In the next 24 hours, I'll be relocating back to Johor Bahru after four years in Seremban. I've announced this earlier on in the month, whilst many others have in fact already known this several months back.

This relocation is no big deal, as I've lived in Johor Bahru for more than ten years prior to my last move to Seremban. This return to Johor Bahru will be, basically, going home.

I've been in Seremban for four years. And in the scale of the human life, four years is by no means a short duration. Much has happened within this timeframe. Here are some of the most significant milestones in these four years:

• I bought a new car, which now isn't new anymore;


• I married a wonderful girl;


• I was received into full communion with the Bishop of Rome;


• My parents and wife were received into full communion with the Bishop of Rome;


• I graduated from seminary with a doctoral degree in Theology;


• I made my temporary profession into the Secular Franciscan Order;


• I served as Pastoral Associate in the Catholic Church;


• I was called back to Johor Bahru to serve His Lordship, the Bishop of Melaka-Johor.

These "successes" were very much fraught with failures, disappointments, losses, and at times, excruciating pain for both my family and me. Life teaches many lessons which we would do well to learn.

Anyway, this is not a goodbye post. It's just notice of relocation. For those of you who've had too much of me, I don't expect to be disappearing from your life anytime soon.

At this time also, I'm taking a moment to remember some very dear friends who've passed away within these past four years. It's impossible to forget some people whose imprints in your life are felt every day. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

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Thinkativity :

Malaysian society has lost a prophetess today. Yasmin Ahmad.

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Internal Politics that Split the Church

Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(July 2009 Issue)

It has often been asked, if the Church founded by Jesus Christ was One, why is there today such a vast collection of Christians claiming to be a part of the Body of Christ, and yet not being in full unity with one another?

Over the centuries, various events have taken place in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church which have caused multiple schisms (i.e. divorces) to take place. Of course, the issues surrounding these schisms often revolved around those of dogmatic beliefs. But as will be elaborated herein, disputes over doctrinal concerns were often also tainted by human realities of pride, power, and prejudice. Had those disputes been handled purely based on dogmatic concerns, the schisms that had resulted from those conflicts would perhaps have not been thus tragic.

To be sure, it is true that the departure of these other Christians from full communion with the Roman Catholic Church happened as a result of unresolved doctrinal disagreements. However, it was more often the manner in which these disputes took place that was the cause of the bitterness with which those resulting schisms occurred.

The state of the Body of Christ today is very reflective of three major disputes and the consequent schisms that took place in the history of Christianity. One the one hand, we have the Roman Catholic Church. On the other hand, we have the cluster of Eastern Churches, which are themselves also generally divided into the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, both not being in full communion with each other. Beyond that, there is also a very significant cluster of Christian communities called the “Protestants” comprising over 40,000 denominations globally.

Together, all these Christians form about 2.2 billion people, a third of the world population. Unfortunately, they do not all exist in a state of full unity. There is much to be learnt from the human dimension - the inner politics - which had been largely responsible for further tarnishing the already complicated relationships arising from the pertinent dogmatic disagreements.

THE PATRISTIC PERIOD
The predominant concern of the Church Fathers throughout this era lay with the natures of Jesus Christ. Was he human or divine? Did he have one or two natures? If he had two natures, how did the two natures relate with each other?

At the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, the Council drafted the now well-known Chalcedonian formulation which became the watershed for all subsequent dogmas about Jesus Christ. The declaration contained several phrases crafted with the goal of explicitly rejecting the various rampant heresies about Jesus: “acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation”.

At the same time, the Council also acknowledged that even though the orthodox position on Christ’s natures was that he possessed two natures, there was no single interpretation for how the two natures related to each other. Since these variances in interpretations had to be accounted for, the Council went so far to only give its weight to whatever consensus it could find.

This position of the Council was cause for grave concern on the part of the Eastern Church that is today known as the Oriental Orthodox Churches, as they had a particular emphasis on the unity of Christ’s two natures. Of course, the Council would not include this interpretation into its formulation so as to avoid foreseeable controversy on the matter. Pope Dioscorus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, therefore refused to accept the formulation promulgated by the Council of Chalcedon.

