Reflections on the Proverbs - Day 4

"Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away."

This being the season for the pungent fruit, a story was told about a man who liked durian, but wanted to stop eating it for a while because of recent overdose. Here are his thoughts (thanks to Jonathan for this story):

I will drive by the durian stall, just to smell it, but I won't park my car.

I will park my car, just to admire the durians, but not alight.

I will get off my car, just to take a closer look, but not pick up the fruit.

I will pick up the fruit, just to see if quality has changed, but not buy it.

I will buy it, just for my family, but not eat it myself.

I will eat it, but only with my family.

I will just eat it here, to avoid taking the smell home.

It is not a sign of weakness to run away from temptations. In fact, we are exhorted to flee from youthful lusts, which surely includes bravado in the face real dangers.

"Don't be a wimp" - giving heed to these four words have cost us more than we know. Run, run away from spiritual dangers. Draw near to God in these moments, and He will draw near to us.

Reflections on the Proverbs - Day 3

"Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding...
When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.”
I made a wish in my younger days, that I will always get a good night's sleep. Looking back, I remember how terrible the feeling of insomnia was. For more than a year, I was watching infomercials at 3 am, and wondering how I was to make it though the next working day without dozing off.
Brethren, if you are battling insomnia, believe me when I tell you I know exactly how you feel. Whatever the underlying reason for your sleeplessness, please don't suffer in isolation. For that is what spiritual evil would have us feel - that our personal problems are unique, that no one understands us, that no one can help us. But the Lord Jesus knows, for He was crucified to set us free. This wisdom and understanding from God is found in what Jesus did on the cross, and is now freely available to us through the Holy Spirit. Get wisdom, get rest. Go to Jesus, and He will give you that sweet sleep.

Reflections on the Proverbs - Day 2

"To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things"

What are froward things? Frowardness is turning away from what is the truth to what are distortions of the truth. How often have we taken part in gossip or rumor-mongering? Have we spoken of things that give the impression of something other than the truth?

There are at least two instances of my Lord Jesus wanting people to be honest, to be truthful. John recorded His proclamation of Nathanael, on introduction, as a true son of Israel, in whom there was no guile or deceit. John further recorded in Revelation, that Lord Jesus, in His admonishment of a group of lukewarm believers in Laodicea, wishing them to be either hot or cold. The latter instance, I take it to mean hypocrisy in the church - with people trying to look passionate for Jesus ("hot") while actually denying the power of Christ ("cold") on the inside.

Truthful words are difficult to say and hear. Truthfulness itself is a rare commodity. What ends up coming out of our mouths is very often a perversion of the truth, that is - frowardness. And only if we seek Godly wisdom will we be delivered from this.
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Reflections on the Proverbs - Day 1

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction."

I used to think that, as a school teacher, dealing with knowledge was my job. Until I read that part of the first Proverb again today. The word "but" links a two-part sentence. We are exhorted to gather knowledge by fearing God. This is contrasted, by "but", with what foolish people would not do, that is, to get knowledge. What is this knowledge that fools despise? Wisdom and instruction. So knowledge is, in fact, not so much what I tell the kids about Science and Maths in my daily interaction with them, but rather, wisdom (the ability to discern between good and evil) and instruction (the willingness to obey God).

Join me, if you like, in reading one Proverb chapter every day for the month of August. Thirty-one days, thirty-one chapters. Unchanging, uncompromising wisdom and instruction.

The tenth leper

On 27 June, 2014, I left my previous job in Shanghai. The future was uncertain through my eyes. I had been asking God for a year off from work since 2011, and at the end of 2013 I made the decision to leave Shanghai. There was no plan for how I could feed my family without a regular salary. There were only two things on my mind - to reconcile with my mum, and to rest and recharge before continuing in China. One year, I asked God.

Today, 27 June 2015, as I look back. God has not only provided the daily bread, but also gave more than enough for me to clear the housing and car loans. Beyond money, He let me experience the children's homeschool experience, allowing me to see how my kids have grown in wisdom. Through long stretches of "doing nothing", He opened up conversation and intimacy between Wifey and me. He sent devoted and wise Christian brothers & sisters to encourage my family as we lived out a life that is rather unconventional for Singaporeans. And He reconciled me with my mother, whom I saw less than 10 times in the past 20 years

On 29 June 2015, I will re-enter the workforce, albeit on part-time basis. One year, I asked God. He has proven Himself faithful, even when I was unfaithful to Him.

Thank you, Lord, for considering me, the last, and Samaritan, leper.

Religious nut won't stop misquoting scriptures, until this happened...

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The bait headline got you, didn't it? Yeah, I dislike such sensational stuff just as much as you do. Take that, upworthy.com!

