What i want from God

What i want from God.

Kinda difficult when i put it that way. I think that if everyone had just one wish they can make of God, they'd have trouble filling that up.

Sure, we do want many things in our lives, but they're not THAT terribly wanting [for lack of words].

i mean, i'm sure i want loads of money, no stress, all the anime i can watch, good food, car, a pet, a fit and healthy body. But these aren't really what i would pray to God for. Nope..Not even for good grades.

But if i had one wish i could make to God, is that He would walk with me, and let me know that He is doing that. It would just be so great if i could talk to Him and have Him answer back, like even play pranks on Him just to be sure that He is there.

Nope. I don't want money. i can do with pretty little. I don't want a good job from God; my life ain't defined by my job. I want friendship with Him.

And i'm pretty glad that i'm getting much of that in a way; when i have a friend who is around me when i need talking to, someone who would tour paris with me, someone who would take me to VivoCity for the first time, someone who would pester me to teach guitar to, someone i could visit at her booth to pass time, someone i could write letters to.

I still feel like the people around me are my greatest blessing. And that is coming from someone who hermits in his dorm studying or playing or watching anime who dun go out often. That says a lot. So you peaps who have loads of people/friends around you rejoice and give thanks!

"Our God is not a God of the dead, but of the living" - that means that God is not in your job, your car or your house; but the people in your life

Stay blessed
Brian

Being Christian [For myself]

Well, it's kinda back dated, but i've learnt something from visiting a friend's church during easter sunday

That being Christian doesn't mean that we are perfect, but that we seek the perfection of Christ. And Christ is the only man who is perfect, the one who has 100% for every test, who knows just what to do, what to say in every kind of situation.

And we are just people who struggle and try to achieve that end, but realise that we can never.

And we sin because we fall short of that perfection, not just because we did wrong stuff.

And i guess being christian for me means to reason my way through with views, with facts and evidences, and tangibles. But i really thank God for people He placed in my life who do NOT do things that way, so i have my balance through people around me. People who experience His joy and love and share that with me are SO important in my walk, and i thank God for all of you.

Christians should be Christians

Dear friends,

One day i was talking to someone, and we touched on the topic of Christianity (somehow) and he was asking me: "Are Catholics Christians?"

"Of course they are. We all worship Christ."

"But [unnamed] is a catholic and he says that he isn't a christian"

What a shock.

I'm not sure whether that is the right stand for a catholic to take, but i just feel it's so sad that there are such divisions in the religion.

In fact, one of the question that bug me the most is this: why is Christianity the most split apart faith there ever was? Is it one of the teachings? Is there a religious reason why there are so many different denominations in the world?

The answer to that is a very complex one, and I'll try to explain it, but i will not profess that it is the ONLY answer. OR that it's the RIGHT answer. It's just A answer okay? so cut me some slack here.

As we all know, the first church that was every established was the Holy Roman Church, which was the Roman Catholic Church. That was way back from when the 12 apostles started the underground church operation, up to when it became the official religion of Rome at the death bed of emperor Constantine, through the times when Roman Catholic Church was the one unifying factor over the different regions in Europe, through the splitting of power to different regions and princes..

To the point when Martin Luther King headed the reformation and established the Protestant while John Calvin established the Calvinist, and along the way Lutheran church came about, and then the Puritans left Europe and established their colony in America[not just puritans] and somewhere later along the lines Pentecostals emerged and Charismatics evolved.

And that's not even all of the different denominations there were.

I suppose that the fact that the denominations can be named and described to great detail shows that there is order in the separations, but still, separation is separation. And the wildest thing is that each denomination holds on to their own beliefs, even if the foundation of the truth is still the same. Kinda makes me wonder where long the line did we go wrong?

A few blog entries before i mentioned that we should all be careful especially when we try to interpret the word of God. We may think it's divine revelation, but sometimes it's just us with a wrong tangent. That's what i believe happened. Somewhere along the line, someone came up with a wild idea, and everyone hopped on the boat and split apart from the rest. It's become so ugly that now, no one knows which is the true faith anymore. And that should not be the case.

This was exactly what the early church fathers were afraid of, and from that fear came the persecution of the witch hunts and heresy trials. And the stark irony of it is that all that bloodshed didn't even avoid this catastrophe that we are in now.

I really applaud and appreciate churchs that have a no-denomination stand, that they accept everyone from different background, and that they try to tread the line where teachings go, but eventually they will still go back to some background and those who came from elsewhere will feel betrayed.

What i really wish would happen is that God would do something drastic and show us which one is the real faith. Like a movement that seeks to reconciliate all the denominations under one CHRISTIAN faith, and unite all the churches in the world into one huge conglomerate MNC that would rule the world..haha..maybe not rule the world..But i believe it will help give Christians an identity, and make it a whole lot easier to help the world as well.

Take for example in Detroit, there are no lack of church. While i was there, what struck me was that there was a church almost every other street; but each congregation was stuck with low numbers and mundane problems, like where to get funding from with the small church population, how to get their utilities going, windows fixed..the kind of things that would be fixed if they were a part of a bigger organization that funded them, so they can focus on working on the important stuff.

Imagine a huge Christian organization where the money is centralised and went out to help people and ministries where it is needed. I'm not talking about contributions, but about freakin funding and powering the ministry! If just any christian organization can 'boast' about some charitable deed, imagine if the organization was a whole lot larger; how much good we can do?!

