(Translated upon request from a Chinese note I wrote on facebook)
Brother Chung-Ching just came back from a discipleship conference, his heart still glowing with fervent excitement. He couldn’t wait to share with me how he believed all churches must take discipleship more seriously than they ever have, and that Christians must make a mutual life impact on each other through one-on-one accountability. He also encouraged me to focus more on this aspect when ministering to people, since he thinks I would make a pretty decent discipler …
In God’s kingdom, it becomes increasingly hard to come by someone who has the same vision and zeal as brother Chung-Ching’s. What’s more, Chung-Ching is not just a man of words but of deeds: he is willing to lavish his time and caring with no other motive than help a younger brother grow in his spiritual walk. Many people may not even understand what this is about; and for those who do, their understanding does not entail an interest or intent to actually take some action.
I have long recognized and acknowledged the need for discipleship, but willing as I am to be a discipler, I have never met a younger brother who longs to be discipled. This, I must say, is not quite surprising for at least two reasons. First, the disciple ought to have a desire for spiritual growth; but many young believers are sloppy with their faith and they tend more towards fleshly indulgence than spiritual discipline by a veteran. Second, many young Christians find it hard or intimidating to open up their “deeper self” to be known, or they may not even know how to do that. It is therefore a severe challenge for them to build a direct, honest, and accountable relationship with a discipler. Given a choice, they would much rather not complicate things and simply tumble along in their spiritual walk.
One of my greatest regrets is that I have never been discipled by anyone. I have never met a mentor who teaches me how to live out my Christian faith, a mentor who is willing to invest himself in me and make an impact on my life. More ironically, despite my willingness to give myself away as a mentor, I have yet to come across someone who is willing to take me up on my offer. Maybe that is because even the person who takes me on has a price to pay too – for his presumed loss of selfhood …
Even so, I still believe discipleship is the way to go. I suppose I will just wait on with patience while my Timothies are taking their time to make their long-awaited appearances in the path of my life.
Tuesday 26 May 2009
Monday 13 April 2009
The Silver Lining of Nightmares
(Reproduced from an earlier blog entry written on December 12, 2005. I decided to put it on again because I read an interesting piece on nightmares by Daniel, though obviously the kinds of nightmares we are talking about are quite different. Here is the link to Daniel's piece: http://mechanicalchopsticks.blogspot.com/2009/04/nightmares.html)
You've had this nightmare before. Each time it may be rendered in a different way, but the primary motif remains the same. In the nightmare, you invariably find yourself staring into an expanse of cold, unrelenting existence which suggests mild hostility. And such a frightening sight, as you always hope to ignore but never fail to notice, has an air of familiarity to it, because it looks so much like the sweet dream you had just moments ago, except that now the environs have completely mutated into something diametrically opposed to the warm congeniality you know so well when things haven't gone awry. You don't have a clear idea how you end up where you are. You only know that being there you feel a stifling sense of impassability. The frostiness that stares you in the face numbs your mind, shrivels your heart, and dampens your spirit all at once. You couldn't believe you would actually be encountering such frostiness. You're not sure you can battle it, because it seems to get tougher every time. You wish you weren't there. You wish your whole being could be transposed to another realm of existence so that you wouldn't need to go through all this -- again.
Coming out of such a nightmare, you feel physically sapped and emotionally drained. You doubt if you could sustain another trial of this kind. You know nightmares are good-dreams-turned-bad, so you feel you want to give up dreaming altogether, if only you could. But then you also know that you CAN'T, not only because you have absolutely no control over the incidence of dreams, but also because it is absurd to give up all dreams just because of the scary ones. More importantly, sweet dreams have deepened your life to a dimension you never knew existed. Without these dreams, it would appear that life is hardly worth living at all.
Nightmares would recur, but that shouldn't make one give up on dreams. The agony of sacrificing all dreams just because some of them are painful far exceeds the suffering of the nightmares themselves. This realization gives me an important insight into God's love for humans. God never gives up on us even though we could be His nightmares, because the "agony" of giving us up and having us isolated from Him just because we're not always the way He wants far exceeds the "pain" of Him seeing us go astray in and of itself. God created a relationship with humans built on love, and although it might be speckled with imperfections, it is certainly a bond too intimate and dear for Him to forego. In this light, God's ceaseless love for us makes perfect sense, because why would He, being all-intelligent, take a more painful option? The bond between God and humans embodies a love so intrinsic and deep that He will not sacrifice it even though it is being constantly compromised. His love remains unshakable and unmovable no matter how wrong things go, because only that -- not giving up -- will bring a much better outcome.
