Beloved Junior Apprentice,

Precious one. Yes, more than a year it has been since I have scribed anything in visible articulations for your perusal. Much has taken place in the battlefront throughout this period of time. Multiple events have taken place which threatened the cause of the Kingdom for which we have fiercely sought to live, and countless others have affirmatively impacted the ever-increasing establishment of our Master's subversive Kingdom.

I have fallen not less than once in this past year - this is a painful confession from a senior apprentice. Yes, my dearest friend, senior apprentices too do acquire scars in the course of their battles. But these scars should not constitute a mockery of our conscience or an accusatory voice hailing for the Kingdom's doom. For we know unequivocally that in the final analysis, the Master's Kingdom will come in its fullness... who can stop it? That you and I are called to participate in the Order for the establishment of this Kingdom does not by any means imply that the success of the mission is contingent upon us; our invitation to participate is nothing more than a privilege. The Master loves you and me.

But in this past year, I have been reminded over and over again that as we stand in the midst of the relentless battle against the Old Kingdom, staking ourself for the cause of the New, sometimes it would appear that our greatest enemy is not those we face in the battlefield, but those we face in the mirror. Yes, I am talking about our selves. I'm beginning to wonder which is the more lethally dangerous one of the two.

Beloved junior apprentice, you have grown. I have observed it and I will attest to it with the deepest trust the Master has placed upon me in his charge given to me over you. And I too have grown. I have grown because you were in my life. It feels somewhat strange calling you my junior apprentice any longer, for you have fast become a friend. No, more than a friend. Come, let's keep up the good fight until the Kingdom comes in its fullness; if not today, perhaps tomorrow. Or the day after. It will be done.

Yours most affectionally,
Senior Apprentice

Links to previous Dispatches to the Apprentice:

Dispatches to the Apprentice (1)

Dispatches to the Apprentice (2)

Dispatches to the Apprentice (3)

Dispatches to the Apprentice (4)

Posted by SK at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a little girl who becomes so bedazzled by the mascot of a telecommunications company she keeps talking about him day and night, searching for him in unlikely places, writing him a letter without truly knowing if he might receive it, and never ceasing in her amusement at the mascot.

And then this gigantic telecommunications company receives the letter because the little girl’s mother posts it to them on her behalf, and they unexpectedly feel that the secret wish, the little desire, of this child means the world to her. And they fulfil it by sending the mascot over to meet with her and to take her to school one morning.

The Kingdom of God enters into the world of those – such as these little children – whose secret wishes no one typically bothers to care about and whose insignificant dreams go unnoticed.

There are little Rachels all around the world whose desires dissipate into oblivion and whose dreams remain ignored, because their voices are too small and their inspirations of no consequences to the scheme of things in the present world. The Kingdom-people are those who go to these Rachels, that their voices may be heard and their dreams fulfilled with dignity and honour.

And boy, watch how they scream and squeal and hop and dance when the Kingdom is brought to them. Only these can do justice to the the gift of the Kingdom by their sheer delight, for they know what best to value. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.

The Kingdom of God is where silliness is taken seriously.

Posted by SK at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I admire you deeply for your courage.

Whilst many others are finding the partners they've desired for themselves, you've pledged yourself to one with whom you must exist for a cause greater than yourself.

I deeply admire you because you've been warned, and you've ignored the danger and decided that there's no other path you might want to choose.

Strangely, I see all these other possibilities before you, and yet you remain blind to them all, fixating your eyes only on this one path.

Henceforth, we'll be plotting freedom and liberty in establishments of oppression. We'll be orchestrating explosions of reconciliation in boundaries of enmity. We'll be planting insurgents of hope in borders of despair.

Others call it insanity. We call it the dance of life.

Posted by SK at 2:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Malaysian Ministry of Home Affairs,

What is the value of a human person?

In the first place, how do you define personhood?

Or have you ever even attempted to define that which constitutes personhood that you could even so much as consider emerging with an idea like this?

Have you seen how many foreign workers are (mis)treated by their employers (your local citizens)? It's bad enough that their treatment of a foreign human life betrays their attitudes towards the worth of the human person. And now, you're affirming that they should do worse.

Think.

If what I've read is true, as a Malaysian citizen, today I'm quite speechless. And as a citizen of the world, I hang down my head in shame.

Posted by SK at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This post dwells on some further sustained thoughts pertaining to the “dynamic universal core”. If we posit that the dynamic universal core is “time sensitive and perennially changing with the development of our theological understanding”, what reasonable sources possess legitimate ascendancy over the dynamism of the core?

