Renewal

There's nothing left to seek, it's time to act. Once again, I'm plunging into the unknown. But it feels different this time. I'm more confident in my steps now. Lead the way o lord. Be the light on my path.

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't

When the truth hurts, should I keep it to myself, and spare others from being affected by it, even if it means I have to be dishonest to myself? Should one ever jeopardizes his integrity for the sake of others? Should the self seek to reconcile with himself first, or exists in perpetual harmony with his community? Bad faith, or social responsibility?

Choices. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The future is a black unknown, and when the decision is made, the consequences will fall into places accordingly. Everything in its right place.

Loser

If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.

- JC

Ah such a beautiful ideal. Transpose this to my everyday life:

If someone manipulates you for their own gain, let yourself be manipulated. Don't retaliate, no, don't even resist, even when you are completely aware of how you are being used, just follow the leash lead.

When someone asked to take a look at your logbook which you have meticulously completed with all the attention to details, you will gladly surrender it to them; Knowing that all your hard work will almost certainly be plagiarised within minutes, & completely aware that if discovered both you & that someone will be in deep trouble.

That my friends, is the way of Christ. The way to freedom. Hah, no wonder the world scorn at Christ. To be like Christ, is to be trampled by anyone who wants to take advantage over you, without even putting up a fight. Just as the charismatics love jumping around, claiming they are invincible with God on their side (& all that kind of nonsense), "Christians" around the world are fooling themselves & don't see what it really means to take up the cross & deny thyself -

To be a complete loser.

...Dare I strive to be that kind of person?

The Way: Intro- or Extraversion?

What is the Way? Perfecting the self & chasing after the divine, or love & charity to others? 'Both' is a great theoretical answer, but I've encounter no such living example yet. To manifest the innermost passion into a practical social interaction seems like an impossible feat.

The tension of trying to achieve both at once is strenous to me. Perhaps I've been doing it the wrong way? Did Christ not said, "For my yoke is easy and my burden is light"?

Zealousness for God & good intentions to others do not strike me as an existential answer to the meaninglessness of life. What is the 'more' that I've been missing?

Dark Times Ahead

Is the world falling away from me, or am I falling away from the world?

Who's holding the driver's wheel? Definitely not me.

Am I stuck in a quicksand? Or am I moving at full speed towards oblivion?

. . . . . .

Great. I'm entering another Dark Age again. Like how I was before I found Christ, and another one before I found Kierkegaard.

Excuse me as I disappear/go into hiding for awhile.

Dark times ahead.

...to stupefy themselves...

“People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy."

-- Mikhail Bakunin

This is probably one of the funniest quote I've ever came across which I also find most incredibly true - as I can personally testify for that. I am amazed myself with how far we're willing to deceive ourself in order to feel insulated, belonged and happy in a community.

"This has to be said; so let it now be said. Whoever you are, whatever in other respects your life may be, my friend, by ceasing to take part in the public worship of God, as it now is (with the claim that it is the Christianity of the New Testament), you have constantly one guilt the less, and that a great one: you do not take part in treating God as a fool."

-- Soren Kierkegaard

Babel

Humanity is a mess. War, genocide, xenophobia, racism, prejudice, it seems that we can never achieve true unity among our species. I can't help but if God intended humanity to be this messy.

After all, was he not the one who creates division among humans during the Babel incident? By 'confusing our languages', God's intervention leads to the genesis of different culture & languages, religions & ethnicities. Is it not reasonable to reason that the inevitable conflicts between these different subgroups are (at least partly) God's handiwork?

I have never understand the story of Babel. What is God's ultimate purpose in causing a split (multiple splits?) within the human race? And why then, if it is his will that we will never be achieve true unity, did Christ pray for us to be one?

Perhaps the story of Babel is merely a man-made myth...?

Losing my religion

Things are becoming obvious now. I've spent the whole year in limbo, and now I finally see - I have a decision to make.

Now I have to choose between surrendering myself to nihilism (Nietzsche's words are incredibly seductive), or taking a Kierkegaardian leap of faith to... only God knows where. The tension of having to choose between the two extremes is causing an unbearable anguish within me: I've been neglecting my everyday life.

