Reflection: Read the Bible, and don't leave it with others to do it for us

I have been thinking how important it is to read the Bible. Here is my reflection.

"If we don’t read the Bible ourselves (individually and as a faith community together), then our faith is in the hands of a few people who are engaging/charismatic speakers/writers/bloggers/intellectuals."

Reflection: Suffering, culture and individualism

For years I have been thinking about "suffering" in the Bible. I would like to share a few thoughts over time. These thoughts are not final, for I am still working on them. But I hope they are useful.

Two thoughts in this post.

(1) Our church culture today (in the West) tends to avoid suffering, rather than embracing it. We want the gospel to be one that delivers us from suffering. We even avoid the word "suffering" and replace it with the word "challenge". Suffering is a negative thing, and we want to replace it with a more positive attitude. We want to triumph over suffering, because otherwise we are seen as indulging in it. But the biblical writers are not ashamed of suffering. They happily talk about it. In their suffering they seek God's mercy. They lament, and they even protest (read the Psalms!). And in the New Testament we find Jesus embracing suffering and death, and because of his faithfulness God raised him from the dead and exalted him to the highest place (Philippians 2). In 2 Corinthians we find Paul following the way of Christ. He boasts of his weakness, for he knows that it is in his weakness and hardships that God's power is manifest.

(2) In an individualistic culture, we tend to treat those who suffer as individuals. They have to first deal with their own problems as individuals; and we, as independent individuals, will show them mercy and compassion as we see fit. But people with a Christ-centred communal worldview do things differently. The followers of Jesus form a Christ-community. In this community we see each other as siblings in Christ. When someone suffers, the whole community shares the pain. We rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. We share our resources and we learn from each other in our suffering. And it is all based on the fact that Christ suffered and died for our sins.

Reflections on theological training (Part 1): Why bother?

In recent years a number of people have expressed to me their interest in pursuing theological training. It is great to hear their journey and desire to study the Scripture and theology. Our conversations have prompted me to think about sharing my thoughts on theological training in a series of blog posts.

In this first post I want to ask the critical question: Why bother? That is, if theological training does not help us to embody Christ's life, death and resurrection in real life, then why bother?

I don't have the last word on this. But I will share a few thoughts. It may help if I share my own story. I came to faith when I was a teenager. I always wanted to serve God, and was always active in my local church. But it was more than 10 years later that I felt a strong sense of call to go into ministry. After a lot of prayers with my wife, I decided to leave my career to go to a Bible college to study. The good thing about having been a Christian for so long was that I had had the time to (1) read the Bible over 10 times before studying theology; (2) have a good experience in serving in local churches; and (3) have a solid non-church-related work experience.

But before I finished my theological training, I was asked to join the pastoral team of my church. And in a few years I was ordained. Life was really tough at the time. Ministry was hard work, and emotionally draining. We had little money. My wife had to work full-time. I also had to work part-time outside the church for extra income. At the same time, I taught as a tutor in my Bible College. In addition, I continued with my own theological studies, and started an MPhil, in which I engaged in serious research in Biblical Studies. The hectic lifestyle eventually took its toll, and I resigned from ministry to concentrate on my studies.

In the meantime I did more part-time work while I finished my research degree. The subsequent years were more part-time and full-time non-church-related work. I found it a valuable experience to be in the real world again after years of theological training and pastoral ministry. I viewed my work differently, for my studies in the Scripture had helped me to understand better the world that God created.

Years later God gave me a new job to work in an overseas relief and development Christian organisation. Soon I started my PhD on Biblical Studies as a part-time student, while continued to work part-time in that organisation. I am now half way through my PhD. I am not sure whether I am smart enough to finish it. But I will give it my best shot.

So much for my story. But as you can see, in all these years I have had the opportunity to engage in the real world in one way or another. I get to see people from all walks of life, including people from different faiths. I get to talk with them and listen to their cry. And at the same time I engage in theological training. This has been a very enriching experience. I find myself engaging in the Scripture and the real world at the same time. It is not just about theories, or merely about "what works in practice". It is about critiquing the world and its culture with the Scripture, and at the same time allowing real life stories to enrich my own understanding of the Bible.