Despite the nightmares, I'll not give up on dreams: because in what seems to be an interesting parallel, they remind me of the ceaseless, unfailing love of God in all its sanity and profundity.
You've had this nightmare before. Each time it may be rendered in a different way, but the primary motif remains the same. In the nightmare, you invariably find yourself staring into an expanse of cold, unrelenting existence which suggests mild hostility. And such a frightening sight, as you always hope to ignore but never fail to notice, has an air of familiarity to it, because it looks so much like the sweet dream you had just moments ago, except that now the environs have completely mutated into something diametrically opposed to the warm congeniality you know so well when things haven't gone awry. You don't have a clear idea how you end up where you are. You only know that being there you feel a stifling sense of impassability. The frostiness that stares you in the face numbs your mind, shrivels your heart, and dampens your spirit all at once. You couldn't believe you would actually be encountering such frostiness. You're not sure you can battle it, because it seems to get tougher every time. You wish you weren't there. You wish your whole being could be transposed to another realm of existence so that you wouldn't need to go through all this -- again.
Coming out of such a nightmare, you feel physically sapped and emotionally drained. You doubt if you could sustain another trial of this kind. You know nightmares are good-dreams-turned-bad, so you feel you want to give up dreaming altogether, if only you could. But then you also know that you CAN'T, not only because you have absolutely no control over the incidence of dreams, but also because it is absurd to give up all dreams just because of the scary ones. More importantly, sweet dreams have deepened your life to a dimension you never knew existed. Without these dreams, it would appear that life is hardly worth living at all.
Nightmares would recur, but that shouldn't make one give up on dreams. The agony of sacrificing all dreams just because some of them are painful far exceeds the suffering of the nightmares themselves. This realization gives me an important insight into God's love for humans. God never gives up on us even though we could be His nightmares, because the "agony" of giving us up and having us isolated from Him just because we're not always the way He wants far exceeds the "pain" of Him seeing us go astray in and of itself. God created a relationship with humans built on love, and although it might be speckled with imperfections, it is certainly a bond too intimate and dear for Him to forego. In this light, God's ceaseless love for us makes perfect sense, because why would He, being all-intelligent, take a more painful option? The bond between God and humans embodies a love so intrinsic and deep that He will not sacrifice it even though it is being constantly compromised. His love remains unshakable and unmovable no matter how wrong things go, because only that -- not giving up -- will bring a much better outcome.
Despite the nightmares, I'll not give up on dreams: because in what seems to be an interesting parallel, they remind me of the ceaseless, unfailing love of God in all its sanity and profundity.
Tuesday 7 April 2009
The devil not always to blame ...
I don't usually find the articles in Christianity Today interesting to read, but this one is quite an exception.
Entitled "Self-Examination Time," the article reminds believers of the importance of self-knowledge in proper Christian living. Such self-knowledge, the writer says, will not be possible without the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Now this may not be as hard to construe as it may first sound. It simply means that such knowledge of self depends more on your spiritual condition than your own (presumed) intelligence or inward perceptiveness. This is quite an important distinction, because many people who believe they have a good understanding of themselves often end up doing things that unnecessarily complicate or tangle up their own lives, thus causing inconvenience and grief not only to themselves but most typically to others as well along the way. The writer of the article puts such folly neatly in perspective with a quote from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, where the master Devil advises his apprentice Wormwood on how to beguile the Christian under his care:
"You must bring [your patient] to a condition in which he can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office."
Certainly most of us can vouch for the existence of people like that -- blind to their own defects which are glaringly obvious to everybody else around them. However, I think rather than ignorance, the problems with these people are more often denial and rationalization. They either refuse to confront the reality of their defects, or they re-package them into something to be accepted, even welcomed. In short, they use God to rationalize their headstrong preference to serve their own desires rather than His.
That is why the article cautions that what usually makes us sin is not so much temptation from Satan as our own hearts. We all like to deceive ourselves in one way or another, and it is not as if we are not good at doing that. Therefore the writer is absolutely right in saying that no amount of self-examination is any good if it comes solely from ourselves; it must come through a spiritual awakening, an honest confrontation with our own personality the way a mature, sincere, and well-intentioned Christian friend would.
