BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Thursday, October 29, 2009


What i'm about to write is something i'm still wrapping my head around. if it's offensive, or factually erronneous, or full of holes, engage me on it.

*

a lot of christians keep a close eye on israel and the israel situation. because of the origins of our faith, it's not only natural but almost intuitive to do so. i also know a lot of christians who are very pro-israel. my own pastors are leading the line on this, so again, i think this position is fairly mainstream.

but there are things about israel - and christians' unequivocal support of them - that bug me. i guess at the heart of what i'm struggling to understand is this: is the israel of today the same israel as that of that of the old testament? or perhaps i could finetune the question a little.

is national israel today the same israel as that of the old testament.

one more finetune.

is national israel today the same "israel" as that of the old testament.

i can understand it if christians are looking at an old testamental israel with hopes of the endtimes. i can understand it if christians bless an old testamental israel because God said that whoever curses them will be cursed. it's not that i don't get it. but what israel are we fixated on today?

the old testamental israel was an israel of a testament. they were an israel of a promise. this present day national israel does not look like that israel. when i read the papers, it hurts to see that the national israel of today's trust rests not in their God YHWH, but in a nuclear stockpile and an allyship with the united states. what is so "israel" about this israel?

i'm a chinese christian. i know nuts about what it means to be semitic. but i know that israel's finest moments have always been when the odds were stacked against them and they trusted God to deliver them. sometimes, by sheer miracle (the parting of the sea), sometimes by sheer absurdity (jericho's walls), and even many times by military strength (david's many conquests). but the God of the old testament also did say that it is not by might nor by power but by the Spirit, and this is the same God who wouldn't let David build his temple because of the blood he shed.

as a christian, i wish i had a testamental israel to look towards for the hope of escathology. but no such israel seems to exist. the existing israel's trust is not in God - chosen people of God that they supposedly are. they protect themselves like how north korea and pakistan protect themselves. what's so special about an israel that looks like that. maybe it's also apt to ask what's so special about any christian nation that protects itself like that. nothing. nationalist militaristic nations are, if i may adapt the yiddish term, goyische, and i have no intention to fixate on them.

national israel today is a goyische israel.

why is the christian church so fixated about a goyische national israel?

i'm not. i'm not even impressed.

nothing about the middle east today, and its conflicts, inspires me to love and revere this same YHWH more. as a bypassing observer of the mainstream press, the nation we learned to love in the old testament today bears for me an embarrasing testimony to the rest of the world.

just more of the same weapons, only in different hands. really, what's so special about it?

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Genusfrog [ 3:10 pm ] | 0 comments

Thursday, October 23, 2008
VOTE PRO-LIFE

Go ahead. vote for your pro-life president. or go ahead. go vote for your anti-gay marriage president. as long as you know that you can't legislate morality, and the only thing you'll effectively be changing is the way people behave when the authorities happen to be looking.

you're not really getting any holier.

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Genusfrog [ 9:50 am ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
ON PARTICIPATING IN HISTORY

Maybe i've just witnessed history in the making. history, i guess, is the kind of thing you don't know you're participating in until it's over. but it felt like history ... in the making.

it felt like one day, i could tell my kids that i was in that very kelana jaya stadium when anwar ibrahim announced he was ready to take over the government. maybe one day, if "916" becomes something of a landmark, people will look at that 20,000 strong meeting and say that it all started happening again there. i could tell my kids that i was in that crowd, waving the malaysia flag whenever i heard something i agreed, clapping when i heard something worth clapping for, and keeing quiet either when nothing moved me or when something moved me deeply.

i don't know if 916 will be fondly remembered, like the berlin wall or march 8, or if it will become another piece of recyclable in the trashbin of miscellaneous history. in that sense, attending rallies for story-telling value is a bit like betting on blackjack.

i'm glad i wasn't just there for story-telling value. and i never play blackjack.

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Genusfrog [ 2:52 pm ] | 1 comments

Tuesday, July 29, 2008
TWO-FINGERED SALUTE


Is that political blogger turned parliamentarian Jeff Ooi giving Malaysia the two-fingered salute from his hospital bed?

Maybe he doesn't know that his palm is supposed to face out.

Maybe he wants to show us his bandage as well as give the victory sign.

Or maybe he just wants to be a rock n roll star, like Liam Gallagher walking into a group of photographers. Yeah, maybe that's it.



Rock on Jeff.

