Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith

Read more about it in this Time Magazine article. Even "saints" are humans. I really like the conclusion of this article.

Consistent with her ongoing fight against pride, Teresa's rationale for suppressing her personal correspondence was "I want the work to remain only His." If the letters became public, she explained to Picachy, "people will think more of me — less of Jesus."

The particularly holy are no less prone than the rest of us to misjudge the workings of history — or, if you will, of God's providence. Teresa considered the perceived absence of God in her life as her most shameful secret but eventually learned that it could be seen as a gift abetting her calling. If her worries about publicizing it also turn out to be misplaced — if a book of hasty, troubled notes turns out to ease the spiritual road of thousands of fellow believers, there would be no shame in having been wrong — but happily, even wonderfully wrong — twice.

I can't help thinking if her first vision is too "grand" that she missed all the more subtle signs God showed her along her life. As I have repeatedly said before in this blog, I do believe God shows Himself most of the time through boring things in our lives.

I am sure most of us have been through these darkest hours before. Here's another saint's take on this.

CGST TEE course (Autumn)

The course list for the coming autumn is available.

I'm thinking about the Book of Daniel... What about you?

(Initially I intended to stop taking the course for a while coz I've really got too much to do, but Daniel seemed very interesting, I have always wanted to know the meaning of the latter part of that book...)

P.S. I just realised it's a Sat AFTERNOON course... that means I cannot attend fellowship... ARGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Tao Fong Shan and my first Labyrinth experience

We went to a retreat camp last weekend. I am sure many Christians in Hong Kong knew about this place-- Tao Fong Shan, I have been there several times before but I have never stayed there at night.

For those of you who didn't know, it's a place where they tried to merge Chinese culture with Christianity. For example, this church was built in a Chinese style.





And there's also a meditation room. Quite Catholic in style, I like it. With candles and Jesus was carved on the cross.



And a huge cross





And this is the "narrow path" leading to the "narrow gate"





The most special thing I tried this time is the labyrinth-- a tool for meditation. (For more info in Chinese from the Tao Fong website. This link from the Grace Cathedral got much more info tho!)



I realised during my walk through the labyrinth, one needs to walk away from the centre before one can get to the centre. We often pursue our goals singlemindedly, but the fact is we often need to let go and do whatever God wants instead of rushing to grab what we want. When I arrived at the centre, I realised it's so bare, I like the periphery more. =) All the more reason to let go and let God do whatever He wants with us.

Of course, all of us have different feelings after the meditation. You can try it here online!! I think physically walking is a much more interesting experience. :)

For more about the facilities, check this out.

Working the Angles

Just read a review on this book. (I haven't read this book, but I have read Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, it's a pretty good book, so I think it'll probably be a good one.) From the introduction of Working the Angles written by Eugene Peterson:

American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted…. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills.

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns–how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.

Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.

How true this is. This is NOT just happening in the States, also in Hong Kong. sigh... I have once heard someone said, "you want to go an find the perfect church, the minute you go into that church, it's no longer perfect, coz you're imperfect."

This is just so sad when pastors stop doing their jobs.

Cape Refuge

I have never been able to finish any Christian novel before. Well, I have only tried reading "Left Behind" before. I had pretty high hopes for Cape Refuge coz its reviews on Amazon are quite good. And Terri Blackstock was a a best-selling writer before she was called to write Christian fiction.

I am sorry to say it's a big disappointment for me. I don't like mystery a lot, but even I can guess who the killer was from the start... and it's so obviously being written to preach a certain message, and I think that IS a poor way of trying to convey a message across. One should do it in more subtle ways to make a story enjoyable.

And the story is far from enjoyable. I had to flip through the second half of the book to finish it. I can't believe Blackstock was a bestselling writer before, coz she wrote badly now... hmm... tho she's writing for a different genre now.

Whereas Diana Gabaldon (my favourite writer, a devout Catholic) wrote historical fiction, but you can see Christian messages everywhere in her book. An example of it can be found in one of my previous posts.

When is there going to be some good Christian novels??!!
(Sorry for any grammatical error, it's 4:30am)

My Jesus I Love Thee

Doulos

The ship will visit Hongkong during 11/9-7/10 at the Harbour City at TST.

