WHO THE FUCK READS BLOGS?????

 

Just realised the number of views on my page.

Absolutely bewildered by who out there still gets redirected to blogs. Surely no advertisers would pay for it. 

After all, WHO THE HELL STILL READS BLOGS???

The Father's Heart/Compassion

 

Just finished watching “My Demon” not too long ago. Its common now for shows to poke fun at religion while at the same time subtly raising real questions that people struggle with about faith. And sure enough, one line in the show stuck with me. In the show, God chose to manifest on earth in the form of a female hobo. She would have conversations with the demon. One of the things she said (paraphrased) was that “I can’t have the same emotions and empathy as humans. Otherwise, I would go mad.”

That line immediately (and also predictably) caught my attention, as my struggle with faith has so much to do with the relevance and immediacy of God in my life. I’ve always been taught that He knows my struggles, He grieves with me in my pain and celebrates with me in my victories. He’s always been portrayed as someone with an overwhelming ability to know how I feel. Yet I find myself wondering if its an empathetic knowledge, or is it merely a clinical omniscience of how I feel.

I see the kind of pain this world is in. The war torn and poverty stricken. Those who lost their loved ones to disease and illness. The injustice and imbalance of power and money in the world. The futility of all our struggles, and even our accomplishments. And ever since I was a kid, I had the same thought as so many others: “If I had the power to change all this and make it better, I would.” After all, it takes a special kind of hardness of heart to watch a friend’s dying parent struggling so much with pain and suffering as disease wracked his body and take away every last shred of his human dignity. Who could stand by and do nothing when something can be done?

Yet so often, it seems that God does.

Sure, we like to come up with all sorts of rhetoric. We like to say that all the pain is temporary and shall pass, and we shall eventually bask in the bliss of eternity with God. We even like to preach about how pain brings us closer to God and makes us stronger. We come up with purposes and meaning for all the pain and suffering in the world. We also blame it on the sinfulness and corruption of humanity, and absolve God of any blame on what we see.

NONE OF THAT IS WRONG.

I understand. And I can see how that works.

But it doesn’t answer the question of “who could stand by and do nothing when something can be done?” When all the Jews were crying out as they were gassed to death in the concentration camps, what kind of being could blithely choose to not intervene when its in His power to stop such a terrible thing from happening? All the rhetoric I’ve read answer some questions, but it also leaves many more questions begging to be answered.

And church has been very good at directing you to only ask question where they’ve carefully crafted answers for. For any question outside the box, we turn to the get-out-of-jail card: “His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.”

In other words, shut up because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Just accept that He’s way smarter than you, and He knows what He’s doing. Since He died for you, you don’t get to question how much He loves you. So just keep His sacrifice for you firmly in mind, and all the other questions you have will fade into the pale.

Lately I have found myself asking how I should go about understanding the empathy of God. We are told He knows our pain. The evergreen Footprints reminds us that he carried us in my pain and our struggles. Yet when I apply my own limited human understanding to what that empathy means, I find myself circling back to the question of “who could stand by and do nothing when something can be done?”

And that’s why the line in My Demon struck such a deep chord in me. Because it resonated with the question I’ve been asking. Is that really how it works? God’s empathy is not how I have always understood it to be? He needs to wall off that horror which drives the impulse to do something when unspeakable atrocities are being committed. He needs to not feel that overwhelming compassion to take pity when He sees the disease ravaged crying out to Him for healing. He chooses to see eternity as the end game, and therefore what happens to us now is merely part of the journey. Just go through the pain as a rite of passage and you’ll eventually come out to paradise on the other side.

That’s a really terrifying image of the God that I worshipped. Even parents on earth have a threshold when it comes to their children. We know they need to go through hardship, and we know they need to learn some things the hard way. But we don’t want it to cost them literally their life, or their limbs. We don’t want them to be driven mentally unwell by it. So parents will intervene when they see that its taking a severe toll on the children, so that they can live to fight another day as a whole and well being.

