About Christianity

'abortion is wrong, immoral and absolutely forbidden in christianity.'

this is what many of you say. you can quote me a whole list of Bible verses, and come up with all the theories, to prove what you are saying is correct. oh well, this is not the point of today's post. actually, i do not think abortion is forbidden. but that, is also not the point. this is an endless debate. i am not going to change your opinion, and i am not going to tell you why i think abortion is not wrong. everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

at the end of the day, we just have to have an answer to God.

those against abortion will come up with phrases like murder, the fetus is a life...etc. actually, i want to say, for a woman who is pregnant, there is no need for you to tell her all these. i am not pregnant, and so i cannot say exactly what is it like. but i think, all mothers, all pregnant women would know what it means to abort a child.

so, when a woman aborts her baby, there is a reason. standard debate points in favor of abortion would be: rape victims, babies with disabilities, incest victims...etc. the list goes on. again, i am not going to argue whether it is wrong or not to abort a child.

what actually made me so pissed off is, the people whom i see who are strongly against abortion, they had no idea what they are actually saying. or maybe let me rephrase, they give no thought to the people they condemn, or criticize for abortion.

people abort babies for different reasons, and some of them are listed above. as we all know, abortion is a surgical process (i won't describe it here), and after which the body of the woman is damaged, slightly. in fact, it is a painful procedure. no woman would want to abort her baby happily, as far as i know.

'even if the baby is disabled, he is still a life.' 'even if the baby is the result of rape, you have to let her be born, because it would be wrong to abort it.'

for many of the people who say things like this, i always feel they are hypocrites. if you are one of them, i don't really care what you think. you can say your opinion in the comments section, but if you flame me or give non-constructive posts, i will just delete it away. to hell with free speech.

why do i say people like these are hypocrites? unless you experienced the same or similar situations like these people who want to take away their babies, you have no right to say such things. i help took care of my baby sister, and watched her grow up. i know how difficult it is to bring up one healthy baby. what if, the baby is retarded? or an unwanted baby? won't the mother be sad? won't the child suffer?

what do i want to say? people often throw laws at the people, without showing the tiniest bit of compassion and understanding. just because it is law (actually we don't even know if it is forbidden), people have to obey them, regardless of their suffering? if you say a woman have to give birth to a retarded child, would you help take care of the kid? obviously you won't. because you are not a saint. and because you have your own life to lead. so you only talk and say it is wrong, and leave the results of the birth of the baby to the mother, while you happily convinced yourself you did the right thing. is that it?

it is very easy to talk. i can also talk. in fact i can talk as if i am the holiest person on earth. who doesn't know how to talk? but, behind all our talks, where is the love and compassion expected of us christians? because we think it is law, we throw it out at the others, without even bothering to understand their pain? if that is the case, we would all go to hell. because it is law, we would go down to hell for all our sins. there would be no need for Christ to come.

because we were given compassion, that's why we can live on. but for many of us, we don't give others compassion. yes, maybe you can say compassion cannot make the baby healthy. compassion cannot reverse the time of conception. but, compassion can explore new ways to help the people. if at that time, Christ did not have compassion on us, He would not have offered to die for us. He could have just sent us all straight to hell. because of His compassion, a new way which was not available to us was opened. and He acted as a bridge between us and God.

when we throw out the laws at people, are we behaving like christians? 'christians should not abort babies.' we throw out a supposedly still debatable christian law, and talk like a christian. but do we act like one? do we speak as one who condemn, or as one who loves and is compassionate? Christ doesn't just talk about how He loves us. He proved it by His actions. similarly, we can talk all we want. but are we going to prove it?

if one day, you who condemn abortion, is raped or discovered your child is retarded or disabled (which for both cases i sincerely hope you don't meet this kind of situation), what are you going to do? throw yourself this 'chrisitan law'? or if others throw this law at you without showing the tinest bit of compassion, or a ton full of fake love, would you be angry and hurt?

in our attempt to keep all laws, do we forget the most important thing of all? love and compassion. in our bid to follow all these rules and regulations, have we become cold-hearted people who spare no thoughts for others? have we become, a worse hypocrite than what we usually are?

before i forget, like you, i am also one of the hypocrites. an insincere person who only knows how to talk. like what i always do on this blog. so if you are going to say what a hypocrite i am, there will be no need to do so. i understand it perfectly well myself. we are all just wallowing in that puddle of insincerity. the difference between us is, how deep are we sinking?