All that said, I am not suggesting that everyone should do the same thing. There is nothing wrong to take a few years off to engage in full-time theological training. Some may study for one year, simply to consolidate their faith. Others may do two years simply to study the Scripture, but with no intention to become a minister. For some others, it may turn out to be many years of academic studies, if God intends them to teach at seminaries. What I am trying to say is that one should always endeavour to embody the gospel in real life - that is, where people are. We need to hear the stories of the poor and the rich, the unlearned and the educated. We need to get to know people from different cultures, and appreciate what God is doing in their lives, even though we have very different life experiences. We need to identify with the poor and needy, and stand in solidarity with the marginalised and disadvantaged.

My own experience is that I can never be prefect when it comes to these things. But it has been a profoundly enriching experience. The Scripture comes alive when we engage with real people in the real world. If we do theological studies for the sake of study alone, why bother?

Some reflections on different ways to see the world - Affluence, poverty, making a difference

Here are some reflections about how people in the West and those in low-income countries see things differently.

In the West, we want to see how we can make a difference. We want to see how we can fight injustice and alleviate poverty in the world. But for the poor in low-income countries, it is a matter of whether there can be any difference at all. If daily existence is a struggle, how can one find hope in the midst of injustice and poverty? Only a relationship with Christ and his identification with injustice and poverty can give us true hope and comfort.

In the West, we get to choose. Yes, we don't always get to choose, and there are those among use who are marginalised and disadvantaged. But comparatively, many of us get to choose - to study hard to go to university or work hard to learn a trade, save up for a holiday overseas, go to church and spend time with friends on the weekend, etc. Yet for many who live in low-income countries, the only choice is to keep staying alive and not to give up hope. They don't really get to choose in the way we do. There is no such a thing as a holiday overseas to see what the world is like. There is no such a thing as going to university - that is, for most of them because there aren't too many places at university, if there is one at all.

Many of us (not all of us, of course) in the West live in affluence. With our money and relatively high social status, we have the power to help the poor. We find satisfaction and meaning as we give to them. But for many who live in low-income countries, they learn to share with others with the little they have. Sharing resources out of poverty and powerlessness produces a profound sense of grace, hope and love that those living in affluence cannot fully understand.

None of the above means that living in the affluent West is wrong. Nor does the above mean that the rich should all become poor. It is not about guilt. But I hope the above helps us to learn from each other - to see the world from another perspective. I think God sees the world from all the different worldviews, and he knows exactly what the poor have to go through.

Reflection: The word "truth" in the Bible

I have been thinking that "truth" is one of the most misunderstood words in the Bible, for we keep thinking about the "truth" in modernistic terms. But truth, truthfulness and embodying truthfulness are all interrelated within the biblical worldview.

And if you know Greek, check out Ephesians 4:15. The Greek does not literally say, "speaking the truth in love". Instead, it's "truthing in love", which means embodying and living out the truth in love!

"Speaking the truth" may be part of it, but there is so much more. If we only speak the truth without living it out in love, then we are quite hypocritical, aren't we? On the contrary, if we live out and embody God's truth and truthfulness in love, then what we say has credibility. Imagine that we can truly care for others, give them grace, and show them genuine love, then people can truly see some measure of who God really is.

I tend to think that what Christ did on earth was to embody God's truth in his life, suffering and death, and God vindicated him by raising him from the dead. I think Paul tried to follow Jesus' life pattern, and he asked his Christian communities to do likewise.

Reflection: The message of 2 Chronicles

Recently my son (who is in upper primary) was reading 2 Chronicles. As it happened, I finished reading 2 Chronicles not long ago. I said to him that I thought a message of the book is that we should rely on God rather than ourselves or other resources. (The successive kings of Judah - as recorded in 2 Chronicles - had to learn to rely on Yahweh. It's a point clearly made by the chronicler.)

Then my son said to me, "I think the message of 2 Chronicles is that people do sin against God, but God still forgives them." Then he said that the kings in the book kept sinning, but God is merciful.