But when God acts the way He does, the result sometimes is the loss of faith. Eternal separation from God. It’s a permanent loss. Yet He does not deem that too high a price to pay. Instead, we are taught it’s a system He uses to sieve out those who are do not belong to Him. (Of course, I would be opening a whole new can of worms and also digressing too much if I go into the question of what constitutes as “someone who belongs to Him.” So I shall not go there.) So when people ask “where is God in the midst of all the madness in the world today?”, it still remains one of the hardest question to answer. Of course, its easy to sit in one’s ivory tower and discourse on the topic. But when you are staring at a suffering person in the face, the question becomes impossible to answer. After all, if you can still throw the theological discourse at such a person’s face, that’s when you will probably lose that person for Christ forever.

So this perhaps, is what I shall be mulling over for this year in 2024. What is the compassion of God, and how does it work in the immediacy of this broken and suffering world?

Sheepish Musings

 

So its once again Missions Month in CEFC, and as I listen to the pastor droning on and on about reaching the world for Christ, I am again drawn (as I am prone to do), to thinking abt myself. Hehz…

I remember thinking about the parable of the lost sheep, and how Jesus said that all the heavens rejoice when that one lost sheep is found. And while many people interpret that “lost sheep” to mean those who are unsaved, I wonder why there aren’t any Missions Week or Missions Month that focuses instead on those who have backslided and left church. Could it be that its much easier to focus on newcomers than to try to reach out to ex church members? Maybe because doing so would require taking a good hard look internally at where the church could possibly have gone wrong and driven members away?

I think back to the 30 years that I spent in church, and I think more than 50% of the people I knew had left church. I’m not sure if that’s a typical statistic, but at least I can say that’s true for myself. From people I see attending church, to those who was in fellowship and then in cell group, until those whom we had allegedly “won for Christ” through various Evangelistic programs that we had done… more than half had left church. Admittedly some moved on to other churches, but so many just totally decided not to go to church anymore. When you include the numbers who still attend church but obviously are just nothing more than filling seats, and you wonder what exactly are we inviting people to, when we invite people to church.

Many may think I’m very cynical. But my recent housewarming experiences tell me that its instinctive to clean up your house before inviting people over. Yet when it comes to church, we seem totally eager to just ask people to come and expect them to be blind to the cracks in the church social group, and the accumulated dirt that’s bulging from under the carpets.  And then instead of taking good hard looks at where we went wrong, we sigh and shake our fingers at those who left, labelling them as backsliders and worldly.

A good analogy of this behaviour would be like a person who bought a tool and never really learned how to use it. So he damaged the tool, and proceeded to label it as a poorly constructed tool. He then goes out to look for a new tool, and the cycle repeats itself again and again. Maybe, instead of repeatedly buying new tools, the person should learn how to use the tool properly first. Or perhaps to take the analogy even further, to learn how to repair the broken tool.

I also remember Jesus saying that if you cause a brother to stumble, its better to take a large stone, tie it around your neck, then go drown yourself. I wonder how many people are stumbled every time the church runs Missions Month. Every time we invite someone into the church community only to burn them after that, we might lose the person forever. And instead of trying to seek the lost sheep back, we tell ourselves we can always just get another sheep to bring back into the fold. And then we convince ourselves that we have “found back the lost sheep” and all the heavens is rejoicing. How blind can we be to what the Father’s heart truly is!

Maaaaaaaany years ago, CEFC had a reputation as a church where wounded church members could go to and find healing and restoration. It was a common testament among the new members in the church that they had been badly burnt in their church, but in CEFC they found genuine fellowship and community which restored them. Back then, CEFC was in the business of finding back the lost sheep. I wonder how true that still is today. Is CEFC still a place where wounded Christian solders can find healing and restoration? Are they still in the business of finding back lost sheep? Or have they also now transited into the business of just finding another sheep?