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Genusfrog [ 3:08 pm ] | 1 comments

Friday, May 23, 2008
ON ABSOLUTE VALUES AND MY NEW MOST DISLIKED POLITICIAN

Have you read the one where mukhriz mahathir takes a swipe at zaid ibrahim for "realising the opposition's goals" in his fight for more judicial fairness? this mukhriz really pisses me off.

mukhriz mahathir - just because there are BN politicians out there taking the high road doesn't mean that they are serving pakatan rakyat. if your values aren't compatible with that of zaid ibrahim's - or the people's - that doesn't mean that zaid is working for the enemy. it just means that you are irrelevant. and out of sync with the heartbeat of the rakyat.

do not confuse absolute values with party agendas. justice. fairness. the only reason why pakatan rakyat look like they monopolise these values is because BN people like you have no interest in them.

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Genusfrog [ 10:19 am ] | 0 comments

Monday, March 17, 2008
ON PERSPECTIVE AND THE ELECTION

On the morning after the elections, i woke up to the thought that abdullah might have to step down as prime minister. but a few conversations and a lot of nonsensical press later and i'm retrieving that thought. put differently, if mukhriz mahathir is on one end of the spectrum, i'm not there with him.

i want my leaders to take responsibility for their failures as much as the next guy. but what world do we live in where winning an election by 62% is considered a failure? are we so accustomed to landslides that our perspectives have been seared? are we going to judge abdullah by the autocratic standards of the past or get used to the actual standards of real democracies? on the morning after the election, i was reminded that most governments would be happy with 50.1%. it's a very sobering thing to hear.

take australia for example. kevin rudd won the last election with an 8-seat majority in a parliament that sits 150. that's like a 12-seat majority in malaysia's parliament. they're calling that a big win. bn have 58 seats more than the opposition. they're calling for the prime minister's head. i'm not an abdullah supporter but if he needs to resign, it's for all the promises he never tried to keep. not for election results. in as much as one is related to the other, when it comes down to apportionment of blame, there's still a big difference between the two. he failed the people but he still didn't lose the election.

and while i'm on this quasi political rant of sorts, can i just say that i'm tired of reading bn leaders say things like "we need to sit down and see what went wrong". for crying out loud. you are what went wrong! the only post-mortem you need to conduct is the one on why you've been a jerk for at least the last four years.

but i digress. yes, i was talking about perspective. bn leaders need to get some perspective and stop trying to find scapegoats in their post-mortems. and abdullah's detractors need to get some perspective and stop knee-jerking just because they didn't get another landslide. and if we want to go down the road of great democracies, then maybe mukhriz mahathir should shut up and wake up to a post-8 march malaysia. because our country is different now. you got your simple majority. learn to be happy with it.

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Genusfrog [ 11:37 am ] | 0 comments

Sunday, March 09, 2008
ON PATRIOTIC SONGS AND THE ELECTION

Inilah barisan kita
Yang ikhlas berjuang
Siap sedia berkorban
Untuk ibu pertiwi

Sebelum kita berjaya
Jangan harap kami pulang
Inilah sumpah pendekar kita
Menuju medan bakti

Andaikanlah kami gugur semua
Taburkan bunga diatas pusara
Kami mohon doa
Malaysia berjaya

Semboyan telah berbunyi
Menuju medan bakti!

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Genusfrog [ 8:00 pm ] | 0 comments

Friday, March 07, 2008
ON ALLEGIANCE AND THE ELECTION

Two recent events, when juxtaposed, made me see this elections differently. the first was the priviledge i had to drop by at a dap ceramah this week. the second was worship in church.

at the ceramah, people rallied around their political leaders, honking their cars as the next headliner arrived and when lim kit siang turned up, about five thousand people were chanting his name. the mc introduced him as a "champion" who'd been "fighting for so long". his sheer presence at the ceramah lent the entire proceedings weight. i heard this morning that last night, ten thousand people gathered at pantai as anwar ibrahim led a predominantly malay crowd to pledge support for malaysian chinese and indians. politics, as you'll know, has never been short of heroes.

but it was on the sunday morning before that that i stood among other christians in church and sang "hosanna, hosanna, hosanna to the highest". and as i sang that, i remembered a time when lots of people shouted those same words. it was on palm sunday.

mats were spread and the jews of jesus' day hailed his entry into jerusalem. though he entered on a lowly donkey, they hailed him for it nonetheless. maybe they missed the point that he was making, because a few days later, this same crowd that shouted "hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest" had changed their worship number to "kill him".