It is open knowledge that the "emerging" people are serious about engaging with the dominant culture confronting the Christian gospel (in the West the postmodern culture, and in Asia perhaps the postcolonial ethos). First and foremost, this engagement is about the vulnerability of allowing the dominant culture to challenge the Christian gospel with serious questions regarding the adequacy, accuracy, and even the absolute rightness of the latter.

But it is probably a misunderstanding beyond proportions that these people engaging with culture are actually permitting the culture to redefine the core. It is most likely that culture raises questions which shed doubt on the perennial universality of the core, but not necessarily that culture redefines the core.

In my observation, it seems to me that whilst culture is permitted the role of the “interrogator”, the contextual thinkers are going back into the Great Christian Tradition to seek solutions for these problems raised by culture. They do not claim that culture itself provides the answers. They seem to have an implicit understanding that the Great Christian Tradition itself possesses more than a sufficient wealth of wisdom to provide plausible solutions for challenges posed by culture. The Great Christian Tradition causes one to expand and deepen the core such that one realises that his definition and demarcation of the core may have been overly limited and unnecessarily fossilised.

Thus, it is not uncommon for contextual thinkers to move beyond the boundaries of their own limited traditions (i.e. their denominational / traditional boundaries and familiar scope of theological positions) towards other even older traditions in search of responses to the problems posed by culture. This explains the openness of the emerging people towards the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions and their willingness to listen to other ecclesial voices beyond that with which they are familiar. Again, this is not something deemed acceptable to every Christian thinker of every tradition. Some traditions are, by their sheer nature, implicitly closed to conversations which challenge the rudiments of their all-familiar categories.

The Christian faith is more than 500 years old. In fact, the memory of the Christian Church goes back beyond 2,000 years. The contextual thinker holds on to this wealth of ecclesial life and therefore understands that there is no need for theological insecurity, for he has a long, long history – a Great Story of which he is a part – consisting of multiple voices of wisdom who have come before him and who would be able to infuse wisdom and impart solutions in his endeavour to be a relevant voice within the present scheme of life. This is the reservoir of ecclesial jurors for the contextual thinker which many others fail to observe or choose to ignore all together.

For him, the challenges posed by cultural confrontations do not cause him to pander into a state of intimidation and self-preserving defensiveness, for he looks beyond himself and his restrained traditional familiarity; and behold, a world of endless possibilities is open before him as he gleans from the voices of his many Fathers who once treaded the path on which he now finds himself. Someone aptly comments (and the contextual thinker certainly mirrors it well): “It’s not about the old ways, it’s about the much older ways”.

Posted by SK at 1:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

In speaking of contextualisation, there are (rather simplistically) two trends of thought:

1) The gospel consists of a "static universal core", a series of articulations which is time insensitive and perennially unchanging. The contextualisation project is simply about enfleshing this core with a cultural facade for the facilitation of communication and understanding. The core, essentially, does not change.

2) The gospel consists of a "dynamic universal core", a series of articulations which is time sensitive and perennially changing with the development of our theological understanding. The contextualisation project, whilst being about the cultural expression of this "dynamic universal core", is also about allowing the enfleshment process to provoke us to re-examine the legitimacy and relevance of the universal core. This means that the universal core, by its sheer dynamic nature, is vulnerable to being modified, changed, eradicated, retained, or reaffirmed in accordance with that deemed necessary.

I suspect that the "emerging" people are those who are more ready to embrace the second of the two approaches, and not just anyone is willing to sit well with this methodological vulnerability.

But anyone who is seriously going to engage his/her context authentically would almost immediately see that the second of the two is probably the only way by which one can be authentically contextual in his/her theological methodology.

Editor's Note: This post was first posted as a comment in the following blog entry.

Posted by SK at 1:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever wondered how bystanders must have felt about Jesus and his company of friends? They must’ve thought he was cultivating a bunch of cronies, people who’d ride on his fame and enjoy the benefits of his impending political success.

After all, if he was the one sent by God to topple the Roman Empire and end the horrendous oppression, he would soon emerge to be the new political ruler of Israel. If this was the case, wouldn’t these friends eventually be the ones to occupy the crucial governmental places once their new king established his new cabinet?

Well, yes… this was how they eventually occupied the positions of greatness bequeathed to them:

Matthew -
suffered martyrdom by being slain with a sword at the distant city of Ethiopia.

