Emptiness

The streets now feel hollow and empty without the policemen that have been infesting town, taking up valuable oxygen.

Beware, one and all. The streets in town are no longer safe.

Desdichado

Had lunch with Weilun today, and we talked abt finding acceptance in church.

I think its sad that very often church is the one place where christians find it the hardest to find acceptance. Being held up to a higher standard is in its own right something that isn't wrong - but this "yoke of Christ" has unfortunately gone from easy to being incredibly impossible. I think it was Gordon MacDonald who once said "The church is the only army who shoots its wounded."

He would know.

Having been at the wrong end of an adultrous affair, I shudder to imagine the hurt he felt in return, for the hurt that he caused.

I guess it would be overly harsh to totally put the blame on the church. After all, if your'e guilty of adultery, you'd better be prepared to face the music. Its just that very often the church isn't able to differentiate between discipline and condemnation. More often than not, the discipline that the church administers alienates rather than restores. The one put on the rack is the one who feels like he's less welcome than someone who isn't a brother in Christ. Somewhere along the way, we have lost the ability to love the person who sinned... our acceptance of that person becomes conditional, our fellowship suddenly becomes very awkward, and we seem to suddenly feel justified to impose our standards on that person - adding to the weight he already carries.

I guess its kind of sad when I think abt how many pple leave church each yr after being 'disciplined'.... and how the guilty remain so self-righteously oblivious to it. I know I've been guilty of it before, so I'm in no position to stand on a pedestal and cast the first stone. But I daresay at least I've leant a little more abt how much mercy we all seem to lack, in light of the mercy we all receive from God.

I guess we all need to revisit the notion that he who is forgiven little forgives little... if God can make me feel so forgiven, why is it that when I think I'm being forgiving towards someone, he still continues to feel the weight of my judgment upon him? Why does my forgiveness continue to ring of something that's conditional? Why is it that everytime I think abt it, I always think of what's wrong with him instead of the good that he has in him? Why is it that he feels more bound by the Law in how I treat him, as opposed to having found forgiveness and freedom in Christ?

Mm... ah well.

I wonder how many who left church have done so because of my inability to love...

Losing The Plot

Today I heard 飞越迷雾 being played on the radio. No, not the one written by Weilun, but the one by Emil Chau.

A quick calculation tells me that its about ten years now, since my life was changed so much by that camp we held in ACS. From the spiritual encounters I had there, to the kind of friendships and fellowship that were made there… Back then I got to see how God works when a community is able to be of one heart and in once voice, working together to serve one God… I started to think back to all the people who had worked together in that camp, people that I got to know throughout the six months’ of prep that led up to the event itself… Its hard to imagine just how much has changed since then…

10 yrs on, so many of us have gone our own separate ways. Some went their own ways to pursue their studies and chase after their dreams. Others sought a church that better suited them. Some left, burnt out by church and friends alike. Others just split fellowship due to differences in ideals, unable to accept the differences in each other. I remember thinking to myself that such a community held together by a common love and pursuit of God MUST be one that could last a lifetime. Of course, I’d imagine that there would be some who moved on as time went by, that some of the bonds would lose the intensity it had… but never would I have imagined that in a span of less than 10 yrs, the sort of fellowship and bond that we had enjoyed back then should have come to such a state.

I can’t help but note that the fellowship was not merely diluted over time as other ministries pulled each other away… nor was it simply a case of people naturally moving on in life. So many of the fellowships were forcefully broken, and the friendships either irrevocably broken or else have been reduced and diminished to a kind of wariness and distance between each other that totally cheapened the kind of bond they used to have.

It made me wonder…. Even if every one of us had been guilty of adultery, murder or blasphemy, would it have warranted the kind of state our fellowship with each other has degenerated into? Because whatever the reason might have been for the estrangement or alienation, the big picture of how little acceptance we ultimately have for each other is more than just a little frightening. I think of the kind of fervor we had back then in serving God together… how we’d be watching each other’s backs and carrying each others’ loads…. And I look at how we now subtly hint at each other not doing enough while stabbing them in the back… and I see for myself that as much as fellowship can be such a beautiful thing, a broken fellowship can be so much uglier.

