About Christianity

'please take a look at the water tank! inside there are many fishes of strange shapes.'

'deep sea fishes... are they deep sea fishes?'

'correct. under normal conditions we should not be able to see them. the ocean is separated into layers by their big difference in temperatures. the above is called the surface, the bottom is called the deep sea ( this is an over-simplication of the simplication of sea level categories). for every increase of 10m of depth of the sea, the atmospheric pressure increase by 1. in the deepest part of the ocean, for every 1cm squre there is an increase in 1 ton of pressure. hence organisms living in the deep sea are very special. the world that never saw the light - other than that, they have no other places they could live in. they could only live there, just like me. (erm, i am bad at this. if i say anything scientifically wrong please pardon me.)

is school life fun, recca? there are many friends there. what are your favorite tv programs? who are your favorite artiste? are you in a relationship? all of you live on the surface, fishes that swim freely. the world i live in - even plants, swimming organisms cannot even survive there. to live, they can only eat the corpses of other fishes. fishes that cannot even swim up to the surface even if they want it.

the world mori-sama (name of a person. -sama is a form of addressing a person of higher level respectfully) wants to create... is to turn the surface just like the pitch-black deep sea. a world that no other organisms other than deep sea fishes can live! mori-sama created for me, a world that i could also live in.'

'i will not let you do whatever you want to do. that is not the world we want. we are free.'

'freedom? i also want it very much. but it is too late! fishes who even forgot how to swim, it is already -- '

---

ok the above conversation sounded a bit lame. it is supposed to be a sad story. but because of lack of space i cut it out and took out the important parts. so, here we go...

deep sea fishes. in the human world, there are people like that. like what the person said, most of us are fishes living on the surface. swimming freely, experiencing life the normal way. and there are people, like the deep fishes, live in the pitch-black world of despair. a world with no light and hope.

i think, for those of us who live in the surface, we would definately not be able to fully understand the feelings of those who live in the deep sea, those who were not able to see any hope, those who could only see despair and darkness around... and finally those, who lost the ability to see hope (fishes who forgot how to swim).

for a human, hope is the driving factor for us to move forwards. a person may not have love, but he can have hope. and as long as a person has hope, be it good or bad, moral or not, he is able to move on. it doesn't matter what the person is hoping for, as long as there is hope, a person can walk forwards.

a person who lost hope, he cannot walk forwards. like the fish which forgot how to swim, he is unable to go forwards too, unable to go to a world where there is light. there are many people like that. well we ignore those people who love to dramatize things and make it as if their whole world collapsed when there is a little problem in their lives.

like that person who wanted freedom but was not able to get it, there are people who wanted to go on to the surface, but do not know how, or that they could not. i cannot imagine how a person can live through life like that. but the fact is, there are people like that. oh man, i keep repeating myself.

do you know people around you who are like that? a person who lost all hope may not look like it on the surface. afterall, humans are fantastic actors on the stage called 'life'. all humans belong to the surface, yet it is tragic that some are in the deep sea. some are born into that world, some are pulled down by the others...etc.

one may be down, but as long as he can still see hope and work for the future, he is one who live on the surface. maybe the part of the surface where it is near the deep sea, but nevertheless still on the surface. those who live in the deep sea can never come up again on their own. because they had lost the will and not see the hope. if left alone they will continue to stay there. at least, that is what i think.

what can we, the fishes on the surface do? because we see the light, because we can see the hope, we know there is a future for them to go. because we have experienced it ourselves. and then, the only thing we can do, is to help them out of that pitch-black world. bring them into our world. maybe, their problems are too big for us to help. maybe, we can do nothing 'practical' to help them. but as christians, the least we could do, is to pray.

prayer cost you nothing, maybe your time used for praying. but if prayers can help a person and bring him up to the surface where there is light, isn't that little time spent worth it? we may not be able to help, but we know God can. He wants us to live life to the fullest, and if we by ourselves cannot help others, then we can ask God to help, or ask Him to help us help them.

talk is easy right? i thought so too. afterall, if it is that easy, the deep sea fishes would not exist in the first place. maybe we can put it this way: if we help, maybe there is a chance to pull that struggling person out. but if we don't, then that person will stay there. life is meant to be filled with all sorts of emotions - anger, happiness, sadness, frustrations, hope, despair, depression...etc. but if one only has the negative of the emotions, then he is not living life.

there are many deep sea fishes. we may not know who they are. but at least, as christians, if you have the time, pray for these people. it doesn't require much of your time and effort. just a minute a day praying for them. out of all the 24 hours a day, 60 minutes an hour, using one tiny minute should not hurt a lot.

and also because, the reason why you got through all the hardships of your life and attain your peaceful life on the surface, other than your own hardwork, may be also because out there in the sea, another surface fish once prayed for your happiness.

