word cloud

from http://snapshirts.com/custom.php

Order... order... order... chaos!!!

In the foreword to the book "The Wisdom of Each Other", Eugene Peterson begins with the story of how John Muir, fearless explorer of the North American continent, when faced with a fierce, primal, lashing storm, did not retreat into a cabin, but climbed a Douglas fir at the top of the ridge and rode out the storm.

Spiriturality, Peterson says, has to do with life, and life is a crazy heck of the thing indeed. We would like to have it under our control, but it's not meant to be that way. The weather is a primal thing, after all, and life is full of the unexpected. Why else is the future something everyone wishes to peer into?

"Religion" on the other hand normally tries to piece together lots of things that seem spiritual, all the essences of "life", into a neat little bundle. Everything's figured out. We feel so nice and safe.

The question Peterson asks is what do we do then when a sudden storm of life blows our neat packaged life our of our hands, scattering it everywhere?

Will we run after and pick up the pieces, retreating into a safe haven to hide out from the elements? Or will we do a Muir and experience the Weather, "ready at the drop of a hat to lose my life to save it (Mark 8:35)?"

Somehow I feel like the "life" that seemed so ordered, peaceful and figured out to me has been blown apart.

And now what shall I do? Where shall I turn to?

Lord, I wish that you be my Douglas fir as I experience the full force of Life.

There's so much I have yet to know about.

Oh, that I would be teachable.

Perhaps that's the underlying reason for the storm after all?

Giving Socrates a run for his money...

I know there are some of you out there who are exclaiming, "Finally!"

Y'know, I am too.

thoughts on job

I must admit that this book is a little tedious to go through. Reading through it is fine, piecing together the arguments harder, but the greatest test of all is actually writing a reflection upon it.

Precisely why this entry is so late in coming.

All of us know the story of Job. Good and upright man, caught in the middle of the greatest wager of all time between God and Satan. The contingency which is being staked on? Whether or not Job will curse his Maker upon being deprived of his abudances and afflicted with disease.

The worst thing for Job is all his tragedy seems to have no explanation. After all, he was a righteous man, was he not?

Job doesn't waver from his faith. He can't explain his suffering, but refuses to blame God, even when goaded to do so from his wife (the only person whom Satan left with him, for obvious reasons).

Enter Job's three pals, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. Seeing his pain, they shut up and sit in silence with him for a week. I believe Philip Yancey was right in saying that that was the most helpful thing they did for Job throughout the whole book.

Because after that Job opens his mouth...

(and bear in mind we're only at Chapter 3)

...and there's where the great debate begins. It's quite interesting that only us, the readers know about the great bet that has caused all that has happened. Job and his three friends, oblivious to the truth, try to puzzle out the rationale behind Job's misfortunes.

I tried to make a semi-organized summary of the entire thing, but like all verbal disputes, Job and company often follow the Rules of Rhetoric®:

• ONE: begin by insulting one another (with flowery language too)
• TWO: twist, turn and twirl their words
• THREE: respond by bringing up something else instead of directly countering/rebutting/answering the opposing side's arguments
• FOUR: contradict themselves

So in the end, what was meant to help me see the the connection between the individual speeches ended up convincing me of the lack of connection between the discourses. Each participant seemed more concerned about putting forward their point of view than answering the objections of the other party. It reminded me of bad 'Parlimentary-style' debates I've witnessed whereby each debater would go forward and ridicule their opponents with great viciousness but offer little explanation on why they thought the opposing side's arguments were leaky. They would then promptly move on and spit out the points they had prepared, which most of the time were only mildly related to what had been brought up by their opponents.

It's interesting however to note the style and content of each participator of this dialectic. Job, who speaks the most, rants and whines, and understandly so! He longs for death, questions whether God cares if men sins or is holy, and wishes for God to appear and answer his queries. During the second round, he feels that God and the world is conspiring against him, asks for a representative in heaven (if only he had Jesus) then calls for God to come to his defense. Suddenly during the third round he goes back on his theory that God leaves the wicked to prosper and proclaims God's sovereignity, and ends with a long ramble comparing his old life to his suffering at present. Throughout the whole thing Job maintains his innocence, but bounces back and forth between semi-optimism that he will be redeemed and negativity.

