About Christianity

when i was still a kid and was still very influenced by the others and taken easily by what i saw, as well as taking things at surface value, my father asked me a question.

he asked, 'if a father was a thief, and one day he realized his son became a thief too, would the father have any right to scold/punish the son?'

at that time i said, 'no'. the reason was simple. if a man did such a thing, he had no right to say others. but my father told me it was not the case. i cannot remember exactly what he said, word for word. but i can still remember the meaning of the words behind it. so let me rephrase it in my own way.

if a man committed a crime, he might have failed at being a law-abiding citizen. but if he did not correct his son who did the same things as him, then not only had he failed as a good citizen, but failed as a father.

you see, when he corrected the son, he was not standing on the grounds of a citizen, but as a father. it was therefore his duty to correct him.

somehow, it seems like this gives me a reason not to do what i preach.

how many times have people accused you of not doing what you preach? a lot of times? a few times? for me, i cannot remember, but i know it was not a lot. most of the time, i admitted it myself. well afterall i know myself best.

among all the blog posts i have made and all the suggestions as well as the 'to-do-list' i have put up, i myself probably did less than 10% of them. am i supposed to be ashamed? probably. did i lose the right to continue this blog? definitely not.

reason number 1: this blog is mine. i post what i like.
reason number 2: me not doing what i preach does not mean what i preach is false. i mean if i ask you to eat fruits but i myself don't do it, does that mean fruits are bad for health? of course not.

what do i want to say? i only want to say although i may not do what i preach, you can still see what i am writing and see and pray for yourself whether what i am saying is true. i am not forcing my ideas on you, neither am i saying it is definitely right. i stand ready for correction.

but i have to say that today i made this post not because someone accused me of being a hypocrite. i just felt like making it. oh well... maybe it is just my conscience or the Holy Spirit telling me that i should wake up and start doing what i know.

you know sometimes we made a mistake in life, and when we see others making the same mistake we were told that we did not have the right to talk about another person when we ourselves had done it, or sometimes we told that to ourselves or others. in that case, what would you do?

from here i take it as that you knew that you were wrong in the past when you made that mistake and your concern now is for the person in front of you, making the very same mistake. i am not referring to those hypocrites who judges others while not knowing they were doing the same thing.

i think, if you care for the person, you should say it and correct him. because you are correcting him as a father/friend/teacher...etc and not on the grounds of a stranger on the streets. maybe we would get scolded. but having made the same mistake yourself, would you want to see the person you care for suffer the same consequences as you?

we cannot deceive ourselves and think nothing bad would happen. as long as one plays with fire, he is going to burn himself. we cannot hope that one day he will be able to control fire freely like some anime/manga character. the only way to stop him from being burnt is to stop before he is burnt.

no matter what the reason, if it is genuine care and concern, and love for a person, go forth and correct the person. precisely because you have made the same mistake and suffered the consequences, there is nobody better than you to correct him.

i state again, your mentality must be that of a person who wishes for the best of another person, and not that of a self-righteous hypocrite who only knows how to judge others.

'sadness is not just living in misery. it is living in misery, yet mistaking it for happiness.' this is a line from one of my favorite stories, describing the life of one tragic character. (i read the story 2 years ago, so i cannot remember word for word. but this is basically what it said.) this is also one line i could not forget from all the stories i read.

in a way, is it not true? living in misery, yet mistaking it for happiness. you may think, this is just stupid. who would not know they are living in misery and still think it is a happy life? i think, almost the whole world think that way.

today, i went to a performance in which my friend invited me to. it was a dance performance and she was dancing. (of course i have to pay for the tickets. lolx.) anyway, one of the items featured an old man carrying a bird cage. it depicted one of the neighborhood scenes where the old men love to carry their bird cage (with a pet bird inside, of course) and walk around.

i thought of the birds inside the cage. many people like to keep birds as pets, and closing them in such a small cage, without partners, all alone, when they should be in a group flying in the open sky. sad, is it not? sometimes birds do try to escape. i have seen it before. only under extreme luck could they do it. living in misery.

what about us? humans. we live in a cage. and we don't try to escape, even when there is an escape route right in front of us. why? because the cage is too comfortable. we had come to think that living in the cage is happiness. let me explain. of course, since this is a christian blog the rest of the article follows with christian ideas.

we are living in a world of sin, trapped and unable to escape with our own strength. like the bird in the cage, we can never escape, even if we have extreme luck. but there is a way we can go. all we need is to ask Lord Jesus, who died for us, to open the door of the cage. most people do not do that. either they do not know there is a help they can hold on to, or they refuse.

to those who refuse, i think i can explain why, using the caged bird as an analogy. perhaps you have seen before caged birds who escaped die soon after. why? they had no strength, they lost the ability to survive outside. they could not run from predators. they could not find food on their own. their wings were too weak to carry them.

the same for us. after living in a world of sin for so long, we could not have the love, patience, faith, hope etc that is required of us to fly (be a person whose life is pleasing to God). that is why we needed training. training comes in the form of obeying a set of rules, trials, relying on God etc. saying it is easy, but as we all know, it is not as simple as it is said. it is hard. very hard. so people have the tendency to go back to the cage, even for a while.

the cage, which is this world of sin, has a lot to offer us which we can enjoy. life's pleasures. sex, drugs, games, activities...any one of it gives us more pleasure than to be a 'holy person' going through suffering. afterall a 'holy person' cannot have sex with any person he/she likes, cannot be addicted to anything, have to always put God as first priority, cannot take revenge and all the hard stuffs. the life in the cage is much better, at least that is what many of us think. christians go back to the cage sometimes, sinning deliberately despite knowing it is wrong. i do that too. and i have no idea how i am going to explain my life and my actions after i die.

and this, the above, is an example of humans, of us, living in a cage, and mistaking it for happiness.

why is it misery? life have problems, be it the most condemned criminal or the 'holiest saint' on earth. but the way of the world makes it worse. for example, if 2 people quarrel, it is the usual tendency to let the quarrel escalate to a very agitated state. but as christians, we are told to be patient, to love each other (which does not equate to you closing one eye to the other party's sins). when we have problems, we rely on other people instead of God, who sometimes gives us wrong advice, betray us, or make our life worse. God never makes mistakes, never betray us, and the trials He gives are meant to build us up.

is it not misery to continue living in this world of sin and engaging in its sinful activities? the wages of sin is death. yet when we are sinning, we actually think it is pleasurable. we make jokes at others, get addicted to various things etc. living in a world of misery and mistaking it for happiness. what could be sadder than that? are we any different from the story's character?

our difference from the birds, is that unlike them, we are born into this cage, not caught into it. but also unlike them, we have a help that we can hold on to. if we continue to stay in this cage, we will one day regret it. when we die, we either go to heaven or go to hell. i said many times, you won't want to go to hell.

if we can take the effort, the faith, the hope to step out of our cage, then we can realize how big is the sky. then we can realize how pathetic this cage is. we can not only see, but experience for ourselves, the new life outside the cage. until then, step out of this cage, let the Lord train you and prepare you, and don't go back to the cage, deliberately. we all sin, but don't do that deliberately. i know it is easy to talk. but we have help. i am trying not to keep on going back too. i hope you can do better than me.

and if you are guessing which story did that line in the first paragraph came from, it is from Tsukihime. which character was it referring to? read the story on your own. it is a nice read.