1 minute a day... it is not too much right?

In the city I'm not used to that's full of dirt,
I can't laugh the same and I walked with my head down
People pass by in a quick pace
I ask "has their dreams come true?" But I'm still struggling

I want to try living in the present
rather than returning to my childhood
It's my nature to be a coward

If I go to a sunny spot and stretch my arms out,
I wonder if I can go beyond the sky
that's what I thought
---

how many of you here do not dare to dream again? not because of anything, but because you are scared of failure. can you think of any time of your life when you are like that? i can. i thought, this is natural.

when we were younger (even though i am still very young) we dared to dream. impossibility seemed to be a concept meant for weaklings and failures. and then maybe we tried and tried. failed once. we got up. failed the second time. we got up again. the third time, we forced ourselves to get up again.

and then, as we tried to overcome the wall that we can never get over (at that time, maybe), we realized in the end, that maybe we are just only a weakling we used to say of others. and as time passed by, as we come once more to the wall we failed to climb, and we looked up, we thought, 'maybe, no more. i am tired. enough. i am really very, very tired.'

i think, as long as we are humans, we would have met with this kind of situation.

in a place where we are not comfortable with, we walked, with our heads down, unable to laugh. maybe we can laugh in front of others, but that would be a mask. because in the end, we would not be able to really laugh. because we know best ourselves we are not able to have a genuine laugh or a smile.

some of us could not lift up our heads. why? maybe it is because of the burden of failure. maybe because we dare not look at a place far far away, and say to ourselves, 'hey! i want to go over there!' so we walk with our heads down, not daring to dream about the future, seeing only the present, carrying our past failures with us. and then, we walked, following the others. where to? we don't know. anywhere. as long as the current state we are in doesn't fall off. anything better is a bonus.

and as we walk, we see people. those living in a city would know, the city is a busy place. tokyo, singapore, new york, london... people are rushing here and there. rush to work, rush for meals, rush to get home, rush to play. everybody is in a rush. and maybe once again we asked ourselves, 'has their dreams come true?' maybe. maybe not. who knows? everybody is rushing, as if there is something they must do. as if that is essential to their dreams. maybe it is. maybe it is not. again, who knows?

but, no matter what we think, that is still the life of others. we are still, walking with our heads bowed, walking with our failures on our shoulders, staring at the ground that is the present, not looking ahead which is the future. we are still struggling. for all we know, we are at a contradiction.

we just want to maintain the current state. but at the same time we envy those who has more. but even when we envy them, we cannot be like them. because we do not dare to dream. and if we do not have dreams, how can we work towards our goal? we want a better life, but we don't want to fail again. so we asked for no improvements in our life, yet at the same time we envy those with a better life. contradicting, isn't it?

maybe, you want to say, 'what do you know?' or maybe, you want to say to me, 'you cannot imagine what kind of feeling that is.' but, like i said before, as long as we are humans, we would have gone through this stage before. and me, like the rest of humanity, at one point of time or another, had already gave up dreaming. and maybe, slowly, unintentionally, we had replaced our dreams with envy.

we want to try living in the present, like all of us are doing now. we don't want to go back to our childhood, because we are cowards. (again, see the opening of this post.) we don't want to go back and see once more the faraway place we used to look at. we don't want to remind ourselves of the place we wanted to go to. because we are cowards, and we are scared.

and sometimes, life do give us second chances, if we are lucky. maybe, the rainy days are over. the sun comes out once again. finally? maybe not. because we had given up on seeing the sun once again. maybe the rain was there for too long, long enough to make us forget the warmth of the sun, the brightness of the sun.

and when once more the sun comes up and once more we have a new hope, as we stretched out our hands, do we dare to dream? do we dare to dream that we can soar beyond the sky? the sun is up, and we have our past failures to learn from. we have already gone through the worst, what can be worse, right?

i cannot say for sure you will definately conquer the wall this time and fly up to the sky. it depends on your goal and your ability, as well as God. but, if we stay at the ground for too long, when one day we want to fly up, we would find ourselves not able to do so. the weather is nice, and the hope is bright, wouldn't it be a waste if we let the opportunity slip off? maybe we cannot fly as high up as we want. maybe, we cannot fly for as long as we want. but, anything is better than the ground, right?

so if today the dark clouds are no more, and the sun comes out... lift up your head and look to that faraway place, and stretch out your hands once more so you can fly over to that faraway place. because this city of dirt, this gloomy place, is really not fit for human living.

before his friend turned into sand, his friend asked him, 'so, what is your wish?'

