03/19/2008
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Being smart looks nice. Even Jesus would have praised smart people, wouldn’t he? Now, read this:
Jesus said to his disciples, “There was once a rich man who had a manager. He got reports that the manager had been taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses. So he called him and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? You’re fired. And I want a complete audit of your books.’
“The manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve lost my job as manager. I’m not strong enough for a laboring job, and I’m too proud to beg … Ah, I’ve got a plan. Here’s what I’ll do … then when I’m turned out into the street, people will take me into their houses.’
“Then he went at it. One after another, he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’
“He replied, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’
“The manager said, ‘Here, take your bill, sit down here — quick now — write fifty.’
“To the next he said, ‘And you, what do you owe?’
“He answered, ‘A hundred sacks of wheat.’
“He said, ‘Take your bill, write in eighty.’
“Now here’s a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way — but for what is right — using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.” (Luke 16: 1 — 9, from the Message Bible)
What the heck is he trying to tell us? True, it’s very relevant. The world knows no shortage of those smart people. Still, can you believe this passage is straight from the Bible? It’s so un-Jesus-ish to give such blatantly brutally evil advice, isn’t it?
I was confused when I first read the passage. The confusion never subsides. Of course, I’ll be glad to emulate the manager that the master praised so much. Anytime, my Lord. My pleasure, sir. Why not? It’s in my blood. I had such difficult time concealing such impulse. Any help? Please don’t throw at me some spiritual bullshit. Please…
03/17/2008
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I don’t like Christianity when the whole point of Christianity appears to be a self-copy: that the whole point of the religion is to propagate the belief and decree to another host (You can call it the ideology of evangelism, which is so prevalent in the religion that you don’t recognize it anymore). It looks so virus-like. If the whole point of being God is letting people know of Him, why would He bother hide the truth and urge them to put together the puzzles scattered around the world to figure out the truth? Is the life a game played by everybody over and over again? It looks so pervert.
03/17/2008
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We’re living in a capitalist society. That, however, doesn’t mean that everything we do is done the capitalist way. In the Poker Face of Wall Street (google books) Aaron Brown nicely captures the point when he described the poker table as a system parallel to the capitalist economic/financial system. I agree with him that gambling and lottery is a universe of its own, a parallel universe to our capitalist way of making, spending and running money.
But, is the list exhaustive? Most of the black markets would be ashamed to be dropped from the member list. So is the religion, I guess.
That was not the reason why I picked a book called Daring to live on the edge (google books) by Loren Cunningham. I picked the book because of its fascinating title.
Also out of my desperate desire to be somebody spiritual, religious, Christian-like. I have felt that way for about 3 months, despite my natural tendency. I am an avid reader of books, including science books like the ones written by Richard Dawkins. I still enjoy reading titles that is entertaining, lucid and insightful. But, I somehow feel empty, which is fine with me. I sometimes feel so random, which, too, I can live with. And, I kind of feel asocial, detatched and lacking social skills and influence, which is not fine or acceptable to me from time to time. Unfortulately, living in a world like this, the frequency of such feeling of inadequacy and want of connection only increases.
Still, I want to be a reasonable religious spiritual Christian, to the extent possible. I kind of like the notion of Christendom as a parallel universe, but it is difficult for me to take God as my pinch hitter when it comes to finance. Well, now I feel I’m talking too much so I’ll cut the chase.
The book says that to make God work for you, you need to (1) understand what God wants you to do (hear out what He should say), (2) do it (however it may feel inadequate or insufficient or irrational) and (3) wait for Him to work it out for you.
But first, what is faith? And how do you get it? Is faith squeezing your eyes shut and believing with everything in you that Santa Claus is real? No matter how hard you believe, Santa Claus will never be real. Such an idea is pure fantasy. On the other hand, God is real whether or not you believe in Him. His existence and power are not related to how much faith you have.
Does faith require you to turn off your mind and fling yourself off some cliff of impossible circumstance? Hardly! Soren Kierkegaard popularized the term “a blind leap of faith.” But Bible faith is neither blind nor a leap. It is walking in the light. (Daring to live on the edge, p. 20).
Now, that makes more sense. Incidentally, I hear more about jumping and height and terror these days, probably from the behaviroral economics…