I think he has a point, and in fact spot-on.

Reflection: Sin, grace, salvation and our attitude toward others

Just a few thoughts.

Perhaps our reluctance to say sorry to others (for big and small matters alike) is a reflection of our lack of understanding of our own sinfulness - the very human condition that shows us how much we need God's grace.

Perhaps our tendency to see the faults, shortcomings and sins of others (rather than the good in them) is a reflection of our lack of understanding of God's sheer grace in rescuing us from the bondage of sin and death through Christ Jesus our Lord.

For if we realise how sinful we are we would not claim that we are always right, or more righteous than others. Likewise, if we truly realise how sinful we are and hence how amazing God's grace is for us, we would see our fellow human beings as fellow sinners who need God's grace (rather than "them as sinners" and "us as righteous people").

All these come back to how much we truly understand "salvation by grace", or, more precisely, "salvation by the costly grace" of the Crucified Christ and Risen Lord.

And as I wrote the above, I wonder how much I have fallen short of God's glory, and how thankful I am to God who has poured out his grace on me, a sinner.

Reflection: Some thoughts on the cross on Good Friday

Here are some thoughts I have about the cross.

The radical notion of the Son of God dying for the sinful humanity on the shameful Roman cross as the atoning sacrifice is an extraordinary picture of divine participation in human suffering. The Christ-community's suffering is not something unfamiliar with the Creator God, for he allowed his own Son to be subject to ancient Rome’s brutality. The profound “mystery” of God sharing in human suffering has been revealed to us through a notorious object of Roman oppression, namely, the cross.

The identification of God’s Son as a weak and frail human being is at the same time his way of delivering humanity from sin and death, which is of course thoroughly counter-cultural - both in the ancient world and in the 21st century.

What a God we worship. And he calls us to follow him.

Reflection: Power, privilege and social justice

Here are some thoughts on power, privilege and social justice.

For those of us who are in a relative position of power and privilege, social justice is an abstract notion of how to choose between different actions, personal lifestyles and public policies. For those who are poor and powerless, social injustice is about despair, hopelessness and, sadly for some, a matter of life and death.

Some reflections about knowing God

Here is my recent reflection about knowing God.

Without knowing the Crucified and Risen Christ we cannot truly know God.
Without following Christ's way of life we cannot be truly human as God intends.

And without knowing God how can we have the courage to follow Jesus' sacrificial way of life?
Yet without embodying his self-giving life how can we truly know him?

Reflection: Some thoughts about power

Here is a recent reflection.

The notion that power is in and of itself not evil and that we can have power as long as we use it properly sounds good (and indeed is quite right). But the problem is that when we are in a position of power we can hardly understand what it is like to be powerless. (Or if we have experienced powerlessness before, we can quite easily forget about what it is like if we now have a lot of power.) This in turn means that we probably don't know how to use power properly. Paul's resolve to boast in his weakness in 2 Corinthians has much to say to us today.

Reflection: Powerlessness - The main players in the New Testament

The main players in the New Testament were mostly poor, marginalised, disadvantaged and/or powerless - either because it was simply their life situation, or that they had willingly given up their power and privileges. There was a leper and a crippled woman. There were women who followed Jesus from Galilee, and fishermen who gave up their possessions to follow him. And, most of all, we find Jesus in the New Testament, who died on the cross, which was a symbol of utter shame and Roman oppression (on its powerless victims!). Then we have the apostle Paul, who boasts of his weakness and suffering, because he wanted to follow his Saviour and Lord.

Let us enter their stories, and let them touch and transform our lives.