Now, although what followed this dispute was a consequent schism between those who had rejected the Council’s formulation and the rest of the Church, the schism was not born purely out of theological dispute. There were other human agendas involved too.

The Bishops of Alexandria had been leaders in the first three Ecumenical Councils prior to this fourth one at Chalcedon. The dominance of these Alexandrian bishops in those Councils had become the cause of envy among many from the other Churches. Furthermore, the dominance of the Alexandrian view in those earlier councils had led to the excommunication of the Bishops of Constantinople, which was the capital of the Empire.

In fact, just two years prior to this most recent Council, there was another Council that had been convened, and the Bishop of Rome (Pope Leo) was excommunicated as a result of the meeting having been overly steered by the Bishop of Alexandria. In the first place, this was one main reason that the Emperor Marcianus subsequently assembled 600 Bishops in the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), so as to render the Council two years prior to that null and void.

So beyond the theological concern, there was quite obviously a nationalistic ego involved in the decisions of the Council. The other patriarchs had a vendetta against the Bishops of Alexandria for the way the latter had steered the previous Councils in exclusion of those other Bishops. For them, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD was payback time!

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD
The next major schism which took place in 1054 AD is well known to have been caused by the filioque controversy.

One of the most significant events in the early history of the Church was agreement throughout the Roman Empire, both East and West, on the Nicene Creed (i.e. the “I believe”). It was intended to bring doctrinal stability to the Church.

However, over time, a disagreement arose over the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed (an addition to the part of the text which referred to the Holy Spirit “proceeding from the Father”). The Western Church had subsequently added the filioque phrase (Latin, “and from the Son”) to the Creed. The filioque is first recorded as having been added to the creed at the Third Council of Toledo (589 AD), and by the 9th century, it was used in the Western church routinely until this day.

For the Eastern Church, the filioque indicated a double procession of the Holy Spirit and was unacceptable. In other words, the Holy Spirit could not proceed from two sources (i.e. the Father and the Son). The Eastern Church insisted that there was only one source of being within the Trinity. The Father alone was the sole and supreme cause of all things, including the Son and the Spirit within the Trinity.

Theological though this argument may have been, the consequent schism between the Eastern Church and the Western Church was tainted by many political factors. The truth was, the relationship between East and West had long been embittered by rivalry for dominance, and the filioque controversy was merely the last straw that had broken the camel’s back.

For one thing, there was rivalry over the dominance of language, as the West was Latin-speaking and the East Greek-speaking. Pope Leo IX of the Western Church and Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople had both suppressed the use of the Greek and Latin languages in their respective domains in order to assert the significance of their own languages.

For another thing, there had all along already been disputes over whether the Patriarch of Rome (the Pope) should be considered a higher authority than the other Patriarchs. All five Patriarchs of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church were in agreement that the Patriarch of Rome should receive higher honours than the other four, but they disagreed on whether he had juridical authority over the other four.

In 1054, Roman legates had traveled to Cerularius to deny him the title “Ecumenical Patriarch” and to insist that he recognise the Catholic claim to be the head and mother of the churches. At Cerularius’ refusal to concede to the demands of the Wetern legates, the leader of the Latin contingent excommunicated Cerularius, and he in turn excommunicated the legates.

But in fact, the Western legates’ acts were of doubtful validity because Pope Leo IX had died, while Patriarch Cerularius's excommunication was applicable only to the legates personally and not to the Western Church as a whole. Still, such political rivalry had caused a schism that was never to be bridged again.

In 1965, the Western Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople had both nullified the anathemas (i.e. condemnations) of 1054 AD. But healing and communion after over 900 years of mutual discord requires much more than mere retraction of past condemnations.

THE REFORMATION PERIOD
A new period of Western Christianity began in the 16th century. The most significant development was the Protestant Reformation in 1521. The Reformation was a complex affair. Its agenda went beyond “reforming” the doctrine of the Church. It addressed social, political and economic issues.