crowds are fickle things.

so when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for? are we just crying because we share a mutual adversary or are we crying because we are lending our voice to the man in front? i worry.

i worry that on the 9th of march, or the 10th, or the 11th, people will lose interest. i worry that once the supposedly new operating system of bn is released, that everyone trudges back into normalcy and accept a life where programs hang and documents disappear. i don't want to be a fairweather lover of malaysia. it's very fashionable now to say you want to stand up for justice and equality. the real test happens on ground zero every day for four years after the 8th of march. i don't want to give anwar ibrahim my hosanna today and then curse him next year. if i give you my hosanna, i really give you my hosanna.

i know we're all excited about tomorrow. but herein lies my personal commitment: to be excited about tomorrow's tomorrow.

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Genusfrog [ 2:33 pm ] | 1 comments

Tuesday, March 04, 2008
ON MAC v PC AND THE ELECTION

There's this hillarious series of mac ads on youtube where the two computers, personified as a couple of guys, have a dialogue that eventually illustrates mac's superiority. in many of the ads, mac seems quite happy to cede some territory to pc. he tells pc that he does spreadsheets well. it's funny. and then, in one of the ads, pc brags about all the things he can do and mac says he can do all the stuff pc just bragged about as well, because now you can run windows on mac. pc, of course, wasn't pleased.

those ads made me think about this election. there are some things we know about macs and pcs. pcs do gaming better. they do spreadsheets better. surfing for torrents is better. and ms dos lets you get your hands nice and dirty. macs do lifestyle things better: compiling photobooks, cutting home movies, recording music and building quick websites.

transpose that to local politics and indulge me in this fascinating parallel. bn are supposed to do stability well. they're supposed to do economy and national security and business well. the opposition are supposed to own the other ground: anti-corruption, human rights, and social justice. when abdullah said four years ago that he was gonna take down corruption, it looked every bit like... the untinkable. populist dominant pc running mac os as well as windows. of course, we know that pc could never do that. as for bn owning the opposition turf? nah.

so will the political mac ever run windows? who's gonna be the one to stand for all that they do best and plunder the other for what they're supposed to do well too? will the bn government stand up for social justice? or will the opposition deliver a solid economic plan?

when abdullah tried the whole anti-corruption thing, we all saw that it wasn't his forte. last week, i stumbled upon this - an opposition party economic plan. i wonder. will we ever find out if it's all hot air?

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Genusfrog [ 4:06 pm ] | 1 comments

Monday, March 03, 2008
ON PRAYER AND THE ELECTION

There are plenty of people who pray for peace, but if praying were enough it would have come to be.
- Jewel, Life uncommon

There's an election rhetoric going around super-spiritual pentecostal type christians that i'm not entirely excited about. i'm gonna tread this one carefully but tread nonetheless i will.

if you're the churchgoing type, can i ask you, have you been hearing a lot of calls to pray for the nation? i have. nothing wrong with that.

they usually go along the lines of "Pray until something happens".

i've also heard those that go on and on and on about "God, expose the wicked", "God, install a righteous government", "God, remove the unrighteous".

i've even heard one that went "Voting is important, but praying is even more important".

now i don't know about you, but too much of this prayer drive thing makes me a bit concerned. why should it? lemme see.

i believe that there's a reality in malaysia about a certain kind of voter. that kind of voter, i believe, is everywhere, and they look something like this: they want to do good. they want to uphold good values. and they dislike white collar immorality as much as the next malaysian. like all malaysians, they also want stability, security, a healthy economy, booming business, and enough peace and racial tolerance just so that life can look normal on any given monday morning. but when someone reduces the voting choice down to voting for righteousness versus voting for stability, this malaysian is more likely going to err on the side of caution and vote for stability. and i repeat, this malaysian is everywhere.

nothing wrong with that.

except that when the church is the one driving the call for righteousness and godly values, when the church believes it's been called to provide the nation's benchmark for morality, the over-emphasis on praying simply allows the aforedescribed malaysians to stay within their comfort zones and just pray. i know you don't mean it that way. but it's easy to hear it that way. it gives people a passport to just pray and do little else.

but to those who say "pray until something happens", i have this to say. pray and make something happen.

to those who say "God, expose the wicked", i have this to say. someone had to flip their camera on before lingam got caught on video. if you really want the wicked exposed, do the exposing.

and to those who say that voting is important but praying is more important, i think i know what you're getting at, but be careful that your priorities don't stumble already apathetic and fearful people into further inaction.

pastors. when you talk about evangelism, you always tell us to do something about it. you never just tell us to pray. how different is it now that we're talking about social justice?

