Joyce had to go back to office today so I took the opportunity to go for a swim.  I accidentally left my toiletries in the cubicle after showering after the swim.  When I went back to get my stuff, I found that the cubicle had been occupied by a guy who was showering naked without the door closed.  He was obviously exposing himself.  Embarrassed but without much a choice, I asked him politely to hand my stuff over.  He did, and flashed all of himself and a sleazy suggestive smile at me.  Yikes !  I fled.

Visited a friend at Eusoff Hall last night, who is now an undergraduate living there.  What I found interesting was that one of the blocks in the hall had pretty much become an "international block”, ie. the block where the majority of the international students chose to move into.  Although international students now made up about 50% of the hall, local and international students were not getting along as well as they should ideally.  Hence, the unofficial division of hostelites between “international” and “local” blocks.  Plus, most international students would move out of the Hall after two years (they are guaranteed two years stay), and rent an apartment or move into a hostel together.  Seems that NUS’ attempt to integrate local and foreign students hasn’t met with much success!

(Read my other posting on NUS / Eusoff Hall here).

Had Bible study with Chong Yew and James tonight.  We discussed Nehemiah 8 and in the course of it I gained a new perspective of the Feast of Tabernacles (Deuteronomy 16 : 13 - 17).  I had always associated the Feast of Tabernacles as a time of celebration, a time when the Israelites moved out of their houses and lived in tents to help them remember as a community God’s provision for them – how they were never hungry or thirsty in the desert, and their clothes did not wear out (Deuteronomy 8 : 2 - 18).  What dawned upon me today was that the Feast would also be a time for the community to remember that their forefathers’ wanderings in the desert was a time of suffering, but that God had always watched over and provided for them.  Which gels very well with my (admittedly melancholy) perspective of Christian life – that it ain’t perfect (sometimes it sucks), that God refines the characters of the ones He loves through hardship, but that God is always there watching over and providing for His people.

Read 1 Corinthians 6 : 1 - 6 today.

[1] If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints ?  [2] Do you not know that the saints will judge the world ?  and if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases ?  [3] Do you not know that we will judge angels ?  How much more the things in this life !  [4] Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church !  [5] I say this to shame you.  Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers ?  [6] But instead, one brother goes to law against another – and this in front of unbelievers !

Interestingly, yesterday over dinner Joyce mentioned a Christian client who had come to her for help in his partnership dispute with another Christian business partner.  When she brought this up to one of her Christian bosses, he suggested “Christian mediation”.  He told her that some Christians assume that they should in a spirit of love and grace forgive an offending party and let themselves be trampled all over.  (A quite impossible ideal, I would say).  However, Joyce’s boss believed that the Bible also emphasised restitution, ie. that a wrongdoer should account for what he has done wrong, and gave the example of Zacchaeus the tax collector (Luke 19) who returned to the people had cheated four times the amount that he had extorted from them.  “Christian mediation” I suppose would be a means of resolving disputes and ensuring that a Christian wrongdoer makes restitution to the other Christian that he has wronged, without resorting to the court system as exhorted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 6.

We shopped at Parkway Parade on this evening.  As we drove past FCBC, and saw the crowds that thronged the church before it began its service, I sighed and joked that “if we had been more discerning when young, we would have joined a mega-church” (meaning of course that it is now too late for us to pack up and leave our not-so-mega-church … heh heh).

Finally completed Helen Schulman’s PS.  Quite a funny love story, though a little deviant (aspiring undergraduate having a torrid love affair with a divorced school admissions coordinator is definitely deviant by Singapore standards).  Didn’t find it as charming as the movie though.  Perhaps because the relationship as portrayed in the movie was less vulgar.

Tonight, Joyce and I kind of decided that we’ll get the Lancer M/T.  Priced at about $10,000 below the Toyota Corolla Altis and $20,000 below the Ford Focus, it’s an obvious choice (albeit only slightly less non-exciting than the Corolla).  I think it makes more sense to save the $10,000 plus, so that we store Jed’s cord blood in the cord blood bank, get an SLR camera, etc.  What we can’t agree on, and I foresee this taking some time, is the colour.

It is always painful, shopping with parents. 

And I had to go shopping with in-laws today (at grandmother-in-law’s insistence) to buy (horror of horrors) yellow gold anklet and necklace for Jed.

It amazed me how long we took to settle on what to buy, since all yellow gold looks the same to me – very yellow and supremely unattractive apart from it’s trade-in value at the pawn shop – but that’s shopping with parents for you.

OK, I’m being mean.

Programme for the afternoon was distributing ice cream at Seng Kang with other church members as part of our community outreach efforts.  I was supposed to meet the youths at the Seng Kang MRT at 1300 hours to go down to the venue together.  But I was delayed by the shopping trip with my in laws, and turned up late.

Although I was not intentionally late, for some inexplicable reason, I got very stressed over this (I’m could literally feel my blood pressure and heart rate rise a few notches, and I think the stress was obvious from my facial expression / body language).  I told Joyce that it was probably because I felt that as ministry leaders we should always seek to set an example for those under our charge, which includes being on time.  Joyce said I was being too hard on myself.

