Gain by Simon Wong

I read this just now and I think it is brilliant.  It seems to be a question that has been asked by many people I know (blogs I’ve read); what know and how do we move forward?

“There is a disorder called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Andihidrosis and as the name suggests it’s an inability to feel pain, stress and temperature. At first it sounds really great – thinking about it you would love it if stubbing your toe didn’t hurt or stomach aches and headaches didn’t exist. When a child is diagnosed with this condition, they are usually found to be quite happy infants. They don’t feel the need to cry because they never feel that anything is wrong. Then things take a turn for the worst when they start teething and now they chew up the insides of their mouths and their tongue because they simply can’t feel it as their mouths become a gory scene. Hot stoves can be touched, falling down the stairs is fun and running head on into concrete walls is of no consequence. They can’t sweat in hot weather because they don’t feel it’s hot and there is a prevalence of a limited mental capacity. They usually don’t live past 3 and it’s rare for them to reach 25.
So why am I mentioning this disease? Sunday was someone’s idea for an international day of prayer which most churchy churches will participate in. This brings me to my point: religious freedom. Of the major religions of the world, religious freedom is most whined about by Christians. In the biblical context, no one complained about having religious freedom – it was expected that there wasn’t going to be the sort of religious freedom for Christianity that there was for the established Jews or Greeks. Constantine screwed things up by trying to make Christianity mainstream and in all honesty, it’s not meant to be a mainstream religion. North American Christianity is boring, dull, fake and overall disliked by most – because an unsuppressed Christian becomes apathetic and lazy. We fill our lives with Christiany things because we lack the realness that is the testing of faith by persecution. The oppressed Christians ought to pray for us slackers who find retarded things to fill their “spiritual lives”. We don’t feel the pain, the stress, we’re free and we’ll die soon because we’re living a dead bliss.
We don’t need another sermon, another praise night, another conference, book study, new song – we need the anti-christ. We need the fanatic atheist. We need to feel something real because our attempts to make things real are like a cutting at the wrists. Commonly misunderstood as a suicide attempt, wrist cutting is usually an attempt by emotionally drained people to feel something because they can’t feel anything. It’s time to live.”

Simon Wong, “Gain”, accessed 19 November 2009, available from http://wongsimon.xanga.com/716267315/gain/

Filed under: Uncategorized , church, Re:

It’s the most wonderful time of the year

“It is better to have nothing to give, than impudently to solicit so that you can give” St. Jerome

Jerome, Epistulae 52, ed. I.Hilberg, CSEL 54 (1910), p.440, lines 3-5

 

How true is this of our churches today.  We have fundraisers because we can’t just give money.  Is something wrong?  And if we are, what does that balance between our lives and our church life look like?  Does it even exist or is it a fabrication?

 

I’m thinking of these questions as we enter Christmas.  It is a time of giving in one sense  of the word.  Namely, churches will give a one time effort or lump some of money (guilty) and then January will come.  You’ve heard it said that it should cost us something to give; I say it should cost us everything.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Christmas, church

Continuing the theme of phrases

“I told you so”

No phrase contains such misunderstanding and pain. It’s the phrase one can’t help but utter yet never wanted to. It’s the phrase no one wants to hear because it is filled with shame and embarrassment.  The “you were wrong and I knew it but you wouldn’t listen”.

It feels like parenting and God experience this all the time.  They know what you’re getting into but you just won’t listen.  I know I don’t and then they have to say those words.

There are some bets I just hate to win.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Halloween

I should write this before Christmas is here.

I grew up never celebrating Halloween. We used to go downstairs and just spend some time together as a family. We didn’t answer the door or dress up at school. I think we did carve a few pumpkins though.

Today, Christians usually celebrate Halloween by throwing a ‘Fall Carnival’ or something that is the equivalent of Halloween but in a Christian Community. However, they do not go out to Trick-or-Treat on the 31st or open the door.

So my question is, what is the correct approach to Halloween? What is the most Christian?

This year I experimented with the theme of Hospitality. Throughout the Tanakh, we see examples of the Israelites welcoming in people. Abraham when he saw the 3 men, cooked up a meal for them and didn’t let them go on their way before they ate. Similarly, Lot made sure they stayed and lodged in his house rather than the city square. In parables of Jesus, we see the good Samaritan, who embodies this care for the ‘neighbour’.

