A message?
hsiang January 15th, 2010
Is someone trying to send me a message? Since my last post quite a few Christianity-related things have popped up around me.
Perhaps it’s just a heightened state of awareness and it’s purely my consciousness picking up things which are near the front of my mind these days. But then again, it’s just weird.
It started out with the book I was reading – Gandhi’s autobiography. Now I’ve been reading that book since mid-2009, and as I’m not a slow reader, it’s just purely that I wasn’t that interested enough to sit down and read. But about a week ago, the text suddenly jumped up at me as Gandhi started exploring his own faith, questioning Christianity and spoke of his own beliefs in God. What astute timing… coincidence 1? Maybe.
Coincidence 2 – Last Thursday, my first day back at work, there was a booth at Silks where colleagues were promoting a series of lunchtime talks called “Christianity Explored”. Title is self-explanatory. I was interested in attending, but with so much work it would have been very difficult to step away at lunchtime. Plus I feel like this journey for me, at least at the start, will be a fairly individualist and personal, engaging only close and trusted friends.
Then there was that article about Tiger Woods’ faith. According to the journalist, Woods is a Buddhist. But due to his recent transgressions, it was suggested that conversion to Christianity could offer Woods guidance, forgiveness and redemption. True that in Buddhism there isn’t the One Being to say “I forgive you”. Of course it’s not the same in Buddhism. It’s not about sin. It’s about recognising the cause of suffering and addressing that cause.
It’s most interesting because I don’t think I really understand the concept of Sin. Maybe in layman terms, but not to the extent the Bible teaches it.
And most recently was just last night when Reine and I engaged into a conversation about the history of Christianity, Islam and Jewism. We wiki’d quite a few pages like “Bible“, “textual criticism“, “Malaysian Chinese religion” (which turned out to be quite an amusing read!), “Chinese deities“, “Chinese gods“…
I felt like we were engaged in a proper conversation. It made me feel good to be teaching and educating her! I don’t want to be her lecturer, but her mentor – be someone to help guide her through life and grow as an individual and as my partner.
Back to the original purpose of this post, I don’t know what it is but I’m so curious these days. I want to learn and to know more! Not just about Christianity, but about other religions. I want to know what I believe.