Christianity on the grille
I just love BBQ'ed food...but I don't like my religion being BBQ'ed, especially when nobody else is doing the grilling but ourselves.
This morning skipped my Field theory lecture again (i know me bad) because I couldn't wake up. So I ended up surfing the net for something interesting to read. I had bookmarked this little page dedicated to the New Perspective. ( Check out the previous post to find out what's it about. ) So i scanned down the articles and had a good read. There were pros for the New Perspective and the cons as well. I was reading the cons.
But actually I'm not going to blog about the New Perspective, I'll blog about something else that has always been on my mind.
1) Protestanism and other religions. As I was growing up, Christianity was distinguished from the other two by that Christianity was a religion of faith/grace while the others was a man-made system of good works to earn (Judeo-Christian) God's pleasure (i.e. salvation). Of course I was mystified about this because I wasn't entirely sure they were even worshipping the same God as us, so certainly some of our Christian categories wont fit nicely when applied to other religions. As I began to read some comparative religion, it seemed to me that we (christians) have not understood what other religions are saying in the first place.
To illustrate: 'Salvation' to the Hindu is being united to Brahma, but certainly their god isn't the God of the bible. So that means the hindu concept of salvation is totally different from the Christian's understanding of salvation. Hindu's aren't doing good works to earn God's favour as though they had always believed it was the correct way to achieve salvation, rather they do good works to earn karma and finally achieve nirvana. I don't think you can find a parallel concept of karma and nirvana in Christianity. (Mind you Nirvana isn't another synonym for Heaven).
Or another: Why does a Muslim pray five times a day and perform the Haj or fast during Ramadhan? To earn God's favour? I don't think so. The Muslim faithful is merely following the teachings of Muhammad in doing so because he believes that this is the way man ought to live. And he lives by the Quran because he or she believes that that's the way Allah has chosen to reveal his revelation to man. Is a Muslim doing good works to get into heaven? Actually he is not, because any Muslim will tell you that nobody is ever assured of that. The only way to be sure of getting into heaven is to be a martyr. (Mind you, the concept of assurance is Islam has nothing to do with the Christian concept of assurance depite similiar appearences).
2) Faith vs works: Now this is really a head scratcher. Pastorally, it a nightmare for anybody in spiritual leadership to explain to a new convert of how 'faith without works is dead', but yet how grace is opposed to works. Through the many explanations I heard as a child, through my teenage years and even now as a uni student, none of them are satisfying. Usually it involves something along the Archimidean Golden Mean, 'let's find a balance' kind of talk. Or they would use the language of 'discipleship'. I still don't have the answers, but I suspect that all these confusion is caused by lack of precision in language and explanations. Christians have this awful habit of 'lumping' concepts together and using words very imprecisely.
p/s The faith vs works issue has a more sinister face to it. 'Faith' is what gets converts into church and 'works' is what is used to get people to run the church programmes and the cycle repeats. Of course this is just my speculation, if you don't get it..never mind. Substitue church for VCF and the picture becomes ugly.
3) Roman Catholicism: This is a very sensitive issue. Are Roman Catholics to be counted as brothers in christ? To put into my particular context: VCF has no problem considering Nav and CCC members of the kingdom, but is the CSS partners in our kingdom work? How even about Legion of Mary?
Let's not fight at the level of official doctrines and documents. Meeting people at the ground level, catholics who are really nothing much diffirent from us in terms of faith and practise, influences your perspective a lot. Yah, they may participate in the mass and genuflect, but....*long stretched out sigh*
4) Serving God: In CF, I think when there is leadership transition the continuity question comes up. Who is going to lead? Since leading is serving, the question transforms to, who is going to serve? So we go around asking, do you want to serve God in this area? And the answer is...
I have always wondered whether at the ground level, at the cgm level there is a unspoken perception that we are recruiting to continue a programme oriented ministry. We claim that we are people-oriented. But certain things are better left unsaid. Let out actions speak for ourselves, if CF is really people-orientated, we don't even need to claim that we are, less people see through our hypocrisy.
It is so manipulative when we use the language of 'serving God' to get people to continue a legacy of programmes just to keep up with appearences. The danger is that sometimes we don't even realize it, but deep down somewhere, like a splinter in your mind, you know that it is there. And so the very nessecary step is really to stop 'serving God'.