It began with Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and a biblical theologian. He challenged what seemed to be the predominant teachings of the Catholic Church at that time. For example, he asserted that salvation was attainable through Christ alone without the mediation of the Church, that the Bible alone was the source of authority, and that all baptised Christians had the right of priesthood.

Luther was convinced that the Catholic Church was corrupt in its ways and had lost sight of the central truths of Christianity, the most important of which, for him, was the doctrine of justification (i.e. God's act of declaring a sinner righteous) by faith alone through God's grace alone in Christ alone.

Luther’s teachings against the Catholic Church and the Pope changed the course of Western civilisation. He was excommunicated by the Catholic Church in 03 January 1521 upon refusal to recant his teachings which were deemed heretical by the Catholic Church. He subsequently married a nun, Katherina von Bora, who also defected from the Catholic Church. She was 26 and he was 42.

As the Reformation spread, the three cities that became the centres of the Reformation were Germany (Martin Luther and the University of Wittenberg), Geneva (John Calvin), and Zurich (Huldrych Zwingli).

The key to Luther’s success lay not so much in convincing the masses of his doctrinal correctness; it lay in responding to the political climate of the day. Luther’s Germany was nothing like modern-day Germany. Germany at that time was divided in multiple territories with different royal governing authorities. In order to push his agenda for reform, he had done much to garner the support of the princes of the various German territories. The strategy he had adopted was that of presenting to them the semblance of a Catholic reformer rather than a heretical revolutionary.

So as to gain the favour of the princes, Luther assisted them in quelling revolts by the lower classes of society in the name of religion. Apart from the suppression of the lower classes, the middle classes of northern Germany, namely the well-educated urbanites, would appeal to religion in order to express their discontent according to the cultural medium of the day. The great emergence of the burghers, the desire to run their new businesses without the regulatory impositions of institutional barriers or outmoded cultural practices gave rise to the revolt for self-motivated purposes. To many of the middle class masses, papal institutions were rigid. It therefore made sense for them to jump onto Luther’s anti-papal bandwagon.

In Northern Germany, the burghers and monarchs were united in their frustration at having to collect taxes from subjects and sending the revenues disproportionately to Rome with little or nothing left for themselves. In Northern Europe, Luther appealed to the growing national consciousness of the German states because he denounced the Pope for involvement in politics as well as religion. Moreover, he backed the nobility, who were now justified in crushing the Great Peasant Revolt of 1525 and confiscating church property because of Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms. This explains the attraction that Lutheranism held for some of the territorial princes.

With the church now subordinate to and the agent of civil authority and peasant rebellions condemned on strict religious terms, Lutheranism and German nationalist sentiment were ideally suited to coincide. With this, the Reformation was a success and the rest was history.

POLITICS, PRIDE, POWER, PREJUDICE
Thus obvious is the smearing of the Church’s doctrinal disputes with disgraceful political endeavours by her children. Of course, one must not be mistaken and falsely conclude that the Body of Christ would have remained in full unity had those political motives been absent. Unity must always serve the priority of truth and cannot be achieved at the expense of truth. Hence, it was not wrong that separations might have had to take place in the face of doctrinal controversies accompanied by efforts to preserve the orthodox teachings of the Church.

However, the bitterness of the disputes tainted with human motives is another issue all together. Because of such political motives involved in the processes, often accompanied by lack of mutual respect for the dignity of others, we cannot conclude with an utterly clear conscience that the historical schisms of the Church were orchestrated by the Holy Spirit in His effort to preserve truth among the people of God. In large measure, the disputes had more to do with power and dominance than truth.

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Deacons as Administrators
of the Church

Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(June 2009 Issue)

The employment of salaried administrators in dioceses and parishes today is an entirely new phenomenon. There is little that Holy Mother Church, being a two-thousand year old institution and community, has not thought about. Right from the time of the Apostles, Church administration had already become a challenge, and a special order created in response to the need for effective administration.