Seriously, the titular nut is me. That's how off-putting I am, firing off smart-alecky replies when Christian friends approach me for a listening ear. I wonder how many people I've driven away from genuine and lasting friendship because of my behaviour.

This morning's Our Daily Bread reading is a timely reminder of how Christians can quote verses out of context, and sometimes this is disastrous on friendships, especially when a person is in anguish and the last thing he wants is someone throwing verses at him.

"God never gives us more than we can handle." Do you hear this often from Christian friends who are trying to comfort people in grief? Perhaps you were at the receiving end during a low point in your life? Well, this quote is not found in most English translations of the Bible. The foundation for this quote is 1 Corinthians 10:13, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." Reading that verse in its context, Paul was addressing the issue of temptation, not suffering. God provides a way out of temptation, not necessarily suffering.

We may view temptations as ethical cross-roads, with moral choices to be made. Very often, suffering may not present such choices. An appropriate response when a friend in anguish draws near is perhaps that suggested by Paul in his letter to the Romans, "...weep with them that weep." When Lazarus died the first time, my Lord Jesus wept with the dead man's family. Surely He knew that He was to raise Lazarus back to life in a while, but He still wept with Mary and Martha. If you have a friend who is suffering now, I pray you will be there with him. We are called to love, not judgement.

On the road to Damascus

This weekend marks twenty years since my baptism as a follower of Christ, and if I look back even further to 1984, thirty years since that rain-soaked December night when I stepped forward to acknowledge my need for Him. If there's one thing I learned from these three decades, it's that years do not make a man wise. A cynical friend once quipped, after we had attended one too many talks at a pretentious conference, "So the speaker has twenty years of experience? Maybe twenty times of the same one-year experience." My friend could well have been talking about me, a person still very much lost after thirty years of following Jesus.

Perhaps the expression 'kicking against the pricks' is apt here. It seems such a difficult thing relying on Christ, and not my own understanding, especially when nothing has happened over the past eight months after leaving a cushy job, all the while resisting the Lord's attempt at steering this stubborn ox. Where am I going, following Jesus? If His yoke is easy and His burden light, surely then I am a long way off from following Him, and learning from Him.

Still blind and clueless on the road to Damascus.

Of Nolan, funerals and relationships

Some thoughts ran through my mind as I stayed home this past few days to chaperone the kids. It was a week of funerals, including That One. Some of my friends had loved ones who passed on, while others had elderly family members waiting out their time on sick beds. It got to a point where I tuned out by watching movies back-to-back.  And it seems that Christopher Nolan’s films aren’t exactly what we should be watching to relax our minds.

Nolan’s films are about human relationships. Think about it. Shelby’s relationship with the people around him. Borden and Angier’s failed professional and personal relationships. Wayne’s loss of his parents. Cobb’s guilt over his deceased wife. Cooper’s estrangement with his daughter. These were driving points in Nolan’s works. His films are about relationships as much as they dazzle audiences with special effects or action sequences.

Just like the complexities of the dream layers or the science behind black holes, human relationships aren’t the easiest thing to comprehend. Perhaps they are the most complex things we have. We seldom have a good grasp of what they’re all about, even as we fumble our way through life.

It’s funny how in school we’re taught math and everything else except how to relate with one another. I remember my early days in the education service, encountering a rather over-enthusiastic colleague who proposed a grading rubric that involved assessing how well each student worked with others. But how do we even put a grade on that? What does it mean when a student is 67% able to relate to others? That he has 33% sociopathic tendencies?

As we prepare to say our goodbyes to loved ones, or even less-than-loved ones, we will always reflect on one question. How would the relationship have turned out if we had done things differently? You know, there is wisdom in the admonishment to not let the sun go down on our anger. For we don’t know how much hurt will fester, or if any of us will have a tomorrow to make amends.

A reason for obedience

As I grapple with mid-life crisis while trying to find meaning in existence, one particular question from old comes up persistently - "Yea, hath God said,...?" If we applied that question, it would be equivalent to that of trying to obey my Creator and simultaneously rationalizing my daily actions.

We must listen to God only. The trick is knowing what to do with our reason. Obedience is only significant if we have the choice to disobey, and very often the most compelling motive to disobey is our reason. But what price this freedom to decide? Someone once said that while we are free to choose, we are not free from the consequences of our choices.

Rationalizing is a natural response when we don't like what God has said, or, even more so, when we don't hear from Him at all. To put it in another way, many well-meaning Christian friends have said to me, "If you've not heard from God, then maybe He wants you to take the initiative and step out in faith." This and other statements to similar effect shake my faith in God, especially since I am an impatient man, and crave for the big-picture view of circumstances.

For every "Yea, hath God said", can we respond with a "Thus saith the Lord"? Tough.

