More Like the Master

I heard some feedbacks that my blog lacks pictures and therefore it is boring.

Well, let me echo what Edmund Blunden said in 'Undertones of War', that it does not matter if you do not understand and do not want to read it. After all, your eyes are yours and not mine.

This blog is mainly for the documentation of my deeper thoughts on life. Though pictures speak a thousand words, they cannot reflect explicitly what I intend to convey, which is much about the intangible. However, if you do take time to read my entries, I humbly thank you and hope you will be edified by it.

'Whether therefore ye eat,or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
do all to the glory of God.'
I Corinthians 10:31

Trivialities aside, I would like to share the lyrics of this hymn which I found edifying for me. I learnt it in church choir for the item that we'll be presenting during the church's 26th anniversary (that's next Sunday!).

The turn of the 19th century saw the world flourishing in science, technology, culture and philosophy (just to name a few). As such, many people abandoned the faith of the Rock of All Ages and embraced liberalism and other cultures. God fed His herd with the multiplying of hymns being written then in the economically more developed countries.

More like the Master I would ever be,
More of His meekness, more humility;
More zeal to labor, more courage to be true,
More consecration for work He bids me do.

More like the Master is my daily prayer;
More strength to carry crosses I must bear;
More earnest effort to bring His kingdom in;
More of His Spirit, the wanderer to win.

More like the Master I would live and grow;
More of His love to others I would show;
More self denial, like His in Galilee,
More like the Master I long to ever be.

Take Thou my heart, I would be Thine alone;
Take Thou my heart, and make it all Thine own.
Purge me from sin, O Lord, I now implore,
Wash me and keep me Thine forevermore.

'More Like the Master', 1906
by Charles Hutchinson Gabriels (1856-1932)

Ousia of Mankind

Ousia (Οὐσία) is the present participle of the Ancient Greek word for the verb "to be", translated into Latin as essence or substance.


TWO WEEKS AGO, I attended this enrichment lecture on humanness. Based on philosophy, which was extremely thought-provoking and interesting, what I found rather amusing was that the whole lecture ended with us having to define humanness ourselves. Well, that's besides the point.

How do you define humanness? What is the essence of the human? The Greeks coined the term 'ousia' and Aristotle used it to develop his philosophy on humanness. Throw this Greek word into your essays and the marker will be impressed.

One of the many ambiguities of defining the ousia of Man is the controversy of the soul. If you say that the soul would define a human, you mean that non-humans do not possess this intangible and invisible soul. The conflict is, how do you actually PROVE that there is a soul or otherwise? You can't do it by science. Science is the validator of religion, of the logical and of the infallible. Therefore, it is a rather shaky stand to parrot-cry 'There is a soul!'.

If you agree with what I had just written, may God have mercy on you. YES, humans have souls and non-humans do not. The human is made of three components - the body, the mind and the soul. The former two are common in all living organisms, excluding unicellular organisms and what-nots. However, it is the distinctive soul that the human naturally possesses that allows him to have the capacity to develop higher-order thinking skills, such as 'evaluation' (one of Mrs Yap's most frequently-used words), invention and aesthetic appreciation. Since we are all contemporaries of modernism, you may now apply your logic to assess the extent to which animals are able to compose music, study science and create civilisation.

The Bible gives us a steadfast proposition of this belief of the soul as the ousia.

'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul.'
Genesis 2:7

The recognition of a soul is imperative for the Christian, because it acknowledges Man was, is and will still be made in the image of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

'So God created man in His own image'
Genesis 1:27

Being made in the image of God is not in the literal sense, but as in human behaviour and instinctive beliefs. God is eternal, with no beginning and no end; Man is eternal (through the soul), with a beginning and no end. This means that in God's plan, Man was to live eternally before the Fall which lead to sin, of which the wage is blood and death. God is compassionate, merciful, just and loving; we find that these are inherent qualities that humans possess. Though we may not know it, we have an inclination towards that which is light and is good and a hope that all good will last. The concepts of moral uprighteousness and its eternity is similarly imbibed by our Creator. The ousia of the human is the soul. Tis' especially significant because it is this soul that will gain a new, glorious and incorruptible body upon rapture to live in the Place of golden gates and pearly streets. This is the ultimate destination of the Christian, and will thus shape the manner in which his life is lived in.

Sadly, this belief has been abandoned by the society in its quest for so-called creativity and liberalism. 'I do what I want, and it's absolutely none of your business. So get out of my life NOW!' There is no ultimate destination that the modern man knows, thus leading to the sense of futility or the temporality of life. Life is ambiguous and the future is somewhat misty because man is not definite about who he essentially is and thus what his cause for existence is. Some societal flaws inflicted are hedonism, homosexuality and unfounded abortion. God's unadulterated Word, however, has provided an infallible explanation of all we need to know for our salvation. However, it would boil down to the fact that faith is about the unseen and trusting that there is sturdy ground even as if you take the next step in darkness.

