School of theology

I used to think along the line that anyone who studied theology would be something like a sage speaking like a pastor or reverent, a person quite disconnected from the world. How wrong I was.
Whether we realise it or not, we all actually crave theology. In fact, we don't just crave theology, we are born to reason theology, speak theology, and live theology. Using God's wisdom as the foundation, and substance to the finer points of reasoning and logic. I cannot tell you how reassuring it is to the soul to come to a good understanding of the bible. Theology grants exactly that.
In every human lies the desire to be more wise, knowledgeable in everything despite knowing the imperfection to us that disallows that. We all want to seem good at everything. This trade of us shows through the fact that we want to give advice on everything despite knowing that we are not the best or even good at that one peculiar thing. Its a premise that not everyone is going to accept, though my position would be that reality does not require the belief of people to make it real. Thus the phase "reality is a hard and painful place."
The study of God. That is what theology is. There are many school of thoughts that goes around it, but generally there is only one focus. God's style of reasoning and ways.
Here is my premise. With God as our creator, sustainer, reason, and hope, there is even more so, too many reasons to want to study God. No man would in his right mind not decide to study his origin to want to know his purpose.
"Origin story telling time!" -- deadpool
Honestly, how nice doe that line sounds? When I first heard it, I like it so much that I gotten really motivated to find out my origin as well. Which led me to start a bible hunt around chapters like genesis, and the books written by apostle Paul. Knowing our origins, our originator is very important. Destiny and things like that can only be discovered upon discovering true origins.
Thus my conclusion. God is our origin and originator. To lead a fulfilled and wise life, You must know God. Period.

Count down

A few more days left, and I will officially graduate with a law degree. A few more days left and I will  be in Malaysia instead of the UK. Suddenly the feeling of going home has vanish and this foreign land actually feels like home. I think I have gotten way too accustomed to it despite already having acknowledged its temporariness. On the other hand, I certainly do look forward to the idea of fulfillment of purpose, which has to be done back home.
However, the most dreaded feeling is the feeling that comes with the knowledge of difference I have with others. On a general note, all my peers from home can already start working after obtaining their degree. Me on the other hand, have to go through some more exams. A Bar exam, and an examination regarding the Malay language. Both very time consuming, and after a while of having being consumed by time, gets pretty frustrating. And if things cannot get more daunting, I am facing one of the worlds hardest exams known to man. Its passing rate is only 50 percent of the students. Meaning the other 50 percent is destine to not be able to get even 40 marks. Now comes the crazy part. The exam's difficulty level is such that majority of the people will have to retake the paper. The people who pass is determined on a graph basis. Reason is to minimize the quantity of people entering the legal profession. I fear. A lot. Failure is not foreign to me, but the feeling of having to go through it again has never changed. If anything, the difficulty of it only worsens the way I feel.
This path now will definitely put my emotions to the real test. On top of knowingly entering such a ridiculously difficult examination, Having to watch my friends spin their way around the working market, buy car, buy house, start a family,while I continue studying is ridiculously frustrating. To add to the frustration, it is not like coming out to work after all that studying guarantees me better opportunities and chances. To begin with, my starting salary is measly compared to theirs, and the workload is more, the status in society i get is a double edge sword where people expects me to be rich and unscrupulous, at the same time, holding on to a ridiculously high moral code. Summing up, the me in the future is stuck with a measly pay for at least 5 years, yet having ridiculous working hours that will make me want to kill myself, being labeled a professional, yet being paid nearly the same as an unprofessional, expected to do charity... I came onto this road with the ideology to help. However, I didn't come on board knowing that in the act of helping, being taken forgranted is on a ridiculously high level. I can actually understand why many lawyers resort to such dirty technics and ways of not caring for others. Why they keep doing things that brings so much hate. Because the people whom they once sworn to protect is actually all out to make use of them, stab them, betray them, then discard them.
As a Christian, having come down this road is painfully hard. I think I actually have developed a dual personality to a certain extend. The me I want to be, and am striving to be, and the me I can be but will never want to be.The more I walk down this path, the more power actually is deposited into my hands and being a trusty of that power is actually getting harder because the people who give those power I can honestly say, deserves death to the highest degree. There are times where I greatly desire to just run a knife down them. God forbid that I run my life without love. I can see a fair share of difficulties that a lawyer will face while maintaining a Christian faith and walk. And the one that appears clearest is people who will seek help thinking they deserve it, and as they pursue that help, they are going to treat you like a dog. Having more power then them means being able to treat them worse without them knowing it, and watch them go down a drain that they can never crawl out of. And the worse part of it all is, I do know how to put someone in a drain they cannot exit. The hardest part is not doing it while helping that person up his ladder not because I like him, but because that is the Godly thing to do.
With great power comes great responsibilities, but at the same time, with great power comes great temptation, great vulnerability, great pain, and the worse part of it all. Little to no friends.