All tickets will be available on 18/8 at 基道書樓／中信書室／循道衛理書室／怡樂坊．

For more information, pls check this out.

Why the godly guys aren't hot, and the hot guys aren't godly

Just read this interesting explanation on this topic. While I agree with the above statement, I don't think this is a problem for most Christian guys, I don't think they're so "pure" that they don't know how to pursue a girl, but I've never seen any hot godly guys, have you?

one day, the Christian boy feels physical attraction to a girl, and since nobody has delimited where physical attraction ends and where sinful lust begins, the whole thing is tainted with guilt. He sees no way he can express attraction or flirt with a “sister” with “absolute purity.”...He’s been convinced that flirting and dating are “sinful” or “manipulative,” and is embarrassed before himself that he even has physical attractions, ’cause all he’s ever been told is that character and godliness are all important in a mate. (Christian authors and preachers often won’t even acknowledge the aspect of physical attraction which initiates virtually all pursuits.)

So what often happens next is that the godly Christian guy goes to the Christian book store for help (I’m telling you, just about all of my friends have done this, and all of them are still single)–because God knows his dad is never going to teach him how to flirt, to read body language, or to practice proper dating etiquette, and what he finds is that all the books in the Christian book store on relationships only talk about the morals (in other words, more accusations of wrongdoing and wrong feelings), and not the mechanics of winning a girl’s heart. And God knows there aren’t any sanctified men’s magazines; while attempting to learn about style, grooming, fitness, and how to approach women from such a magazine, the reader is bombarded with images of bikini clad women, raunchy articles about sexual practices, and fixations on material wealth and worldly lusts. (Blessed is he who does not take the counsel of the ungodly. . .)

Missionaries from Korea overzealous??

Two of the Korean hostages have been released by Taliban yesterday. Since their kidnapping, their careless disregard of their own safety has been criticised by many. This article discussed whether their approach is overzealous. This is an excerpt.

South Korea had over 16,000 evangelical missionaries abroad as of the end of 2006, the second biggest source of missionaries after the United States.

Korean Christians are passionate evangelists, but what they don't have is a careful, reasoned strategy, insiders say. Since Christianity entered Korea 100 years ago this year through Pyongyang, now the North Korean capital, the number of churches in Korea has mushroomed as have the number of missionaries. But their inexperience often left them ill-prepared and ignorant of rules and pra ctices in regions where proselytizing is prohibited by law, they said.

The captives, mostly in their 20s and 30s from Saemmul Community Church just south of Seoul, overlooked many critical points that might have saved them from their ordeal, government officials said. The volunteers were on a 10-day good-will aid trip to Afghanistan during their summer vacations, They did not report to the local police when traveling from Kabul to Kandahar, the former stronghold of the Taliban where security is a problem. Their bus was of a type that the locals knew would be used for foreigners. In addition, they ignored warnings from the Foreign Ministry and National Intelligence Service that they would be in danger in the war-ripped region...

"Korean missionaries have strong emotional fervor but they are weak in strategy," he said. "Missionary work is about humbling ourselves, listening to what locals say, what other missionaries there say ... We use the term 'spiritual war' but that doesn't mean we wage war against local residents. We cannot be combative delivering God's words."...

"If they identify themselves as Christians, put on a placard that says they are from a church, they're making themselves perfect targets of terror attacks... If they are good, they naturally draw people. We can't say, 'Believe in Jesus or go to hell'," Kim said.

Like many others, the Yoido church sends out full-time missionaries, mostly professionals like doctors or engineers, to Afghanistan and other Islamic countries, but they operate in a subtle way, he said. He said they never put on a religious label but try to mingle with locals as "good neighbors." The Yoido church has 600 full-time missionaries in 55 countries and sends out about 1,500 short-term missionaries every summer for a week or two.

He said it's a "top secret" how many missionaries it has now in Afghanistan for security reasons.
Still, aggressive evangelism is a key practice of many Korean churches, which believe their current prosperity flows from the work of Western missionaries who came here during Japan's colonial rule or the Korean War. The believe they should emulate and pay back those missionaries, some of whom were martyred, through service to third world countries...

"It's a theological question whether aggressive proselytizing is right or wrong. Many say that Christians should try more to understand and sympathize with locals rather than to convert them, but it's not easy to say aggressive evangelism is wrong because that's a fundamental denial of what the decree says," he said, "But we will have a big debate about this. That's for sure."