In the Acts of the Apostles (6:1-6), the landmark election of seven men as deacons of the Church took place arising from administrative concerns. The Greek-speaking widows, who were not attendees of the Temple where the Apostles preached, were said to be somewhat neglected since their needs were not attended to in their own homes. They, unlike the Aramaic-speaking, had allegedly not received their fair share of the goods which were distributed by the Christian community among the people in need of aid. The Apostles, in having their attention brought to this need, concluded, “It is not right for us to neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables”. They therefore laid hands on seven “deeply spiritual and prudent” men for this ministry of serving the catechetical needs of the widows and the bringing of their rations to their homes. They were called “deacons”. These deacons served as the Apostles directed.

Arguably, the institution of the order of the diaconate preceded that of the priests. The reason for this is that at the institution of the diaconate, the Apostles were still in active ministry and had not had to grapple with issues of succession, whilst the Church was relatively still small.

THE ANCIENT CHURCH ADMINISTRATOR
It is the deacon who, in the history of the Church, has been instrumental in Church administration. Of course, this order was instituted for the service of charity, word, and altar. But the focus of our exploration here will be the first of the three, which includes the mammoth task of Church administration.

As has been explained, the foundation of this ministry is found in Acts 6:6 wherein men were elected to serve in the distribution of daily rations to the widows. Its original Greek word diakonia very simply means “service”. This perhaps explains why the dalmatic, one of the deacon’s liturgical vestments, has short wide sleeves with a somewhat apron-like appearance - he is an icon of Christ the Servant.

Church history documents the growth of the deacon’s role. So crucial was the role of deacons that the See of Rome, by the third century, was administered by The Seven Deacons of Rome, who were deputised by the Bishop of Rome to handle the operational affairs of the diocese. In the scheme of the diocese, the bishop and deacon were very closely bonded to each other.

Tradition records a deacon called Lawrence in the year 258 AD in the See of Rome. The emperor Valerian had been cultivating a desire to possess all the wealth and riches of the Church in his lust for power. He therefore ordered for Lawrence to gather all the wealth of the Church before him, this being an offer of a way out of martyrdom for Lawrence. Just four days before that, the Bishop of Rome - Sixtus - had been martyred. So close was the relationship between Sixtus and his deacons that as he was led away to his death, Lawrence and his other six brother deacons followed along, crying, “Father, where are you going without your deacon?” Lawrence’s six brother deacons were subsequently also martyred.

In response to the emperor’s instructions, Lawrence requested for three days to gather all the wealth of the Church together. Within that three days, Lawrence congregated all the poor, the handicapped and the needy from all over Rome who were being supported by the wealth of the Christian community in obedience to the Gospel imperative. When the emperor arrived, Lawrence presented all these people before him as the true “gold and silver” of the Church. The deacon, known today as St Lawrence, was put to death by being burnt slowly over a gridiron.

Among the many lessons projected by this account of St Lawrence, one acquires a rather clear idea of how deacons were very much involved in administrative matters in the Church, particularly, the administration of Church property and the administration of its people.

The deacons of a diocese constituted the eyes and ears of the bishop, his "right hand men". The bishop's principal assistant was known as the "archdeacon", and was often charged with daunting responsibilities, namely, in the financial administration of the local church and the distribution of funds and goods to the poor. So crucial was the diaconate in the Church that of the 37 men elected pope between 432 and 684 AD, only three are known to have been ordained to priesthood before their election to the Chair of Peter, whilst the rest were elected popes whilst they were still deacons.

DIMINISHMENT OF THE DIACONATE
Beginning as early as the fifth century, the role of the deacon as Church administrator had gradually begun to diminish in the Latin Church, leaving it as a transitional stepping stone for men on the way to priesthood. It however remained a crucial component of the Holy Orders in the Eastern Churches, both Catholic and Orthodox, which still sustained the role of the permanent diaconate.

One reason for this diminishment of the diaconate as a permanent function in the Latin Church was the failure of both presbyters and deacons to understand the unique role of the diaconate as a distinct order within the life of the Church. It also was less than helpful when deacons who had major responsibilities, together with powerful authority accompanying these responsibilities, became lofty and self-serving in their attitudes. The presbyters too were often unhappy that in certain responsibilities held by the deacons, they found themselves having to submit to the administrative authority of the latter. Even St Jerome demanded an explanation for why deacons had often been endowed with such authority by bishops: “After all, deacons could not preside at Eucharist, and presbyters were really the same as bishops".