'i just don't want to lose all these things. i only want, to take back all the happy memories of the past.'

and as he said that, all that was important to him turned into sand and disappeared.

---

this teenage boy, in order to turn the current reality into something like the past, challenged 'god'. his past was that of a happy one, with friends around him, and had little troubles compared to his current situation. but as always, reality is not always beautiful. his important friends were gone, and all he had was a nightmarish reality and loneliness. he did all he could to go back to the past, to revert things back to the previous state. in the end, he challenged 'god'.

how many of us are like that? well, not to the extreme of challenging God. how many of us are stuck in the past, unable to look forwards?

life is beautiful sometimes, and ugly sometimes. if there is happiness, there is sadness. if there are ups, there are downs. success and failure. stress and relief. everyone experience the same thing - joy, grief, victory, loss..etc.

maybe, at your current stage of life, everything looks so bad. so bad you want to despair. so bad, like that boy, you think it is a nightmare. there is nothing in front for you to look forward to. whatever you do, you keep failing. and maybe, finally, you give up hope, and dare not hope anymore.

and when that happens, it is human tendency to look back to the past. to the past when everything was so beautiful. there are many reasons why we do that. maybe it is the only source of strength that lets us go on. maybe we want to go back to that state. maybe, just naturally, as if addicted by drugs, we cannot help but go back to the past where our memories are.

but, i thought, if we cannot let go of the past, we cannot move forwards. if we cannot let go of the past, we cannot face the reality now. in a way, it is like drugs. for a short moment, we thought it would help us go on. but in the long term, it actually makes us despair even more.

why do we still hold on to that past? because, it is very hard to let go. because, the reality we are facing now is too hard for us to bear.

sometimes i am like that too. even though i know i cannot keep on doing this anymore. like that boy, if we continue to do this, if we cannot let go of the past, whether by despair or by desperate attempts to return things to the original state, one day, we are going to lose every single thing important to us.

because, the past can never return to us. that is why, it is called the past.

we need to let go of the past. but letting go does not mean you have to forget them. the past is important. but if we cannot let go, we have no future, and our present is so dark we cannot move on.

talk is easy, right? i thought so. i only know how to talk, so i don't know what to do myself. but i thought, maybe i can introduce you someone who can help you. maybe, i thought, i would introduce you to my God.

if one day, or now, you find your present too dark to go on, your future too uncertain to move forwards, why not ask for help from my God? He knows the way, the past, the present, and the future. if the road is too dark, ask Him to light it up for you. if the future is too blur, ask Him to guide you. i cannot promise you the road He leads you will be smooth. but this i can promise you: He won't give you a road too hard for you to walk. this i can promise you: wherever He led you, there He will be with you too.

let go of your past, so your heart won't hurt anymore. so you can turn your head around, face the front and continue walking. i don't know how long you have to walk, but one day, you will be able to see the light. if you really cannot go on anymore, then ask God for help.

of course, as we walk, we sometimes do look back. i think, it is ok. as long as we don't reach out our hands and try to grab it and turn it to our reality. the past can never be the present.

but i think, maybe, from the present, like what the people in stories always do, we can tilt our head sideways a bit, smile and say to our past, 'i am glad i was there once. it really made me very happy.' or maybe, we can tilt our head sideways, smile and say to our friends, 'i am very happy i once walked this road with you.'

it won't be easy. but this, is the key for us to face the present, and to walk towards the future. so, turn back and smile. don't cry because the past is behind you. at least, you have a past you can look back to.