sovereignty

Consider the notion of sovereignty in its fullness. It means all powerful and all knowing. Simply being in a position and having an ' eternity' that is beyond our comprehension. I like the way how the Calvinist portrays eternity as something the limited human mind cannot understand for its meaning and the power that comes behind that word is something that is outside this dimension of understanding. If you think you can understand the ties between sovereignty and eternity, consider this few notions alongside the issue of freewill.

With sovereignty comes the notion of predestination. If a being is sovereign over another, it has all rights to write law, decide on what others should do, even lay it out for them. In that sense, the government only has temporal sovereignty because its power stops at law creation. It cannot pre-determine what you can do. Whereas an all sovereign being in all its rights can. Look at the law on family. A parent determines the direction a child goes. By law it is correct, and morally acceptable. The child cannot by law or morally decide on his own before the coming of age, what is his purpose or obtain ownership over anything including himself. Now, that is only a minute sense of sovereignty. Real sovereignty can be scary to picture, but yet beautiful as well. God is all sovereign.
So what is predestination? Predestination is the idea of predetermination. That our lives are being predetermined by this sovereign being. Get the drift how did this came about alongside sovereignty? Now consider this notion together with freewill. We all know every humans has freewill because it is in build in us the ability to think for ourselves and make decisions.
unless you are a person who denies God ever having a form of sovereignty, consider this notion. Each one of us has special things that we are good at or other things that we are bad at. This in its way is already a subtle way to say we have a predetermined purpose or plan because by using those peculiar gifts, only then do you reach full potential. But at the same time, by saying that all people are good at some things and bad at others, it is already saying that we have no freewill of being able to chose some things in our lives. We cannot decide what we are talented at. That already is predetermination which comes from the ideology of predestination.
Consider this too. The notion of  'the right partner'. That too is predetermination. It is the belief that somewhere in this world lies the 1 and only 1 for you. and that is saying that there is a predetermined future, person, some people even say gift. With this, you can say it is not possible to marry the wrong one. But at the same time, I then ask you, is Love an option of choice? For in the same way we can decide to persue a career, study a peculiar vocation, we can start and end a relationship. At the same time, predestination would deny 1 thing that a lot of us will find it hard to believe, though we all would love to. Getting married to the wrong person is not possible because your future has already been predetermined.
The final issue I will dwell on is completeness of predestination. Some people will argue that only for certain aspects of life is predestination applicable. There is always an intersection where freewill and predestination must meet and one must give way to the other. I do not reject the premises of arguments of any side, but which conclusion i accept is a different story. Consider this, we have talked about what sovereignty is earlier at the top, so here is my short argument.
For a being to remain sovereign unchanged, power cannot be removed because once removed, sovereignty is gone. Now, the notion of granting freewill indefinitely means there are issues that God himself even, cannot determine. Those issues now becomes indefinite. At the same time, the eternity of God does not justifies that there are anything that is not known to him, justifying predestination. Thus my personal conclusion, I fully condone to the theology that God is all sovereign, thus predetermining all things and knowing all things. How freewill fits into the equation.... I have yet to find a justification. hahaha. My take? Grace.

pause

updates to this blog shall be paused till the 22nd or the 23rd for traveling purposes. its really difficult to be traveling and blogging at the same time. Also, its even harder to be typing with someone elses computer due to the different keyboard position. Finally, even harder it is to think and calm one self to focus just enough to produce proper thoughts to write them. thus, a minor short pause which will resume soon i guess.

Thank you God

I had one of the best times ever traveling in one of the places that i used to dread most. Evidence that if putting God first is done, things will slowly start to fall in place. I started of the trip by dedicating its entirety to God stating out a few goals and desires that must be achieved at the end of it.
-get over my breakup so i can focus more on God when i am doing my quiet time, and when i am serving in church, and when i am interacting with people, and so i don't get so desperate to desire a girlfriend
-be contented with singlehood as it is also a gift from God.
-treasure my friend who is travelling with me.
-see the places and people i dislike from God's perspective and learn to love them
-find out more about the historical truths of the specific significant era that those places contributed to.  Especially the Christian era.
- finally, hidden symbolism.