Eliphaz speaks like a old sage confident that he has attained knowledge of how the world ticks, and claims that he received a vision reminding him of God's superiority over mortal men. He dismisses fate as a mere excuse, and urges Job to repent and thank God for correcting his wrongdoings. His next salvo is that it is proven and sound theology that evil people reap the crap they sow and that Job is a fool to try and go against concrete lidah pendeta. Eliphaz is initially amicable, but becomes increasingly infuriated when Job continues to defend himself. Finally he lashes out at Job, accusing him of exploting the needy and sitting there while others suffered before ending with cries akin to "Repent, repent, ye sinner!"

Next is Bildad, who is a firm believer that mankind is the reason when anything becomes screwed up. He first suggests that Job's children must have sinned, or Job must've become worldly and forgot about God. His second attack is simply repeating the tired, old 'rule' that God rewards the good and whacks the bad. By round 3, Bildad only manages to muster a few lines with the underlying message being, "God is great! Man is crap!"

Speaker number 3 is Zophar. Zophar insinuates that Job has been secretly sinning for a while, and that he should have seen the meltdown coming. Most commentaries on Job say that Zophar feels that Job is wrong to claim purity before God, but the fact is that Zophar brings nothing new to the table, with the sovereignity of God being a central point even (to an extent) in Job's speeches. Zophar probably realises this as well and shuts up after two shots at Job, choosing to remain silent in round three.

Lastly appears Elihu, a younger guy who has had enough of the faulty arguments of the three stooges. In three speeches he attempts to dismantle what Job and his friends have said, first insisting that God always answers, maintaining that God is behind everything and that God is silent when we're unhappy because we forget about him during good times.

Of course, after reading all that, you're probably very tired and confused. I am too (to a even greater degree) after typing all that. But the thing I want to bring up here is if you were to look back at the arguments presented by each person, you would find that during some time in our life, we have probably acted and spoken like one of these people whenever someone we know is undergoing tough times.

I know of a person who went through a tough time when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. Members of his cell group, instead of encouraging him to be strong, instead whispered around and mumbled that he must have sinned in some way for this tragedy to have happened. Like Job, he became very discouraged.

How often do we offer simple answers to people that are having problems?

"You must have sinned. Or maybe a family member."

"Are you really sure you've kept pure without secret sin?"

At the end, God finally appears. But unfortunately for those of us looking for the answer, God chooses to follow Rule of Rhetoric® No. 3. He instead asks Job a whole barrage of questions that Job is unable to answer. The three stooges meanwhile are blasted for talking presumptously. Job realises that God is still ultimately in control and everything happens for a reason. God restores Job, and blesses him with twofold of everything he had before!

And all of that happened without God even mentioning about the cosmic wager.

In the end, we never really find out about why suffering happens to good people, or why evil people are allowed to prosper, except we are reminded that God is always in control, and that suffering doesn't always stem from sin.

I guess that's all we have to do when life around us looks grim. Grit our teeth and hold on to the fact that God is in control. It could be a test. It could be for God's glory (John 9:1-3?). But that's not for us to know until it's over.

To tell you the truth, not all my questions about suffering have been answered.

But I've emerged with a little more insight at least... and anyway...

That's not for me to know until everything's over, isn't it?

TRAILER: Screw History, On With The Wisdom!

Hey all.

Just a little glimpse of what's to come.

Both me and Ben are currently racing to finish Job by the end of this week, so pray that we'll be able to produce some Bildad-esque rhetoric content soon.

As for me, I don't think I will be getting my backlog of bloggings done anytime soon, so, as the caption of this preview hints, my first real post after a long hiatus will be on one of the Wisdom books (hopefully Job of course).

Thanks once again for supporting the both of us all this while on our journey. The terrain that we're trying to get past at the moment is swampy, but we'll emerge (hopefully) without too much slime on our faces. The salt flats of History are behind us. Onward into the marshes of Wisdom!

