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.