Thinking through what happened in the afternoon, it struck me that my stress reaction probably arises from the experience in my previous church(es), where I personally felt (as a youth / young adult) that the adults had set poor examples for the youths.  When this reality finally sank in, I was totally crushed.  I don’t want others to go through the same bitter experience, because of my action or inaction.  Question is whether I’m setting too unrealistic an expectation for myself.

I was asked to write an article for this week’s church bulletin.  The following article was published today :

Do you struggle to be perfect ?  I do.  I struggle to be the perfect husband.  The perfect son.  The perfect employee.  The perfect friend, disciple, ministry leader,  Christian, Singaporean.  To show perfect love and to live with perfect integrity.  Many times I fall short.  Many times I find that I lack the time and energy, talent or ability to be perfect.  I find that many times I’m uncertain if what I do is perfect – the right thing to do or say for the moment.

Do you struggle with pain ?  I do.  I struggle with why I fail in life, even though I try very hard, even though (I think) I am faithful to God.  I struggle with suffering, with why God allows some really difficult times in my life, like my Dad’s cancer.

Do you struggle with fear ?  Doubt ?  Disappointment ?  Rejection ?  I do.

In such times, I turn to the Word of God. 

Strange ?  Perhaps in the sense that reading the Bible is not the first thing most people will do to make themselves feel better.  I think the Bible can seem intimidating because it is not only thick, but because it says so many things about being perfect – the things you could do to lead a perfect life, and the lives of perfect Christians who have lived before us.  But my life is not perfect.  How can this be relevant to me ?

Over time, I’ve discovered that the Bible is much more than a how-to-be-perfect manual.  Recently, I read the blog of a person who shared about his struggles as a Christian, and I posted the following reply to affirm and encourage him :

“… one aspect of my life journey that has reached the same conclusion as yours is that of the Bible as a living record of other people’s journey with God. Not a record of perfect people leading perfect lives as I suppose many Christians [mistakenly believe or] would like to believe, but of imperfect people trying to make sense of their struggles, people trying to reach out to a God who seems so faraway, but whom we know [is nearer than they think.  We know that He] cares about them because the stories of these imperfect people have entered the Scriptures – a permanent reminder that God loves and honours even gasps for faith, inspiring us to do the same when we are drowning”.

When you realise that the Bible is about God lovingly recording the life stories of people He cares about (for you !), and that He cares about you in the same way, the verse “for everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15 : 4) suddenly has a new meaning.

The Word of God inspires me not because it contains 101 commands on how to lead a perfect life, but because I see in it the lives of Christians who have run before me, stumbled, and were picked up by a God who loved them despite themselves.

I hope that this inspires you to read your Bible and walk on for God today.

Published in the Straits Times forum yesterday (6 August 2005) :

“Singapore has prided itself on being a melting pot where people of different religions and cultures live together in harmony.

However, as sizeable portion of the Christian population engages in activities like proselytism, evangelism and attacks on evolution. Proselytism and evangelism often include verbal assaults on other religions.

I am a secondary school student and have often seen people promoting their religion within the school. While they are free to believe in their faith, what they do is against the very Pledge they recite every morning, and an affront to the work our ancestors had put in to establish this nation.

Our ancestors put aside their differences, worked together and built this country through friendship, trust and tolerance, something these missionaries are threatening to undo.

Should there by some religious influence on government decision-making ? Nay ! I say. The United States has already let religious authorities affect its bureaucracy. Now, half the schools in the country do not teach evolution and that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, despite the scientific evidence.

Are we to devolve to that level ?”

The theory of evolution – and the word to stress is theory – is something we don’t completely understand. There are gaps in the theory that we can’t explain, so it’s not unfair that it’s flaws should be subject to attack, whether by Christians or not. After all, the veracity of science lies in the fact that it, unlike blind faith, is open to questioning and testing.

The writer’s argument should also cut both ways.

If the writer thinks that it is terrible to be subject to a barrage of arguments (perhaps rather painfully not very coherent ones, since they are made by his peers) against evolution, and that this is an affront to his belief(s) (atheism ? evolutionism ?), isn’t it as much an affront for creationists (whether Christian or not) to be told during geography and science lessons (though I doubt that teachers put it in absolute terms) that their beliefs are incredible and that only the theory of evolution can explain how our planet came into existence ? Isn’t it as much an affront for creationists to listen to and be required to use the words “nature” instead of “creation” in geography and science classes ?

By the above I don’t mean that creationism (or “intelligent design”, the more politically correct term) should necessarily be taught in science and geography classes as an alternative theory on how our world came to exist. Unlike evolution, which can be proved to a limited extent through experimentation and observation, intelligent design cannot. The theory of evolution is therefore, arguably, more of a science than intelligent design is. Intelligent design, on the other hand, might better fit into a class on philosophy or religion.

I would also agree with those who say that a theory (ie. evolution) is not necessarily incorrect or invalid just because it cannot be conclusively proven. What is needed, however, is more balanced approach when the theory of evolution is taught. Students should be informed of the gaps and the limits of our understanding, so that they do not incorrectly assume that the theory of evolution is the last word on how all of us came to exist.