John -
put in a caldron of boiling oil, but escaped death in a miraculous manner, and was afterward exiled to the remote island of Patmos. Eventually died in a prison.

Peter -
crucified at Rome with his head downward.

James the Greater -
beheaded at Jerusalem.

James the Less -
thrown from a lofty pinnacle of the temple, and beaten to death with a fuller's club.

Bartholomew -
flayed alive.

Andrew -
bound to a cross, from which he preached to his persecutors until he died.

Thomas -
run through the body with a lance at Coromandel in the East Indies.

Jude -
pierced with arrows until he died.

Philip -
crucified.

Simon the Zealot -
murdered by a mob in Persia.

Matthias -
first crushed with rocks and then beheaded.

Sometimes when we see a company of friends journeying together towards the coming of God’s Kingdom in the world, all we seem to see is joy and much laughter. Because of the commitment they have towards one another and the love they share, we perceive them to be recipients of unjust privileges. We think they’re exalting their positions of chosenness and forming a fraternity of nepotists, hungry for the proclamation of social power.

But as each one of these considers the cost of journeying with a bunch of friends who’re serious about their participation in God’s dream for the coming of the Kingdom, there’s an unspoken price which he must pay for the choice he has made. This price and its accompanying sacrifices often go unnoticed and are understood only by those who walk alongside him and suffer the same curse of chosenness.

Chosenness may seem like a privilege. But those who’ve been chosen to walk this journey would swear that it would’ve been much easier to live in ignorant bliss, and that they often wonder if they might not have preferred the less turbulent path.

Posted by SK at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Lord, there is something I must discuss with you. It’s about the issue of allegiance.

If I have to choose what to render to you and what not to, you don’t blame me, do you?

I mean, it’s really a hard world to live in. I have to cope with demands from many parties.

You’re not the only one I have to live for you know. I have to grapple with demands from my employers, my family, my church leaders… and then there’s you…

It’s hard trying to ensure that everybody’s happy with me. You understand, right?

I know you say that all of me belongs to you. But surely you must know that this is purely religious talk which can’t possibly apply in the real world.

If I lived as if all of me belonged to you, my life would be finished.

What will happen to my career which necessitates some measure of compromise on my personal religion? And if my career goes down, what happens to my family?

I have children to school and feed, and I have a wife who needs to be proud of me. You understand, right?

I don’t think anyone would blame me if I thought for myself. I don’t think anyone would dare blame me. And you shouldn’t too, since I’m just being like everyone else.

Posted by SK at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Contextual theology has been in existence for aeons now. When people engage with prevalent cultures like modernity and post-modernity, or some third-world socio-political realities such as political oppression, economic imbalance and gender imbalance, they are essentially engaging in contextual theology.

At the outset, it is crucial for the theological thinker to acknowledge that all theology is contextual. Every theology necessarily arises from some immediate context or situation which warrants a reflective exercise and thereafter effects a thoughtful theological response. This is true even for those theologies we now accept as normative.

Of course, there are those who continue to revel in the glory of universal and timeless truths. It is, needless to say, a much safer position in which to stand. Many of us come from such traditions that "fossilise" what we think to be universal. However, even if we conceded to the validity of the position of timeless universality, there's an inclination to forget that our articulations of that which is universal themselves aren't universal. The reasons for refuting the universality of these articulations are multiple:

Firstly, these articulations are encouched within a cultural reality. To begin with, the fact that language needs to be employed for these articulations already points to the inherent validity of this argument. Secondly, our articulations are never exhaustive of the universal in its entirety. We are but mere humans articulating our cognitive understanding and subjective experiences of the divine within the confines of our intellectual perceptivity. We must never allow our intellectual loftiness to pander to timelessly universalising that which we have constructed using finite intellectual material. Thirdly, an engagement with contextual realities often (if not always) necessitates the theological thinker to re-examine what he once thought was universal.

In other words, we cannot escape the particularities of our theological contexts. A theologian must - at all times and in all places - engage in the theological enterprise as a contextual exercise.

Now, it is at this point that we begin to face some strange demands from those who fail to acknowledge the inevitability of the contextual exercise - they mandate that a universal apologetic has to be constructed in order to establish the legitimacy of the contextual exercise! The irony of it is this: such a demand itself arises out of a certain cultural predisposition (which they, of course, fail to realise).

The contextual theologian must hold his nerve and not pander to playing the same game, lest he gets stuck in a cycle of universalistic hegemony. He must not attempt to “evangelise” the theological universalist by trying to play by the rules of the latter’s game. He should keep speaking a language the other understands, but not start speaking the language of the other - and this statement is itself to be understood, no less and no more, contextually.