Enjoying the trip was placed at the last, and a bonus if anything else did happened. I really wanted to get myself in order so badly, that if any of those desires and goals be achieved, I counted it that I have already enjoyed the trip. But God was about to prove to me that he is by far capable of far more than that.
I never understood how much difference a good travel companion would make compared to a bad one. The last travel companion I had complained that I was too touristy because of the way I carry myself and take pictures. Now I think about it, I wonder who was the one who had a misconception of travelling. Deep regret do I have in bringing her around to see the world in the ways she so desire, while I lost the chance to see the world with the eyes I wanted, and to some extend, I could never see those parts in the way I wanted ever again because the timing has already past. With this "old friend", I can look at all the historical artifacts I want, take as many  " silly pictures" I wish, and relate God to even him who travels with me in my own way.
To my friends who wants to travel, look for a travel companion who would
-pray together with you as you travel,especially in moments where sin is imminent (you never know when they pop round in travel, and they come real hard too)
-challenge you to overcome old barriers
-brings up and answers to Godly conversations
-down to earth

this 4 points where what which was found in the friend I traveled with. But God came greater. Knowing what I really want, but at the same time what I really need, God has never ceased to amaze me in the trip.
One of the things I was really looking forward to was experiencing local culture of the place. God brought my friend and I to two cities so far with great culture, and brought people who were kind and willing to demonstrate those culture to us for free. In venice, I got a chance to put on the venerian festival mask and suit. In rome, a public display of their orchestra (for free) was being held, preforming classics of Italy. I got to see much church history too as well as recieve impressions from God how things were in the past. Not all that different from modern age I must admit.
All in all. a wonderful trip with much being achieved. I can only kneel and praise God now.

venice(finale)

And the trip in venice comes to a close.Next stop Rome. Will I miss this place? Without a doubt. It is a really beautiful place. So cultured, so much scenery, so much beauty be it night or day. The next time I come here would be for a honeymoon though. The atmosphere in this place is most indulgent when with a partner,but painfully difficult without one. Not to mention, the circumstance that I currently am in makes it way harder. Apart from that, historically, this is one place that has to be explored. Indeed, it is a place that the historian in me can appreciate.
Next stop Rome. Am I in anticipation? absolutely! But at the same time fearful of reality there. Crime and hostility is apparently no joke. There is this story going round saying that people there would use knifes to slash open your bags to get a hold of your belongings. A lot of muggings, a lot of dark works at work. At the same time, there is so much places of historical value to visit, so much history to dig into, evidence to seek. It feels as though I am about to enter a forest of wolves looking for a sacred grove or something of that sort. haha. Pray for me. Now. Of to pack and get meself ready for the last few bits of Venice.

venice trip part 1

Oh bother, the last trip of moving around europe begins with me forgetting my camera. Oh the injustice that I have done to myself! Hahahaha. This trip if anything have really been nothing but a really impressive journey for me. Venice is showing me an entirely different side of italy, and I really like it. Hopefully this keeps up till Rome. Most of the rest of italy has been a great let down to me. Venice from what I know has a really colorful kind of community festivals. Thanks to the game assassins creed 2, I have a general idea as to the mask festival that is held in venice every february. I do not really know how it is being celebrated now adays. Will have to do some research about it. According to one of the locals, it was originally celebrated because the king one day wanted to have a type of celebration that would include everyone, and thus begin the mask celebration where everyone wears a peculiar mask that potrays a peculiar personality. Eg: the doctor, the casenova, the clown, the king, and so on. The mask that I find most amusing is the doctors mask. This whole city is one surrounded with loads of water, and people pretty much get around by boats. Ah well. Borrowing a camera from a friend. Photos will be up soon. Hopefully.

