Start button - just pretend that it is a Green button, ok?).

Find your little doggie inside here.