As a result, by the early middle ages, the diaconate in the Latin Church had become an intermediate step in one’s journey towards priesthood. The deacon, now a solely transitional role, was perceived by the clergy and populace as an incomplete priest awaiting the completion of his sacramental ordination. He was a mere priest in the making, rising through the ranks, this being a traditional system of gradual promotion adapted from the Roman secular government.

REVIVAL OF THE DIACONATE
Efforts for the restoration of the permanent diaconate as part of the three-tier hierarchy of the Holy Orders commenced as early as the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the 19th ecumenical council of the Church. However, since the onus of implementation was laid upon the popes, none of them deemed it fit to execute this restoration until Paul VI at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). For example, Pius XII in 1957 affirmed the vitality of this effort but concluded that "the time was not yet ripe".

But at the Second Vatican Council, the Holy Father Pope Paul VI definitively restored the permanent diaconate in the Latin Church through his apostolic letter Diaconatus Ordinem. Subsequent to his reinstatement of the permanent diaconate, he said “the permanent diaconate should be restored as a driving force for the Church's service (diakonia) toward the local Christian communities, and as a sign or sacrament of the Lord Christ himself, who 'came not to be served but to serve'" (Ad Pascendum, August 15, 1972, Introduction).

One reason cited for the restoration of the diaconate as a permanent order of the Church during Vatican II was that it would at least temporarily alleviate the shortage of priests in certain parts of the world. The presence of deacons would somewhat relieve the absence of priests and provide for the spiritual sustenance of communities which rarely caught sight of priests in their midst. This rationale continues to be valid and even compelling in certain contexts today. However, holding solely to this argument that deacons would merely be helpful in situations where relief of priests was required, and that the former would not have been needed should there have been sufficient numbers of priests, would constitute a deficient understanding of the threefold hierarchy of the Holy Orders. The diaconate possesses its own intrinsic reason and right to exist.

In the document Lumen Gentium of the Second Vatican Council, the function of the deacon is clearly delineated:

At a lower level of the hierarchy are deacons, upon whom hands are imposed "not unto the priesthood, but unto a ministry of service". For strengthened by sacramental grace, in communion with the bishop and his group of priests they serve in the diaconate of the liturgy, of the word, and of charity to the people of God. It is the duty of the deacon, according as it shall have been assigned to him by competent authority, to administer baptism solemnly, to be custodian and dispenser of the Eucharist, to assist at and bless marriages in the name of the Church, to bring Viaticum to the dying, to read the Sacred Scripture to the faithful, to instruct and exhort the people, to preside over the worship and prayer of the faithful, to administer sacramentals, to officiate at funeral and burial services. Dedicated to duties of charity and of administration [italics added], let deacons be mindful of the admonition of Blessed Polycarp: "Be merciful, diligent, walking according to the truth of the Lord, who became the servant of all".

[Lumen Gentium, 29]

Notice that this paragraph in Lumen Gentium alludes rather explicitly to the fact that administration is very much a part of a deacon’s sacramental function. Thus, the diaconate is a rather distinct and specific role in the Church which is not to be confused with that of the priesthood; the deacon should never try to be a priest. He is also not an assistant to the priest, except when specifically instructed by the bishop to be so, for he serves the bishop’s bidding just as the deacons in the Early Church were directed by the Apostles.

Having said that, it must also be noted that despite the decisive reinstatement of the permanent diaconate at Vatican II, its restoration in the particular churches falls under the discretion of the local bishops: "But it pertains to the competent local episcopal conferences…with the approval of the supreme Pontiff, to decide whether and where it is opportune that such deacons be appointed" (Lumen Gentium, 29).

