A reflection on conversations with my spiritual guide on 30 June 2007

1. On the Rule of Life
A community of people sharing life together in commitment to the Kingdom should not be too impetuous in setting out its rule of life. The focus of the community should rest on its concrete sharing of life together on a daily basis.

From this daily sharing of life will eventually emerge a pattern, a settledness, a stability with which the community exists and regulates itself. The collation of words that we gradually find to describe this daily pattern of stability is that which we call the rule of life.

The rule of life cannot be externally imposed upon anyone who is not yet ready to accept it. Any new visitor spends a considerable season of time with the community as an observer and a learner. When the visitor finds himself attracted to the rule of life, it is for him to express a desire for a voluntary embrace of the community’s rule of life. Otherwise, the community continues to exist as a parable of the Kingdom for the visitor.

Upon the embrace of the community’s rule of life, the visitor becomes a brother. His life story becomes woven into the story of the community, integrating itself into the community’s being a parable.

2. On Speaking for the People of Asia
That which we know as Asian Theologies today has implicitly elitist undertones. They are written by people who have constructed theologies for the masses of Asia without first having consulted the masses. In thinking that they somehow know better, such theologies is written with the presupposition that they accurately reflect the struggle of the Asian peoples. No consent was sought from the masses to validate the written theology. In claiming their theologies to be liberating, they may have further marginalised those whom they sought to liberate.

A theology that is truly Asian would seek validation and legitimisation from the people it speaks about. Such a theology would take on a consultative tone and hopes to understand theologies that already form a part of the way the masses understand their world, and seeks to find the appropriate words to describe the experiences of the masses in as accurate a way as possible.

We need a new Asian theological method.