God said we should be brave, not foolish. Martyrs should only die because they have to, NOT because they want to or mistakes that can be easily corrected.

I did not pray for their release, (I am not sure if that is God's will, how will God sort out this problem humans created?), I just prayed for their peace even when they are being held captive.

1st Anniversary Really!

Today is really the first anniversary of my spiritual journal, and I just briefly glanced through my blog again to see how God talked to me in the past year, here are some selected posts...

Walking with God
Saul vs David
Andrew
Reflections on Christianity and Christians
Offering and Sin (Sermon 10/9/06)
Thoughts on Sermon 8/10/06 (Matthew 22:36-40)
Pistos ho Kalon
Tired of being "good"
What is a good spiritual life??
Trust
REVIVAL - What I have learnt in the retreat camp (on Mark chapter 9) Part 1
What I learnt in the retreat camp on Mark 9 (Part 3)
Continuing on the journey with Jacob
Joshua 3:1-5 Sermon
Church problems
Offer yourself as a Living Sacrifice
The ark of convenant (1 Chronicles 13) & David
Letters from Leavers
What's so Amazing about Evangelicals?
Francis Beckwith
Forgiveness again...

1st Anniversary

Well, it's tomorrow, I started this spiritual journal one year ago when I was elected the chairperson of my fellowship and decided to keep a record of how God could pick me up from a low point through my experience of working for Him. And I did grow, both spiritually and personally.

I wrote this post today, instead of tomorrow, because the fellowship election was held today and I was re-elected as the chairperson again.

I have never taken any leave (i.e. not to be on the list of eligible candidates) from the committee, sometimes I wasn't elected, but I have never said I'm not going to participate in the election before.

My rationale is, if God thinks I'm not suitable for the work, I won't get elected.

Last year was the busiest year in terms of fellowship work. I worked as the officer responsible for the spiritual growth of the fellowship for 3 consecutive years before. It was busy, but NOT as busy as last year.

Honestly, I was silently hoping that God would reassign some of the less "heavy" tasks for me because I will be having my Part 2 exam next year, and I need to study a lot.

I think God has His own plans, and I trust that He will lead me through my work, my study for work, my evening classes at CGST, my work in the children's service, my Sunday school teaching class and my work in the fellowship.

However, it doesn't make next year any easier... no matter how I look at it... Let's see how God's grace get me through this. :)

Young adults aren't sticking with church

From USA Today

Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 — both evangelical and mainline — who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23, according to the survey by LifeWay Research. And 34% of those said they had not returned, even sporadically, by age 30. That means about one in four Protestant young people have left the church.

"This is sobering news that the church needs to change the way it does ministry," says Ed Stetzer, director of Nashville-based LifeWay Research, which is affiliated with the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

"It seems the teen years are like a free trial on a product. By 18, when it's their choice whether to buy in to church life, many don't feel engaged and welcome," says associate director Scott McConnell.

...The survey found that those who stayed with or returned to church grew up with both parents committed to the church, pastors whose sermons were relevant and engaging, and church members who invested in their spiritual development.

"Too many youth groups are holding tanks with pizza. There's no life transformation taking place," Stetzer says. "People are looking for a faith that can change them and to be a part of changing the world."

Why they leave
• Wanted a break from church: 27%
• Found church members judgmental or hypocritical: 26%
• Moved to college: 25%
• Tied up with work: 23%
• Moved too far away from home church: 22%
• Too busy: 22%
• Felt disconnected to people at church: 20%
• Disagreed with church's stance on political/social issues: 18%
• Spent more time with friends outside church: 17%
• Only went before to please others: 17%

Why they stay
• It's vital to my relationship with God: 65%
• It helps guide my decision in everyday life: 58%
• It helps me become a better person: 50%
• I am following a family member's example: 43%
• Church activities were a big part of my life: 35%
• It helps in getting through a difficult time: 30%
• I fear living without spiritual guidance: 24%

I'm in the group that stayed. =) I guess "it's vital to my relationship to God and it helps in getting through a dificult time" may represent what I feel, but I stayed because God is in the church despite the fact that my pastors' sermons were NOT relevant NOR engaging. =P

Love our enemies

For preparation of the Bible teaching this week, I re-read What's So Amazing about Grace. As I'm also reading parts of The Cost of Discipleship, it's funny how a quote of it appears in the Philip Yancey book.