CLERGY, NOT EXALTED LAITY
Some people have commented that if deacons are called to works of charity and administration, as prescribed in Lumen Gentium, then there is effectively no difference between them and the laity who are also able to undertake works of charity and of administration. But to thus conclude is to deny the theological distinctiveness of the office, for the diaconate is a gift to the Church, the deacon a man who offers himself in obedience to the bishop and for the Church as a member of the first order of clergy. His work expression may not be fundamentally different from that of the many services rendered by the laity, but as a person, he is materially different from the laity by virtue of his ordination into the Holy Order.

The task belongs to him, in the first place, to inspire dedicated service among the laity. The very person of the deacon himself is a visual reminder that Christ is not only the high priest, but also a servant, “For the Son of man himself came not to be served but to serve... (Mark 10:45)”. The deacon’s presence exists to consistently propel the people of God out of lackadaisical complacency over issues of peace, justice and mercy, challenging all the faithful to respond to their baptismal calling to fulfil the mission of the Church. A task like this certainly entails more administrative considerations than meet the eye.

There is, to be sure, nothing wrong with dioceses and parishes employing lay people to work as administrators of their various offices and ministries. In fact, many times, lay people are able to accomplish that which clerics are never able to find time to achieve. But to rely solely on the role of the laity in the administration of the Church is to keep the Church in sacramental poverty, since God’s gift of the diaconate to the Church for very obvious purposes is not utilised.

The deacon therefore continues to be revered as an icon of Christ the Servant for whom works of charity and administration are a permanent vocation in his life, together with the service of word and altar. His role is profoundly different, but not necessarily better, from the role of the laity, because his ordination into the Holy Order leaves a permanent mark on his soul.

Like Lawrence and his six brother deacons, the deacon today is to be so bound to the ministry of his bishop that in the face of the bishop’s peril, the deacon would cry out, “Father, where are you going without your deacon?”

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Surviving the Global Financial Crisis

An Interview with a Former Banker and Freelance Corporate Consultant

Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(May 2009 Issue)

Tell us more about the economic dilemma confronting us today.

The global financial crisis, which was brewing for over two decades really started to show its effects in the middle of 2007 and into 2008. Around the world, stock markets have crashed, large financial institutions have either collapsed or been bought out, and governments in even the wealthiest nations have had to come up with rescue packages to bail out their financial systems.

A collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market and the reversal of the housing boom in other industrialised economies caused a ripple effect around the world. Further weaknesses in the global financial system have surfaced. Some financial products and instruments (special investment vehicles or SIV) have become so complex and twisted that as things start to unravel, trust in the whole system has started to fail.

What have been the effects of this economic and financial dilemma?

When people did eventually start to see these colossal problems, confidence fell quickly. Lending slowed, in some cases ceased. Now there is a crisis of confidence. Some investment banks were sitting on the riskiest loans that other investors did not want. Assets were plummeting in value so lenders wanted to have their money back. But some investment banks had little in deposits; with no retail or consumer deposits, so some collapsed quickly and dramatically.

The problem was so large even banks with large capital reserves ran out so they had to turn to governments for bail out. New capital was injected into banks, which, in effect, allowed them to lose more money without going bust. Confidence was further undermined. (It may take years for confidence to return.)

Shrinking banks suck money out of the economy as they try to build their capital and are nervous about lending. Meanwhile businesses and individuals that rely on credit find it harder to get.

A spiral of problems result and this global meltdown has affected the livelihoods of almost everyone in this ever interconnected world.

How has this situation specifically affected Malaysians?

Malaysia is not spared. Its economy contracted significantly during the second half of 2008 with major exports notably oil, electronics and primary commodities registering double digit declines. Malaysia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the fourth quarter of 2008 was barely above water at a dismal positive 0.1 percent. Fast deceleration of demand for our goods and services by the world’s major industrialised nations facing the worst recession for over 60 years will inevitably cause Malaysia’s GDP to dip below zero for the first and second quarters of 2009, which by technical definition will mean that our nation will fall into recession by then.

With banks and financial institutions drastically cutting credit lines to conserve and preserve their fast eroding capital, caused either by mounting losses of their investments in the myriad of US subprime mortgage-related vehicles or the envisaged jump in non-performing loans, corporate failures will become more rampant in the coming months. News of job cuts, retrenchment, factory shut-downs, down-sizing, pay-cuts, job-freeze are daily occurrences and have unfortunately become the main subject of our conversations at most social gatherings.

