A word of wisdom from Professor Scott McKnight:

...all “watch blogs” ought to be banned if uncivil: they are feeding on others with nothing positive to contribute or say. By “watch blog” I mean those sites designed to do nothing but gripe about the left-leanings of others. People who worry all the time about how others lean are not nearly as straight up and down as they think. My plea: enter into the conversation as a conversational partner, and please avoid acting like theological cops who are protecting the Church from devious writers out to deflower the Church and its theology.

This somewhat perceptive observation (it is not often that a person is privileged to employ the literary device of sarcasm upon himself) immediately kickstarted a struggle within me. Some people call it the power of the conscience. I so wanted to help this man to get to where he was supposed to be. But you know what they say about entertaining strangers... it is dangerous business, for they may harm you in the least expected manner possible.

I started my car and drove past him and headed towards my next destination. But I didn't arrive quite as soon as I expected to. Because the power of the conscience is overbearing. So I turned around, stopped beside him, invited him into the car, and sent him to his intended destination.

There was no robbery, no murder, no harm done. Only a simple sentence of thank you: "Thank you for being a man with a kind heart". It's easy to think we can be kind and loving. But when real situations arise, we're suddenly hit by the harsh realities of inconvenience and the many risks we have to take just to love others.

Shame on me.

This is something for all bloggers to take note of in our endeavour to be responsible bloggers:

Ben Witherington: "On Speaking Privately in Public - On Blogs"

Those who desire to be responsible handlers of truth (whatever one perceives of this term) must never be caught argumentum ad ignorantiam (arguing from ignorance). If one must engage in beneficial and fruitful debates, let it be that there is legitimate cause for such an enterprise. And let all such endeavours be undergirded by a spirit of gentle humility. One also needs to keep in mind that there are potential arguments not worth engaging in, for in such climates, no one seeks to listen.

It is a complex world wherein information and knowledge are freely disseminated. Whilst many are inclined to exploit knowledge to its fullest potential, we must find the thin line defining the distinction between knowledge and wisdom.

True wisdom finds its power when one remains silent or speaks at the appropriate occasions. Knowledge is found where one speaks or acts to demonstrate one's lofty capabilities; but wisdom is found where one speaks or acts to move hearts.

1. I am back on broadband! I will spare you the horror of being enlightened on how many calls I have had to make and how many people I have spoken to in the past three weeks. No, on second thought, I won't spare you the horror... I have made some fifty phonecalls or therabout in the past three weeks, and spoken to nearly twenty people about getting my service activated. Some people are not doing their job; and the worse thing is, there's no way of even knowing who they are. But yes, I'm back on broadband.

2. I have been kept busy settling into my new house with my two parents and two furkids. We are well settled by now, and my parents love this town. To my horror, Mum exclaimed "I hope we will live here forever!" Okay mum, I'll try to negotiate with God about kicking me all over the globe like a ball, spherical though I may be.

3. I have apologetically cancelled my impending trip to Brazil in February 2006 for some foreseen reasons. It is regrettable that I will not be able to participate in the presentation of a theodicy at the 9th General Assembly of the World Council of Churches, but I trust they will find a suitable candidate to replace me in my absence.

4. I am also sustaining a momentum of curriculum preparation for the new term at Seminari Theoloji Malaysia. The specific topics I will be teaching in the coming term are Theological Prolegomena and Theology Proper. It is refreshing to explore once again the depth of the Patristic period in theological development, and utterly humbling to be reminded of the lack of depth in much of my own theological construction.

Q: How can I know I will make it?
A: The grace of God will sustain you.

Q: But the thorn in my flesh is excruciating.
A: The grace of God is sufficient for you; his strength made perfect in your weakness.

Q: Why is this happening to me?
A: He has plans for your life that you know not of.

Q: How do I know I have the strength to withstand it?
A: He will not test you beyond what you can bear.

Q: I am afraid.
A: He is with you. You are never alone.

You can rationalise your way through, but you cannot rationalise the fear away. Because something within you knows that the very thing you fear may - in a very real way - just be the thing you will have to face in time to come. And you know that "trusting the Lord to take it away" may not be something within his will at all.

And so you realise that you have to learn to redefine "trust". Trust is now not so much about believing that the Lord will take away the undesirably painful things from your life. It is now about learning to abandon yourself into his hands and his will - your deepest hopes, your secret dreams, your intense longings...together with all the most excruciating devastations that have set in throughout the course of your life journey. And you have to learn such a posture of trust because that is the only way that you will be able to survive tomorrow.

What a pain to bear. What a privilege to have known the sacred imperative of helpless abandonment.

Fiat volvntas tua ... let Thy will be done.

Others tell me that it is fine, and that you are gracious to accept my imperfection. But I have known and felt enough to know that the lack of perfection in my love for you and for my neighbour has brought a deep pain to you. The more I strive towards the perfection of this love, the more I'm confronted by my lack of a capacity for perfection. And each time I'm paralysed by this reality, your grace confronts me in even greater measure.

The depth of your love is beyond my comprehension. But I know how this life of mine pains you deeply. It didn't cost you nothing to love me. But the wretchedness in me cannot fathom the magnitude of that cost. Still, I know enough to understand that my inability to do likewise leaves a deep longing within you; a longing to have my heart.

Here is my life, Lord; I look to the cross and ask that you teach me to give it to you.