Love in a rational manner

Most times we want love to be a feeling or an emotion. The young ones specifically want it to be something romantic. But having lived with someone in a marriage for slightly over 10 years, I'm slowly beginning to realize that love can, and should also, be something that comes from my mind too. Otherwise, how do I see purpose when the kids are thrashing the living room and one another for the n-th time, when the pot is boiling over, and when I'm trying to listen to the wife over the phone while a paper aeroplane zips across my face?

Mark recorded my Lord Jesus saying this, "...you shall love the Lord your God with...all your mind..." Embedded together in His command to love with one's heart, soul, and strength, is also with one's mind. One's intellect, one's will, one's act of commitment, one's reason, one's logic, call it whatever you like but one thing's for sure, I have to tell myself to love even when I don't like candlelit dinners, walking in the rain, or having some elevator Kenny G-type muzak in the background.

Loving in a rational manner. Is that possible? If I believe it was love that compelled my Christ to stretch His arms out on the cross, then I have think that it was not just a feeling or emotion that drove Him to do it. I wouldn't know what went through Jesus' mind that Friday, but one of it was probably the thought - I must do it.

Deathless and hopeful

John recorded the conversation between Jesus and Martha when Lazarus, the brother of Martha, died. Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. He who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe me?”

A sister-in-Christ passed away last night during an operation for a medical condition. She has gone home to the Lord. Followers of Jesus who remain here have a hope that we will all be re-united in the presence of God. We will see one another in eternity. This gives me comfort, for I have never seen or known my earthly father. All I have here is a verse from John on his tombstone. I have a hope that I will meet my father in heaven, just as I will meet that sister-in-Christ who died last night.

My brothers and sisters, can we even imagine it? Everyone whom we’ve known as fellow disciples of Christ, we will see every one of them.

Peace.

The history of Singapore

While we get caught up with this SG50 project, we run the risk of forgetting the pre-1965 history of Singapore. The more cynical among us would even suggest that SG50 is another attempt by the powers-that-be to whitewash "non-approved" history, much like my own six-year experience with the media in Shanghai, China, where depictions of pre-civil war, pre-1945, and pre-communist history were non-existent.

It cannot be that this Singapore island was a sleepy village, even before 1819 when the British East India Company conveniently "found" it and we were, henceforth, no longer lost. Given that everyone's harping on the strategic location of this island, we should expect that, as long as naval technology exists, Singapore would be a prized location for anyone wishing to dominate the region.

A cursory glance through online archives indicates that there had been many dominant players in the history of Singapore for at least the past six centuries. How did various powers like colonial Britain, Imperial Japan, the Johore Sultanate, the Dutch East India Company, colonial Portugal, the Malacca Sultanate, and Yuan and Ming China view Singapore? Even our very own ancient name of Temasek points to an interesting time when the Srivijaya was dictating the affairs of 10th to 12th century Southeast Asia.

SG50? I think SG500 would be barely adequate for framing the history of Singapore. It is a shame for current and future generations of Singaporeans to remember this island as nothing more than a post-1965 economic miracle.

Concerning governance

Governments all over the world do two things. 1. Make it a crime for its people not to give it money; and 2. make promises to its people once in a few years. Only one of these is compulsory, the other is strictly optional, especially if it doesn't mind being labelled a dictatorship.

There is also the "Rule of A" regarding any legislation a government enacts. In a dictatorship, there is the single Rule of A, which, in English, is that a minority is "Above" the law. Governments that want to avoid being labelled as dictatorships generally have two Rules of A - 1. No one is "Above" the law, and, 2. while no one is above the law, laws are not "Applied" on certain individuals, usually those above a certain socio-economic status.

Here ends the lesson. You're welcome.

Reflections of husband- and fatherhood

So it's a trying time for my mental & physical health over the past few months, culminating in the current (and second!) bout of HFMD, with spots breaking out on my palms, and mouth ulcers ruining my taste but not my hunger. My son was acting up just a minute before I typed this, throwing toys around and threatening to spill his drink - all a part of the growing up that kids between two and three years old experience.

For the first time in a long while, I couldn't muster the usual anger response to the situation around me. Due to a lack of physical strength, I was left helpless looking at John as he overturned his train set before kicking me in the shin, chanting, "I don't want Daddy!" The only thing I could do was to stretch out my arms and say to him, "But Daddy loves you. Can I give you a hug?"

After much cajoling, he gave me a hug and a kiss, and said sorry.

There was nothing I could do to make him feel sorry or to compel him to give me that hug. Nothing and no one but the Holy Spirit. During such moments of helplessness when confronted with the childish behaviour of my own kids, I'm reminded of what Paul the Apostle wrote in his second letter to the church in Corinth, "And he (Jesus) said unto me, My grace is sufficient for you: for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

My Father in heaven uses such moments of weakness to teach me life lessons, and to love my family. Bless the name of the LORD God.