Art and the Bible

The Lordship of Christ over the whole of life means that there are no platonic areas in Christianity, no dichotomy or hierarchy between the body and soul. God made the body as well as the soul and redemption is for the whole man.

...when a man comes under the blood of Christ, his whole capacity as man is refashioned. His soul is saved, yes, but so are his mind and body. As Christians we are to look to Christ day by day, for Christ will produce his fruit through us. True spirituality means the Lordship of Christ over the total man...[Christianity] involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just "dogmatically" true or "doctrinally" true, but true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life...once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment - the infinite, personal God who is really there - then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth.

How often do Christians think of sexual matters as something second-rate. Never, never, never should we do so, according to the Word of God. The whole man is made to love God; each aspect of man's nature is to be given its proper place. That includes the sexual relationship, that tremendous relationship of one man to one woman. At the very beginning God brought Eve to man. A love poem can thus be beautiful. So if you are a young man or a young woman and you love a girl or you love a boy, you may indeed write beautiful love poetry. Don't be afraid. That too can be praise to God. And when the two people are Christians, it can be a conscious doxology.

 Art and the Bible (1973)
Francis Schaeffer

Hmm..interesting.

greed rears its ugly head

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.

God (in Ephesians 5: 3-13)

People don't look ugly when they eat hastily. They look ugly when they are greedy, no matter how dressed up or affluent and charismatic they may be. Greed rears its ugly head in their eyes and mouth. And that is how I look like when I am greedy in my heart. I must have been so ugly in the past when I gorged myself out on buffets! Yet God had been patient to tolerate that while he changed me in that aspect.

Just right after we left the buffet restaurant, I saw the third of three poor elderly men that evening. He was flattening cardboard boxes that he found in the trash. They earn $0.14 to $0.15 for 1 kilogram. He would need to sell 142.7 kilograms of cardboards just to eat a few hours at the buffet place I went to!

I felt sadness, and guilt was creeping in. The guilt rhetoric is all too familiar: Why did I spend my money on a buffet when the S$21.40 could be used to help the poor? 

By faith, I believe that God's Kingdom is one of abundance as much as sustenance. He takes care of these countless poor people as they salvage trash. Yes, I have a responsibility for those in poverty, but they are God's responsibility first and mine second. To imprison myself with endless guilt over what I could have done to help everyone on earth is to play God, something that I cannot do in my limited and sinful nature. It will just result in bitter judgmentalism and pride towards those who do not 'sacrifice as much as I do'. At least this was my experience after holding The Absent Party in place of my 21st birthday for the Dalits in India.

I believe this is why Jesus sometimes spent the entire day without sleeping or eating healing the blind, sick, and the crippled, while at other times feasting with prostitutes and traitors. He was always showing people what God's goodness meant through his person, no matter where he was or what he was doing.

What place is there for guilt if in God's mercy and by his strength, I learn to live a frugal life and use the salaries he's lent to me to further his Kingdom, as well as meet my needs and have abundance?

I believe what God has said and proclaim this to you:

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
   come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
   come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
   without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
   and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
   and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
   listen, that you may live.
 ...
As the heavens are higher than the earth,
   so are my ways higher than your ways
   and my thoughts than your thoughts.
As the rain and the snow
   come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
   without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
   so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
   It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
   and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

Isaiah 55:1-3, 9-11

In short, I'm just overwhelmed and grieved. Who would have known that I would be shown so much from just a buffet? Yet I am thankful. The Lord trains those who belong to him for use.

Here's a mashup of Pink's Perfect and Jessie J's Price Tag by Charlene and me.

And here's a great song. Can't wait for Lucy Rose to release her first album in a few months!

song for you

Open your heart, open your heart! For I have loved you from the start.

Safely Home

"They began singing a song with strange words, more like a story script than lyrics:

From the time the early church appeared on the day of the Pentecost,
the followers of the Lord all willingly sacrificed themselves.
Tens of thousands have sacrificed their lives that the gospel might prosper.
As such they have obtained the crown of life.

Yue whispered, "This song is called 'To Be a Martyr for the Lord.' It's very popular in house churches." Ben listened as the song continued:

Those apostles who loved the Lord to the end
Willingly followed the Lord down the path of suffering
John was exiled to the lonely isle of Patmos.
Stephen was crushed to death with stones by the crowd.
Matthew was cut to death in Persia by the people.
Mark died as his two legs were pulled apart by the horses.
Doctor Luke was cruelly hanged.
Peter, Philip, and Simon were crucified on the cross.
Bartholomew was skinned alive by the heathen.
Thomas died in India as five horses pulled apart his body.
The apostle James was beheaded by King Herod.
Little James was cut up by a sharp saw.
James the brother of the Lord was stoned to death.
Judas was bound to a pillar and died by arrows.
Matthias had his head cut off in Jerusalem.
Paul was a martyr under King Nero.

The song had a catchy beat, but Ben found the words bizarre and frightening. He wondered how people could sing them with such enthusiasm.

I am willing to take up the cross and go forward,
To follow the apostles down the road of sacrifice.
That tens of thousands of precious souls can be saved,
I am willing to leave all and be a martyr for the Lord.

Voices intensified as they sang the chorus:

To be a martyr for the Lord,
To be a martyr for the Lord,
I am willing to die gloriously for the Lord.

