The reflecting theologian

A few days ago, the sentence was passed on Kong Hee and co. Kong Hee himself received 8 years. A few days later, he told his congregation that he hopes that there will be a closure to the church members on this issue. It was perhaps more interesting to read the comments on social media regarding the case than just reading the newspaper report. The newspapers will claim to be neutral, mothership.sg will claim to be speaking out for the people. But as I read the comments, I can't help but feel a bit sad on the whole incident. I wonder what God has to say regarding this. It was very telling that most people in the social media will proclaim their own judgment on the case, mostly claiming that the sentence was not hard enough. Some say that he cheated the congregation's money and he will never be able to compensate for what he has done. Some joked that he will be going in to start a cell group. Some people involved in prison ministry joked that they do not need to go back in no...

So the City Harvest Church saga is coming to an end. And all the six, including Kong Hee, are being judged to be guilty. For more information, you may read from here . I have some thoughts regarding this whole entire episode.  Firstly, for Christians, this is not the time to be discouraged. The whole episode cast a dent to Christianity in Singapore but for us, it may be a defeat but we need to be comforted by the fact that this is not the end. In the larger context, the Devil may tempt Christians to become bad testimonies for the Kingdom but this does not change the fact that God has already won the war through Jesus Christ. The Scripture, such as Revelations 19:11-21, promises that Jesus will come back again and when He is back, he will bring forth the final victory over the evil ones who are waging war against Him. The work of the Kingdom, therefore, does not end with what happened with City Harvest but it will continue on, just as how churches have suffered over many year...

Something for us to think, did the Samaritan woman in John 4 really believe what Jesus said? Our usual answer is a "yes," drawing our conclusion based on two facts: that the woman went back to her town and told her fellow villagers about it and that the other Samaritans believed in Jesus because of her testimony.  However, if one studies the Greek text a bit closer, one may find that the answer needs not necessarily be the case. This is due to the way that Koine Greek phrased their rhetorical question. Without getting into the technical details, there are two ways of framing rhetorical questions in Greek. Method A frames the questions in such a way that the answer required will always be "yes". For example, in 1 Corinthians 9:1, when Paul asked if "am I not an apostle?", the way the Greek was phrased almost always demand a "yes" answer. And we see that in the English translation as well.  Method B, on the other hand, frames the question in...

I am considering moving this blog to wordpress. My new wordpress address is reflectionsofatheologian.wordpress.com. But I am seeking feedback. Please let me know if you prefer blogger or wordpress.

(This reflection was posted on my class learning portal regarding my previous mission trip) Well, I was asked to share about my trip just now in class and I thought that I should have done a better job in sharing what happened. Consider this as part of my reflection on the Greek class as well. So, as most of you know, I went  to teach in an underground training center which was run by a Singaporean pastor. It's the same place we went to for our mission trip in 2013. And this time, I was there to teach a class of 18 students from churches from other parts of the country on the book of Ephesians. I must say that knowing Greek first and foremost really helped me in my preparation, primarily because I was using some rather very technical commentary that sprouts Greek all over the place. So being able to read Greek helped me to understand most of the contents that the author was writing about. Also, during the class, as I was teaching the book, some students asked me about other simi...

I have once again failed to post on a regular basis as I have wished to. Part of the reason is because I have been busy with preparation on several studies. I just did a teaching in classroom setting on James 3:1-4:12 and am currently working on a book study on Ephesians that I will be teaching in another classroom setting in another country. All these works, trying to figure out the word of God, have already taken up a lot of my mental energy, though I would love to share some of these findings in near future. Alas, I have so much outstanding posts which I want to write. But I've thought that I want to throw in a few thoughts on GE2015. As most of us know, it has been an unexpected result for the incumbent party to win at such a high margin. Someone in my office was saying that "confirmed they will lose another 2 more GRCs". I don't know where that confidence came from but that support partly stemmed from his personal friendship with Paul Tambyah and the outward ap...

As a result of what my lecturer mentioned last week about him going to an overseas church which has been previously split apart by a scandal to preach to them about faith, I began reading up on a church split that I have heard about some years back. The incident was not that high profile internationally and therefore it was not being widely reported in international Christian news site. Moreover, despite the apparent success of the church internationally, the church remained isolated for most part of its history from other churches. Nevertheless, the church was considered one of the most successful churches in its own home country and had been pretty controversial in terms of its practices.  The summary of the whole incident stemmed from accountability. This is one concept that most people do not like to hear but unfortunately, it remains so important in our Christian life, especially when we are dealing with money in church and human lives in our koinonia. In the church, financ...