So my problem is for us who do not open the door. Is it wrong that we do not open the door to those who knock?

I welcome your comments and thoughts. I was thinking of giving away bible verses next year. “knock and it shall be opened to you, ask and you shall receive”

Filed under: Uncategorized , Community, Holidays

Time

Looks like my wordpress time setting was off.  Just in case you were wondering why I blog in the middle of the night/early morning.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Time

Two phrases

There are two phrases running through my head today.

“Carry your cross” and “It has nothing to do with me”.

When I lost my mother, I think I also lost my dad. While working through my grief this year, I’ve come to see that our house has become one without any parents. Any central leadership or authority is gone and what remains is a wasteland.

Everyone has looked to me to hold the house together and keep it tidy. I hate it. I cannot uphold order in the house like mom did. Partly because I am disorderly but partly because after she died, everyone seemed to care less. We each allowed the house to slip, some even saying that it was meant to be. The house represents a collection of how we each deal with grief.

For myself, it is a chance to get everything in order. To finish unfinished business. To start anew.

For my dad, it is shattered remains of hope. He floats in and out without purpose. Sometimes he is active but at most times, he just sits in front of his computer in his room.

For my brother, none of it was his responsibility and that fact hasn’t changed. Mess can be tolerated and the one who cannot tolerate it, should clean it up, including what mess he leaves.

For my sister, life goes on as usual. Her room is her sanctuary and she rarely needs to venture downstairs. Since she doesn’t have too much stuff, it can stay within her room without cluttering the house.

Today I found an old soda in one of those disposable cups from mcdonalds in the fridge. It had been there so long that the liquid was leaking through the bottom of the cup.

“It has nothing to do with me”

I live in a house teeming with this phrase of selfishness and self-centeredness. No one cares about anything. Once it’s in the fridge, it’s not their problem. I feel the same way. In two or so years, I will be married and moving out. Why should I care? I have a future with a wonderful woman who shares my views on cleanliness and orderliness. Why should I care about saving this house? It has nothing to do with me. I can easily let it slide by hiding in my room and eating at Joyce’s house and in two years, I’ll be gone and free to start over the way I want to.

I am so inwardly curved. Everything bends in on itself.

This week we are going to sing an old song O love that will not let me go. The lyrics are so beautiful.

“Carry your cross”

It isn’t in the song but it reminds me that Jesus carried his cross and did not let me/us go. He entered into this mess that he had no part in creating and moved to set everything right.

I want to leave it all behind/ He chose to come and to stay

I don’t want to clean up what is not mine/ He takes on the sin of the world

I want to force my family to do their part/ He invites us to partake, often being rejected and left alone

Everything in this house teaches me about Christ. Carrying your cross is not about spreading the gospel and being moral. Those are apart of it but it comes down to a covenantal and loyal commitment to this earth.

It is saying that these people and this world matters and I am not giving up on it though I could.

Carrying my cross means that all that rotten food in the fridge is my problem.

Feeding and cleaning the cage of the bird is my problem.

Picking up jackets left on the sofa are my problem.

Dirty dishes.

Answering the phone.

Bills and paper everywhere.

They become my problem.

In the same way Christ takes on the world’s problems, so must I. Transforming from an inward curve onto oneself to an outward pouring of love and beginning to see that giving and receiving are one in the same action

Filed under: Uncategorized , Community, conflict, waiting

Trinity

Had a lecture today about the Trinity. The prof basically didn’t even stop to breath but now I want to write my term paper about the Trinity. Why.

I think the idea of a God who is constantly expressing himself in relationship to himself and to his creation is something I want to explore. It is so beautiful to know that this God preserved in Judaism is one who reaches down to his creatures. And today I saw the cross. He reached down to such an extent as to become one of his creatures and even to die by their hands.

I think I can love a Triune God partly because he loves me but also because he can love himself “drawing life from and pouring life into each other – a communion of love”

And isn’t that what we need in a world where we tend to bend into ourselves, our needs, wants and selfish and self destructive obsessions.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Community, Love, Regent, Trinity

Why bother?

