Tag: Bible

Faith as motivator

Faith not fanatic is one of the strongest motivators.

Fanaticism is one-dimensional one-upmanship taking to the max. Not worth paying attention to (that way, it deflated on its own). But faith propels a man beyond himself. Take Cold Mountain for instance. It gives you a chill just to relate to the character (during the Civil War, weather-beaten just to drag himself back home, to love awaiting). Or that which drove a widow with child to drop in a backward tribe to learn their native tongue and ultimately translate the Bible into that tribal language (Elizabeth Elliot).

He is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

We wake up each morning (some of us wake up each evening) counting on the rising of the sun, and neutrons, protons all held together. That gravity still works.

Faith.

We read about the Crusades, the battle of the faiths. The force of beliefs went astray.

While the future pulls , faith pushes.

The challenge is to walk the tight rope between belief and reason. When discussing the Rise of the Rest, we don’t really expect to see our own Gospel of prosperity applied to all.

Tolstoy touched on the conflict between public good vs private interests (while Moscow was burning, the rich and the rest only worried about what was immediately relevant to them).

Public good and personal gratification, when conjoined, makes for a happy society.  When in conflict, hypocrisy. Instead of planning for the future, we kick the can further down the road.

This is why we cannot solve climate problems or other issues on the commons. Politics at its worst got in the way, instead of being a way. We “bowl alone” , close our doors and our eyes. Down the street, it’s someone else’s problem. (Conversely, when the Evangelicals try to play politics, they barely get pass first base even with full-page ad on the NYT).

With no institutional memories (church history was quite skewed) and talent to navigate the modern world, men of faith simply see his strength dissipate, leaving the mike for fanatics whose agenda are too distorted. The Bible wasn’t intended to be a substitute for the IRS tax code.

To decode God‘s instructions, one needs a set of “braille-like” keys, whose main code is faith, besides love ( Him and one’s neighbors). To own up to that takes up a life time.

Major not in your minor. Focus on faith, but realising that it’s not the only motivators. Other people have their own ideas of faith besides their universal and inalienable rights to pursue happiness.

From that common base, we can go ahead beyond gamesmanship. While being dogmatic, we should know that those 9/11 fighters were just as fanatic (and barbaric).

Faith remains important but needs a dose of relevance and verifiable reality, called life.

Though now see through a glass darkly…oneday we may see face to face.

the right screen

Smart phones got computer, TV and phone screens, all in once. The combined screen.

I was sitting in front of a lap top and an attached large screen. For a moment, I looked at one screen while the action took place at the other. To catch on, I  need to follow the cursor to know where the action was.

In life, we have looked in the wrong place for the right thing.

(to make friends while in prison, for instance).

Penn State commissioned JoePa statue in front of Beaver Stadium, just to now debate whether to take it down.

The Christian in Asia a few centuries ago, were told to remove ancestor’s altars, traditionally placed at the center of the home.

The FEDs keeps reducing rates. Should we look there for future directions? Unemployment indicators? Housing and foreclosure reports?

Never have we been tested as during the past 4 years.

Am I looking at the wrong screen?

Prophets have arisen, and more shades of truths have been made available.

Which way is the wind blowing?

Put your money in Macau.

or in Manhattan?

Google Glasses or JcPenney?

Pick your people right. Business model can always be modified as we go along. Often times, it’s on the wrong screen anyway. Keep the statue. Make it a teachable monument. After all, JoePa had always championed scholarship and athletic pursuit hand in hand. Institution for higher learning should at least have intellectual honesty and moral conviction to defend its mantel and mission. Especially when it is now looking at the right screen not smokescreen.

Mobile books

I was waiting for my scooter ride outside Cho Ray Hospital when a peddler approached me. “Want to pick something to read?”. Turned out, she was selling used books, in a box: Cu Chi Tunnel, My Lai Massacre, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Sorrows of War, Understanding Vietnam…

Those subjects are now as old as the war itself. All healed and pealed, just scars.

When I was in high school, I went up the gang-plank to tour the Logos ship.

This ship carried books and Bibles across the ocean to far-away lands (of heathen). Later, to reciprocate, I volunteered one summer aboard the Doulos (Logos 2.0) ship to W  Africa.  I saw the longing for a better life in those dark eyes. The instant bonding of men in different skin colors. And the no-way-out trajectory of Liberia in the mid-80’s.

Mobile books.

But not up-ward mobile lives.

Now, we have e-books and e-learning.

Open U and open source. I wonder how many of us are taking advantage of free access to advance ourselves.

I wonder how many sales the peddler made yesterday outside the hospital?

I wonder how many patients bought and read about Man’s Fate .

I read so I won’t be alone.

I am reading “Love and Garbage”.

And I appreciate your reading this, so you and I are not alone.

Love, death and garbage will always be with us. It’s an unmovable law. The consolation is, we are not alone in this. Want to pick something to read?

Twitter and Twister

The later brought destruction to the Mid_West, but its impact is immediate, albeit regional.

The former more dangerous, simmering and long-tailed.

140 characters are more than enough to assassinate a character, his/her reputation which is built up over a life time.

Be careful.

Social malaise not social media in the wrong hands.

Not enough post, people don’t recognize your brand.

Too much, they are bored and become anesthetized.

We are living in parallel worlds: Twitter‘s and Twister‘s.

Digital and analog.

Both are real, as real as what’s floating and flowing through our heads.

With Twitter, we can edit, and control.

We leave our marks in the world.

140 characters at a time.

( I am at an internet cafe near Tan Son Nhut Airport. A baguette vendor just walked by to take order. Talking about digital and analog!).

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have become part of our digital life. The trinity came on the scene only half a decade ago.

During that time, we have had the housing crisis, and its reverberation.

Nature shed its blood, shakes its fist and shred some fat.

Survival of the fittest (MySpace, Kodak).

I must give it to Levis. During and after the Gold Rush, the unintended consequence was Levis jeans.

Winners and losers, but Levis always wins.

Now, gold diggers and gold traders are wearing them to.

We play the game of Island survival to exercise “forced choices”. Jeans always is a must-pack.

In five years, Facebook and Twitter will still be here.

Twister will come and go.

Still, be careful of both.

Its impact might be long-lasting. More than any of us is now realizing.

Just ask the scribes. They had no idea what they were doing when copying the Bible and later, print them.

A well-placed thought and well-said line becomes a saving line for someone in need and in search of truth, on or off-line. But ill-thought and ungraceful comments stay digitally and eternally.