Its such an ugly thing that you’d have thought all of us supposedly mature Christians would have been aware of how blatantly wrong it is… but no… we all somehow manage to justify our broken community using scripture… giving reason for why we choose to alienate ourselves from each other. We argue over a life that fails to meet the standards we set down for each other (in the name of Christ, of course), as if anyone could ever meet them to begin with. We fight over church and ministry strategies and break bonds of partnership we had with each other, as if those strategies bear consequences that are greater than stumbling the brother or sister we so callously discarded.

It always starts out so small… a discontentment with someone that we chose to paper over… the cracks underneath continue to grow, and in time a chasm has sprung up in the friendship. At that point it time, it take so little… anything, in fact… to tear away the paper and expose the gulf that now divides the two brothers and sisters. We then start to blame each other for the distance that has been allowed to grow and fester.

你迷了路觉得人心不古
山高水低看不见来时路
你迷了路爱恨悠悠忽忽
峰回路转逾走不出白云深处

In a different context, I suddenly see what an apt song we chose to be our theme song. Our church seems to have been engulfed in the mist… and we all seem to have lost our way. What’s the point of a booming and successful ministry if I look back and all I can see is a trail of destruction and ruin? At what price would I have then built my success on? Aren’t we all one family?

飞越迷雾把生命看清楚
明明白白掌握你的路
经过跋涉之后你总能够
拨云见日重回到最初

This song was played on the radio as I was on the company bus that ferries us from the MRT to the building… and as these thoughts and memories came to my mind, I was surprised to find myself tearing. I mourned the fact that I am unable to celebrate the euphoria and the experience of that camp, in light of how it proved to be such a transient accomplishment. The scars of broken relationships and shattered fellowship is a legacy that continues to this day, and I guess no one can say he or she hasn’t been guilty of it as well. And I guess until we can fly out of this red mist, all the talk of building a ministry and building a community will always be met by me with a tinge of regret and cynicism… after all, if something that great can be all but swept away to naught in the space of less than a decade, what chance do we now have? Until we somehow rebuild the ruins, what’s the point of trying to build new things from amongst the debris?

I guess part of me really wishes for what the song says… that in light of so much that has gone wrong, we may one day be able to “经过跋涉之后你总能够拨云见日重回到最初”.

Goodbye Agassi...

Agassi lost.

The fans did all they could to will Agassi to one more win, rising with arms aloft to celebrate when he'd break serve or fight off a break point. They applauded after Benjamin Becker's faults, a tennis faux pas. They broke into clap-clap-clap choruses of "Let's go, Andre!" at changeovers.

"It felt amazing. Nothing I've ever experienced before. I was overwhelmed with how they embraced me at the end," Agassi said. "They saw me through my career. They've seen me through this, as well."

But Agassi couldn't conjure up any more magic in his 21st consecutive Open, an event he won in 1994 and 1999. His back -- and Becker -- wouldn't let him. Over and over, Agassi would pull up short, watching a ball fly by instead of chasing it. He winced after serves, clutched his lower back after stretching to reach for shots.

"I wanted to run on the court and pull him off," said Agassi's trainer, Gil Reyes, "because it shouldn't hurt -- it shouldn't hurt that bad."

"The scoreboard said I lost today, but what the scoreboard doesn't say is what it is I've found," Agassi told the crowd, tears streaming down his cheeks, his voice cracking with emotion. "Over the last 21 years, I've found loyalty. You have pulled for me on the court and also in life. I have found inspiration. You have willed me to succeed sometimes even in my lowest moments."

He could have been referring to his losses in his first three major finals, two at the French Open and one at the U.S. Open, setbacks that made him wonder if he'd ever reach the very top. Or, more likely, when, having won Wimbledon and reached No. 1, he sank to 141st in the rankings and resorted to playing in tennis' minor leagues in 1997. Or, most recently, when his back hurt so badly after the first two rounds of this U.S. Open, the tournament he announced this summer would be his last.

That's why, for Agassi himself and the 20,000 or so fans who honored him with a raucous, four-minute standing ovation in Arthur Ashe Stadium after the match, it truly did not matter all that much what Sunday's outcome was. This day and this tournament were all about saying goodbye to an eight-time Grand Slam champion who grew up in front of the world, from cocky kid with the shoulder-length hair and denim shorts to the thoughtful guy with the shaved pate and proper tennis whites.