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Genusfrog [ 12:45 pm ] | 0 comments

Friday, February 29, 2008
ON CHINESE FAITH AND THE ELECTION

There's a blogger called "The Malaysian" who recently said this regarding malaysian chinese voters:

"The older among the Chinese electorate may not wish to rock the boat and may be willing to accept ruling party assurances that things will be better next time around. Feeling resentment, anger, disappointment and bitterness is not enough. Translating those emotions into a 'loyalty shift' is the tricky part. And are the Chinese really up to it? Or will they as usual chicken out at the last minute, preferring to keep what little they have rather than 'gamble' on the future?"

when athalia sent me that, i told her it's because of the religion.

chinese traditions and folk religions foster a very one-sided hierarchical relationship between man and deity. the chinese psyche is governed largely by compliance and fear. don't believe me, look at the number of superstitions surrounding events like weddings or chinese new year. you have to do a, b and c, or else, x, y and z.

the end result is an entire community that seems to me to be perpetually paralysed towards change. maybe they afraid of the quasi-spiritual, quasi-confucian authority, and the retribution that either it, or natural order, brings, especially if the change that is called for necessitates that spiritual or confucian authority's demise.

people say that when you talk about preaching the gospel to the chinese, there is a lot of unshackling to do. maybe it's because preaching jesus is preaching a revolution of change. likewise, galvanising chinese towards political reform suffers from the same difficulty - choose the untested opposition and x, y, z. while this in no way links the present opposition to any kind of christianity, it nevertheless highlights the chinese psyche's resistance towards rocking any of its worldview boats.

i think that as long as nobody is patient with this unshackling process, the end result will always be that the chinese mind crawls back into familiar ground and reject change. ironic then, that it is the buddha to whom it is often attributed the saying "everything changes, nothing remains without change".

and so i wonder. what's the point of the chinese living in a democracy if they are fundamentally so afraid of a change in government?

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Genusfrog [ 6:13 pm ] | 0 comments

Thursday, February 28, 2008
ON TARRING ROADS AND THE ELECTION

I was in subang this morning and got stuck in a 20-minute jam. it was around 8 o'clock. now, there are two kinds of jams: jams with reason and jams with no reason. jams with reason are somewhat acceptable - a stalled car, a fallen tree, an accident, a broken traffic light. jams without reason are just mysterious and annoying. but jams with reason, as i discovered this morning, are not always reasonable jams. cos when i finally got to the choke point of the jam, guess what was causing the massive slowdown?

they were tarring the road.

at 8am on a working day, they were tarring the road. aha. elections! right? right.

so i got especially angry, because if you drive anywhere near subang, the roundabout at metropolitan college and the roads around section 12, you know that the roads there are full of massive holes, lumpy patch jobs and rubble on either side. and so, with ten days before national elections, somebody upstairs in the subang municipal council decides that tuesday morning 8am is section 12's slot to court votes.

of course, the first thing i do when i arrive at the office is to find out who the sonofagun incumbent state seat person is at subang. i google up a few websites, check out the electoral roll and home in on the subang jaya echo.

his name is lee hwa beng. that's right. this man in the picture.

don't forget his name - lee hwa beng. he's not standing in subang jaya anymore, he's moving on to kelana jaya after march 8. but i've still got a few choice words for this local representative.

lee hwa beng. your roads shame you. your disastrous flyover shames you. if you think you can buy subang jaya voters with dust, soot and a traffic jam ten days before your day is numbered, then you cheapen the people of subang jaya, and that also shames you. i'm embarrased for you that you have to tar roads now. i drive on your roads almost every day, so i am here to associate your name - lee hwa beng - with bad roads.

may that association last for the next five years. may every mention of lee hwa beng remind people of bad roads.

lee hwa beng = bad roads

lee hwa beng = tar road last minute

lee hwa beng = bad roads

there. that's my community service reminder. like i've always said - i'm not being partisan here. i'm not even telling you what party he represents. because when what a politician really represents is bad roads, he really doesn't need any other banner.

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Genusfrog [ 9:46 am ] | 2 comments

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
ON ROMANCE AND THE ELECTION

Disclaimer: No, despite its title, this post does not contain election/erection jokes.