---

fans may already know this - Mizuki Nana's dad passed away on 29th october 2008. it is on the news. anyway, my deepest condolences. her blog updates will be irregular for now though. for her blog entry on this issue, j1m0ne had done a translation of it on her website. http://atemonai.com/blog/mizuki-nana-on-her-fathers-passing/

'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 truly know and truly understand, then, maybe I could not even utter a single word.'

i like this phrase a lot. as usual, for the n-th time, it came from a story. how i wish i can come up with such beautiful lines. well, these lines were said by a man to a woman he loved, to the woman whose pain he could not understand.

have you ever have the feeling of asking people to shut up? sometimes do you get the urge to slam at people and shout at them and say, 'Don't talk about things you cannot even begin to understand.' all people have problems in their lives, big or small. what is small to you may be big to others, what is big to you may be small to others. there are different kinds of big problems as well. one person may grow up in a very poor family. the other may grow up in an abusive home (well i don't really call that a home anymore). the third may grow up alone, without family.

because of our characters, which i believe are given by God, which is also moulded by the environment we are in, we make different choices in the same situation. there arises different opinions. makes sense?

and of course, people make decisions that benefits them. nobody in their right mind will make decisions to harm themselves unless for a very special reason. even people who take drugs, i guess (since i never try before) they want to escape from reality or just for curiosity sake. to them, their benefits are escape from pain or satisfying their curiosity. that, is the benefit they derived from it.

because humans are logical beings, we make decisions that we deemed as the best for us. however, what we think is best for us may not be that way as others see it. back to the example, person A takes drugs because he wants to escape from reality and the pain, but person B might not see it that way. he might see going for counselling to be a better option.

this is a small example. bigger, more common examples would be abortion, euthanasia...etc. i am not going to talk about that now in this post. this is not the point of it anyway.

sometimes we see people doing things as wrong, whether it is very obvious or not, and sometimes we slammed the people straight in their faces. scold them, criticize them, whatever. or maybe we didn't do this ourselves. but people do this to us. i am excluding your parents and your teachers punishing you because you are naughty, ok? lol.

and when that happens, sometimes we tend to or actually shout back, or get shouted back, 'what do you know?' or 'don't talk about things you cannot even begin to understand!' when people threw this words at us, or when we throw it out at others, what is the emotion we are feeling? i can say, almost 100%, it is anger.

for simplicity sake, we assume we are the one shouting at others. so, we feel angry. why? because there is this joker, who didn't even understand our pain, didn't even understand our situation, didn't even understand a single thing, came and condemned us. this person, who did not even go through the pain himself, actually scolded us. he who did not know anything has no right to say anything. that is what i always thought. really.

but why? that is in contradiction with the very first paragraph of this post right? the reason i said that is because the first thing people do is to condemn. maybe people are like that. maybe we ourselves are like that. how many of us, before we say something, even bother to understand the person right in front of us?

the fact that a person is smiling happily doesn't mean he has no troubles. people don't usually wear their feelings on their faces. there is no need to tell the world you are in trouble. people are not interested. we wear a mask we called 'smiles'. naturally, as if we are born with that talent, we can switch to that mask whenever we are with people. we are so gifted at that we don't really consciously tell ourselves to keep the mask on. it is as easy as breathing, as walking, as eating.

so, when we see the person standing in front of us, do we understand him/her? how much do we know about him? when we condemn, or scold, or criticize, why do we do that? yes we know he might be wrong, from our perspective. so? why do we condemn? is it because we care for the person in front and want him to turn from his ways? or is it because of that self-righteousness inside of us that we allow ourselves to be the judge over him?

if it is the latter, i guess it would be better for us to shut up. because we accomplish nothing. nothing at all. so what if we declare judgement on the others, when we are not even supposed to do that in the first place? does it help? no.

if it is the former, that we want to help, then maybe, or we should, get the situation right first. yes, he may be wrong. but how do you feel if someone who don't know a thing come and tell you what to do? you wouldn't like it, and you would reject it. i know i would. but if you show you care, you show that you want to help, and instead of condemning him, you gently tell him what is wrong, or by practical efforts show that you really want to help, then, wouldn't it be a much better choice to make? wouldn't the result have a higher chance of turning out to be more positive?

different people have different capacity of stress and pain, sorrow and despair. maybe the person who suffered, he had already suffered more than you can ever bear. maybe he suffered a pain greater than you imagined, such that if it were you who were the one going through it, you might already have long been gone, or made a much worse choice.

because we have not gone through it, we have no way to understand the person in front of us. but also, like the man said, it is because we have not gone through it, that we can see things objectively, that we can encourage, that we can help. because we still have that hope, because we still have that energy to move. because we can, and able to pull the person up to a place where there is light. of course, a person who went through the same pain and came out of it would be a much better person to help.

the above 2 paragraphs seems like a contradiction right? i guess i will explain it later.

all that i said just now, they were of course somehow extreme. we don't usually meet people who despair. but we do meet people who are in pain most of the time, whether we are aware or not. but it comes down to the mentality of us when we face others.