But one thing's for sure: I'm losing my religion. I can no longer hold on to my old beliefs. A change must come; which one?

Why I can't be a...

Steve Jones over at Ethical Monotheism posted 3 insightful entries on why he can't be a catholic, liberal christian or evangelical christian. I've been thru similar stages myself, critical on one denomination before switching sides and criticizing the denomination I was from, and eventually culminated with where I am now: critical with the very concept of mass worship.

Mind you I'm not condemning all churchgoers to be lost souls. It's just that I find it hard to have an authentic relationship with God if I'm required to give up my personal faith in order to achieve conformity with the crowd. I'm convinced that there are saints among the churchgoers, but I also believe that God meant some of us to be closer to him thru segregation from the crowd rather than be one with the whole.

Here are the links to the blog entries:

Why I can't be a Roman Catholic

Why I can't be a Liberal Christian

Why I can't be an Evangelical Christian

The Inwardness of Faith

If there's one thing I'm unforgivingly critical about 'community believers', it is the obsession with sensationalism. All the excitements over miraculous healing and spiritual revival and remarkable last minute rescues in times of trouble. Heck it's almost as if they're trying to force an impression that God is so amazingly involved in our daily lives, that the supernatural keeps invading into our natural world!

But faith to me seems to be increasing unsensationalistic to me. It is merely holding onto ones belief in the face of all obstacles and adversaries. No miraculous return of sight to the blind motivates me to believe, no fulfillment of prophesy that assure me about the inerrancy of the Scripture, no speaking in tongues or divine ecstasty that lead me to 'jump into the abyss of Faith's seventy thousand fathoms', as Kierkegaard puts it so colourfully.

It is merely, a choice. A choice of the utmost internal significance and struggle, without all the excessively sensational external display. Blind to all others except the innermost core of my existence.

The Irrationality of Faith

Faith is, ultimately, irrational. I cannot give any defense at all to my faith in Christ. It is simply a decision I've made, and nothing more can be said about Christ that lead me to embrace him.

Anyone who attempts to introduce rationality into Christianity do so in futility, as all they achieve is to bring about more contradictions in their quest for a consistent, logical foundation of their faith. Apologetics is bunk.

But the beautiful thing is, even with all the laughable attempts by these misguided fools, people still hold on to faith amidst all the contradictions. I guess that is the essence of faith, to believe sincerely in the face of absolute irrationality.

Surfacing Doubts

My juvenile instinct has come back to haunt me. The craving to be able to connect to someone else is just too hard to be held back. The longing to be accepted, the need to conform, the yearning to have a common interest with someone else besides... me.

The world's a tough place to be alone. Facing the meaninglessness & futility of life, having a crowd you can blend into could really drown off the awful sense of isolation that pervades one life. Sometimes I'm frustrated as to why I (one of the few among many) have to become so acutely aware of the meaninglessness of existence. True, in a way is was a liberation to take that leapt of faith, but it also leads to a wretched mode of life as well, to be constantly in a state of despair, and knowing all things in life are merely a distraction from the awful abyss of nothingness.

In times like these, traces of doubts frequently cross my mind... Why is God so silent amidst the darkness of this world? Where was the light that once shine so brightly even when the darkness comprehends it not? Where are the pillar of light, the splitting of the Red Sea, the Ark of the Covenant, the fall of Jericho, the resurrection of Lazarus, the Transfiguration, the ascension to Heaven?

Whatever happens to "even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father"? The world mocks Doubting Thomas for his lack of faith, but I for one could totally emphatize him (I'm a Thomas too, aren't I?). How do you hold on to faith in the face of such... complete despair?

Shifting towards Philosophy

Organized religion preaches to the masses indifferently, but philosophy requires the individual to confront it personally.

Organized religion expects unshakable and constant belief, while philosophy forces you to constantly re-examine and reconsider your stand.

Organized religion fences you within a safe but artificial and shallow microenviroment, while philosophy throws you out into the wild, but you grow from the experiences you got.