Quite a long time back, i fancied a girl. and what i did when i fancied her was, i let her know it. quite unequivocally and without much indication of my own terms either. she knew that i liked her. now it was up to her to like or not like me.

can follow right?

one of my friends scolded me. he told me i couldn't court a girl like that. he said, "now she holds all the cards. what do you hold? nothing". and i thought, ya he's right. the ball is entirely in her court. she can do to me as she please. she can try other guys and if they don't fit, she can come back and say ok, i kinda like you. if they fit, she may not even come back. that's bad courtship strategy.

same thing with elections.

if you vote like your vote doesn't need to be courted, the party you vote for will never have to woo you properly. you will never receive flowers on your birthday, a juicy telephonic kiss at night and surprise delivery of breakfast in bed. if chinese people vote for mca as if it was a default setting, the BN coalition would never have to court chinese votes. you always tell your friends this girl or that guy is taking you for granted. and you say "dump them liao!". well, why are you still fetching mca to the mall and waiting in the car for her to buy shoes and handbags? i'm not being partisan here. i'd say the same thing if the roles were reversed.

make the party court you. your vote, like your dignity in romance, can never be put on a standing order.

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Genusfrog [ 9:45 am ] | 1 comments

Tuesday, February 26, 2008
ON REVERSALS AND THE ELECTION

I was thinking this morning while driving, would BN make a good opposition? in the unlikeliest of unlikely near-impossibilities, should BN lose the elections, what kind of opposition would they be? wait. let me put on my 3d glasses first.

their newspapers might not get renewed. maybe in a year's time, we'll all be reading malaysiakini or harakah. but i digress. what would it be like then, for people like najib and ka ting and hishamuddin to be the underdogs with no media coverage, no say in parliament and have lowly dap people condescend on them in the press?

no, i'm serious. i really think that one of the markers of a solid political party is when they can be a good opposition party. a good opposition party requires an entirely different set of attributes: creativity, innovation, resourcefulness, grit and good lawyers. and it's a lot harder too to be a good opposition party. with all the constraints on them in malaysia, you have to be twice as good to get the same number of seats.

so today, i'm thinking, if i asked you if our current opposition was twice as good as the ruling coalition, maybe you wouldn't say yes. but if i asked you if the ruling coalition was twice as bad, you might say yes.

funny. i know. and it's not even politics yet. just language.

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Genusfrog [ 4:30 pm ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, December 12, 2007
OPEN LETTER TO CHELSEA LY NG ON HER ENDORSEMENT OF THE ISA

Local journalist for The Star, Chelsea Ng, wrote on Monday that our judiciary's leaving the dogs and headed for greener pastures. Towards the end of her story, though, she gives her personal thumbs up to the Internal Security Act. Here's an open letter to her.

Dear Chelsea,

I read your comment in Monday's papers, on your sunshine view of our judicial reforms. I'll come right off the bat and say that your story is cringe-worthy, and definitely shocking.

While your calm response to accelerated promotions in the justice system begs a raised brow (and your comment that "we should not be too troubled" because "many thought that both these top two judges were the best choice" begs for a whole lot more before it qualifies as credible commentary), it is your comment on the ISA that is most offensive.

I shall quote you on that. Talking about a former judge who endorsed the ISA, you said:

"How true. It may be a draconian legislation but it is sometimes necessary to bring peace and stability to a country during trying times."

Are these really your comments? Or are you toeing the party line on this? That paragraph, even when taken in context, is not only journalistically flimsy - which is the least of my worries now - it is morally hypocritical and it is on this platform where your story offends Malaysians.

It is shameful for you to be a card-carrying member of democracy, use that democracy to earn a living by expressing your views in the papers, and use that same democracy to endorse an Act that strips the democracy from some of your fellow citizens.

It is shameful for you to write a commentary about the increasing health of judiciary, and in the same story, endorse an Act that imprisons your people with no trial, no phonecall and no prospect of legal process.

It is shameful for you to sit in the comfort of your desk, steady employ and middle-class life and endorse an Act that right now detains Malaysian men and women in 3 square-foot cells with no sanitation, no clothes, no light and the constant threat of beating and rape.

Easy for you to say, Chelsea. It's so easy to endorse injustice when it's your neighbour and not you whose life is being torn down. It's so easy to get behind a word processor and say cushy things like "necessary to bring peace" and assume that peace should come by any means, including violence and injustice. And it's extra, extra embarrasing for a Malaysian to stamp that approval in the papers for the whole country to read.