Let's say that the number of sins we've done is x...

Hm. It's just nice that when I wish to type my first entry in a couple of weeks, blogger.com refuses to let me into the blog. Am currently using Notepad to prepare this... reflection of all sorts.

Hey, how's thing with everyone? I'm really sorry I haven't contributed anything for so long, was distracted by Gerak Gempur exams. Wasn't really taking it that seriously, but I was officially 'banned' from the computer, so... you get the idea. ('Banned' equals the monitor cable being locked up in a undisclosed area of the house)

I've missed this blog a lot. I haven't been visiting even during my short excursions online because I know I'll feel really bad seeing Ben updating it all alone. My apologies, comrade. I'll try and make it up to you by (hopefully) making a few entries today.

So without further digression (for the moment), here are my:

thoughts on numbers

While reading through this book, I was constantly confused by the usage of the number 12 for the tribes of Israel. For the most part of the book, references to the '12 tribes' do not include Levi. However, during the budding of Aaron's staff, only twelve staffs are labelled, one of them being of course Aaron's (representing Levi). It was when I read Joshua that I managed to find a logical answer to this quandary (at least it seemed like one to me). During the division of the land, one 'lot' of land drawn and divided among the tribes of Joseph, which are Ephraim and the half of Manasseh (the other half already having received part of Gilead east of the Jordan). My conclusion? Whenever Levi is not involved, Manasseh and Ephraim are counted as seperate, full 'tribes', while during situations where Levi is involved, the two tribes were combined as one tribe of 'Joseph'.

Before I go any further, I have to express some worries that my 'thoughts' are beginning to centre on my misgivings instead of the lessons I've learnt. I wonder, am I just writing to amuse my readership and forgetting what I should be doing in the first place? Maybe not. As I read through the Bible, I constantly am told of the 'textbook meanings' of each book or passage, whether by people or Study Bible notes or introductions slotted before the books. Some, like a few of the intros found in the Message and those found in Philip Yancey's 'The Bible Jesus Read', are refreshing. Others, such as Study Bible notes remind me of sermons I've heard before. Context is such a subjective thing. I guess I prefer to learn lessons myself rather than be simply told the messages others have agreed on for a passage. After all, prophecies about Christ (especially in the Psalms) were sometimes found places where the context appeared to be different.
 
The book begins with a census of the fighting men of Israel. These numbers actually are useful when compared to the figures of the census on the plains of Moab. Information on which tribes were most badly hit by the plagues and rebellions (or perhaps suffered from unfavourable birth to death rates) can be approximated. Simeon for example shrunk considerably during the years in the desert to slightly more than a third of the 59,300 men at the beginning of Numbers. Manasseh grew quite a bit, Asher and Issachar slightly less, while the rest remained about the same. My induction? Simeon must've had the most number of men involved in such atrocities such as the Shittim orgy... or maybe they just gave birth to a lot of girls.
 
The Message (yes, I've finally bought the book, no more relying on gospelcom.net!) calls Numbers the period of adolescence for the people of Israel in the Pentateuch. I would agree, because the book contains screw-ups aplenty by the Israelites. I think screwing up is one important part of life. Everyone needs to mess up and learn from it. Somehow humans just can't learn certain things without actually going through the pain of failure. And it is during our teenage years that we endure the experiences necessary for us to mature.
 
Situations such as struggles for priestly power were bound to happen sometime in the future. It was just as well that they did happen early on to set an example for those trying to override God's commands. Through the fates of Korah and his posse we can see how God punishes those trying to get glory for themselves and question the ones God have appointed. It's sometimes sad that these things still happen nowadays. Things such as court cases to challenge the validity of the appointment of leaders in Christian denominations simply have no reason to happen, other than human nature attempting to turn leadership of the church into yet another area for politics.
 
Moses' first recorded failure to follow God's commands in many years is also a grim reminder to us how even the greatest leaders are still susceptible to falling to our sinful human nature. Whenever we begin to forget that we are but the tools of God's divine purposes and start feeding our egos, sin will creep into us once again.
 