The Final Breakup

Wow! Its been a year since I last blogged! And in that space of time, I’ve finally served my time and am able to move on. And the “moving on” part has really happened at warp speed. All that weight I lost while being incarcerated has pretty much been regained, so I can honestly say that I have managed to recover all that I have lost over the past year.

But what prompted me to again pen my words here has been the shocking saga with regards to Ravi Zacharias. He had one of the deepest impacts on my faith, as he was the one who challenged me to think deeper and more critically about my beliefs. And to learn of his many misdemeanours which dwarfs even mine was at the same time so mind-blowingly shocking and yet at the same time not at all surprising.

This is not an easy piece of writing as I am aware how much it can come across as being self-justification or even self pity. However, I find myself being unable to couch it in a more political form, simply because what I felt towards the issue is so strongly visceral, and not merely an exercise in my thought process.

I felt sick to the stomach.

Both towards Ravi, as well as for the vitriol that inevitably followed. 

I felt sick to the stomach at Ravi’s actions because it gave me a very strong insight into how much my own actions must have betrayed the trust of so many. Having been at the same end of the shock and dismay that many must have felt when they realised what I did, I can finally say that to some extent, I know how they felt. And yet, I also felt a very strong sense of empathy towards both him and his family, myself having also joined the burgeoning cast of Fallen-Christian-Hypocrites/Monsters.

Having once been a worship leader who passionately embraced the words I sang, I found myself for the past few years being absolutely unable to participate in the worship. I was unable to do so because I was unable to resolve the dissonance of hearing a congregation so passionately extol grace and forgiveness, and make so little effort at reaching out to the fallen leaders. How many in the congregation would ever again speak kindly of Ravi or recall how he has helped them, I wonder. Or even to make any kind of positive reference to Khong Hee and how his ministry also had many things we all could learn from? How many in my ex-church would ever again speak kindly of me, if I am a name that even gets mentioned? (Perhaps I have already become He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in the circle.)  Its as if everything we’ve ever done was negated because we did something that apparently God expected us to do – fall short.

Again, I feel it bears repeating that the victims of my offences must be excused from this consideration. In fact, I only wish it was possible to cast me forever from their memory, lest it brings them only more pain each time I am recalled.

I find myself musing how the Bible would have turned out if David had lived in this era. After the exposure of his affair with Bathsheba had resulted in him murdering her husband to conceal his own sins, does anyone reckon there would be any future to his leadership? In today’s world, he would have been hauled up before a jury and sentenced for his crimes, forever stripped of his position as a spiritual leader and shamed beyond redemption. Of course, I’m not saying its right he got away with adultery and murder (and maybe even rape). Who’s to say Bathesheba didn’t feel pressured to give in to David as he was the king? Certainly the #metoo movement would have had a field day with him, eager to paint Bathsheba as a victim of David’s predatory instincts.

What would therefore have happened to all the other things David did in his lifetime after his transgressions? I’m sure some would argue that God could easily have raised up another to carry on the work He has planned. And of course that’s true. But perhaps there’s a reason why God didn’t raise up another leader and bring down David?

Bill Hybels was similarly accused of many an indiscretion, and eventually accelerated his retirement. If he had displayed the kind of repentance that David displayed, would a few more chapters in his leadership at Willow Creek have been possible? Or would he more likely have been vilified beyond redemption, condemned to forever be known as a Fallen-Christian-Hypocrite/Monster?

I was very much dismayed that every Christian leader and every article I read on the internet seemed to address how much Ravi’s actions shocked them, left them bitterly disappointed, and then concluded with another caution that it could happen to any of us. None of what they wrote was wrong – but it contained not an iota of forgiveness in their writings. There was talk of judgment before God, there was talk of their disappointment at his duplicity and lack of remorse, and there was a lot of talk about how Christians need to beware how insidious sin is in creeping up into even the best there is out there. But there was not a single kind word of the good he did in the past, other than as a reference to highlight his deceitfulness. There was no encouragement to show concern for his family and commendation on how hard they’re trying to make things right even though it wasn’t a mess they had made. RZIM as an organization is finished despite all the good work everyone else in it had done.