I am ashamed for you. I am half-hoping that you were just toeing the party line when you wrote this piece because as undignified as it is to say something you don't mean, I sincerely believe it is the lesser indignity when compared to actually endorsing the ISA.

I hope you reply this email because I believe that journalists should be held accountable for their opinions.


with heartfelt regret,
Fergus Ong


You can email Chelsea at Chelsea@thestar.com.my

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Genusfrog [ 11:32 am ] | 0 comments

Monday, March 07, 2005
MARX & CHRIST

Have you ever heard people say that Jesus was the first communist?

people who have said that would no doubt be referring to the time when Jesus spoke with a rich young man who led a pretty upright life. this dude thought he had it all to qualify for the kingdom of heaven until Jesus told him to...

Mark 10:22
...sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

and this guy, disappointed, left the scene knowing he didn't have what it took.

so, sell your posessions. is Jesus a communist? well, that's an inadvertently ironic comment, since communism rejects God and Jesus is God Himself, but if you can look past that one glaring inconsistency, and humour yourself a little, you might start seeing communism under a pretty different light.

yes, in most parts of the "rest of the world" (and by that i speak of the world as opposed to america), communism has had a pretty healthy ground to introduce itself, let itself be known and evaluated by people, and almost, so to speak, given a shot. ok, so if that coats a lot of maple syrup over our histories of communist guerrilla wars, killings in the night, and less than savoury attempts made by the powers that be to get rid of such reds, forgive me. but i dare say that most parts of the rest of the world have had some real and tangible experience with communism. so, is it such a bad thing? if it is, why is this Jesus freak writing so lovingly about it?

when marx wrote the communist manifesto, he was of course reacting to an economic climate distinct to his time. it was the industrial revolution! people were being oppressed in factories while the bourgeoise fat cats fattened themselves to no end. marx predicted that communism was the natural progression of the history of economic power relations. well, no doubt he got that wrong. we're not here to talk about the authority of marxism.

i like the similarities between christ and marx. apart from the fact that one man was God incarnate and the other was a mistaken philosopher (ahahaaa!), both were revolutionaries in their own right. both kickstarted moves in history that affected and forced the rest of the dulled world to wake up and make a stand. but my greatest interest in them is that both men are interested in utopia. marx envisioned a lennon-esque/imagine-esque world (or rightly so, lennon imagined a marxist world) where "there's no heaven, no hell, no countries, no hunger, nothing to greed or die for and no religion too". surely, at some level, this must have appealed to the masses in an era such as marx's. what relevance was the church to them at a time when widespread oppression and exploitation in the workplace ruled the day. did the proletariat have time to even go to church? could they keep the sabbath? was God not there?

well of course God was there. but i sidetrack, i'm sorry. in a different way, Jesus was interested in a utopia, but His utopia was heaven, and He came from there. and apart from the reality of heaven and hell, the rest of lennon's utopia isn't too different from the idea of the biblical heaven (note especially, no more religions). it's again ironic, therefore, that in his pursuit of a so-called heaven on earth, marx took God out and everything stopped happening. it seems that without its opiate, the world - not just the masses - held no future for this mistaken well-meaning philosopher.

i like it that they were rebels. i love it whenever i read about how Jesus used to go into temple courts and turn the tables over and scold people for turning His Father's house into a marketplace. i love it when Jesus repeatedly says to the highpriests and the Romans that He is King of the Jews, even if it meant inching himself closer to the hurt of the cross. marx caled for a similar kind of rebellion, requiring that change can only take place with revolution, overturining the superstructure. it's the kind of wholesale change where all the people at the top get killed off. it's the kind of wiping out that reminds me of Israel in the old testament, and how God used to ask them to kill off everything and everyone of their enemies.

you know, Jesus always tells us to relinquish our will for His. to submit our desires unto Him and let His desires be ours. why does He want this? because He knows better, knows that we don't know better, and in the process of relinquishing our wants to Him, we build a relationship of trust and faith with Him. interestingly, marx called for a similar kind of sacrifice. he called for the people to relinquish their private property and give it up to the state. marx's state is a christlike body that gives generously "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs". what awesomeness! does it mean that i can do what i'm good at - no matter what - and i'll be taken care of, no matter how? wow! that sounds like our ministries when we go to heaven!