Things like this really make Christianity a tasty meal. Don't you just love chicken wings.
This morning skipped my Field theory lecture again (i know me bad) because I couldn't wake up. So I ended up surfing the net for something interesting to read. I had bookmarked this little page dedicated to the New Perspective. ( Check out the previous post to find out what's it about. ) So i scanned down the articles and had a good read. There were pros for the New Perspective and the cons as well. I was reading the cons.
But actually I'm not going to blog about the New Perspective, I'll blog about something else that has always been on my mind.
1) Protestanism and other religions. As I was growing up, Christianity was distinguished from the other two by that Christianity was a religion of faith/grace while the others was a man-made system of good works to earn (Judeo-Christian) God's pleasure (i.e. salvation). Of course I was mystified about this because I wasn't entirely sure they were even worshipping the same God as us, so certainly some of our Christian categories wont fit nicely when applied to other religions. As I began to read some comparative religion, it seemed to me that we (christians) have not understood what other religions are saying in the first place.
To illustrate: 'Salvation' to the Hindu is being united to Brahma, but certainly their god isn't the God of the bible. So that means the hindu concept of salvation is totally different from the Christian's understanding of salvation. Hindu's aren't doing good works to earn God's favour as though they had always believed it was the correct way to achieve salvation, rather they do good works to earn karma and finally achieve nirvana. I don't think you can find a parallel concept of karma and nirvana in Christianity. (Mind you Nirvana isn't another synonym for Heaven).
Or another: Why does a Muslim pray five times a day and perform the Haj or fast during Ramadhan? To earn God's favour? I don't think so. The Muslim faithful is merely following the teachings of Muhammad in doing so because he believes that this is the way man ought to live. And he lives by the Quran because he or she believes that that's the way Allah has chosen to reveal his revelation to man. Is a Muslim doing good works to get into heaven? Actually he is not, because any Muslim will tell you that nobody is ever assured of that. The only way to be sure of getting into heaven is to be a martyr. (Mind you, the concept of assurance is Islam has nothing to do with the Christian concept of assurance depite similiar appearences).
2) Faith vs works: Now this is really a head scratcher. Pastorally, it a nightmare for anybody in spiritual leadership to explain to a new convert of how 'faith without works is dead', but yet how grace is opposed to works. Through the many explanations I heard as a child, through my teenage years and even now as a uni student, none of them are satisfying. Usually it involves something along the Archimidean Golden Mean, 'let's find a balance' kind of talk. Or they would use the language of 'discipleship'. I still don't have the answers, but I suspect that all these confusion is caused by lack of precision in language and explanations. Christians have this awful habit of 'lumping' concepts together and using words very imprecisely.
p/s The faith vs works issue has a more sinister face to it. 'Faith' is what gets converts into church and 'works' is what is used to get people to run the church programmes and the cycle repeats. Of course this is just my speculation, if you don't get it..never mind. Substitue church for VCF and the picture becomes ugly.
3) Roman Catholicism: This is a very sensitive issue. Are Roman Catholics to be counted as brothers in christ? To put into my particular context: VCF has no problem considering Nav and CCC members of the kingdom, but is the CSS partners in our kingdom work? How even about Legion of Mary?
Let's not fight at the level of official doctrines and documents. Meeting people at the ground level, catholics who are really nothing much diffirent from us in terms of faith and practise, influences your perspective a lot. Yah, they may participate in the mass and genuflect, but....*long stretched out sigh*
4) Serving God: In CF, I think when there is leadership transition the continuity question comes up. Who is going to lead? Since leading is serving, the question transforms to, who is going to serve? So we go around asking, do you want to serve God in this area? And the answer is...
I have always wondered whether at the ground level, at the cgm level there is a unspoken perception that we are recruiting to continue a programme oriented ministry. We claim that we are people-oriented. But certain things are better left unsaid. Let out actions speak for ourselves, if CF is really people-orientated, we don't even need to claim that we are, less people see through our hypocrisy.
It is so manipulative when we use the language of 'serving God' to get people to continue a legacy of programmes just to keep up with appearences. The danger is that sometimes we don't even realize it, but deep down somewhere, like a splinter in your mind, you know that it is there. And so the very nessecary step is really to stop 'serving God'.
Things like this really make Christianity a tasty meal. Don't you just love chicken wings.
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on Thursday, March 31, 2005 at 3:58 PM.
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