Philip Yancey is talking about how unnatural an act of forgiveness is and even after forgiveness the wound is still there. And it's a peculiar quality in Christians.

Bonhoeffer talked about "loving your enemies" while being persecuted by Nazis.

Through the medium of prayer we go to out enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God. Jesus did not promise that when we bless our enemies and do good to them they will not despitefully use and persecute us. They certainly will. But not even that can hurt or overcome us, so long as we pray for them... We are doing vicariously for them what they cannot do for themselves.

My "trophies" from the Bible Conference Book Exhibition

Not so perfect man

Joseph is NOT perfect! (I'm talking about the one from Genesis. I wrote this in response to what my friend posted about Joseph, and I found it can be posted here as well. haha! I've corrected a lot of typo though, haha!!)

No one in the Bible is ever perfect (with the exception of God and Jesus of course), that is why we should simply stopped taking role models from the Bible. The Bible is about God redeeming us DESPITE all our faults.

I remembered Dr. Moye agreeing with me when I talked about this during the Sunday school class two years ago.

His problems:
1. The way he took all the lands from the Egyptians for Pharaoh during the famine.
2. The way he managed to make EVERY one of his brothers hate him. You can imagine him telling his father all the mistakes of his brothers, was that all from good intentions? I doubt it. Even if you believe it was of good intention, it showed how foolish he was (in dealing with human relationships). When you see someone doing something wrong, the first thing to do is not to run off and tell your father/superior about it. UNLESS you want to make those people hate you.

I'm not on the bus either

Some time ago I watched on TV about Christians in the States building a museum for creation (!) to prove that God has created the world. (as if it can ever be proven!) I like that program, coz the host is a devout Jew, he believes in God, but whenever he disagrees with the view of those "fundamentalist" Christians, he got scolded as if he's Satan...

Today I read this post over at Internet Monk, I'm afraid this is not just something happening in the States, it's also getting more and more prevalent in Hong Kong. And I am weary of this like him...

The excitement is building around here. A good number of adults have been to the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky and they are singing its praises.

...I’m easily distracted from the Gospel, and I don’t want to be. I want to be single-minded about the gospel. Evangelicals these days WANT to be distracted. They are on buses of every kind, and I don’t want to be on any of them.

They are on the culture war bus. I have no hope that Christians can save the culture through politics. All that money could feed the poor, start churches, fund missionaries and mercy ministries. Giving it to ads on TV and Radio in hopes of making America a “Christian” nation is a waste of time.

...I’m not on that bus. Justification is by Jesus, through grace and faith. No one is justified by cultural wars or family values.

I’m not on the creationism bus either. The Bible is the story of redemption, and the point of its account of creation is to tell us who God is and who we are. I’ll give creationists the benefit of the doubt and I’ll agree that secular scientists have a far weaker case than they assume, but I don’t believe we save anyone by creation science. I don’t believe the age of the earth is the test of Biblical orthodoxy. I don’t believe creationists do very good science. I don’t think intelligent design is a trick of the devil.

All these creationism buses seem to have the not-so-subtle subtle message, “Get on or we’re going to run over you.”

I want to be all about the Gospel. It’s my one interest in this business. I truly fear the totalizing tendencies of so many evangelicals who believe anything they do, think, write or sell is a moral obligation for real Christianity. I fear the people who are so easily manipulated by what they hear, read and see that they will mount a mini-crusade against those who differ with them. I fear the increasing assumption that in evangelicalism, there is a group-think bus for every topic from Harry Potter to feeding schedules for your infant.

Suddenly, the Bible isn’t the story of redemption. It’s the instruction manual and complete encyclopedia for every sphere of life and every human activity. Not in telling us to do all we do in the name of Jesus, but in telling us the age of the earth, the dos and don’t of birth control and how to vote in a political environment the Biblical writers never dreamed of.

Mostly, I am weary of Christians- so many of them my brothers and sisters- who can’t give breathing room to a Democrat, theistic evolutionist or advocate of public schooling. These buses are for pilgrimage, and the seats are only for particular kinds of pilgrims. Christ doesn’t require us all to be alike in all these ways. We’ve built this evangelical subculture and made it an ultimatum. Very bad idea, that one.

