About Christianity

chinese teacher left behind students and ran away on his own during the sichuan earthquake. what do you think of this statement which was in the news? what is the first impression you have?

let me see..... he don't deserve to live. he is heartless. he is a coward. he ought to die. he is not fit to live. a rotten man. are these the thoughts that came into your mind? if it is, see, you made another mistake. because, who are you to condemn him?

let me say first, i read the headlines, and not the article. but what i am saying is not related to that. that is not important, because, i am going to address the issue of humans judging one another too quickly. no, i am not defending him. i am not judging him.

so he ran, leaving behind his students and leaving them to die. he got slammed, he got flamed and he got condemned. maybe you think he deserved it, because if he just stayed, he might have saved some lives. some of you more noble people may have sacrificed your lives to save that few kids, or as many as you can. afterall, they are children with a bright future. fair? it seemed so.

how about we look from another perspective? his perspective.

what if his parents had not yet died? what if he has a family to support? here, i am assuming his parents are still around and he has a family to take care of. please note, in china, the women do not work, or seldom work after they got married. traditional thinking. the man brings in the bread. in china, you only have a kid. his parents most likely only have him as the only child.

now... the situation in front of you. an earthquake. someone got to die. you either save the kids and risk dying, or you leave them to die and get a higher chance of survival. obviously, he chose the second one. are you condemning him again? think about it again. if he die, who is going to take care of his parents? if he die, who is going to take care of his family? would you save a few kids and let your family suffer, or risk getting condemned and slammed and insulted and flamed but able to live on for the sake of your family? so what if your name got written down in the newspaper as a crisis hero who died but your living family suffered? if you die, that's the end of you.

no, i am not saying the reason why he ran is because of that. he might have other reasons. or he might just like you say, a coward who care for nothing else but for his survival. what i want to say, people do things for different reasons. who are we to judge him? if i have a family, i would rather get condemn and live, than to die a crisis hero. planning to slam me? you better not do it on my website.

same for other things. sometimes people do things that are 'evil' or 'bad'. we are quick to judge. we hear one side of the story and we jump to conclusions. always being full of ourselves, always think other people are no good. but what if, we are in the same situation as them, what would we do? 'i would definately save the children.' is that what you think? no. unless you go through the whole thing yourself, you are not fit to comment on anything. yes. not fit. because no one can talk about what they do not understand. it makes us an even worse hypocrites than we are right now. we may think we will save the kids, but when the real thing came, what would you do? what would you do?

i am not saying you are also another coward who will run away. who knows? you might be a hero. you might be a coward. you might stay. you might run. whatever you do, who are others to judge? everyone has different purposes in life. who are we to judge others?

so, the next time something like that happens, big or small, in war or peace, in any kind of situation, do not judge. of course, i am saying this as a person who has not undergo any tragedies in life. maybe, if something bad happen to me, like someone come and kill off my loved ones, i would condemn him too. because we always talk about things we don't understand. always.

but there is this statement (from memory) from a character in a game (True Tears) i played, which is translated as :

it is true i cannot understand you. but it is because i cannot understand the pain, that i can give you support. it is because i don't know the suffering, that i can encourage you. if i truely know and truely understand, then, maybe i could not even utter a single word.

what i want to say is, encourage people, and not judge them. i am saying this from the point of a person who never experienced a single tragedy in life, which is why i am able to say it. this post is kind of contradicting, eh?