 | |||||
| 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
No comments:
Post a Comment