It also seems that many in the Christian circle are fixated with how Ravi seemed to display a total lack of remorse regarding his actions. And of course, everyone therefore feels he does not deserve forgiveness from the community. Instinctively, that feels both natural and right. But if we take a closer look at the gospel, is that what we see? Does the father wait for the prodigal son to deliver the grovelling speech he prepared before welcoming him back to the house? Did God wait for us to repent before He chose to die for us? Yet somehow we have taken it upon ourselves to do better than God, and set a hgher standard before deciding if someone deserves forgiveness.

I find myself asking how Jesus would look down on this spectacle and feel? Would he be satisfied that His church had adequately spoken up for the Truth and defended the church? Or would it pain Him to realise that so many people remain so very eager to cast the first stone?

In the time that I have been in CEFC since my fall, I have had a lot of time to look at the church from the other side. And it has been a sobering experience. I’ve come to realise finally why some call Christians arrogant and out of touch with reality. It wasn’t because I was seeking to find a different social circle to belong in, as I still do not identify myself as a non-believer (tho I have even been told in my face that I am effectively a non-Christian already!). I still very much believe that God is the same God that He is before my fall. I still believe He’s very real, and I believe everything about HIM that I always believed in. I only question if He ever chose me to belong to Him in the first place.

However, I no longer have any faith left in the church. Perhaps, ironically, I am guilty of the same thing that I wrote about here. As much as my actions have grieved the church and caused them to no longer believe anything good about me, the last 4 years have left me bitterly disappointed in the church, and I no longer find myself being able to believe in it anymore. As breakups go, this seems to be as final as it can get.

After Watching Hotel Del Luna

Watching Hotel Del Luna during the Circuit Breaker period is bad. It gives me plenty of time to brood and over-think the themes and the various values that were mentioned in the show.

One of the most significant elements of the show has to do with the Bridge to the Afterlife. In the show, souls begin the painful and long journey across the bridge in order to cross into the afterlife and be reborn. Along the way, they go through the process of forgetting everything about their past life. By the time they reach the end of the bridge, their soul is a clean slate, ready to begin anew.

Naturally, the most painful part of this process is reserved for the ones left behind, knowing someone they love will leave them, and never remember anything about them. We all prefer the concept of our loved ones looking down on us from heaven don’t we? One of the very poignant scenes (for me) featured a man who desperately hoped his dead girlfriend was still somewhere on earth and was accessible via a proxy. It was too painful to know that the parting was final and complete. And yet, it seems that both the Bible and the show share a similar notion that all relationships on earth are rendered meaningless in the eyes of eternity. 

In the Bible, we are told that there are no ties in heaven. No brother or sister, father or mother. No spouse, no children. We are all individual entities whose only communal relationship is that of being the Body of Christ. And that has always sounded perfectly normal back when I was deeply steeped in church teachings and the church community. Yet after watching this show and musing about the questions it stirred inside of me, I am left to wonder why is such a big deal therefore made of the institute of marriage. Unlike our own personal salvation which is eternal, we are told that the relationships we have on earth is a transient one. Once we die, it is rendered meaningless.

Why does that pose a quandary to me? Because the Bible also clearly instructs us not to invest in things that do no last. I believe in spiritual disciplines because my soul is eternal. I believe in serving in church because the whole plan is to eventually be the body of Christ. But if marriage so temporal, then why should I make such a big deal out of it?

Marriage is hard work. Ask any married couple. In fact, ask the alarming high population of divorcees. If I indeed was lucky enough to find my soul mate and invested a lifetime of effort in maintaining my relationship, building up memories of our shared endeavours together and  reaping the sweet benefits of a lifetime nurturing the love between me and my wife, it is indeed cruel beyond all measure to know that the hard work would indeed last merely this lifetime, after which it is rendered meaningless.