The thinking of a person

Recently, I found out; what you where thinking before going to bed would be the first thing you wake up to think about when you wake up. Meditation. What most people finds strange to speak about, and shunt entirely actually is a process of thoughts that cannot be avoided. How interesting I thought, when I first found out about it.
So what formulates someones thinking? Belief system? Education? Experience? All of it? I used to quantify thinking of a person to a very small box. A person from a certain country would think this way, a person with a certain education would think another way, boy was I about to find out a whole new thought system that is used.
How does one juggle emotions together with logic then? Is it even possible to be able to process a thinking patent that has both an emotional and logical aspect to it without being bias? Though the bible, we learned that we can confine each thought and do what I call boxing out the unneeded thoughts. But from my perspective, a good blend of the emotional and the logical can only come with the united front of men and women. Due to the visionary thinking that men possesses, it makes men thinks of emotional thoughts and logical thoughts separately. Allow me to even say that the reason for this is the position of command ie: following that a men's position would demand. Thus also demanding that there be followers of him. Women has a different thinking. more grid/ radar. Thus being able to see what is the path to a vision.  I have known people to be offended by this, but I will still say it, with the visionary mind of men, women are meant to follow them, not wait for a "perfect" man to follow. Of course, whether the man is visionary is another story, but that of course should be left to God to decide.
Today I had a very pleasant conversation of a women, and she brought up a very good point about how the media will sell out an image of a totally distorted position that women should be holding. Women are now being told to do what men are supposed to be doing, from the position of men. Is it right? NO by all means. Its like asking an ant to do what a termite does. What makes it worse is the men who comes to defend the position of women are regarded as weak or un-understanding of the circumstances. How does women survive in a world trying to fufill men's purposes with the rights of men instead of women's purposes and rights of women? You have 1, no equality, 2 no survival, 3 decay, and finally death.

Forget

Today in my devotion, I remember something I used to do, still do, and am frustrated with because I am still trying to not do. Forgetting God's grace.
Galatians 3
This passage was talking a lot about remembering what God has done for us, the sufferings we have gone through together, and that giving up should not be considered an option that is available. As I read on, I can feel as though Paul is scolding me for being too "fleshy". Too focused on things that are not of God, no delight to him, though being permitted to me. One might think that this is too much to ask, however, I will argue that nothing is too much when it comes to trying to put all focus back to God. All things that does not lead to God will point to sin, it is only a matter of sooner or later. Whether you realise it or not makes no difference. Sin afterall, is still sin. And indeed the most fustrating disposition can be that the very thing you enjoyed doing most, is actually sin, and now you struggle with trying to be rid of it for it has not just taken out so much time, but also have been part of the way of conduct in the daily life.
God on the other hand expects us to not just raise out of our dependency of the flesh, but raise into receiving his abundance of grace. Strange how we endlessly try to earn trust when it is given freely, and by not receiving it freely but forcefully earning it, we ended up being accounted as foolish people. But that is apparently the reality as by our own means, we can never really earn anything.
Talking about wanting. Have you realised how deceitful your heart can get? How good it is at corruption? I have still yet to realise its full potential, but I have seen a fair bit of mine already.

Evening devotion

The last few days of doing my daily devotion have been unsettlingly uneasy. Every time I tried to bring my focus down, it blows up and away wandering on and on to other thoughts that I had believed where tamed and taken out. But no. It wonders and wonders all the way there. I felt rather helpless and fustrated that each time I sit down to pray, my thoughts starts flying.
Is God greatly unpleased with something that I am doing? Personally, I find that there are a lot of things that I am doing and have been doing greatly unpleasing and it has also been a struggle to rid myself of them. Self, desire, want. Sometimes it feels like to be a Godly person, one must come close to becoming a monk. Hide oneself away from the world. For if one associates with the world long enough, one can actually become of the world far too easily. 

"You will be in the world but not of the world". Thats a random passage that pops into my mind as I write this. The other thing that came to mind was the bible reading i had yesterday regarding the last chapter of 2nd Corinthians. Godly living. Paul speaks of Christ granting power to every Christian to tame all thoughts to the submission of Christ. To take every action only for the benefit of Christ. This is evidence of one's salvation. Not that one has successfully done it, but that one is actively doing it?
More and more do I find myself in awkward positions of struggle. Loneliness I feel during and after the struggle. Wondering if anyone else I know would actually feel the same way I do.
Sigh.. My Christian walk is still so unsettling that instead of influencing people around me, I get influenced so easily as well, without knowing it; I start talking and speaking like those around me whom I have decided that I must influence. Subconsciously I would not put my foot down, but if I had been conscious about what I am doing, I would be death struck fearful of what I have been doing, which is what often happens when I have finished associating with some people. " What on earth have I been speaking?", usually is the first thing that comes to my mind. How unedifying was it, really?
I feel humbled.