Entitled "Self-Examination Time," the article reminds believers of the importance of self-knowledge in proper Christian living. Such self-knowledge, the writer says, will not be possible without the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Now this may not be as hard to construe as it may first sound. It simply means that such knowledge of self depends more on your spiritual condition than your own (presumed) intelligence or inward perceptiveness. This is quite an important distinction, because many people who believe they have a good understanding of themselves often end up doing things that unnecessarily complicate or tangle up their own lives, thus causing inconvenience and grief not only to themselves but most typically to others as well along the way. The writer of the article puts such folly neatly in perspective with a quote from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, where the master Devil advises his apprentice Wormwood on how to beguile the Christian under his care:
"You must bring [your patient] to a condition in which he can practice self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office."
Certainly most of us can vouch for the existence of people like that -- blind to their own defects which are glaringly obvious to everybody else around them. However, I think rather than ignorance, the problems with these people are more often denial and rationalization. They either refuse to confront the reality of their defects, or they re-package them into something to be accepted, even welcomed. In short, they use God to rationalize their headstrong preference to serve their own desires rather than His.
That is why the article cautions that what usually makes us sin is not so much temptation from Satan as our own hearts. We all like to deceive ourselves in one way or another, and it is not as if we are not good at doing that. Therefore the writer is absolutely right in saying that no amount of self-examination is any good if it comes solely from ourselves; it must come through a spiritual awakening, an honest confrontation with our own personality the way a mature, sincere, and well-intentioned Christian friend would.
Thursday 19 March 2009
The Blessing Of An Unsimple Mind
(Reproduced from an earlier blog entry written on April 10, 2006)
When I was much younger, I would sometimes wish that I were somebody else. I wished to be like those people who didn't seem to notice, think, or bother much about anything other than their own simplistic view and way of living. I wished I could just get on with life without too much awareness or perception of the intricacies of the human condition. I wish I could be blissfully oblivious to all the hurtful things that happened around me and TO me. In short, I wish I could fail to notice or recognize human flaws so that I would be a simpler, happier person.
The thing is, most people seem to appreciate me exactly because I'm NOT simple. They like the fact that I can often see through the delicacies of matters or the complexities of human follies. They like the way I bring them a sense of order or direction when they feel caught up in a morass of confused thoughts or emotions. Or simply, they like the feeling of relief in unloading their miseries or frustrations on me.
I will honestly say that it pains me to see people wallow in emotional suffering just because they fail to grasp (or rather, acknowledge) what the real issue with them is. It pains me even more when the way they choose to deal with the issue does not seem to be making them any happier, but they would still stick with that way, because for reason not quite comprehensible to others, they just feel so self-assured about it that any other alternative simply appears irrelevant.
It is at a time like this that my "childish" wish of being somebody else would pop up in my mind again. If only I had a simplistic mind that could see no further than the plainly and painfully obvious! If only I wouldn't know that people oftentimes bring on their own sorrow and agony! But then we are told as Christ's followers to "carry each other's burdens" in order to "fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal 6:2). As such, having the perceptiveness and sensitivity to bear another person's burden -- even if that burden is in a way self-afflicted -- is in fact a special gift from God to help me fulfil the command of Christ with much greater ease and sophistication. What is important then is not whether I have succeeded in helping someone the way I want him to be helped, but that I HAVE TRIED helping him at all. It is our faithfulness in doing the necessary, however insignificant its impact might be, that would find favor in the eyes of our Lord.
When I was much younger, I would sometimes wish that I were somebody else. I wished to be like those people who didn't seem to notice, think, or bother much about anything other than their own simplistic view and way of living. I wished I could just get on with life without too much awareness or perception of the intricacies of the human condition. I wish I could be blissfully oblivious to all the hurtful things that happened around me and TO me. In short, I wish I could fail to notice or recognize human flaws so that I would be a simpler, happier person.
The thing is, most people seem to appreciate me exactly because I'm NOT simple. They like the fact that I can often see through the delicacies of matters or the complexities of human follies. They like the way I bring them a sense of order or direction when they feel caught up in a morass of confused thoughts or emotions. Or simply, they like the feeling of relief in unloading their miseries or frustrations on me.