For me, I just don't think we should force others (who aren't even Christians) to agree with us, in the process making them our enemies even before they ever got to know Jesus.

Sometimes I doubt if those really matter to God, like the world has been created for 5000 year+, all those fossils are not THAT old... The one God I know and believe in is probably weary of all these stupid arguments...

The Therapeutic Gospel

A thought provoking article. Finally something in English for those of you who read English. =) Here's an excerpt, or read the whole thing thro the link.

It’s structured to give people what they want, not to change what they want. It centers exclusively around the welfare of man and temporal happiness. It discards the glory of God in Christ. It forfeits the narrow, difficult road that brings deep human flourishing and eternal joy. This therapeutic gospel accepts and covers for human weaknesses, seeking to ameliorate the most obvious symptoms of distress. It makes people feel better. It takes human nature as a given, because human nature is too hard to change. It does not want the King of Heaven to come down. It does not attempt to change people into lovers of God, given the truth of who Jesus is, what he is like, what he does.

* I want to feel loved for who I am, to be pitied for what I’ve gone through, to feel intimately understood, to be accepted unconditionally;
* I want to experience a sense of personal significance and meaningfulness, to be successful in my career, to know my life matters, to have an impact;
* I want to gain self-esteem, to affirm that I am okay, to be able to assert my opinions and desires;
* I want to be entertained, to feel pleasure in the endless stream of performances that delight my eyes and tickle my ears;
* I want a sense of adventure, excitement, action, and passion so that I experience life as thrilling and moving.

In this new gospel, the great "evils" to be redressed do not call for any fundamental change of direction in the human heart. Instead, the problem lies in my sense of rejection from others; in my corrosive experience of life’s vanity; in my nervous sense of self-condemnation and diffidence; in the imminent threat of boredom if my music is turned off; in my fussy complaints when a long, hard road lies ahead. These are today’s significant felt needs that the gospel is bent to serve. Jesus and the church exist to make you feel loved, significant, validated, entertained, and charged up. This gospel ameliorates distressing symptoms. It makes you feel better. The logic of this therapeutic gospel is a jesus-for-Me who meets individual desires and assuages psychic aches.

兵器譜：後現代明光社

I read this on the way to work today... Sorry it's in Chinese again...

短短十年，明光社與社運團體的恩恩怨怨，已經如鐵路一樣長，差不多到了「一切人反對一切人」的地步。

...先是網民發起「救盲行動」，炮轟明光社是「基督教原教旨主義」和「假道學」，經常假借影視及娛樂事務處、淫褻物品審裁處及廣播事務管理局的淫威，來騎劫香港人的自由，令香港步入黑暗...

這無疑是個叫人忐忑不安的意象。異議人士和社運團體用上了極大的力氣，去跟對方勢不兩立。但今日的「對方」不是甚麼甚麼局長和財閥，而是一個僅僅在1997年5月才成立的「民間團體」。究竟，一個團體可以在十年間做了甚麼手腳，能令一眾社運團體對它「社運」一番呢？常言道，一個人、一個團體在香港社會算不了甚麼，十年、廿年的工作歷史也只是九牛一毛，但偏偏，明光社的十年，不單令它成為「道德沙皇」、「聖人」、「道德塔利班」，更成功令本來「粒粒性格巨星」的異議團體，全部槍口一致對外，齊轟明光社。委實是「不可叫人小看你年輕」！

...所有人都是透過一個詮釋框架看世界，每個人都帶著一套前設來經驗世界，因此基督徒也無需隱諱自身特有的基督教前設，以供別人驗證；而 Lyotard更表明，根本沒有中立的公共空間，即使學術界和基督徒也可以大膽提出基督教的觀點，但同時妥避免唯我獨尊、高高在上的姿態。基督教神學也可以有某種謙卑，在與信奉其他宗教人士和不同道德的人士交往時，也是有所裨益。

If only we Christians can learn this, then a lot more people will become Christians irrespective of whether we organise any more evangelical meetings... (My mom is just complaining about how much money we have wasted on the Graham thing... =P)

「不可叫人小看你年輕」is a good one...

Read the whole thing here.

Good sharing

This is in Chinese, a very good sharing that came just at the right time.