Posted by SK at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Kingdom Citizen,

Your way of life seems rather foolish - I hope you’re aware of that. You must’ve become conscious of this reality by now in the light of how you’ve been treated and how people have talked about you. Most of the time, you find your choices, your values, and your way of life rather out of place; as it were, you seem to be living like you’re from a different world. Half the time, people exert their energies trying to figure you out, and somehow they never manage to - unless they so decide to live with you and to partake in your life.

You’re doing well. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of your relentless decision to walk in the way of my Kingdom. The life you live now is but a prophetic alternative to the rest of the human order - even to many of the people called “Christian” in the institution called “church”. Time and again, your allegiance has been demonstrated in your refusal to act in the way most common to humankind.

Where most others have fought for their rights, you’ve refrained from so much as verbalising a complaint at how you’ve been trampled upon. Where most others have chosen to be pacifists pertaining to the wellbeing of the marginalised, you’ve expressed furious anger at such an absence of human equality and justice. Where most others have chosen to focus solely on the positivistic ethos of the religious life, you’ve not withheld your commitment to my Kingdom by seeking to correct the dislocations you see between the cause of the religious people and the cause of the Kingdom. And one more thing I love about you is this - you love my planet.

I know you suffer. I suffered. In this world, you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world! In time to come, you will witness the fuller rising of my invisible Kingdom - it will creep into the visible order unbeknownst to those who do not desire it. But for you who so desire it, you’re already seeing glimpses of this Kingdom, this state of perfected reconciliation in the order of creation. These glimpses have been effected for your sake. Yes, for your sake, beloved citizen. Just so you know I make good my promises.

Don’t give up. With eagerness, await what is to come. Yes, I am coming soon!

With my deepest affection,
Your Loving King

Posted by SK at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The grieving world continues to delude itself as the many people contained within it furiously construct new realities - countless new worlds - that they may find elusive happiness in those synthetic climates of emotional security.

Deep within, some of them grieve those things they’ve lost whilst others grieve the absence of those things they never had. Each, in his own unique way, expresses those needful things in his life. Strangely, even if many of these "needful things" are projected to take on the form of things, almost inevitably, it's a person who was once lost and caused grief.

Some say that grief is but a gradual process which eventually brings one towards wholeness, that grief eventually ceases. I beg to differ. I think the scars of our painful pasts invoke a grief which lasts throughout our lifetimes. At some point, the grief no longer paralyses us, but yet, we express that loss through certain mechanisms which generate a sense of hope just so we feel that we can perhaps cope with the grief throughout this life.

Some have grieved for so long they can’t imagine a life without it. I've lived almost all my life with people who were and are still grieving. They spend their entire lives trying to compensate that which they’ve lost. Some others even over-compensate just so they feel justified. Perhaps only then can they be somewhat convinced that this world into which they were born is a world regulated by justice. They need to know it, just so they can survive in it.

Grief produces a kind of energy, an energy which renders a certain power to the griever. This energy can either damage or develop others. Our scars can be a source from whence temporal healing is found, or they can be the ugly source from which flows the further debilitation of human life. The art of nurturing grief must be mastered creatively, craftily and delicately, lest it masters you.

Editor's Note: This is a related article worth reading and pondering over.

Posted by SK at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s easier to be nice than to love people.

It’s easier to do kind favours that cause people to like us than to love enough to refuse helping someone fulfil his perceived need. Likeability works to our advantage.

It’s easier to remain silent without pointing out someone else’s faults than to love enough to speak with honesty and directness into a person’s life. Diplomacy works to our advantage.

It’s easier to just accept others and remain blind to areas of their lives that need improvement than to love enough to take responsibility for their personal growth. Superficiality works to our advantage.

Niceness, diplomacy, friendliness, and helpfulness can be the most deceitful ways of being selfish. Loving is never that easy, because truly and deeply loving others can sometimes be the most hideously offensive thing to do.

The two often look alike, but one seeks the wellbeing of the self whilst the other seeks the wellbeing of the neighbour. Are you loving or just being nice?

Posted by SK at 3:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The two-day event organised by emergentMalaysia, Friends in conversation: A quiet revolution of hope, has ended successfully. Influential author and speaker Brian McLaren, and other local conversation partners have exchanged their perspectives on four main issues; gospel, church, discipleship and world.

