The reflecting theologian

Recently, I attended a meeting with a Christian organisation which shall remain unnamed and during the meeting, they were telling me about what they were doing, listing 'biblical references' as the basis for their approach. Most of them come from the OT. The way that they 'interpreted' the Scripture was interesting enough for me to revisit a topic which has been in my mind for a very long time. Let's backtrack a bit first and talk about my own spiritual background. I come from a Pentecostal church (not AOG) and for most part of my Christian life, I have at least seen physical miracles and wonders performed by God through His people in the church and outside of the church. Hence, in practice, I am not an anti-Charismatic. Theologically speaking, I believe a solid theological and biblical case can be made against cessationism, so I am not against any charismatic practices. What I am often against, is that people use Scripture out of context to justify certain char...

Empathy is overrated... Yes, you are reading it correctly. I am saying that empathy, as a social skill, is overrated and to some extent, heavily misunderstood and over-demanded. Empathy, according to Wikipedia, is the capacity to understand what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference. It is (dun get me wrong) an important social skill in this era. But it is precisely because it has become so important that I think it is beginning to be abused by people, especially people who tend to be more 'in touch' with their emotions. These people can either be emotionally unstable, or simply just emotionally immature. And here comes my gripe: these people use empathy as a weapon to blackmail whoever is helping them to come and meet their need for self-pity. I may be a bit harsh here and I do not have a lot of data points to back my claim. And I want to be very careful with what I say here lest it comes back and haunt me. But in most insta...