With job insecurity abounding, we begin 2009 with a dampened mood and muted enthusiasm. Our personal happiness is diluted, our peace is threatened and tension is on the rise, affecting families, communities, organisations and nations.

Is there hope for fast economic recovery?

Everyone is now desperate for a cure, a remedy or hoping someone can fire a silver bullet to help them recover their financial health. Do not expect any to come from the financial experts, as these financial wizards were the ones who created this systemic mess in the first place.

Likewise do not place too much hope for a fast and sharp V-shaped recovery. This “bubble-economy” of greed and conceit (creating mountains of wealth from sophisticated SIVs with no real hard work) was created since 1982 and after enjoying the so-called “irrational exuberance” of 2007, has finally tipped over the cliff and plummeted precipitously in mid 2008.

For those who are still holding on to their jobs, they will have to work harder to get lesser, resulting in little or no time for the family. The social structure of the family will come under increase stress with frequent quarrels emanating over money matters.

At times, hard choices may have to be made between “having food on the table” or “servicing debts” (credit-cards, mortgage, car-loans, etc). Those driven to extreme desperation may resort to crime and frauds while some may turn to either chemical and drug addiction for escapism.

What should we do about it?

For the interest of our beloved “man in the street”, take note and better prepare for a prolonged recession. Fortify your mindset. Be ready to see widespread poverty, as making ends meet will be even more difficult than the 1997 Asian Crisis.

With the foregoing scenario in mind, it may be wise to activate your austerity action-plan if you have not already done so. Do not wait until your cash runs out. Cash, like toilet-roll, runs out quickly when it comes to the end.

Cultivate the good habit of budgeting and consistently “under-spend your income” and “stretch-your-ringgit” by changing your life-style. Car-pool, plan your trip, refrain from buying imported goods, go after locally made equivalents. For non perishable goods, buy in bulk from wholesalers and for perishable goods, take a weekly trip to the pasar borong. You would be pleasantly surprised by the amount of savings you garner from such habits.

Where land is available in your backyard, plant your own vegetables. Besides developing green fingers, you will be amazed by what joy you can receive by being close to nature. Sweat pores open automatically without the need to spend a cent.

For those retrenched and fresh graduates who are unable to get into the job market, avoid hiding behind the computer screen. Instead, build up your networking and strengthen your personal branding. Use your skill-sets to offer solution to problem situations. You will soon land yourself a job when your reputation as a problem solver spreads as plenty of employers are on the constant lookout even during times of slowdown as more solution providers are needed in their respective organisations.

For those already in debts, go back to basics. Forgo luxuries to enable you to free up some cash-flows to repay your debts. Keep in touch with your banker or creditor to pre-empt them from taking legal action. Where possible, work out and term out your debts.

For other categories not mentioned above, I will take the liberty to ask you to join Warren Buffet’s invitation to tap into the financial wisdom of our forefathers and become financially wiser:

Warren Buffet’s advice for 2009

• Hard work: All hard work brings a profit but mere talk leads only to poverty.
  
• Laziness: A sleeping lobster is carried away by the water current.
  
• Earnings: Never depend on a single source of income.
  
• Spending: If you buy things you don’t need, you’ll soon sell things you need.
  
• Savings: Don’t save what is left after spending; spend what is left after saving.
  
• Borrowings: The borrower becomes the lender’s slave.
  
• Accounting: It’s no use carrying an umbrella if your shoes are leaking.
  
• Auditing. Beware of little expenses. A small leak can sink a ship.
  
• Risk-taking: Never test the depth of the river with both feet. (Have an alternate plan ready.)
  
• Investment: Don’t put all eggs in one basket.
  

Those who are already practising these principles should remain financially healthy. Those who resolve to start practising these principles will surely regain their financial health.

Let us become wiser and lead a happy, healthy, prosperous and peaceful life.

Finally be guided by Proverbs 8:1-21.

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