I will honestly say that it pains me to see people wallow in emotional suffering just because they fail to grasp (or rather, acknowledge) what the real issue with them is. It pains me even more when the way they choose to deal with the issue does not seem to be making them any happier, but they would still stick with that way, because for reason not quite comprehensible to others, they just feel so self-assured about it that any other alternative simply appears irrelevant.
It is at a time like this that my "childish" wish of being somebody else would pop up in my mind again. If only I had a simplistic mind that could see no further than the plainly and painfully obvious! If only I wouldn't know that people oftentimes bring on their own sorrow and agony! But then we are told as Christ's followers to "carry each other's burdens" in order to "fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal 6:2). As such, having the perceptiveness and sensitivity to bear another person's burden -- even if that burden is in a way self-afflicted -- is in fact a special gift from God to help me fulfil the command of Christ with much greater ease and sophistication. What is important then is not whether I have succeeded in helping someone the way I want him to be helped, but that I HAVE TRIED helping him at all. It is our faithfulness in doing the necessary, however insignificant its impact might be, that would find favor in the eyes of our Lord.
Heart Or Mind
(Reproduced from an earlier blog entry written on February 27, 2006)
We know we should love our Lord with all our heart, all our mind, and all the rest -- but given a choice, do you think God would prefer to be loved with a heart or with a mind?
We know we should love our Lord with all our heart, all our mind, and all the rest -- but given a choice, do you think God would prefer to be loved with a heart or with a mind?
You might remember that Jesus loved children. And I suppose he loved them because they are ruled by their heart, with no calculating pretense but simply a pure authenticity that reaches directly into another person's soul. They do what they have a genuine feeling for, not what they think they ought to.
As adults, we often do things our mind tells us to do, and oftentimes it's good, assuming we have a decent level of common sense. But in interpersonal relationship, people don't always like things done out of the mind, because things done out of the mind are meant to please, whereas things done out of the heart are evident of love. Of course when someone thinks about doing something to please you, there's already enough reason to be happy -- after all, how many people would bother to make that effort? And why should anyone bother to make that effort at all? But if people like that are so hard to come by, how much more so are people who genuinely DESIRE to do things not so much to please you, as to value you as someone who have literally become an integral part of their existence as inseparable as their very own heart?
In a world of rampant individualism and self-centeredness, doing things with our heart is gradually becoming a rarity. What could be even more chilling though, perhaps, is to expect to be treated with heart when others seem hardly bothered to even think much about you with their mind. But that's exactly what the distinction between the mind and the heart is all about: the former can be manipulated, the latter cannot. You might be able to change what you THINK about a person, but you can hardly change how you FEEL about him. Love cannot be enforced. Even God Himself doesn't force us to love Him, because He knows more than anyone else that love that comes out of coercion is not love at all. To make ourselves more capable of love, therefore, the best way to go really is to pray to God and ask Him to transform our heart into a receptacle that overflows with His love ...
Although a balance between the mind and the heart is important, we must constantly remind ourselves of the risk of turning "heartless." It's most unfortunate that the word "thoughtful" -- a very beautiful word in itself -- emphasizes only the "thinking" aspect of an action and not its "affect." But next time when someone does something thoughtful to you, remember it's just as likely to have come out of his heart as of his mind. And you can be sure that either way, you have good reason to congratulate yourself.
Monday 16 March 2009
Seminary Life Series -- Journal 3: A Beautiful Saturday
(Reproduced from an earlier blog entry written on January 22, 2006)
The sun was just too glorious to be wasted this morning, so I decided to drag my lethargic body outdoor and do something physically healthy.
The sun was just too glorious to be wasted this morning, so I decided to drag my lethargic body outdoor and do something physically healthy.
Taking a walk around campus is something I have long wanted but never had the time to do. When I was really doing it, the feeling was just indescribably relaxing. I had no particular thing urgent pressing on my mind. I could walk as long as I wanted, and the solitude brought a silence that induced flashes of memories both joyful and sentimental. I found myself thanking God not only for the joyful but also for the sentimental, because it's a blessing that I can have some things or people to feel sentimental about in the first place. I looked up at the bright blue sky, and for what seemed to be a truly enlightening moment I realized that life was indeed beautiful and that I was endearingly blessed as a child of God.