Balaam's experience with his donkey shows that whenever we're determined to do things our way and thinking about 'number one', we become blinder than our animals to what God is trying to tell us. It's like one of those over-the-top fables that embrace what we consider 'illogical' to hammer home a moral.
 
I struggle with listening to God myself. While I long to hear what He wishes to tell me, it's not often easy to tune in with all the other waves in the air and in my brain. Most of the time I find myself distracted by other thoughts and worries, if not signals from my five senses. Like the Israelites in the book of Numbers, I'm struggling through adolescence, trying to find God in my hectic everyday life. Like them, sometimes I feel like I'm just wandering in a circle that never ends.
 
I hope to get out of here way before 40 years.

(untitled inane rambles of the second/third watch)

WARNING: Semi-conscious tirade ahead. Thou hast been warn'd.

Leviticus. Hmm.

This is the very book that I stopped during my attempt to read the whole Bible in a year as part of Yoshua's Bible Company (YBCo), a commitment started by a group of teenagers from D'Nous Academy 2003. Previously, I have never attempted, much less completed such a task.

Climb into a time machine, set the clock to exactly a year before this date and pull the crank. *enter multi-coloured warp typical of bad sci-fi flicks* Meet me a year ago (who incidently does not look that different from myself now, plus and minus some facial and cranial hair). Mention reading the Bible in a year and you would behold a surprised face. Mention reading the Bible half a year as well as blogging about it each week and you would behold the countenance a very confuzzled person.

Confuzzled. I like that word. It's almost Tigger-ish.

Now, back to Leviticus...

My first attempt to digest the whole of Leviticus failed because... well, I never really got the whole chunk of it down my throat. After around twenty odd chapters of 'torn apart but not totally severed' birds, priests waving thighs and breasts, mildew-ridden houses and "Unclean! Unclean!", I just got too caught up with the rest of my life that I left the whole project alone for quite a while. Oh, and the fact that I couldn't really appreciate what I was reading played a part too. Of course, in 'typical evangelical fashion' (quoting Yancey again), I shall 'blame myself and not the Bible'. For, try as I may, I simply could not get myself to reboot the program. The Task Manager laughed at my futile attempts to end the task that had frozen my machine.

Fast forward a few months, and here I am, at the completion of the Tabernacle once again. I know what's in store for me beyond this page. Burnt Offerings, Fellowship offerings and Guilt Offerings. Regulations about mildew and infectious skin diseases. All I have to do, is make that one step. *cringes and steps forward*

soliloquy: Hm, well. Something's different.

knuxlee: What?

soliloquy: It says here Absolution Offering instead of Guilt Offering. Oh, and fungus
instead of mildew!

knuxlee: Har har.

But frankly, that was about all that was visibly different about the text this time around. It was still the same old long, detailed instructions not much different from what you would expect in any other religious handbook of rites (minus of course the totally gruesome rituals, but not totally bloodless either). Somewhere in the middle of it I just stopped and posed this question: Why am I bothering to study the details of a covenant that doesn't apply to me anymore (nor endears to my RSPCA-supportive nature)?

PAUSE: I don't think Audrey would have liked to live in those times. At least, I bet her tent would be the furthest away possible from the Tent of Meeting, to avoid having to see all the sacrifices.

My dad make a remark that probably explains everything in Leviticus. "The main point of the sacrifices was because they didn't have the complete sacrifice that was Jesus Christ." But I don't have to tell you that. You've probably been told that a million times over. But why exactly should you read Leviticus?

My answer is this: So that you can bore/confuse/shock yourself to the point that you can no longer take the New Covenant we have for granted anymore.

Yes, Jesus gave us new commandments on how to live that seemed and still seem crazy. But which would you rather have to do? Learn to love your enemies or sacrifice a lamb after having a child? Some (maybe even most) might say the latter, but I believe that there's far greater meaning in the former.

But I must be honest. Try as I may, I have yet to find answers that satisfy the sentences punctuated by question marks in my mind: Why the rigidity? Why such legalism?