'shiki, i have never felt myself smiling. i never smile because i want to smile, and i don't know the reason and the value of a smile. i really don't know what a smile is, because i have never felt happy.'

the above more or less sums up the emotional state of a person called kurogiri satuki.

i have an online friend who is a non-christian. and when i asked her why she did not want to be a christian, she told me the christians she met were all backstabbers and hypocrites. and none of the christians she knew acted like how a christian should act. and if christians did not act according to their own rules, why should she become a christian?

isn't it sad? that the christians she met are all like that. not only her, many of the people are like that too. as christians, we sometimes act worse than a person without a God. it is as if christians is just a group of people trying their luck to get into heaven.

like satuki, he could not smile because he never experienced happiness. if one never felt happy before, it would be then logical that one would never smile.

just like my friend, who never experienced a kind act from a christian before. what she did not experience, she could not know. and what she could not understand, she could not believe. this is not a story. this is a fact of life.

we see some kids who grow up in an abusive home turned out violent themselves. not that they can help it. but if they were never shown compassion, how then could they give out mercy to others?

as christians, most of the time we tried to spread the Gospel by going into all the theories and the preaching. but we failed to consider that, maybe before we do that, we should set an example. what they did not experience, they could not know, and therefore could not understand.

if you preach and teach all the theories, they would still not understand. they would not understand why a God who tell us to love would have followers who backstab each other. they would not know why believers of a faith based on love would behave worse than godless people.

if we were to set an example in our lives, people would be able to see. they would see and want to know why we are like that. christians are always taken as a reference point. maybe you would have heard things like, 'what? you are a christian and yet you scold vulgarities?' 'you are a christian yet you are so immoral?' nobody say things like 'you are a believer of xxx and yet you utter profanity?' or 'did religion xxx teach you to do these kind of bad things?'

no. nobody makes a reference to other religions when people do bad things. they ALWAYS link it to christianity. it did not matter if a person from religion xxx do all kinds of stuffs. but it ALWAYS shows up when a christian do all the kind of wrong things.

then, we are observed by other people. to preach to them about love, we have to show them what is love. to teach them about grace, we have to show them what is the meaning of grace. to let them understand salvation, we should not be too busy to shed each other's blood.

isn't it very sad, that through the things we do, we are deterring others from wanting to know more about our faith. the things we do, not only directly harm the people, it also indirectly lowered the chances of others from being saved.

usually becoming a christian is a step by step basis. if we cannot even show them the most basic and foundations of being a christian, then, how can they even be a christian?

because he never experienced happiness, satuki could not smile. and because non-believers never saw love from christians, then how could they believe in the God of love?

my friend told me once, 'besides iraq, the office is the world's second war zone.' in a way he makes sense. the office, is a very unhealthy place. there are all kinds of people inside. people love to play office politics, backstab each other and do all sorts of nonsense. i started working since i was 17, and had been to quite a few places to work. hahax i always jump from job to job. i have worked in a bar, as a sales-person, as a pilot assistant, as an office worker doing finance and then shifted to marketing, as a tuition teacher... etc.

the office is really one place of a war zone. maybe you would think i am naive, maybe you would think i have not enough experiences. but i think, everybody are working to earn some money. at the end of the day, we just want the money. or it is the case for me. why is there a need to play politics inside the workplace? is there a need to backstab each other?

of course, i have seen people blatantly cursing and swearing behind your back and can smile in front of you. hypocrites. many are like that. maybe i am like that too. there are others who can put arrows behind your back and be a friend to you in front. there are many nonsense inside.

sometimes, to be a good christian inside an office requires really a lot of effort. maybe, or definately, we would need to pray for God to give us strength and wisdom to survive inside in the most Christ-like manner we could. sometimes i would also really like to put a knife behind people's back. but i know, one day who i am accountable to. one day i would have to give an account of my life. not that i am holy. you could say i am afraid of punishments. but then, who knows? one day i might lose control of myself. am i emo-ing today? i hope not.

i remembered i once told a friend who could not get along with others because they had some biasness against her. she was very upset about it. i told her, that that may be a way for her to show her christian faith, a way to display christianity. be kind to others. who knows? it may be God who put you there, so you could show to others how a christian would act. she said she was encouraged by me.

when i was doing my own stuffs thinking about the office matters, suddenly that memory of me and my friend who was upset appeared. as if The Holy Spirit is telling me to remember what i was saying. that words i encouraged my friend with, now came back to me. maybe, i should show my christian way of life. in a world of sin, the christian faith would shine brighter.

sometimes i really feel like a hypocrite, in a different manner from those (i really want to use a swear word here) people in the office. i always do not do what i preach. hahax if you noticed, i kept using the word 'hypocrites' recently in my post. you know, for some reason, i felt like i suddenly could see people in a way i never saw before.

suddenly, i begin to see what hypocrisy people had. it was like i had a revelation and an insight to people's actions. maybe this insight was given to me so i would not be like them, and help people understand their own situation, not to be a hypocrite. like what i am doing now, writing to say what kind of things people do. so if you are one of the hypocrites, please change it. one day, we have to explain what we did with our lives. i know i don't want to fail.

for now, i am totally ignoring some of the people in the office, and do not talk to them unless absolutely neccessary. but even so, it did not make me less of a target board for arrows. maybe my forehead had the 2 words 'shoot me'. not that they did not shoot other people.

but if you happen to be like me, keep one thing in mind. that is your goal. your goal is to work and earn money. just keep that in mind. like going to heaven is your goal, do not let other things distract you. with that goal in mind, things become much easier. or maybe, i have not suffered the worst yet. always remember why you go to work, and not let other things distract you. most importantly, do not join those self-important hypocrites.

am i flaming my colleagues?