Alternative Culture: Japan Sinks review

 

It is well known that the Japanese home islands were formed by volcanic eruptions. But what happens if the islands start sinking? That is the scenario that Japan Sinks seeks to explore in the year 2020.

Synopsis

Japan Sinks follows the adventures of the Muto family as they attempt to survive the collapse of the Japanese home islands. Aided by strangers (including the enigmatic Kite) along the way, the Muto family overcome challenge after challenge to find refuge from the disaster. But will there be true safety from the disaster? How different will the Muto family be post-disaster?

Theological review
There are many themes explored in the ten-episode long series. For instance, there was a storyline involving a cult and the strength of their religion. There were also an arc showing the racism of some Japanese nationalists. Yet I just want to write about one of the themes.

When it all falls apart, what do you hold on to?
One of the things that kept the Muto family going was that they hold something to hold onto. Initially it was the unflinching optimism of Koichiro (the father) that drove the family, followed by sheer determination of Mori (the mother). Due to changing circumstances, the family and their associated group repeatedly have to change their motivations for going on.

Thus the members are consistently demoralised as their source of hope is unseated over and over again during the series.

What about us?
Japan Sinks is a thought-provoking film as it brings us to the age-old question: What is our source of hope? When things go wrong, who do we turn to?

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
 even there your hand will guide me,
   your right hand will hold me fast.
 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you. -- Psalms (139: 7-12)

Alternative Culture: Joshua Harris and Marty Sampson

Gracia Hosokawa, a Japanese Christian. She did not apostatise despite intense persecution in Japan. 

Recently, two leading Christians had expressed doubts in their faith. One is Joshua Harris, author of the Christian book I Kissed Dating Goodbye and the other is Marty Simpson, the lead singer of Hillsong (a Christian Worship band).

Both men had expressed doubts in their faith, and felt that there were hard questions that Christianity could not satisfy. In this post I will writing about apostasy. I do not know neither Harris nor Simpson, so if you want to hear opinions on them, please go to another site.

What I want to address is some learning points about apostasy (leaving the faith).

Lesson 1:
Apostasy happens and is not as uncommon as we think

Even in the early church, apostasy existed. In 2 Timothy 4:10, Paul the apostle writes.

"for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica."

Even though Demas had worked with someone as faithful and dedicated as Paul (Demas was mentioned in Paul's other letters), he left the faith. Thus we should not be surprised that even hardworking church workers may renounced their faith.

Lesson 2:
Christians need to move beyond "spiritual milk"

In 1 Cor 3:2, Paul writes,

"I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready."

The meaning is clear -- followers of Christ cannot always stay in the state of an immature faith. In fact, one of my Indonesian students pointed out that many Christians around her are simply satisfied with surface catechisms, rather than dig down deep. Such unexplored territory and unwrestled questions led to Simpson losing his faith. As he stated on his Instagram,

"This is a soapbox moment so here I go … How many preachers fall? Many. No one talks about it. How many miracles happen. Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send four billion people to a place, all ‘coz they don’t believe? No one talks about it. Christians can be the most judgmental people on the planet—they can also be some of the most beautiful and loving people. But it’s not for me."

Conclusion
This is not some new crisis, but a lesson for us to guard our faith and to continually explore uncomfortable questions. Only then may we find our God is truth.

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” -- John *:31-32

My Confessions: Reflection of Job 1-2

Recently, I read the Book of Job again. When I was younger, I was rarely heard a sermon on the book of Job. I understand why -- the topic of suffering is difficult to talk about.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, read Job.


In this post, I will not be handling the issue whether the Book of Job was meant to be a literal or a metaphorical story. I will merely be reflecting on the issue of Job's relationship with God. I will be reflecting on the Book of Job for this series of posts.

Synopsis on Job 1-2
Job was a wealthy man in the land of Uz. When God pointed out to Satan that Job was blameless and rightous, Satan retorted that Job only worships God because Job is blessed. Satan is then allowed to to destroy Job's wealth.

After Job loses his childen and lifestock, he remains faithful. From Job 1:21,

and [Job] said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
    and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
    may the name of the Lord be praised.”

As Job still remains faithful to God, Satan then asks permission to harm Job directly. Job is then inflicted with sores. Job's wife asked Job to curse God, but in Job 2:9

He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

Still Job did not leave his faith in God.

Job was then comforted by three of his friends, Eliphaz, Bilad and Zophar.

My reflections
Satan has to have permission to harm us
What is striking to me is that Satan has to seek permission from God to harm people. This means that Satan is not even close to God in power and authority.

If God can allow Satan to cast evil upon us, it still means that Satan has his limits (i.e. what God allows). And God loves us.

Satan has a real point.
Like a good deceiver, Satan does hide a token of truth. He points out that people only stay loyal to God because they receive good things from God. In other words, they do not really love God; they only follow God due to the benefits they get from him.

Upon self-reflection, I realise this is true for me for most days. It is very easy to forget God when things do not go my way. I must be vigilant in keep my faith. I should love God for who He is, and not just because of the stuff he blessed me with.


Conclusion
Will we hang on to God even in the tough times?

References

Book of Job

Theology 1.0: What is faith?

Napoleon's tomb, Paris 2011

A misused word?

Due to the huge misunderstandings concerning the word faith, I generally avoid using the term to describe my Christian journey. Some of my friends portray faith as belief without evidence, or even belief in spite of the evidence (Dawkins, 2006).

