The reflecting theologian

I recently saw this video and found that it entirely encapsulates the peril of working too much. Not only losing hobbies and personal life, we also risk losing our families and friends and our sense of self-identity. But this is so prevalent in Singapore today. People work long hours but ended up with no time for any other thing in life. As one of my previous supervisors once said, "where got work-life balance? Work is life mah..." And that is pretty sad, if you ask me. That's why I choose to draw the line. Take note that I am not insinuating a dichotomy between work and life. Neither am I advocating dualism - that work is bad and any other things outside of work is good. But I am drawing a boundary between my paid work and my other responsibilities and commitments outside of work. This is a choice that people have to make and I made the choice to draw the line. This means for me that I try as far as possible to leave my work in the office once I step out of it and I...

Recently, I stumbled upon an interesting study on the state of dating in America in 2014. This study ( http://www.stateofdatingreport.com/ ) is jointly conducted by Christianmingle.com and Jdate.com. I will leave readers to figure out what these websites do. This is essentially a survey conducted on 2647 respondents from America on their views on dating. Certain interesting findings as below: 1. Age demographics It is intriguing to note that 61% of the respondents are above 35 years old. The proportion was weighted down to 59% in the final report. I am just thinking if this reflects a trend of people in urban setting delaying their marriages or unable to find a life partner. It may very well be the case that among the pool of single people (being defined in the study as people who are currently unmarried, currently dating or planning to date in the near future or in an exclusive relationship with a partner for less than two years), this is the group of people who find it the most di...

I happened to chance across this very good article in FOTF SG:  http://www.family.org.sg/default.aspx?go=article&aid=1210 For a very long time, I have been thinking about the opportunity costs of over-committing to my own work and other stuff, compared to my family and also my 'future' family. The question that I normally ask myself is if it is worth it to work long hours on the pretext that we are providing for family or 'doing God's work' (in the case of over-committing in ministries). In that sense, I have had a difficult conversation regarding this area of my life recently, on whether I am over-committing myself. While I can draw a clear line between my professional work and the other parts of my life (not that there is a segregation between the secular and the sacred, I'm not advocating this here), the line is not so clear when it comes to my life outside of work. It doesn't help when I seem to be taking up more responsibilities here and there. ...

I just read this article:  http://www.boundless.org/advice/2014/should-i-date-a-girl-whose-life-goals-are-different-from-mine?utm_source=nl_boundless&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=208606&refcd=208606  and one of the things mentioned by the questioner stood out to me: She says that marrying someone who doesn't share the same heart for missions isn't a deal-breaker. But it gives me pause. I support missions, but it's largely in a financial capacity. A number of missionaries say it's important that both the husband and wife have that calling to work overseas because of the extraordinarily difficult and demanding lifestyle. The last thing you want said during an argument is, "I never wanted to be here in the first place." Scott Croft's view on this matter aside, I began to reflect on the above quoted conversation and indeed, the last thing that a married couple wants to hear from one another is "I never wanted to be here in the first place....

Better to live on a corner of a roof than to share a house with a quarrelsome wife - Proverbs 21:9 As funny as it sounds, this verse actually appears in identical or similar forms in other segments of Proverbs (19:13, 21:19, 25:24, 26:21, 27:15). At first glance, it seems that these verses target to tell the men how unpleasant a quarrelsome wife is in their household. However, as I was pondering on these amusing verses (we have been joking on these verses since our university days), I can't help but wonder if these verses direct more to the men's prudence in choosing their own wives.  Written in a culture when the guys usually look for their own wives, and in a culture when arranged marriages were normally the norms, I suppose the guys had to be very clear what they were looking for in a wife before making the decision who to marry. But from the Scripture, we know how foolish we men can be. Sometimes, we are willing to be deceived by charm and beauty but fail to look one...

Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant - not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. - 2 Corinthians 3:4-6 As I was thinking about competence as a minister of God from this passage, I think it offers us a clue in our calling as ministers of God. In this passage, Paul addressed to the problematic congregation of the Corinthian church in defence of his ministry to the church of Corinth. The context of this part is Paul telling the church that their lives act as the letters of reecommendation that people in that age so need in order to speak in other places and he links the work of heart transformation to the works of God, not only in the lives of the congregation but also his competencies, which he claimed to come from God, thus placing all credits to God. Perhaps the one t...