they are more similar than we normally think. and as a christian, i am proud to be a marxist. so i don't agree with marx on the point of God but he meant well and his core ideas are definitely closer to the truth than descartes, nietschze, and a host of other modern thinkers. i won't wear my CCCP tshirt to church, but by golly, if you think Nike is selling a Just-do-it worldview that is in any way closer to the heart of our Father, you are dead wrong.

sell your posessions! give to the poor! give up your will and hand it over to a higher body. you will be looked after. you will be free. you will no longer live in the bondage and oppression of the wicked. this is the inevitable progression of our historic timeline! this is the portion of he who goes against the grain of the world and moves headlong towards a brighter future! this is freedom to the slaves! good news to the weary! salvation to the downtrodden!

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Genusfrog [ 3:37 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, February 28, 2005
MARX, KUHN & CHRIST - INTRODUCTION

cheerio.

you might notice that i haven't been posting anything of notable a) christian, b) intelligent value of late. this does not mean that i've turned pagan and/or stupid. i've just been finding it hard to put some of my thoughts into intelligible words. but i've been reading a fair bit and perhaps such input is a more fruitful enterprise than blind and undirected output.

in one of my readings, i came across this beautiful word, a word so beautiful it warrants not merely a slot in my Word of the Day column, but a study/post of it - and its workings - as a proper blog. the word i'm raving about is cognitariat. of course, you can see that it is related to the word proletariat, a word most common in the writings of the first of my two favourite philosophers, Mr. Karl Marx. the initiated will probably already "get" what "cognitariat" is, or rather, who the "cognitariat" are. but i'll leave that for another day, when i'll blog extensively and exclusively on the matter.

for now, let me divert the topic ever so remotely, and talk about the second of my two favourite philosophers, Mr. Thomas S Kuhn. not nearly as well known as Marx (and it is indeed odd for them to be mentioned in relation to one another, for reasons that will soon become obvious), Kuhn philosophised about scientific progress, arguing that scientific knowledge and practice happens within paradigms; and one converts between such paradigms when the old one fails to address mounting problems. his seminal paper, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has shaped not only the way i see science, or even the world, but especially - in some ways - christianity. for that reason, my approach to christianity among other faiths is distinctly Kuhnian. he has, along with Marx, been my philosophic hero.

intriguingly, there is a commonality between the thoughts of these two honourable men. Marx talked extensively about proletarian revolution, and Kuhn, scientific revolution. while each talks about revolution in different ways, both saw revolution as the response required to propel the progress of history into the consequent epoch. likewise, both men also commonly see their respective fields, economy and science, as progressing in a linear direction heading towards inevitable destinations.

of course, as it has to be, they also share what are to me (a christian) glaring flaws. the inadequacies of Marx have been well-documented: if the failure of every communist government is in itself lacking as evidence (and i dare say it is), then at least his work has failed to account for the information explosion - and hence, power explosion - that was to happen only a hundred odd years into the future. but as a christian, this is not my concern. my concern is, of course, with his brushing off of God, calling His creator an opiate that dulls the masses from realising their oppression. quite rightly so, the church at Marx's time may not have been the most enlightening nor happening place to be. but with the benefit of a 21st century hindsight (and a 21st century church), we now bravely know that it is the truth of God's word that opens the eyes of the downtrodden and sets them free (and ultimately free!) from the oppression of factory owners and/or the devil.

Kuhn's problem - which i will not go extensively into, since a) most of us are not familiar yet with Kuhn, b) i wanna deal with Kuhn's problems when i blog about him properly - is that he opens the door remotely ajar to relativism. of course, Kuhn denounces it, but in my effort to apply Kuhn to my christianity (an effort no one told me to pursue), there comes a point where Kuhn ends and Ong (that is, i) takes over.

i have, as you can see, overshot myself. this is only meant to be an introduction to the blogs that are to follow, blogs about my two favourite philosophers, blogs about christianity, marxism and kuhnism (the latter of which is a term i've likely just coined from thin air). if you have never heard me speak about christianity, other faiths and the cruel world, this series of blogs should do the job.

cheers. i look forward to writing them.

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Genusfrog [ 5:18 am ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, December 01, 2004
SCENES FROM THE TAIWAN PARLIAMENT

Seeing as i'm incredibly busy right now, that's one, my last few posts have

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Genusfrog [ 2:25 pm ] | 0 comments