In this post I will attempt to examine the term "faith" in slightly greater detail.

I have faith in ....

Let's use a more down-to-earth example. Let's say a 19th Century French soldier says he has faith in the French Emperor Napoleon. What is he actually saying? Is he stating 

A) I propose a metaphysical entity named "Napoleon", whose property consist of being "French" and "Emperor"

B) I place my trust in Emperor Napoleon to get me through this age and crisis.

Naturally (I hope), we would incline to accept definition B.

Who do Christians place their hope in?

So let's extend this example. When Christians say they place their faith in Christ, what do they actually mean? In what do they trust Jesus for?

One of my favourite way to think about is the way the Gospel of John introduces Jesus.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." -- John 1: 1-5 (NIV)

What does this "Word" mean? Written in Greek for the non-Christians Greeks, the way the Greeks would have understood it is "logos". A brief search at wikipedia would reveal how the Greeks treated the use of the word "Word". To the Greek Stoics, the logos was the reason for existence and the universe. To followers of Aristotle, logos was what separated humans from nature. To ordinary Greeks it mean the divine objective root from which everything flows.

Immediately, the Gospel of John throws a challenge to the Greeks, and they would have understood. The claim is this: Jesus is the ultimate reason for humanity. He can be trusted to for our existence, and to be counted on for true joy and to get us through the hardest of times.

With a claim this big, it must be examined carefully. So my readers, if you have not experienced the joy of knowing Jesus, why not come and see?

"He is so happy! I can almost believe that he has found God.” -- Atheist novelist Franz Kafka, after reading a book written by the Christian poet GK Chesterton.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, don't be so quick to dismiss faith as anti-intellectual or dangerous. Who people of faith place their trust in? As a Christian, I invite you to come and see.

References

Dawkins, R. (2006) The God Delusion

For futher reading

What is this Word?

Alternative Culture: Singapore's train problems and the limits of man

 

City Airport Train, Vienna, Austria 2011

Triple train trouble!
In December 2011, Singapore (my country) suffered three major train (a.k.a. MRT [Mass Rapid Transit]) disruptions. As these incidents were consider the worst malfunctions in the 24-year history of the MRT, many have called the CEO to step down.

Having studied in London for the past 4 years, I was initially quite surprised by such demands. If the CEO had to step down everytime there was a line malfunction, then the CEO of the London Underground (London's train services) must have stepped down many times. However one of my friends pointed out that the MRT have often touted itself as being the best, so such incidents was considered a slap to the face to its reputation. Furthermore as many as 125,000 people were affected by one of the disruptions, making it a major accident.

So should the CEO stepped down?

If you're looking for a political analysis of the situation, you're viewing the wrong blog. I'm just humbly here to give a theological view of the event, and that will be the purpose of this post.

I'm here not to criticise the MRT management or the engineers. In fact Singaporean engineers are one of the best in the world. During my time at Imperial College, the students who topped every engineering course I could think of (Electrical, Mechanical, Material, Chemical and Aeronautical) were Singaporeans. In additional to that, I would go on record to say that travelling on the Singapore train/subway/metropolitan is very reliable.

The limits of man
But it's a strange situation isn't it? Despite possessing some of the best engineers in the world, the MRT was shown to be prone to breakdowns. But this isn't the first time man's pride was shamed, isn't it? We were once told somethings were unsinkable, and others would last for a thousand years. And this (series of MRT malfunctions) is in the field of engineering, one of the most highly disciplined fields in academia.

And it's not just in the issue of engineering that man struggles with. We struggle with health, self-worth, justice, poverty, morality, artistic expression and so many other things. And often we tend to elate man's ability to solve everything. If we even struggle to solve for these issues, then what about the issue of salvation, our eternal destinies?

[I am not saying we shouldn't work on these fields, but I'm merely highlighting man's limitation in these areas.]

The ultimate struggle
And here's the ultimate struggle for Christians--we either tend to be religious, or irreligious (Keller, 2007). To be religious, is to look within ourselves-- our acts, achievements, behaviours and morality for justification before God. Then the religious would look to the others and condemned the others for not following the traditions they do.

To be irreligious is also another great temptation-- it is to deny there is a problem with the world and us, and therefore do not see a need for accounting before God.

Both the religious and irreligious can be dangerous forms of self-centredness. Chesterton (1908) used the analogy of images of Buddhist saints to illustrate this well-- that we close our eyes to the world and look within ourselves for satisfaction.

What about Jesus?
Just as a Roman centurion looked to Jesus for his servant's healing and a father looked to Jesus for his son's exorcism, we must look to Jesus (and not ourselves) as our source of justification. As the Reformer Luther (1520) wrote that it was by "impiety and incredulity of heart" that mankind became deserving of "condemnation". In being religious or irreligious, a man makes himself "as an idol in his own heart".

So how do we save ourselves?
You can't!-- that's the point! That's why we can be grateful for Christmas. If we could do everything on our own, God didn't have to come down. So take heart, my Christian friends. There's grace! The salvation issue is not about what we can do for God (being religious), or how we redefine God (being irreligious). It's not about how much faith we have in Jesus either. It's about whether we trust Him in the first place.

And we can. That's why I can joyfully and truthfully declare "MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

Reference

Chesterton, G.K. (1908) Orthodoxy

Keller, T.J. (2007) The Reason For God

Luther, M. (1520) Freedom of a Christian