I struggle with this question each time I read through the Old Testament. Perhaps as I implied in my thoughts on Genesis, it could have been another early design of Mankind. Maybe God tried to bring Man close to him through laws that would set clear boundaries and expectations for the relationship, like how ancient cultures drew clear lines for the relationship between a father and a son. Certain Eastern cultures for example emphasized the father's role as a provider and head of family, but not as one who comforted his child in times of trouble. Molly-coddling was a mother's job. The father was the strong one who showed little, if any emotion. It used to work. Well, sorta. But not anymore.

In this world we live in today, the father that fails to live up to the name 'dad' (which exuberates love and closeness) because he chooses to hold on to the old traditions will result in hatred or feelings of detachment in his children. Maybe a couple thousand years ago in Ancient China such a father could get away with it. After all, he brought home the dough. Whether he stunk of rice wine or was seen with a mistress in town made little difference. It was the way of life back then. But how times have changed. With the birth of psychology came the birth of research producing books on perfect parenting methods. Our image of the perfect father today definitely bears no resemblence to the traditional father figure of previous millennia.

Similiarly, our view on God should be and how the people of Leviticus thought God should be certainly shows how we've changed in four thousand years. Our love towards our own children doesn't change. Four years or forty, we still love them. What does change is how we treat them and try to solve their problems. We know that at some point we have to give them 'the talk', but we will not do it any earlier than the time we decide to be correct. In the same way I believe God did know that someday he'll have to send his son to die for mankind, but he would not so earlier than the time he felt was right. During the teenage years our children will no longer just bow to our rules and regulations. I believe so did God know that a new covenant was necessary for a 'teenage' generation of mankind.

A crazy thought. Is the entire human race like a child that is born, grows and matures?

It's too much for me to think that I believe I have to stop writing now. The signal from my muse, garbled as it was, is now reduced to pure static. I should re-read through what I've written to make it less of the mess it is now, but I'm far too... confuzzled. I'm sorry for jumping from one track to the next with no warnings. My plea is that you'll forgive me, then proceed to grill me, saute me with the flames of your komen and pendapats. Goodnight world.

"The ride's over. Did you enjoy yourself?"
--many sources, but it is my choice to quote the song "Leech" by Incubus, for no particular reason (I don't even like the song)

P.S. I think the Bible was reffering to albinism in Leviticus 13:12-13. What do you all think?

Hijrah: Renungan dan Iltizam

Looks like I'm a day later than Ben, vunce again. :) While Ben, I'm not sure exactly how you could have forgotten your username (did you mean your password?), I'll try to do what I can to rectify the situation.

Unlike Ben, I've not been disconnected from the computer for a week. My only alibi for this delayed entry is my own indiscipline, vunce again (hm, maybe that can be my new catchphrase). But anyway, here I am, with some of my..

thoughts on exodus

Exodus begins with the story of Moses, which you can find quite an entertaining version of it in the pasar malams/VCD shops. However, I made a few interesting (or at least I thought they were!) observations.

When Moses was skeptical whether the Egyptians would take him seriously, God gave showed two miracles that he was to use to make them believe. The first is the one we all know, that is, the staff/snake switch. But the second, the 'now it's leprous, now it's not' hand, was never shown to Pharoah. Now the question is, why wasn't that miracle used to give Pharoah a scare? A couple of reasons came to my mind, but I think the one that made the most sense was that the miracle would have been too easily duplicated by the Egyptians magicians. If they could change their staffs into snakes, what would a simple illusionary trick be to them? David Blaine could probably pull this one off. I can imagine Aaron whispering to Moses, "Should we try the leprousy one?" and Moses muttering back, "Better not. Let's just get out of here."

In that case, did they lose heart and disregard God's instructions? I see little reason for that, given that Aaron's snake swallowed up the snakes of the other conjurers, who must have looked pretty stupid now without their ellaborate 'magical' staves, which had been defeated by a piece of wood that must've looked as unimpressive as the staff of Gandalf the Grey. But then again, given the stubborn nature of Pharoah, a few more miracles that might have been seen as merely sleight of hand wouldn't have worked at all.

