About Christianity

i was a competitive runner during my school days. not that i am not in school now, well the time before my university days. so, every year i would try to win at least a medal for myself. most of the people know, runners have many injuries. well, most sports-person will have quite a few injuries. me too, i have no exception.

i injured myself back in high school, around 13 years old i guess. so, i did rest a bit, but i continued to run with injuries, and joining competitions. and the result is, i most probably cannot go into competitive running again. both my knees and ankles are quite damaged. hahax, i asked for it.

well, actually, i thought that in our life, sins are like injuries. just like everyone gets injured, everyone will sin. it is natural. not that we can help it. but even if we cannot help it, we don't go round sinning just because of that. because, you don't go round getting yourself injured for nothing right? the only difference probably would be, sin is pleasurable at that moment, while injuries only give you pain. in that case, injuries is better since the pain would warn you to stay away. sin gives you pleasure, and instead of chasing you away from death like what pain did to us, it instead invite us closer to death.

like injuries, if you don't treat them, they will get worse. maybe an infection if it is an open wound, or maybe affect you in many other ways. such as if i have a knee problem and i don't take care of it, i can be sure walking will be a problem. if an injury is there, usually we treat it. do we do the same for sin? if we sin and know we are wrong, do we treat it? do we correct our behavior? i can admit now, i don't correct myself always. and yes there are a list of sins i know i deliberately commit. i am not proud of it. well, since you are here, you can listen to the rest of this 'moral lesson' that i don't do it myself. maybe you would do it, if you think what i say is correct. haax. what am i saying?

so sin, like injury, will get worse if we leave it, or maybe if we continue to sin. like if i have an injury and i continue to run instead of rest, i am very sure the condition will get worse. if we sin, and we don't correct it, our sins will pile up and we will get more and more entangled in that web of death. maybe from envy, it goes on to jealousy, and then it goes on to plotting something bad, and the action of carrying it out. you see? i mean, i don't think envy is a sin, but this is an example of what could happen if we don't keep ourselves in check. once you reach jealousy, well i guess that is a sin.

what about old injuries? they do act up sometimes right? the cold weather? or maybe if you strain a little more in a particular spot, say the knees, the pain comes again. it is on and off. sometimes it is serious sometimes it is not. is sin like that? i guess so. even if we repent of our sins, sometimes we do commit the same sin again. afterall, the things we do are roughly the same. lying, gossip, watch porn?, looking down on others...etc.

even when we repent, sometimes we fell for the same sin again. it is not gone. but unlike injuries of which we have no control over, for sin, we can. through our willpower, discipline, and more importantly, God's grace and the strength He gives us. He can give you a lot of strength, but if you do not have the willpower to go against it or the discipline to want to avoid it, it is of no use. it is just like a swordsman giving up his sword. he being strong doesn't mean he will win, because he doesn't want to fight.

well, since we all sin, might as well gain something from it right? we do that with injuries. broken bones which healed become stronger. muscles which got torn down (though that is not an injury) will be replaced by better ones. injuries makes us aware of our actions and what we should do to prevent our body from getting damaged. they are the warnings to tell us to be careful with our bodies.

sin, in a way too, can be like that. but of course we need the help of God. we all do things we regret. and most of the time it is a sin we commit. lying about an important fact. backstabbing others. lusting about people of the opposite sex (and in that way we do not respect that person). refusing to lend a helping hand to someone in need. saying hurtful things to others. we regret them. and sometimes the guilt is very strong. at this time, since it is already over, and we cannot take back our words, all we can do is to improve the situation or prevent the 'next time' from happening again.

apologizing may not help, but in many other cases, it does. trying to make up may not help, and may make us like a hypocrite, but if we don't, then the relationship might really be gone. the guilt is there. and the next time we want to commit the same sin again, we have this pain in us to remind us to take care of our conscience. but of course, we have to remember that pain, and the consequences, if not, there will be no lesson learnt.

like injuries, sin is normal. it is normal, but it is no good. all we can do is to avoid it as much as we can, like any sane person would want to avoid injuries as much as possible. sin is no good, but if it is over then the only thing we can do is to reduce the impact. like how people wear knee guard to reduce the pain, we can try to make up. and then, we learn our lesson and repent, so that the next time, we will not feel pain again. lastly, like pain, sin is something we can do without. so, prevent it from happening before everything is too late. and of course, you cannot do it alone. ask God for help.

i bumped into my old classmate today, and because we had a little time at hand, we talked for a while. we talked about various things, and of course, about the past. and as we talked, the conversation steered to our personality.

he reminded me of the little personality test we used to play as a class activity during my pre-university days. he reminded me that i got the animal 'shark', which was supposed to mean i am a domineering person, someone who won't give way to others. actually, before the results were out, they already guessed which animal i would get.

to that i replied i was not domineering. and what he said was, 'you are. just that you try to hide it.' actually i know i am someone like that, and like he said, i tried to hide it. i had been trying to supress this trait for a very long time now. he said when you interact long enough with a person the characteristics of a person will show up.

do we always do that? i thought, yea we do. maybe not to people, but to God. we know we are sinful. and we know we cannot hide anything from God. but sometimes, naturally, as if it was not intentional, we still do that.

sometimes when we sin deliberately, we feel guilty. or maybe some of us don't, which mean you are in more trouble than the rest. and we sometimes do things to make up, as if that would help. maybe put in more effort in ministry, do more good deeds, do more quiet time...etc. as if by doing all these things we could cover up our sins, and hide our mistakes.

but in the end, we are only deceiving ourselves. a sin is a sin. we cannot hide it. and God knows everything. if we have a sin, we have to confess, pray for forgiveness and repent. it did not matter how many good deeds you did if you are still sinning deliberately. for all the good deeds and ministry work we did, our heart is still view-able to God.

then, why do we still try to hide it? maybe it is human tendency. maybe to hide it from ourselves. so we will forget the guilt and focus more on the satisfaction from all the 'holy' things we did. but is this even constructive? i thought not.

just like how i cannot hide my personality from my friend, we all cannot hide the state of our hearts from God. it is hard sometimes to face our sins. it is hard to talk about the embarrassing things we did. but, God already knew them all. so, why not you just confess? and come clean?

we are all humans. the mistake you made (which i hope is not too serious), would most likely be committed by another person before. for all we did, God still loves us. so, there will be no need to hide anything. and even if we want to hide, we cannot do so. because He knows everything. we cannot hide it.

so, let's stop trying various ways to hide our guilt, and face it openly.

this post is short. maybe i am too tired to think. or maybe lazy.