Some quotable quotes and reflections

We must be content with being nobodies for Christ; to be forgotten. Many missionaries will have passed through the twentieth century only remembered by relatives and a few people that they were able to minister to. Their lives were never considered great, but they did their part faithfully, and most importantly, God does not forget them. (Patrick Fung, OMF General Director)

Sometimes it is when all our dreams are shattered that we realise God's dream' for us - that is, to know him and love him, and to know his love for us and for humankind. (myself)

A former refugee at our church finally reunited with his wife recently. His conversion was an amazing one and his baptism a few years ago moved me greatly. It's a great joy to see his wife in our church today. (myself in October)

I think "sorry" (when it is said sincerely) is a powerful word that can change our lives. (myself)

Forgiveness is not so much a word spoken, an action performed, or a feeling felt as it is an embodied way of life in an ever-deepening friendship with the Triune God and with others. (Gregory Jones)

God subverts human triumphalism in that he wins by losing. He unleashes resurrection life on his world through the dying and rising again of Jesus Christ. Because of God's surprising ways, God's people will play subversive roles in the gospel drama as we resist the corruption of the present evil age. (Timothy G Gombis)

When we read the Bible as stories - God's stories - we stop treating it as a set of rules or treating God as a genie for our benefits. As we enter the stories of the Bible, we feel the pain and suffering of the characters, feel the wonders of God's deliverance, identify with God's people as they struggle and falter, and experience the amazing grace of God in all our failures and shortcomings. (myself)

Faith is a complex human experience, and [the apostle] Paul preserves this complexity while giving it a unique twist. While affirming its character as trust and conviction, Paul connects faith to the experience of Jesus as God's faithful Son. Faith is more than trust; it is also fidelity, or loyalty. (Michael Gorman)

When I read the Gospels, I see a bunch of people whose lives were in a mess. They followed Jesus because he proclaimed a topsy-turvy kingdom. And he did not become King through his power. He became King because he suffered and died, and was vindicated by God at his resurrection. All this was of course the embodiment of his topsy-turvy kingdom. (myself)

If we understand sin in terms of breaking a set of moral codes, we end up with a self-centred religion. If we understand sin in terms of our failure to love our neighbour and to love God wholeheartedly, then we come close to the heart of the gospel. (myself)

From Homer to Hollywood, people are fascinated with heroes. They are people of power and wisdom. But the apostle Paul, borrowing from Jeremiah, says that he would only boast of his weakness, and 'the Christ crucified' is the true wisdom of God. (myself)

Reflection: Reading the Bible as stories

I wrote this recently, "When we read the Bible as stories - God's stories - we stop treating it as a set of rules or prooftexts, or treating God as a genie for our benefits. As we enter the stories in the Bible, we feel the pain and suffering of the characters, feel the wonders of God's deliverance, identify with God's people as they struggle and falter, and experience the amazing grace of God in all our failures and shortcomings. And as we enter those stories and allow the Holy Spirit to touch us, we enter into worship just as the ancients did - and by the empowerment of the same Spirit, we enter into the world to make those stories known through our lives and deeds."

Then I received a note from a missionary friend, Sarah, in Cambodia, which said, "Enjoying the privilige of leading a family to know God simply by telling the stories of the Bible chronologically. I was so thrilled to find yesterday that they have figured out how to talk to God just from hearing the stories."

Sarah has been using story-telling as a way of proclaiming the gospel. This is her response to what I wrote, "It is stories that shape our worldview and worldview that shapes our beliefs and values, which lead to our behaviour. God knew what he was doing when he set so much of his Word in narrative form."

More recent reflections

More recent reflections.

Intellectualism can stifle the church, making it less passionate about God and its mission. It produces an elitism that is the direct opposite of the humility of Christ. But anti-intellectualism has produced a superficial form of Christianity, making the church conform to the pattern of the world because it is not transformed by renewing the mind - doing the exact opposite of Romans 12:1-3.

"Jesus modeled innocent suffering in two respects. He suffered even though he did not deserve it, and, in the midst of abuse, he did not retaliate." (Joel Green on 1 Peter 2:21-25)

We all come to the Bible with our biases. For many, it's likely to be our middle-class, Western Christian tradition from the church fathers to the Reformation, and to its 21st-century forms. We, generally speaking, either embrace that heritage or react against it.

I think there is at least one difference between a person living in poverty and injustice overseas and a middle-class Westerner who has chosen to live among the poor overseas: The former has no choice, but the latter has made a choice, and has the freedom to make that choice.