Christians around the world have a huge untapped potential; it's not about us not wanting to help, it's not about there not being enough of us who wants to make a difference in the world. It's about us trying to do so from a million different directions to different ends. It's just plain ridiculous how so much goodwill is wasted.

Maybe we should all stop thinking about how different we are, and start thinking about how similar we are.

Just my wish for the world.

Cheers
Brian

Being Christian

Dear all,

I dun suppose i am the best candidate to talk about being a christian. There are tons of people who are more suited, but this is my blog..

I guess being christian isn't all it's cracked up to be. Especially when you learn some hard history about christians, you realise that everyone, every christian has gotten it the wrong way:

The world don't owe us anything; we owe the world a lot.

There was an event once in america [i heard of it once] where in the middle of some busy place christians set up a confession booth.

"Presumably for people to go in and confess their sins" most people would think.

But when someone actually went in, the first thing that they heard was this:

"I'm sorry for all the things we have done." from the other side of the panel.

That is so so dreadfully true. Much as we would not want to admit it, we christians do many terrible things in history. In the name of God, we have committed crimes that are inhumane and hurtful.

Even right from the beginning, when Christian churchs first started out. When the Jews were writing polemics [kinda like slanderous letters] about Christians, what was the reaction? Christians fought fire with fire. Polemics after polemics were written, slandering each other in the most horrible sense of the word slander [especially in the context of religion], each seeking joy in the downfall of the other. Unthinkable? Here is a site which lists the anti-semitic stories that European Christians wrote in the past. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/antisemitic.html

Slightly after, Christians were guilty of the worst anti-semitic acts. Around the 6th to 8th century, there was a case where the Eucharist was found missing; immediately the Christians pinned it on the Jews living in the district, and 15 Jews were murdered before the real culprit was caught: a christian who was suspect of heresy.

Even later, Christians were guilty of even greater bigotry; religious intolerance, which rose to murderous levels that left history bloodstained. The crusades were formed against heresy and muslims and thousands upon thousands were killed cold-bloodedly, in the name of the one true God.

Even amongst Christians we are guilty of the very sins we preach against. In the case of the Knight Templars, the Bishop and the king collaborated to plunge the whole order under the charge of devil worship and idolatry and heresy. The result? The Bishop and King dissolved the order that was growing too powerful, and came away with the riches of the Knights filling their own coffers. The Knight Templars were a monastic fighting order that was formed to protect pilgrims making the trip to the Holy City of Jerusalem during the crusades, formed a great army doing so, and pledged allegiance to the king, joining arms with him if there was a need. Yet they were betrayed, because they were growing powerful and proud.

Not to mention the witchcraft persecutions. Regrettably, the very people who were charged to love one another like ourselves, to forgive one another, and to do self reflection before accusing others of their sins, were the very people who persecuted innocents, dragging them through the most devilishly ingenious torture methods to obtain the confessions that they wanted. Not stopping at the confessions, they went on to force those who confessed to further feed the craze by naming others.

And those who perpetrated these crimes were the very ones entrusted with the faith and belief of the whole religion; the popes, the highly educated theologians, the ordained inquisitors and in cases, the kings. Indeed, the so called 'enlightened' ones were the one who were blinded in their pride and knowledge that they failed to see the act they were committing.

Even in the present, in parts of the world we still have Christians persecuting others based on their faiths. We have stories of people being dragged to slaughter by professed Christians. And on top of that, we Christians have been so good at dividing ourselves that we now have too many proud denominations that people actually care for.

We have Christian so full of themselves that they go around telling the world that Christians are going to heaven and the rest of the world is going to hell. We have Christians condemning the world to be full of sin while they claim that they are the ones doing things right.

Being a christian is what it's all cracked up to be.

And back to the story of the confession booth. If there is anyone out there willing to listen to me, i will tell them that as a Christian, i am sorry for all the things that we have done. I am sorry for all the persecutions that we have committed, all the false accusations, all the bigotry we are guilty of. I am sorry that sometimes we think that we know everything and act with pride and lack sensitivity and empathy. I am sorry that most of the time we do not practice what we preach. I am sorry that i am thinking of myself most of the time. I am sorry that once, we thought that violence hidden with hypocrisy was the answer to the world's problems.

Here is the punch line:

Most Christians do not realise that we have nothing to be proud of. Have we accomplished anything? If indeed the world commends the church for charitable deeds, remember that it is by Jesus's command that we love the world and the people who live around us. Those accomplishments belong to God and God alone. We however, have a part in persecuting those around us, either with religious bigotry or insensitivity. And it's not alright to be proud being a christian despite that.

Being a christian is not about being saved, or going to heaven. Being a christian is not about going to church and singing songs. Being a christian is about obey God's commandment to love the people, and care for them. Being christian is not primarily about bringing people to christ; being a christian is about loving people and caring for them, and by doing so naturally share what they are interested in.

Because Jesus did not ask any of the sinful people to worship Him; He ate with them and talked to them when the others would shun them; He washed their feets and taught them, He healed them and He gave them hope. He loved them, never demanding that they be Christians and worship Him. He loved them, and wanted them to lead righteous lifestyles.

Being a christian is not to be proud of nothing! But to understand that to be Christian, we must be prepared to be associated with the body of Christ, to be associated with the mistakes that as a body we have committed, and to be associated with the movement to set things right.

Kudos to you if you made it thus far. Hope you are blessed with this revelation i had.

Stay Blessed,
Brian