After walking two laps around campus, I popped into the gym and tried playing around with the workout equipment. It was quiet in there, with only a couple of people, so I could take all the time I wanted with any machine -- even though I hardly had the energy to take too much time on any one of them. But it was fun, learning how to play with those things without the pressure of someone disdainful gawking at you. In fact, the people there were delightfully nice. A brother who was milling around working on different machines smiled at me every time our eyes met. When I was trying out a machine that exercised my oblique waist muscles, a blond sister beamed at me and offered to demonstrate: "You know you could turn that thing around?" Her smile was angelic, and for a second there I really felt not only life but also she was beautiful.
You might not believe I spent a whole hour playing with the machines in the gym, but that's what I did. When I walked out, my Korean brother Joonsuk saw me and called me over. He was waiting for the weekly grocery-giveaway (which for some reason takes place at the gym -- the least likely of all places to give away food). Radiant with a smile, he reminded me that next Saturday he was making lunch for me at his place, followed by a game of tennis. Now it's not as if he has a whole lot of time himself: he's married, with two boys, taking 10 credit hours, working four days a week from 6-10 p.m. as a custodial worker. And this isn't the first time he's expressed such thoughtful hospitality to a single brother ...
Sometimes, God's love for us is just so subtle yet replete. When we learn to appreciate the beauty that we find in things and people, we simply have no reasons to whine. We might not feel our present circumstances are the happiest, but God never fails to remind us that His grace is sufficient for us -- if we bother to notice.
After walking two laps around campus, I popped into the gym and tried playing around with the workout equipment. It was quiet in there, with only a couple of people, so I could take all the time I wanted with any machine -- even though I hardly had the energy to take too much time on any one of them. But it was fun, learning how to play with those things without the pressure of someone disdainful gawking at you. In fact, the people there were delightfully nice. A brother who was milling around working on different machines smiled at me every time our eyes met. When I was trying out a machine that exercised my oblique waist muscles, a blond sister beamed at me and offered to demonstrate: "You know you could turn that thing around?" Her smile was angelic, and for a second there I really felt not only life but also she was beautiful.
You might not believe I spent a whole hour playing with the machines in the gym, but that's what I did. When I walked out, my Korean brother Joonsuk saw me and called me over. He was waiting for the weekly grocery-giveaway (which for some reason takes place at the gym -- the least likely of all places to give away food). Radiant with a smile, he reminded me that next Saturday he was making lunch for me at his place, followed by a game of tennis. Now it's not as if he has a whole lot of time himself: he's married, with two boys, taking 10 credit hours, working four days a week from 6-10 p.m. as a custodial worker. And this isn't the first time he's expressed such thoughtful hospitality to a single brother ...
Sometimes, God's love for us is just so subtle yet replete. When we learn to appreciate the beauty that we find in things and people, we simply have no reasons to whine. We might not feel our present circumstances are the happiest, but God never fails to remind us that His grace is sufficient for us -- if we bother to notice.
Saturday 14 March 2009
The Answer To Pain
I bought the book The Case For Faith (Lee Strobel, 2000) a long time ago but never got round to reading it. Recently, I began discipling new believers, and thinking that the book could be a good review of the basics in apologetics, I decided to make a stab at it. The book hasn't been disappointing so far, and particularly stirring are some of the quotes so magnificently worded that you would wish they had been written by you:
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." C. S. Lewis
"Since God is the highest good, he would not allow any evil to exist in his works unless his omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." Augustine
"In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel." Saint Teresa
"It's a self-contradiction -- a meaningless nothing -- to have a world where there's real choice while at the same time no possibility of choosing evil. To ask why God didn't create such a world is like asking why God didn't create colorless color or round squares." Peter Kreeft
"The answer to suffering is not an answer at all; it's the Answerer. It's Jesus himself. It's not a bunch of words, it's the Word. It's not a tightly woven philosophical argument; it's a person. The person ... " Peter Kreeft
So here goes a mini-message on theodicy ...
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." C. S. Lewis
"Since God is the highest good, he would not allow any evil to exist in his works unless his omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." Augustine
"In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel." Saint Teresa
"It's a self-contradiction -- a meaningless nothing -- to have a world where there's real choice while at the same time no possibility of choosing evil. To ask why God didn't create such a world is like asking why God didn't create colorless color or round squares." Peter Kreeft
"The answer to suffering is not an answer at all; it's the Answerer. It's Jesus himself. It's not a bunch of words, it's the Word. It's not a tightly woven philosophical argument; it's a person. The person ... " Peter Kreeft
So here goes a mini-message on theodicy ...
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