In light of such perceptions, I identify myself more as a seeker of philosophical truth rather than religious truth. God does not manifest itself in dogmas, but can only be understood if we act according to his revelations.

But neither am I abandoning my faith, for all the energy I focus towards my philosophical search, I channel towards Christ.

So am I still a Christian then?

You can't gather around with a group of people (of similar faith presumably) and start a sharing of individual beliefs in order to arrive at some point of agreement on which is most probably true and which is questionable. Truth is not a concensus; it is a personal approximation of the individual to the divine. Truth is subjectivity.

...An anti-dogmatic dogma??

Walking Alongside Despair

I am no saint. In fact, I totally understood what Paul meant when he called himself the chief of sinners - I see myself as one. When one find himself alone with God and see him face to face, one can't help but despair over the sins that perpetuate the entire being of himself. It's like a sickly coat of oil permanently coated on the entire surface of oneself, a condition that one is forever trap with while in existence.

This constant consciousness about my sinful, worldly nature has been throughout the day in my life. At my most blissful moment, or my most depressed hour, I can't help but being aware of the absurdity and meaninglessness of 'life' as we know it. The persistent sense of despair can be a really heavy burden to bear as I stagger through this particular life of mine. It is incredibly tempting to just let go off everything and indulge myself either in a life of hedonism and aesthetism, or one of piety and the practise of communal submission to a religious code. To withdraw into bad faith, as Sartre calls it. But I have grown too acutely aware of the despair over my own state of existence to live a life of ignorance.

But to live a life defined by actions, acted upon choices which have no certainties, or based on any established consensual guidelines/protocol, is a terrifying thought in itself. Kierkegaard affirms that faith is the solution to despair, but faith require so much courage and risks that I can't help but feeling the burden of the freedom over the choices and course of my own life. Imagine, to be condemned to freedom!

And to know that this is the life I will live for the rest of my 'life'... I guess Christ was right when he said that small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life. Truth is the gate is much smaller and the road is much narrower than most of us have imagined it to be. Not to mention incredibly lonely as one is completely cut off from other fellow humans in this long arduous journey, with only Christ's promises as comfort.

This is merely the beginning...

Christianity does not join people together. No, it separates them - in order to unite every single individual with God. And when a person become such that he can belong to God and to God alone, he has died away from that which usually joins people together.

- Soren Kierkegaard

Faith and the Bible

The Holy Bible - What is its purpose in a Christian's life? Should an adherent of the Christian faith obeys completely on all the writings in it, and form a so called christian worldview based solely upon this great book? How important is a book in a life of worshipping God? If we are to follow and believe everything written in the bible unquestioningly, without a single trace of doubt, are we not at risk of idolizing a book, as sacred as many claimed?

After all, if ones knowledge about God can only be formed within the context of the Bible, then God is nothing but a book! An idea formed by the general concensus by the believers of the Bible! That can't be right! God should comes first, then the Bible! How can the Infinite be described, analysed, and contained within a finite object? No, I'm sure the Bible only shows what God chose to reveal about himself, instead of who he truly is. We humans could never have the capacity to completely comprehend God, as his ways are far beyond our grasp.

So if there is no final authority in judging who or what God is, how can we worship him whom we cannot fully comprehend? By faith. By personal faith. God will reveal himself to each of his believers in his own unique way, and never, ever en masse. Therefore, any attempts to systematically categorize biblical verses into doctrines to be embraced by a group of adherents, are equivalent to constructing a golden bull to be worshipped in place of God. To crave clarity and certainty in our perception of God is to strip away the faith element in knowing God, and replacing God with laws and dogmas.

Funny how the more we seek to intellectually conceptualize the God we worship, the further we focus away from him.

I'm finding it harder and harder to write about something in a coherent, essay format, as I simply lack the energy and patience to translate my thoughts into words. I guess I'm gonna post mostly scribblings in the future, and perhaps synthesize and expand them when I feel like I'm ready. So expect mostly short posts in the days to come!