Monday, April 16, 2007

RZIM Reasonable Faith 2007

Spent the weekend (Apr 13 -15) over at Melaka attending the Ravi Zacharias International Ministry's Reasonable Faith conference together with the Agora SG gang - Joshua, Darren, Mejlina, Zhenhao and two other friends - Joanne and Serene (who incidentally was my uni coursemate)...oh, and not to forget, Dave Chong - the Morpheous behind the Agora matrix.

In any case, the conference was a mentally sapping, but spiritually extremely rewarding. The daily meditations on the book on Ecclesiastes by Stuart McAllister were supremely insightful and brilliantly articulated (ok, I'm getting a bit ahead on my praise...but the three sessions on this profound book were truly well worth the cost of the seminar).

In addition, the Australian historian John Dickson - and his series of messages on Christ's historicity, divinity and the Christian faith provided much food for thought - especially within a pluralistic social context where the uniqueness of the Christian religion is often called into question.

And not to forget folks like I-Ching, Brian Thomas and LT of the RZIM team, all whose words, actions and wisdom I have come to appreciate and learn from.

A weekend well-spent.

Friday, April 06, 2007

MM Lee has spoken

Which means that it is probably going to be the end of this ministerial pay hike debate. Some quick thoughts about this:

MM has always been a pragmatist which in short basically means, "what works is right" - and this has been proven more often than not over the last 40 years or so. The fact of the matter is, he gets more stuff right than wrong - and this earns him the moral authority to speak. Think about it, if a scholar-just-turned-MP would to utter words like:

"The cure for all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government... your asset values will disappear, your apartments will be worth a fraction of what it is, your jobs will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other persons' countries - foreign workers." http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/268475/1/.html

... you can be sure he'll be heavily censored (think: Wee Shu Min episode).

In other words, who says what may be more important than what is being said. MM Lee gets away with some tough statements simply because he is MM - whether one likes it or not.

Having said so, I think the government is going down a very slippery slope with its emphasis on economics. A friend of mine, who is a PSC local scholar - is now actively trying to find ways to leave the civil service - simply because the pay does not match up to what he could earn if he had work in the financial sector (he's a pretty brilliant guy, for that matter).

This means that values like "duty, honour, country" - values which ultimately safeguard the future of Singapore - can go down the drain. After all, such ideals cannot be quantified - and remain intangible - as far as our materialistic system goes.

As such, let's not be overly surprised why so many of our brightest folks leave the country. The brutal fact is: they are simply paid better. And we have been taught (or at least, brought up to believe) that money is what that ultimately matters.

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful" (CS Lewis, The Abolition of Man)

Monday, April 02, 2007

An Update

Its been a really long time since I posted anything substantial - well, as i mentioned earlier, the last few months have been a really difficult time for me...after separating from my girlfriend of seven years. In any case, life goes on, and hopefully the passage of time will heal some of the emotional scars...

Tthere are many things that I hope to do in the upcoming present - partly to keep busy and occupied, but more importantly, to do the things that I've always wanted to do, but somehow for various reasons, did not. This will include volunteer work at a children's home, learning how to sing (sacred music) and to travel. WIll update my activity schedule accordingly.

As for this blog, there are some areas of change that I plan to introduce. For starters, my posts are going to be much shorter (unless its an issue that I've got lots to say - and if that's the case, it won't be on this blog).

Secondly, i'll probably comment a lot lesser on Christianity and a bit more on political issues. In return, i'll be posting book reviews of Christian literature that i've read - so that folks can get a sense of my theological, academic and cultural inclinations. Again, I really don't plan to write a lot - probably a para or two, at most.

Last but not least, I do hope to make this blog a little more personal - without being over-bearing - its probably easier to update my blog this way.

Ok, this post is getting way too long... stay tuned.