Some recent reflections

Some reflections I had recently:

All too often we think that the Bible is there to help us work out what is sinful, who has sinned, and how "I" can have "my" sins forgiven. Why not read the Bible in light of what Christ has done to forgive sinners and embrace the outcasts, and how he wants us to embrace "others"?

Ultimately everything Jesus did was based on his unfailing love for humankind. But to love us he had to suffer and die for sinful humans like you and me. Yet that's the best way to live as truly human, and that's the way of life we are called to model after.

Three powerful words in 1 Cor 1:9 - "God is faithful" ("pistos ho theos")

We see the worst of fallen humanity when there is anger, enmities, hatred and conflicts within a community. We see the best of God's renewed humanity when Christ-followers learn to love, embrace one another, persevere, and trust in God's deliverance in times of pain, affliction, conflicts and hostility.

Should the church imitate the world so that people will come to church? Or should the church model after Christ's way of life so that people will be attracted to Jesus himself?

It's happy for 'deep people'

Here is a quote from the Doctor Who episide Blink. I think it's 'deep'!

Kathy Nightingale: What did you come here [a dilapidated house] for anyway?
Sally Sparrow: I love old things. They make me feel sad.
Kathy Nightingale: What's good about sad?
Sally Sparrow: It's happy for deep people.

Reflection: An inclusive multicultural church experience

Church this morning was great.

(1) My primary-school-age child celebrated his birthday this week. When we walked in church, someone said to him, "Happy birthday!" Then we saw in the church bulletin a special note for the birthday boy this week! As my child always says, "Our church is a good church because the children are important and the adults talk to them!"

(2) We welcomed a lady and a family to be members today. They are amazing people. The lady understands mental health issues and will be running a seminar for us. The husband of the family is an indigenous Australian. (He played the didgeridoo for us this morning!) The wife is a Samoan, and a talented lady. Their kids sang a song for the congregation. There was such a community feel!

(3) A man will be baptised this Easter. He is from another faith, and he came to Australia recently. What a testimony of God's goodness and love!

(4) When I looked around there were people from many countries in Africa, Europe and Asia. This is precisely the type of community we will find when Christ returns! Also, there are people living with disability, people struggling with mental health issues, migrants, overseas students, and asylum seekers. We welcome people of all walks of life. This is such a wonderful place!

Reflection: Value judgment, justice and love

Unfortunately I have seen serious conflicts in the body of Christ. It always saddens me. Here is a recent reflection I have.

Let us not make value judgment on people without sufficient evidence. And even if we have the evidence, let us love them, forgive them, and accept them, because they are people made in God's image, and God loves them. And may God help us to look to his final just judgment and his unfailing love, if we happen to find ourselves being treated unjustly. We cannot love without knowing God's love for us.

Reflection: Trusting God for his provision and fulfilling God's call

When I was 29 I had a good career. I had a BSc (Hons), an MSc, and years of experience in my profession. But then God called me to ministry. After heaps of prayer I left my career at the age of 30 to go to Bible college. The following years were very difficult financially and emotionally, and eventually I stopped working as a pastor, largely because of health reasons and because I wanted to finish my Masters in theology. But I remember that at the end of those years I could say that God never disappointed us financially. Yes, it was very difficult to "walk by faith", so to speak, and trust God for his provision - without any fund raising and without asking people for money. But it's worth it.

We experienced miracle after miracle of financial provision, even though we needed to live on a very tight budget (and continue to do so for many years afterwards). It's an amazing experience.
What I have learned from the experience is that if God has asked us to do something he will provide all our needs. I have to admit that I am a man of little faith - yes, I still am, and very much so. But once you have experienced God's miraculous supplies you have learned something about God's faithfulness.

Will I do it again? Only to the degree that God enables me, and only if I am very sure that God has asked me to do so. Now I am older - I know what my limitations are and how much I can endure. I'll be very careful in making any decision of that kind. But at the same time God's calling is still fresh and real. I consider that I am still in the process of fulfilling that call.

To everyone who wants to do God's will, I encourage you to trust in God's faithfulness. He who has called you to follow him is faithful.