In the book of Genesis, God commands us to go forth and multiply. But this would not be possible without the institute of marriage, otherwise we would suffer the faux pas of committing sexual sin. So in fact, it would appear to me that marriage was instituted by God so that we can legitimately procreate in a way that does not offend God. Aside from that, I don’t see anything a marriage offers which a good fellowship in church cannot offer. From a Biblical perspective, of course.

I know 1 Corinthians 13 says that now we see dimly but then we shall see clearly. And that is the best defence I can have for why the Bible espouses marriage as a worthy enterprise despite its transience. Marriage is supposed to be a foreshadow for the true marriage which is the union between Christ and the Church. When that day comes, everything we had in a marriage pales and fades away in comparison to that magnificent union we have in Christ. And so the seeming loss of something as profound as all the significant relationships we built up in life becomes as nothing.

That sounds really grand, but for someone like me who is in the process of being in a marriage, it is downright offensive to be told that marriage serves as a higher form of fellowship, whose unique selling point is pro-creation as well as a legit reason to have sex. I place a very high premium on my marriage because I know I share a life with my wife in a way which no other friendship or any other earthly endeavour (ministry, career, or any other achievement) can ever trump. Next to God, there is nothing more important to me than my wife, and nothing I won’t give up for her. To be told that such a bond is actually extremely transient is not only discouraging, it is outright offensive.

Of course, when I talk about marriage, I extend this to eventually mean the whole family unit. How often do we get all teary eyed at the thought of one day seeing our loved ones again in heaven? And how often do we hear that in church eulogies, with the speaker exhorting that for the Christian with hopes of eternal life, parting is temporal for we shall one day all meet again? The draconic theologian might feel a spiritual compulsion to correct the speaker that such a reunion has been badly misrepresented. For when we meet again, we shall no longer recognize each other at all. We shall only be like Communist sheep, recognising that we all share a common identity of having returned to the Motherland.

If you find that image offensive, trust me. I feel the same way.

As I watched the theme repeated again and again in the show about how passing over to the afterlife means the total wiping of all memories, the most realistic part of the show would be the pain embodied by every one of those left behind. Its painful to know that all the deep and meaningful relationships and memories built up over the precious moments together will be rendered empty all in one fell swoop. If I was lucky enough to meet the love of my life, I want nothing more than to be with that person forever. Even if I don’t believe in reincarnation, I want to know that the person I loved on earth would still be someone special to me in heaven.

I also remember a time in church when “multiplying cell groups” was a very hot idea. Everyone had grand notions about how it allowed the church to grow rapidly, fulfilling the grand design of God. I was one of those who protested, recognizing how it repeatedly dilutes the inter-relational dynamics in the cell group. I felt that the church is nothing without the bonds of fellowship. If the relationship within the cell groups are shallow, the church is in a very sad state regardless of the size. Back then, I was reprimanded for being too emotional, and not recognizing that the value of the mission to grow the church. But more importantly, I remember being glad I was not alone. People resisted the notion because they feared saying goodbye to relationships that had already been invested in.

Everyone hates to break ties and say goodbye.

So is this a cultural malaise? The over-emoting of ourselves in spiritual matters that focuses more on the self rather than the race which God has set out for us? If I were to focus on the running the race, would it matter less how futile building those deep relationships really are? Maybe we really should expect less from each other and just maintain a surface relationship. One which is sufficient to constitute serving one another, but which does not over-extend ourselves on an endeavour with such a transient reward. Maybe “deep relationships”  really was never intended by God. We are only called to a deep relationship with Him after all.

So maybe I really did get it wrong all this while, and therefore all that happened to me was richly deserved. I’m told that self-aggrandizement is especially detested by God, as it takes away all the glory which is actually due to Him.