today

unless a man has strength to give he has weakness to feed. i guess that is it then. under pressure mediocrity will always take the form of either victory or defeat. you stand or you fall. you win or you lose. in the battle of today there are no stalemates and there are no friendly matches. it's the league. it's the cup final. it's mouldable history. it's me and it's this day. and the pursuit of victory consumes me.

thinking about a dog

there is this dog that i love to play with. he is a great dog and i used to take him for training. he sits and lies down when i tell him to and he has a great personality. yes, dogs have those. he turned me into a dog person rather than a cat person. anyway, i was on my way to my friend's house (the real owners of the dog) and i realised that i was going to see Saabie (the dog) again and i got all excited. then i stopped getting excited. then i thought about this thought that i'm going to try and hurriedly articulate here. so forgive me for talking about my own little world again and forgive me too for expecting that you will find this interesting. it's just a thought anyway.

just as i was getting all excited to be seeing Saabie i realised that i had just showered and that i was wearing my nice new clothes (the same ones i bought while buying my bath robe) and suddenly i realised that i actually didn't want to touch the dog afterall. hectic. my attitude changed totally just because of a few material considerations. and that got me thinking you know. nearly every benefit in this world has a cost. the new bmw is sheer driving pleasure but it needs insurance. wining and dining is great till the bill arrives. and patting the dog is a good idea until i wear the nice clothes.

what did buddha even say?

i have recently started reading this philosophy textbook as a bed-time book. that quickly changed to reading it as a day time book. I have decided to reserve night times for fiction alone. anything else is way too heavy. My upper eyelids need very little gravitational pressure at night time- they always seem quite enthusiactic to spend the night with the lower ones. Like long-lost friends they crave one another's company. This is a ridiculous tangent.

I was speaking about the book. It's fascinating that separate groups of people have been trying to answer the same set of questions for 1000's of years. Still there are no clear answers! Is there life after death? Well, no-one knows for sure... They can't seem to find heaven on Google Earth. Are there angels and demons? I dunno, ask Dan Brown. What's the meaning of life? Well, there are many meanings and none is superior to any other. Apparently. There is nothing conclusive... but is this a good thing or a bad thing for Christians?

I can give you no more than my personal opinion which is: Answers to life's greatest questions lie hidden. Purposefully concealed by the master concealer. He doesn't want to be proved, nor does he need to be. Those who seek, find. Those who question with true open-mindedness find answers. The moment God allows himself to become provable he dismisses a humans need for faith. And faith is a prerequisite for pleasing him. So basically, if God got proven one day he would not be very pleased.

And where does this leave the Christian as he sees other faiths as a threat to his own? Hm. This has always had a generally divided opinion but I'll throw my 2 cents in... God is true and truth comes from him. I would vouch to say that the Bible would be enough of a source of truth and guidance alone but i have always dabbled in literature from other faiths too. A little Kahlil Kibran, a little Richard Bach, a little Marx. And such journeys of thought have always left my faith in Christ stronger. The way I see it is that truth (as an exclusive concept) will prevail. It has to for it to be truth. If truth sinks then it was never truth in the first place. If I am convinced that what I believe is the truth then it shouldn't worry me that what I read elsewhere from other schools of thought will prove my belief wrong. Knowledge will always build towards one conclusion for the man of faith.

My philosophy textbook hardly speaks about Christ and it gives all faiths an equal chance of being believable. Even the faith of choosing no faith. I think it is good to immerse oneself in literature even if it is not Christian stuff. I am aware that this is a dangerous proposition as many have been led down weird paths as a result of this seeking. But for the person who knows that what they believe is true, then ANY knowledge will support that, based on the fact that it is truth and truth is incorruptible. And for that man, the questions and conclusions of other faiths will serve as a gleeful reminder that Christ has found you and given clarity unmatched. That Christ has shown himself to you such that doubt is not a reasonable option...

black on white is boring

Communication is most valuable when it is most intentional and when there is a cost involved that shows a willingness to communicate.

The cost could be financial (like a phone call) or it could be the cost of time… or the cost of effort in order to make the contact. But whatever the cost is, when it is spent, communication becomes more valuable.

I have recently (last 10 months) got into Instant Messaging (otherwise known as IM- in the world of abbreviated language… and yes, such a world does exist and is growing in number). My attitude towards it has fluctuated between poles of loving it and hating it. I have seen it’s usefulness but also its pitfalls.

We cannot, however, analyse the tool without analysing the user of the tool. Money is not bad. It is not evil. It is a tool that we use- a medium of exchange. But money is able to unlock and amplify things in a human that are not commendable like greed, envy, selfishness and materialism. It can also unlock positive things like generosity and dependence. Money is blameless. It’s the humans that give definition to the situation, not the tool. Likewise, when analysing something like chat, it is key to remember that the problems don’t lie with the programmes but rather with those using them…

(Please note: I have failed to identify and scrutinise the BENEFITS of chat and there are many! In the same way that my golf coach never told me what I was doing right and only what was wrong, I am doing the same here. It is a biased article. It’s the black side of the grey.)

Here are some of the dangers of instant messaging…

1. It’s convenient. It is easy to hop onto mxit, or gmail chat, or msn. You can do it anywhere and it takes quick.

2. It’s inexpensive. It costs next to nothing to chat to someone online.

3. It’s situational. I see you online, you see me online. We say hi. We wouldn’t have bothered to say hi if we weren’t both online. There was no purposeful intent, merely the response to situational ‘proximity’.

4. There is a greater dependence on text to achieve what previously required human involvement. What if someone is really not doing well when you ask them: ‘how u’ in hurried tones as you seek to reply to the people replying to you? What if you catch wind of it through the bland vehicle of text? Do you go visit them? Or do you reply something like: “shame, sorry to hear that… thinking of you.” Cute. Real cute. Text achieved nothing.

