The reflecting theologian

Recently I did a study on 1 Corinthians. As usual, studying any Scripture will bring forth some reflections which I would like to share here. The easiest way to reflect is to look into the mirror 1. Giving Up Our Rights  This study that I undertook with my school took place at a very busy and hectic season of my life. In work, I was picking up more corporate responsibilities. In my ministry, I was concurrently teaching a course on church history, which requires me to set assignments and grade them. In my personal life, I was preparing for my own wedding and it just so happened that my pre-wedding shoot overlapped with the study, adding on to the busyness and taking away some attention from this particular study. A preview of the awesomeness of the bride In such a busy period, there was bound to be tension happening and it did happen between Angelina and her father. On the Saturday before the first day of the class, I had a lunch with my future in-laws and an inciden...

Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, But happy is he who keeps the law. - Proverbs 29:18 (NASB) This is a proverb that is the favourite for many self-help people, including those who profess themselves to be Christians. I have seen this proverb being used in my management 101 module during my days in NUS. But as I study the Bible, I just get very fascinated how we, as a people of God, can simply read things into the Scripture and co-opt this proverb into our management theory. Is it really the case that where there is no vision, people perish? What do you think of when you think of vision? Do you think of your eyesight? Do you think of the future direction of your life, or your organisation? Or do you think of the prophetic vision/revelation that God sometimes gives to certain individuals? Unfortunately, most of the people who read this proverb tend to read this proverb in the second sense of the meaning without understanding what the original Hebrew really poin...

To those who know what happened, the past months since the start of 2016 had been very stressful to me. In the preparation to my impending wedding this coming October, my future father-in-law decided to throw a few spanners into the wedding preparation by declaring that he was not comfortable with me as a life partner to his daughter because I am a full time Christian worker and more importantly because I come from a different family background from her.  The latter means that there are certain practices in my own family which are unthinkable in his worldview on how a family should function. This led to intense tensions between Angelina and myself. To compound the stress, NT Exegesis class was not that easy also and the stress of meeting the deadlines mean that I sometimes did not have the time to reflect deeper into the situations I was facing in my relationship.  However, studying the text of Philemon 15-20 reminded me of the way we should conduct our relationship ...

Recently I read this very interesting article on BBC magazine: China's 'leftover women', unmarried at 27 The story wrote that women above the age of 27 will be labelled as "leftover" in China. In more layman terminology, it is called "nobody wants" or 没人要. The phenomenon is consistent with my observations during my trips in China. I learned over there that people normally marry young, by the age of 25 or even younger. Local customs and practices make it easier for the couples to get married, primarily because the parents will pay for the expenses pertaining to the ceremony, pertaining to the housing and even pertaining to the car.  One side of the story is that people will then be pressurised to marry early, at the expense of thinking and working thru their relationship and building the foundation of marriage. This is after all not the days of their forefathers where marriages are arranged and fixed. In those cases, it gets easier because the c...

19 Again, truly I say to you that if two of you agree on earth about any matter that they ask, it will be done for them from my Father who is in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them.” - Matthew 18:19-20 Most of us will recognise these verses from the Scripture. And if you are honest with yourself, you have used it to talk about two things: 1) that a small fellowship is the same as a huge fellowship group and; 2) that when you gather and pray, God is with you. But as my regular readers may have realised, when I highlight a verse, I am normally not talking about the 'normal' interpretations by normal people. In fact, when I highlight one of these verses, it is normally because I am reflecting on how out of context we normally use these verses. These verses here are of no difference. We have simply taken these verses out of context and have done injustice to the word of God. If one reads the whole passage in context and in...

Yesterday, I saw a friend sharing a Facebook post that seems to make a lot of sense: What if... What if the body of Christ, with all its disagreements and all its denominations, put aside their differences and just loved and worshiped Jesus together? What if Catholics and Protestants prayed together rather than fighting over theology? What if we rallied around HIS name and not a church name? What if we were loyal to Him and not to a man-made, theological point of view? What if we came together and became the Family we were created to be? What if we were truly unified and become one just as He and His Father are one like Jesus prayed? Just..........what if??? However, on further reflection, I realised that the thought itself is incomplete, too simplistic and dichotomise issues too much without realising the reality of things. The author displayed an issue with fighting over theology. He advocates an approach where the different groups of Christ believers put aside their difference...

Recently I had a discussion with a colleague on forgiveness, reconciliation and guilt. And I realised that we often hide a lot of presumptions about forgiving people and reconciling with them and we inevitably read these presumptions into the scripture. Perhaps, this issue can first be explored from the Scripture. One place to start is to think about what the Scripture says about God forgiving us and what it entails. To me, the mercy of God towards our sins is manifested on the Cross of Jesus Christ and explained through His gospel. Paul summed it up very clearly and succinctly in his epistle to the Romans: For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed —a righteousness that is by faithfrom first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” - Romans 1:17  It was later written further in the epistle: But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known , to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is giv...