Another thing was that instructions of how to conduct the miracle of turning water to blood changed when Moses and Aaron actually had to do it in Egypt. Or rather, what was originally intended as a sign to make Pharoah believe (by pouring water from the Nile onto dry land) was upgraded into a fully-fledged disaster upon Egypt. The lesson that I gather from this is that we shouldn't always take God's instructions as his final instructions. Let us not stick too vehemently to what we were sure was a calling by God to do something whenever fresh, new orders from our general are delivered to us.

Sometimes we skim through the pages of the plagues so fast that we fail to notice how Moses' faith progressed with each miracle God performed. During their first audience with Pharoah, Moses spoke everything through Aaron, as shown by the usage of the phrase 'they said'. By the time of the plague of the frogs, Moses was already answering without a mouthpiece to Pharoah. Philip Yancey wrote that the Egyptians must have been stunned when Moses finally spoke for himself, for 'out of his mouth flowed perfect, aristocratic Egyptian'. I totally agree with him. Moses must have realised that it was more effective for him to communicate to the Egyptians directly instead of being hampered by what Yancey called 'Aaron's rustic speech'.

PAUSE: Wasn't the end of that paragraph so like Ben, with his style of quoting writers of books he's read? :)

As for the miracles, initially it was always, "Tell Aaron to... his staff..." By 'Strike Seven: Hail (as The Message terms it)', Moses has become confident enough that God's orders are to "Stretch your hands to the skies. Signal the hail to fall all over Egypt on people and animals and crops exposed in the fields of Egypt." During our sessions studying the Old Testament conducted by Dr. Leong Thien Fook at DNA last year, he mentioned that everything Moses went through prior to returning to Egypt was a preparation for his job as the leader of Israel. Now I see that the plagues were God's way of building up Moses to have the faith required for his new post. By the time the Israelites leave Egypt, I almost forgot that he was a whining, stuttering coward at the beginning of his service to God.

I found Exodus also a book that I struggled with as I attempted to comprehend the way God works. The Egyptians to the end of the plagues suffered in what I would term 'buta-ly' because God had made Pharoah stubborn in order that the Israelites would be able to tell their children about how God 'toyed with the Egyptians like a cat with a mouse'. Maybe it was because God didn't want Pharaoh to later delude himself that he had been tricked by illusionists or phonies manipulating natural events to their own advantage, thus creating a flawed history of the Israelites leaving in Egyptian records. I was mildly comforted when I realised that the Egyptians that feared the God of the Israelites would have heeded the warnings and taken steps to minimize the suffering they would endure, especially in the plague of hail.

Oh, and I really like the way The Message phrased Exodus 14:14.
"GOD will fight the battle for you.
And you? You keep your mouths shut!"
Reminded me how I've got a God who fights for me, and how I shouldn't question him but instead 'keep my mouth shut'.

Meeting God nowadays is usually associated with a quiet, tranquil atmosphere in which we can relax and be comforted. I shudder at the way in which the Israelites experienced God's presence. Pyrotechnics, noise, and a downright scary aura. No wonder they told Moses, "You speak to us and we'll listen, but don't have God speak to us or we'll die." What a stark contrast to what we long and hope for, that is for God to speak to us in a personal manner. It made me wonder, are we really up to what we ask for? :)

I also noticed the laws of the old covenant that bigots gleefully jumped upon to condone their practice of slavery during colonial times. Here's an excerpt, "If a slave owner hits a slave, male or female, with a stick and the slave dies on the spot, the slave must be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he's not to be avenged--the slave is the owner's property." Downright nasty! At first I thought the verse meant 'if the slave survives after a day or two', then felt unhappy when I realised the true meaning of it.

But I liked the way Moses negotiated with God. I guess we're always talking about submitting to God's will, but in Exodus we see Moses not simply bowing to God's decision of wiping out the Israelites and starting anew (vunce again!) with Moses, instead pleading tactfully for God to think twice. And we read that, "And GOD did think twice. He decided not to do the evil he had threatened against his people." What a privilege it is to have a God who cares about our feelings and will not simply force us to bend 'to his will'.

I guess that's all I have to write this time. Have to go for lunch now. Seeya all! :)