I would just like to mention that I have not been personally hurt through chatting, although it does seem to sound like it as I re-read what I have written. I guess my point of frustration is that I know that text can be full. I read John Donne, Philip Yancey, The Bible, even John Grisham, enough to know that text can be loaded with content, thought and meaning. Text can be rich in how it makes you think, feel and reason. So it is only natural that I should feel some sort of disappointment at the hurried use of text nowadays. Text that is empty. Devoid of genuine concern and lacking in its ability to comfort, counsel and captivate.

And the power of language is stripped by the speaker. The very man who wants his words to mean something renders his voice an inaudible whisper.

Book Review- Soul Survivor

Hey guys, so I'm dropping the formal prose just to let you know that i finished reading a great book this morning. I have been making my way slowly through Philip Yancey's Soul Survivor for the last two months now. The book's subtitle is "How my faith survived the church" and Yancey speaks about how his own fragile faith was held together through certain role models through his life. He devotes a whole chapter to each of these characters some of them being Leo Tolstoy (a Russian novelist), G.K. Chesterton (an English preacher with a personality), historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, John Donne and contemporaries such as Annie Dillard (Pulitzer Prize winner).

Without expressing my own thoughts too much I think it is safe to say the following: The Church has caused much damage over the years. It has been responsible for wars, dodgy political movements, private agendas and worst of all, individual hurt on a grand scale. Yancey seeks not to defend the church as much as he seeks to defend faith- at the most crucial place ever... the heart of every single believer. Keep hope alive. Learn wisdom so as not to repeat the same mistakes. But most of all, keep faith alive. Feed the flickering flame that is meant to light the world.

I have always been a big Yancey fan and this book was great for me because it was the most personal of all his books that I have read thus far. I got a bit of an inside scoop into his childhood and his struggles which I really enjoyed. (It's always nice to know that the famous ones struggle just like everyone!) Some of his books I find a little bit 'mono-theme-ish" but this was far from being that... I think that writing about a new character every chapter kept the book amazingly fresh and remarkably insightful.

Philip Yancey is a man with many opinions and ideas. He has allowed questions to consume his thinking and spiritual world such that we benefit from his well-weighted conclusions. I guess if I ever had to identify spiritual role-models in my life Yancey would be right up there.

my eyes

my only lens on this world
my visual dependence;
lack of perspective
that keeps me looking

these are my eyes
my smudged windows
responders to my mind's
crooked instructions

look not at man
compare not to him
o eyes if you can
don't fall into sin

look up, not around
better yet see the ground
see the rubble, see the dust
see the dirt if you must

enough to know that this dirt could be
the very same dirt that will one day swallow me
what am i to compare to the strength of a brother?
what am i to see myself as something other?

i am the rubbish, yet my eyes still pry
to find someone else more rubbish than i
and the only way i find him is to believe the lie
that the rubbish i seek is in some other guy

it's me. i am he.
and i need Thee
now more than ever
i need to see
You as superior
and me facedown
no motives ulterior
not wearing your crown

see o eyes! you fight without cause
my God knows how to win my wars
my eyes will again look up not around
and my heart will again know your renown

gandhi's humility

From the life of Gandhi I see a man who confronted the harshest environments with the quietest, strongest strength. The taste on my palette, from my hurried bite of history, tells me that Gandhi really didn't think much of himself. He did however think highly of the certain set of principles by which he lived. He rose early. He prayed. He washed. He fasted. A true example of discipline. What I find so remarkable about Gandhi though is that he was disciplined as though discipline was mandatory. He didn't see extra merit in the procedures and routines that he busied himself with- he merely saw them as being essential for appropriate living.

The by-product of his disciplined is amazing to analyze: Instead of Gandhi becoming smug about his ability to be disciplined, he seemed to display the utmost tolerance for people who made mistakes. When people failed morally he seemed quite understanding and compassionate. Never using himself as a point of comparison he appealed to the innate sense of right and wrong in humans in order to improve their own lives and the lives of those around them. (sounds a little like Jesus to me).

Without getting too much into the exact details, Mahatma Gandhi has been credited for two main things:
1. Stopping much bloodshed when the East-Asian countries were being formed. During a time of rife Muslim and Hindu discord and active aggression, Mahatma fasted and prayed for the violence to stop. On his third day of fasting, weak and quite prepared to lose his life for his ideals of peace and tolerance, the fighting stopped and people started to listen to the raspy voice of a man who knew how to give himself away for something he believed in.
2. Closer to home, Mahatma has been credited with accelerating the racial reformation in South Africa. He was a catalyst in ending the Apartheid regime simply by believing that man deep down wants to be good. That man wants to be noble. And Mahatma helped show us what exactly what being noble meant.

Despite his obvious strength and endurance (here is a link to an awesome post on the meaning of Christian endurance), Gandhi never seemed to consider himself as being superior! He saw himself with the soberest of judgment. History has esteemed him because he did not esteem himself.
It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err. - Mahatma Gandhi
Err he may have, but weaken he didn't. Always aware that he was a fallible human, he still set out to achieve what many think impossible: a mark on history that can never be erased.

Gandhi ended his life with bullets in his chest. Being controversial has obvious dangers. Though this again tells me that Gandhi had principles for which he really would die. His life a reasonable expense for the off chance that mankind might be peaceful. To consider your life nothing- is that not the essence of humility?

I cannot help but see traces of Jesus in this man who never actually put his faith in Christ. Maybe the most obvious observation is this:

Jesus. His life a reasonable expense for the off chance that I may be saved