If so, what keeps one persistent in the laying down of one's self anyway? Perhaps the laying down of one's life is demanded not because it would be worth the while. Perhaps it was simply demanded so that one can be like Christ, who embarked on an earthly journey that was not worth the while.

The laying down of one's life could just be the very demand that attunes one to the heartbeat of God. To feel like Christ, to think his thoughts, to live his life, to walk in his footsteps, to suffer his pain, to love in his passion, to taste the intensity of his longing, and to share in his dream. To embrace the self-emptying life of the One who did that which was not worth it.

So...no, it might not have been worth it. But still, one shouldn't have it any other way.

1. God is community by nature, and we are called to embody his nature. Christianity has never been anything less than a communal faith. No one can be a Christian alone, because that would defy the very core of God's nature. I'm not saying that a person cannot be religious or remain on a spiritual "high" without the Church community. The heart of the matter is that the Church is called to be the visible embodiment of God's communal nature. Am I or am I not a part of it?

2. God's purpose is effective within community. The mandate that Christ gave to his people to love and to bring his love to the world was not given to isolated individuals, but rather, to a community. His missional purpose is bequeathed to a community, and hence the working out of this missional purpose cannot take place in isolation from the community - they are the guardians of the mission. Am I or am I not a part of it?

3. The Church is an abiding visible witness of God's intrusion into and presence in human history. This is one great reason for her visible presence on earth. The only way by which the Christian can truly constitute a witness to this reality is by being with the community, for better or for worse. And so, while I mourn my pain, God is still busy writing the story of this community. Am I or am I not a part of it?

Well-meaning Christians may have been deeply hurt by the Christian community. Find me a person who has loved the Church very deeply and yet has never been wounded by the Church before. What makes wounded people stay is not that churchlife is pleasant and exciting, but that for better or for worse, they have vowed to be a part of a community that chooses to walk the path of the cross, even if this journey may seem imperfect and unbefitting in all its expressions for now.

Being a part of the Church is a journey of discipleship, for we are called to enter in all our vulnerability, devoting ourselves to a community that may potentially hurt us deeply. But it is in embracing this hurt and pain that we can truly participate in the pain of the Body. Christ, despite the hurt and rejection he has faced from the community, has never taken leave...he steadfastly remains the Head.

Also, it would be very presumptuous of anyone to assume that the community has hurt him/her, whereas he/she has never contributed to the woundedness of the Body. As soon as we withhold active participation from the Body and refuse to be an agent of change, we are - in a very real way - inflicting further pain and harm on the Body.

As a wounded brother to another, I would say: Let us stay and weep together, nurse our wounds together...for the moment we slide into indifference, we are not truly weeping anymore; we're just sulking.

Okay, maybe I just don't understand.

Being missional requires a love of such radical magnitude that one is willing to live in a condition of detachment with the familiar realms of life. One must be willing to leave one's wealth, one's friends, one's family, one's job...and even one's own self, that the new self may be clothed with the garb of God's missional nature and purpose. The Christ was not joking when he said "...everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." It was an insane demand indeed, but he meant exactly what he said.

And everyone who professes to follow him is compelled to live the life of insanity that Jesus lived. The life of insanity is one that requires the follower to choose the lesser path, to abandon the desirable things in life, to speak that which makes little sense to the sensible mind, to disappoint those who love you, and to give to those who least deserve the good things. One must truly be a paradoxical fool to follow Christ.

Being missional requires that one count the cost of following Christ. Every day. It demands that the follower or disciple understands the measure to which he is willing to lay his life down for the Master whom he professes to follow and love devotedly. God never forgets those who lay down their deepest desires and dreams at the altar of the Kingdom. He remembers those whose lives are closely guided by the missional way of Christ. No, he never forgets those who truly desire to love him and to walk in his way.

It is easy to love God "sensibly". But to love God radically - as he truly desires - is an entirely different story. He leaves it to us to decide.

Christ requires a radical love. He requires a love so radical that it demands the bringing of that love beyond the community itself. Hence, the pinacle of the embodiment of the Great Commandment to love God and neighbour is to be expressed in the the Great Commission (Matthew 18:15-20) itself.

Notice the decree of Christ in Acts 1:8 to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Bringing the way of Christ to Jerusalem to people similar to ourselves should pose the least complications. Even Judea was homogeneous in its culture even if its people were geographically far too removed from the centre in Jerusalem. But having to engage with the people in Samaria was distasteful to say the least! They would be those who were most difficult to love (and probably the least receptive to our engagement, to begin with).

Our Samaritans are those people whom we would have least liked to have seen becoming a part of the Church. They are those who invoke our sense of abhorrence; those who are "not worth the while". And the radical love of Christ demands that we engage with them and accord the same privileges to them that have been freely given to us. Such is the radical love of Christ. Such is the path of being missional.

I am now well-settled in Seremban, notwithstanding that the absence of a broadband service is giving me an intolerable ulcer. I have managed to find my way around with the help of some very kind friends who have been a tremendous help in my endeavour to settle down and prepare for the challenges of the coming year.

My move to Seremban has confronted me with a challenge: to find and define myself all over again. This does not mean that I have lost myself all this while. It simply means that I have been plucked out from an environment of familiarity wherein my personhood was all too clearly delineated. That obvious delineation has now diminished in an instant, and I need to rediscover who I am called to be to the people whom I will soon call "my friends". Continuity will doubtlessly provide the foundation for this journey, but freshness will enflesh the new relationships...it must.

This is all my articulative poverty can afford for now.