This year has been filled with so much death. Seems like everyone in our community has felt it’s cold touch and it does make me ask the question. We’ve prayed and prayed but it just doesn’t seem to change anything. It’s like we pour our hearts out and nothing.

There seems to be no peace; no shalom; no wholeness in our community.  All that remain are a broken people who have been torn down and torn down again.  I find that when you are dealing with grief, you avoid those who aren’t and gravitate to those who are.  There is a special kinship between those experiencing a pain so deep and a hurt that is so heavy.

It’s hard to imagine a God of peace and life in this year.  It’s hard to have that image of him and perhaps it’s better that we didn’t.  Perhaps this is the year of the Jesus that wept.  The broken and grieving Jesus.  He knew that heaviness that comes.  That cloud that travels wherever you go not because you carry it but because of all the pity others relish on you.

I wrote that half a month ago, before the Regent Retreat and things haven’t changed much.  For me, I still carry around that sorrow and sometimes I feel like I don’t belong.  I don’t belong in the happiness or the laughter.  All that is left for me is darkness and sorrow.

But

at retreat, I was reminded of the others who had left their homes to come and the mixture of joy and sadness that accompanied them.  It was there that someone also reminded me that Jesus was a man acquainted with sorrows.  I am there.  In between the joy and excitement that comes from doing what I love and torn between the memories and deep sadness that come from loss.  But I am ever so grateful and glad that there is another man who was close to sorrows.  Nothing changes but everything is different.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Comfort, Grief, Mother, mourning, Regent

An End and a Beginning

Today, at my first day of orientations at Regent College we sang the song ‘In Christ Alone’.

This song always reminds me of my mother. The one clear request she had for me was that it was to be sung at her funeral. It was imperative to remember that our whole lives gravitate around Christ. When I remember that, I think of the word witness. Witness not in the sense of convictions or a set of beliefs but a tried and true experience that God is indeed good.  In the words of those much wiser, to taste and see that the Lord is good.  A witness about his ever present goodness that permeates everything in spite of all the seemingly bad.

I was reminded that as her journey ended, mine now began.

And how suitable that as her life ended with that song, this new stage of my life would begin with the same song.

I heard a phrase used today. “it so happened that”. Beautiful as we remember how God has and is acting.

His grace and sovereignty with human diligence and creativity.

That is how my journey is continuing.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Beginning, End, Mother, music, Regent

We say goodbye Pt.3

I’ve always wondered why some people never come back to church. I’ve known a few friends who have left the church but have their majority of friends still as christians and you’ll often hear them say stuff like, “I don’t go to church anymore”. Why not? I have never heard any one of these friends renounce everything they believe and call it all a sham (which I assume you would if you left). Instead, they don’t usually have a united answer. It almost always comes down to something personal. I think the answer lies in how we leave things behind.

I wrote about how I had left behind music I used to like and after thinking about these friends I’ve known, I think quite a bit of it still holds true. The idea that new things are innately better than old ones is something that is characteristic of our culture. When we grow up, we leave behind childish things for things of the adult world. It is a process that is natural that has become an ideal or perspective of people living in our time. There is nothing wrong with this way of thinking but if it becomes the only way in which we view the world, it becomes a problem.

I still play with Lego and I’m sure you know many people who would perhaps laugh or tell me to grow up. But I think it’s a bit of a shame when people lose the ability to return to certain aspects of what they’ve left behind. I find it facinating to know how certain people are good with or don’t like kids. Weren’t we all kids at one point in our lives? I know there are many other reasons for it but it’s bizarre the separation between generation groups because we all came from each of those stages and we (if we live long enough) will continue to see the remaining stages.

This brings me back to my friends who have left the church. For personal reasons they left (and by this I mean that they were probably offended or hurt by persons in the church) and for stubborness, they cannot return.  Kind of sucks that way.  What is a good thing (not returning to things we leave behind) becomes something that prevents them from ever returning.  I don’t know of anyone who has left the church for an extended period of time who has come back.  It makes me quite sad.

At that point I should stop writing but I feel like I need to go on for a particular friend I have in mind.  I just want to say that I hope he comes back because for all the bad things that have happened and will continue to happen both in the church and in the world, there continues to be such good and goodness that I see and that I cannot deny amidst the darkness.

Filed under: Uncategorized , church, goodbye