Do you believe in the soul that God created for us?

O for the Wings of a Dove!

And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!
for then would I fly away, and be at rest.
Lo, then would I wander far off,
and remain in the wilderness. Selah.

Psalm 55:6-7

These verses summarise my ultimate view on life. Oh, how I wish I can really fly away from the world and rest for ever under the wings of the Comforter! King David, in his fleeing from his oppressors, wrote this psalm as a humble prayer to seek for the Almighty's Help.

Life has never been easy for me. There is never anything that is enough, be it time, money, knowledge or capabilities. I have three siblings, of which two are going stray from the Path to righteousness, and my parents will have to retire in the short run. I am not doing well for my examinations, no matter how I try to study. My relatives practise politics and my relationship with them is often only skin-deep. There is the constant struggle to maintain my consecration to God, which I had testified to during my baptism in 2004. My peers are greatly influenced by neo-modernism, that is, the trend where ideologies are merely relative and never absolute. Many a time, I know that God has taught me what the Bible says about different issues, but I am socially barred from telling my peers what God says in the Bible.

Our lives have been greatly marred from the state of perfection ever since the Fall of Man. It is inevitable that we have to undergo the curse of toil and hardship.

'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
till thou return unto the ground;'
Genesis 3:19

Our mortal lives have been eternally cursed to be sent forth into Hell and eventually into the Abyss where unsaved sinners shall be sentenced to the second death, the death of the spirit. Yet, God prepared the Son of David to show his love for the fallen sinner, right from the foundation of the Bible, the Book of Genesis.

'And I will put enmity between thee and the woman,
and between thy seed and her seed;
it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.'
Genesis 3:15

While my life on earth will be that of sufferings and hardship, I must persevere to enter the narrow gate, where I must be able to stand unashamed and not empty-handed in front of the Judgment Throne. I cannot become a dove in reality, but I can soar like one in my mind. To soar would be to overlook the matters of the flesh, and to lay up for myself 'treasures in heaven'.

'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moth and rush doth corrupt,
and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt,
and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'
Matthew 6:19-21

God be merciful and hold the horses of punishment for the unsaved! As for fellow siblings-in-Christ, let us be prepared to undergo trials and tribulations to strengthen our faith in the Father.

DDE and two C5s

IF YOU HAVEN'T realised what those alphabets meant, they are my Preliminary Examination results. Yes, I have to face the facts - I did not do well. But then again, this may be subjective and undermine the 'fact' afterall. The quality of grades, or any other thing in the world, can only be determined when you have a standard rule to compare against. DDE and two C5s look bad to me as I had expected to score better. Honestly speaking, I was hoping for Cs for my 'A' level subjects and Bs for my 'AO' ones. Now that I know my targetted scores are merely less than 5 marks away from the actual ones, I must do something to get those precious points.

Upon reflection during QT, I realised I had been lacking in a few areas. My answers were simply missing the bull's eye - I was mainly regurgitating what I had learnt. Therefore, Lesson Number One is: SHAPE my response to ANSWER the question. But technalities aside, I knew that this was a wake-up call to my sins.

I was proud. I started serious studying for my Geography examinations only one or two days before. I practised less than five essay questions for each of the components, but the exact ones came out in the examination. Given that I had sacrificed the bulk of the syllabi to study in detail Population Geography and The Hydrologic Cycle, it was unbelievable that I was asked exactly what I ONLY learnt. So the devil made me proud and think that I had an advantage over others.

'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.'
James 4:6

O Lord, take away my pride so that I may learn and not self-delude.

I had been ashamed of doing QT in school. I decided that the school was a place quiet enough for QT, and that doing it before or after my revision helps calm my mind, heart and soul. God blessed with a place to do QT properly, yet I had abused it. I was embarassed to do QT as my Bible, my RPG and even my reflections were in Chinese. That is stupid, but yes, I have to admit that I am stupid enough to be ashamed of my native language, because the faith is still the same if it were in English. That reminded me of a verse. Although it doesn't exactly apply to my situation, I know that the same sin of denial exists.

'But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.'
Matthew 10:33

Dear Lord, please forgive me of my sins. You gave me new mercies each day, and even more when I was desperately cramming stuff into my head. Yet, I forgot about them and grew proud. Please help me to have the strength to get rid of these problems. I have only 46 days left to the start of the 'A' levels. Please do not let me succumb to the temptation of not keeping your Sabbaths holy too, but work harder and smarter when I can.

AS MY MUM always says, 'It is healthy to sleep early'. Thus, I am practising this profound art right now. Great, it's time to sleep. Don't forget to tag when the tagboard's up! Nighty.