Link: Read the report on this event published by Christian Today

Posted by SK at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The Kingdom of God is like a heavy tremor you feel from a terrifying earthquake occurring in a distant land. You can’t tangibly see its catastrophic occurrence, but you feel the shaking of the ground beneath you and the wobbling of the concrete buildings you’re in.

It leaves you bewildered and wondering, because you know something has effected a shift in the scheme of things. And yet, when you try to point your finger at exactly what has shifted, you realise you can’t even begin to define what has happened. You just know it’s there because you experience its effect, but it’s so profound that no economy of words can do justice to its reality.

The Kingdom of God is intrusive and comes without warning. It’s one of those things in life that happens as an inevitable, much like an unexpected earthquake. And yet, the coming of the Kingdom is not so much a catastrophe for some as it is for many others.

One thing is for sure - the coming of the Kingdom of God rocks you. Sometimes it rocks you so hard you wish you could stay out of its reach. It rocks so vehemently to demolish all the monuments and empires you’ve ever built for yourself in this life. When it’ll ever stop, there’s no saying.

But for now, it has come… and it’ll keep coming. And you can’t run away from it.

Posted by SK at 2:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are a church leader, there’s something I need to tell you. You know how the church institution is almost always run by committees and boards, sub-committees and sub-boards which make decisions on behalf of the people?

I need you to know that although all the ten people on your committee may be godly and extremely beautiful as individuals, as soon as you make decisions and disseminate the results of your committee discussions, these decisions are cold and impersonal, and often heartless.

If we believe that the fundamental basis of the church’s existence is the Trinitarian community that we call “God” (and not some impersonal parliament or board or committee), the fundamental mechanism for decision-making in any Christian community must be based on relationships. Not committees and boards.

When you make decisions and issue them as “the decision of the committee” so that no single individual in the leadership will have to hold personal accountability for the said decision, people who feel they’ve been victimised can’t even begin to point out who the victimisers are. Because it’d be, simply, “the decision of the committee, not my own decision”. There’s nothing kingdomic about such self-protectionism.

I’ll tell you why committees don’t sit well with my idea of church. The Kingdom of God is not about control and authority, that’s why. It’s about the laying down of control and authority that we may live in love and equality for the love of God and our neighbour. It’s about standing on the side of the helpless and the powerless, whereas the committee is about power.

Please, please don’t say that we’re obligated to love the church whether or not it functions in a better way than this. Because that depends almost entirely on who or what you think “church” is. The committee is not the church; the committee is simply a mechanism for control and authority. The people who’ve been victimised or marginalised - they’re as much the church as you are.

Please, for God’s sake, stop functioning as committees, and start functioning as humans. People to people.

Posted by SK at 6:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Link: James Cameron Finds Jesus?

I don't have a sense of protectionism over my faith. It's open to be examined. If it's found unreasonable, I'll leave it.

It's just that up until now, no one has succeeded in convincing me otherwise. Yet.

The Christian faith must never be afraid to stand up to scrutiny.

Now read here. See what I mean?

Posted by SK at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't like fairy tales. Because they suck you right into their plot until you begin to own the story for yourself, thinking that it's true. And before you know it, you realise it's just precisely what it is - a fairy tale.

The Gospel of the Kingdom - is it a fairy tale? It often seems like one.

Posted by SK at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It has been some years now, Lord, since the dream began. The only thing that compels me to move forward in embracing this dream is my inability to find any reason not to.

You remember the little conversation we had some years back which changed my life, don’t you? I told you that I wouldn’t turn back, no matter what. I was foolish. And at times, it seems quite difficult to continue living in such folly even though I mean never to go back on my word.

The truth is, sometimes I live out the ideals of this dream whilst consciously knowing that they’re impractical and that there’s no guarantee it’ll all work out the way I hope it will. But I guess I didn’t embrace the dream because of its practicality. I embraced it because I know it’s your dream.

But then there are times, like now, when I place that dream in front of me once again and find a reason to keep walking in such foolishness. It gets harder, Lord. Especially at times when the fulfilment of this dream seems to be getting nowhere and few seem to understand the reason for this madness.

On the one hand, I hear your voice saying, “You must believe. It’s my dream you’re sharing in, and what I say shall come to pass”. On the other hand, the accomplishment of the dream often seems madly impossible.

At this moment, I’m the personification of a plethora of contradictions.

I need to know that this dream is more than just a wishful thought, that it is a reflection of a reality that is yet unseen.

Posted by SK at 1:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)