When the song was finally over, Yue said, "House caves are wonderful. We can sing and pray as loud and long as we want. No one can hear us." "

 Safely Home (2001) 

Randy Alcorn

And I would say the most fascinating part of this song is that to die gloriously for the Lord is not to engage in some form of zealous religious war (God forbid! That is blasphemy), but to willingly die for walking in Jesus' footsteps.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 

John 1: 9-13

Lord, if I were to die because of persecution, I trust you will give me the strength to hold through till I meet you.

I would write about cats, death, and what I learned about God's sovereignty, but I feel overwhelmed right now and I guess I'll write next time.

We're not halfway through 2011 yet, but so much has happened especially in the past few months in my life and lives of people I hold close to my heart. I am so thankful for them.

God is not human, that he should lie,
   not a human being, that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
   Does he promise and not fulfill?

Numbers 23:19

There is so much in my heart, and you know it all, Lord. I love you and I trust you.

Heinous

I visited my grandpa again few days back for the first time in a few months. We call him Ah Gong and were told that he was getting weak very quickly. As usual, I tried shamelessly to speak to him in my smattering of Teochew, which was possibly mixed with Hokkien especially since I don't really know the difference between both. I know he can understand Mandarin though he can't speak it. But somehow I don't feel comfortable speaking in Mandarin to him. Whether I speak to him in Mandarin or noob Teochew, communication will still be one-way.

Because the problem is with me.

I cannot understand Teochew. I wasn't taught and continue to be refused by my parents when I ask them to teach me. And yes it is a problem because there are so many things I want to say to this dear old kind person, but I can't.

And because of that I broke down in front of him. Just two of us in the stuffy room, him looking straight and me looking at the cold rain and sunshine outside the glass window. Without my Ah Gong, there wouldn't be me. Or even if I was around, I would probably have been born in China in a place poorer than Singapore. And yet I couldn't talk to this man who was quickly fading away with his paper-thin skin covering a network of green veins that vulnerably shielded his skeleton.

I left that afternoon feeling very upset and angry. And even right now, I still am. I, like most other people my generation, are unable and uninterested in non-Mandarin Chinese languages for various reasons including its low instrumental value in Singapore, and them paling out in comparison to other more exotic languages as publicly imagined. And you notice that to call them dialects of Mandarin is a political construction of Chinese languages to justify Singapore's Speak Mandarin campaign in the 1990s to just 'let the kids learn the common Chinese language', i.e. allegedly Mandarin. Apparently, our brain was only competent enough for two languages, and so the campaign's rhetoric was that if parents continue to teach and/or speak to kids in Chinese 'dialects', then that would affect their grades in Mandarin. And surely no good parent would want to sacrifice their kids' academic performance knowing that they are the ones who affected them right? But apparently, this assumption was also wrong, because the enlightened leaders have realized that our brains can actually only take one language, and hence Chinese becoming increasingly optional in school admission up to university level. Isn't this brain thing better explained by socialization patterns than something psychologically inherent?

Looking back, this early aim of the Speak Mandarin campaign to replace 'dialects' with Mandarin in both media and society has been remarkably successful. My parents know how to speak a few dialects, and they choose not to do it at moderate extents with each other, and they choose not to speak any dialect to us at all. And I suspect that somewhere in their worldview, they have naturalized the campaign's rhetoric and expanded on it - not teaching Teochew to your kids seems so natural and it is difficult explain why (as with why pink is for baby girls, and blue for baby boys, or why pretty girls are usually thin with non-frizzy hair).

Isn't it as ironic as slapping yourself in public that by advocating Mandarin at the expense of my learning of Teochew in order to pass down the celebrated values of Confucianism, I have been denied an urgent and genuine expression of the very same values?

What I experienced that Sunday afternoon is the effect of this heinous campaign. I would even say that it borders on immorality, given its already moralized discourse when people are encouraged to speak Mandarin and preserve the Confucian values of propriety, righteousness, humility, trust, loyalty, filial piety, integrity, and love.

Some say "it's the thought that counts, so don't get too worked up that you can't communicate". But if you are the one fading away into nothingness, won't you desire to communicate with others? Dying or alive, we all know how precious it is to be able to talk with someone in your own language, especially your heart language/s, the one that allows you to connect people at a deeper level than other languages you know.

It is futile to wholly blame the social engineers behind this Speak Mandarin Campaign because I know that it is also my choice to have not learned Teochew all this while. But what I do want to underscore is that our leaders lacked foresight, and now we are systematically affected by their successful eradication of non-Mandarin Chinese languages from most Singaporeans' linguistic repertoires. I say that they lacked foresight because I do not wish to give them the benefit of doubt that they saw this coming but decided that it was ultimately not worth protecting anyway.

This is my Ah Gong. He came from Shantou, a formerly bustling coastal city in the Chinese province of Guangdong appointed for Western trade and contact in the 19th century. He was born into a commoner's family in 1901 and later sailed with many other Chinese immigrants across the South China Sea to Singapore to hopefully eke out a living and then later have his wife and his son (who unfortunately passed while he was away) join him.

He carries with him an entire century of history - from the Qing Dynasty, the early days of modern Singapore, Japanese Occupation, Singapore's independence all the way through till today. And not to mention what little I know about his very hard life, a life that would be unthinkable for many of us in our comfortable cushy world.

And this is the grandpa who will pass on, burying with him the real stories that media has sometimes only fantasized about in serial dramas, burying with him the socially marginalized status the government has relegated to him when they owe him credit for building Singapore to what it is today. But before that, I have many things to say to him, many very important things that he needs to know while he still can.