He leaves the game as an elder statesman, not merely because he was the oldest man in the field, and not merely because of his wins on the court, but also because of his demeanor and extensive charity work off it. Through all the in-the-public-eye parts of his personal life (Barbra Streisand; Brooke Shields; Graf) and ups and downs of his professional life, he's been one of tennis' most dynamic and popular players.

He leaves with 60 singles titles, including a career Grand Slam, one of only five men to have won each of the sport's premier events -- something his great rival, Pete Sampras, never did, Roger Federer hasn't managed, and players such as John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors didn't accomplish, either.

He gets praise, too, from his peers as an off-the-court role model. Federer, for one, talks about hurrying to start his own charitable foundation after learning about Agassi's efforts to raise tens of millions of dollars for at-risk youths in his hometown of Las Vegas.
In return, tennis has given Agassi much, too: money, fame, influence.

With fans surrounding his car -- several yelling, "Thank you, Andre!" -- he climbed into the back, joining his brother, trainer and coach. As they pulled away, Agassi turned to wave goodbye, to his tournament, to his fans, to his career.

Please Do Not Format Me

I’ve been thinking abt the way everyone sees human relationships… and how very often we all try to find a comfort zone to operate under. I was speaking to a friend recently, and I told him that he needs to learn to move out of his paradigm where he has a template in his mind of the way things ought to be in the way pple relate to each other… and he should stop being uncomfortable when he sees someone whose behaviour violates the template that he cherishes.

For example… many of us are so quick to take issues with a Christian whom they perceive to be unequally yoked. Reactions vary from a word of caution to outright chastisement. Even worse are those who says “Don’t worry, I’m still your friend and I’ll be here for you”, yet spend more time than not reminding his friend that he is wrong and living in sin.

Some will know I’m referring to, when I said that I know someone whom many perceived to be in an unequally yoked relationship. Many were the church leaders who would say to him that “What you’re doing is wrong. You’ve got to stop. But I want you to know that no matter what you do, I’ll still be here for you.” After saying that to ease their own conscience, they proceed to carry on making him feel like the most lonely guy in the world, since they would always qualify their support for him with the repeated reminder that they think he was wrong. They would consider removing him from positions of leadership, behave condescendingly towards him, yet all the while maintaining the form of showing support, sans the substance of it.

And I really didn’t get it. As much as you can’t qualify an apology without making it lose its sincerity, neither can you claim to be there for a person when you’re more interested in getting the point across that he’s doing something wrong.

I could name so many cases of people who have been badly burnt by, ironically, the church. Its funny that of all places, the church is the least willing to accept a fellow sinner… instead, each and every one of us is so eager to force each other into the template of “how things ought to be”… and are unable to see that we are actually more interested in eradicating that which makes us uncomfortable, since it jeopardizes our paradigm of what’s right and wrong.

So instead of being more interested in the person, we end up being more fixated by the law…

I wonder at those who in the aftermath of what happens, can sit down to analyze why there are some who leave church after receiving what is perceived to be Godly advice. They then self-righteously conclude that the person must have been really rebellious against God, and that they’ve done all they could to play the role of good and Godly counsel. (Think Job.)

In the meantime they forgot that if their act causes someone to stumble, then they have in effect tied a stone around their own necks, and thrown themselves into the sea.

People – this is a church. It is made up of people, not laws. Even Jesus Himself did not cast a single stone at the adulterous woman, so who are we to go around casting the first stones at each other?

In short – the principle to remember, everyone: Always always always always always…. Be quick to build up, and be slow to tear down. And I don’t mean by mere words, because talk is very very cheap. As difficult (as we who have engaged in discipleship before will all know) as it is to build up a life, the harder it is to learn to really be there for someone, where you actions mirror your words. So if you’re going to claim to be around for someone, then you need to review your actions to see if you’ve really done that, or merely self-righteously satisfied yourself that you’ve done what’s right.

And worse still…. If you wanna tear down someone and tell him what he’s doing is wrong, make sure the way you tell him that is not wrong yourself… lest you yourself be doubly judged.

And yes, this applies above all to myself. The next time I tell any of you that I have ‘concerns’ abt your behaviour, pls remind me of this post.

Pls do.