i will now explain the contradiction. if we don't have a mentality of wanting to help, then we should shut up. like i say, we might not take the pain if it were us. so instead of condemning, it would be better for us to walk away.

if we want to sincerely help, then, we would have to make use of the hope and strength we have to pull the person up to where there is light. of course, give the person the right hope, not the wrong kind of hope. i made a post about that on the blog post 'hope is cruel'. go see that if you want to.

we understand nothing. and from there, depending on your mentality, for the same situation, we could greatly affect people in 2 very different ways. if one day, i am asked, 'what do you know?', i hope i can come up with a reply as beautiful as the one made by that man who has the love for the woman.

'you are cruel. you gave her a hope that she could never reach. she would have been fine the way she was. but you came and gave her hope. if she never saw hope, she would have never known what is despair either.'

the above conversation, does it sound familiar to all of you visual novels fans (i am referring to fans who read VNs for their story and not for hentai only. for more details about VNs, go to my main site, games section)? if you do play VNs you would most likely come across this line.

i came across that few lines of conversation roughly 2 years ago when i was playing the game, and i could not get it out of my head even after so long. of course, i did not replicate word for word that conversation, since i depended on my memory from 2 years ago. regardless, the most important thing is that the main idea is still the same.

ok. so. what happened? this girl was suffering from many things since she was a kid, all the way till she grew up. a boy, without knowing fully her situation, gave her a hope that she could be free from her suffering. the girl had not held on to any hope, until that boy came and gave it to her. like the above said, it was a hope that she could never reach.

moral of the story? am i moving on to the moral of the story too fast? lolx. ok maybe i should say something more.

hope is cruel. this is the topic of my post. everyone knows, that we need hope to survive. he who has no hope has no purpose. he who has no hope cannot live life fully. we see people down and we give them hope. we see people struggle and we give them hope. correct? most of us do. but before we give them hope, maybe we ought to think a little bit more.

many people give others hope, even though they knew or maybe they knew not for certain that the hope can never come true, no matter how much he try, no matter how much he hope. for example, you tell a cancer patient that he would get better and recover. you tell a person whose beloved will wake up from a coma. maybe something near to us, you tell a person everything will be all right when you know it is not. familiar? very. i am sure most of you do that.

to give people hope knowing full well they cannot get it is not only cruel, it is downright irresponsible. you may think you do a good deed by giving people hope. you may think you helped him or her by giving her hope. but if you give a person an anticipation of something that will take more than a miracle to come true, then you are just deceiving yourself and the unlucky person. in the end, the one who suffer more would be the person you had encouraged.

or maybe, you give a person a hope that may be achieved through a lot of effort. but the thing is, you give him or her hope, and then you leave her alone. you did not help. all you did is to talk nice. if you give a person hope and leave him or her to struggle for her own, what is the use? you would be making him suffer more. the process may even backfire.

what does that makes us? hypocrites. again. i seemed to always use this word in my posts. i guess it must have become my favorite word. yes. talk and no action. talk without sparing a thought for others. talk and forget. we don't think of the consequences. he is down. we must encourage him. she is in despair. we must give her hope. so? what is the point if they had a hope they can never achieve? we cannot just talk, we must also pull them up. give them a reasonable hope. you don't tell a 4th stage cancer patient he will live on for a few more years. you don't tell the wife of a man who became a vegetable that he will wake up.

of course, i admit hope is neccessary for life. without hope there is no life. but what i want to say is, if you want to give people hope, give them the right kind of hope. a hope which can be attained. a hope which could drive them to move on, not to drive them into further despair. extreme example: you convinced the wife of a man in a coma that he will surely wake up. she believes you. the next day, he died. tell me, what would the wife feel? sad before you gave her hope. sadder after you gave it to her.

moral of the story? i think i got the moral and the main story mixed together in one lump. regardless, there is one hope we can always trust. that is Jesus Christ our Lord. because to Him, impossible is nothing (my favorite addidas phrase!). He will not give you the wrong kind of hope, and what He said, will happen, because He don't lie. Because He is not a hypocrite.

remember, hope is cruel, and the person who give the hope is a cruel and downright irresponsible hypocrite if he do not give the right kind of hope and drive people further down into despair. giving hope is not neccessary doing a good deed, giving the right kind of hope is. also, when you give people hope, it is for their sake, not for your own sake of 'oh i did a good deed today!' mentality.