Dick Lee's "Forbidden City", History and Identity

Inside, there were the rows and rows of red plush chairs and red velvet hangings and there was an exciting subterranean orchestral pit from which the conductor's head and baton protruded and there were box seats where you could lean your elbows on varnished wood and survey the onstage proceedings coolly through your little set of opera glasses. Outside, there were crewcut girls from the Singapore Repertory Theatre singing out,"Get your Forbidden City souvenirs right here!" and "Programmes for S$2!" and "CDs for S$20! Cheaper than HMV!" and then cunningly teasing,"Get a CD, I know you wanna, you know you wanna!". After which NotAFanofKit not only got a CD, but also scored Kit Chan's autograph while FanofKit stayed behind the stage door and giggled.

The musical covered about 50 years of Chinese history through the Hundred Days of Reform of 1898 and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. There were bits about the love of the young concubine Yehenara for the fickle Emperor, the parallel mistaken love/trust of American painter Kate Carl (Leigh McDonald) for/in the conniving British journalist George "Trust me, I'm a journalist" Harrison (Hal Fowler). There was the suggestion that our understanding of current affairs, which later passes off as history, could, in fact, be nothing more than fictitious tales concocted by whoever has control of the mass media. The possible paucity of the storyline and the lack of character development've already been much discussed during the last two runs of Steven Clark/Dick Lee's "Forbidden City: Potrait of an Empress" in Singapore.

On the penultimate night during this third run, the voice of Kit Chan, reprising her role as the younger Empress Dowager Cixi/Yehenara, was beautiful and clear but not quite muscular enough for the stage. Filipino veteran Sheila Francisco's mature Empress Dowager alto was more nicely velvety than Blossom Lam's upsized vibrato on the CD (interestingly enough, Francisco was Lam's understudy for the last run). But the chorus, alas, was muffled and weak. Lack of volume compounded by poor enunciation meant that at times, they were lost to the orchestra and the audience had to rely on the Chinese subtitles to keep them in the loop. Not cool for a work that is through-sung, or mostly anyway. Later, when we saw the ensemble fagging away outside the stage door and then buying packets of fried kway teow from Gluttons Bay around midnight, we knew why.

Dick Lee's chord progressions, apparently, were pleasant and ordinary. But the same leitmotifs were repeated more often than necessary (yes, we know it's meant to be a leitmotif, let's move on!) and some melodic bits sounded like they got themselves recycled from popular Broadway musicals or Dick's older songs. The orchestration with Western and Chinese (erhu, Chinese flute, Chinese gong) instruments was just on the right side of the kitsch line although he appeared to delight in crossing the line for the cheeky Record Keepers (Hossan Leong and Sebestian Tan). The use of minor chords, played loudly, as musical exclamation marks, was unfortunate and clumsy.

The minimalist set, however, was brill: the suggestion of the interior of a train in the opening scene; the use of simple white Chinese screens to great effect to create the impression, variously, of a cold imposing palace hall, a summer palace courtyard of children flying kites and catching butterflies, a burnt brutalised ruin, boxing in, keeping out, delineating the boundaries of the environment. Yay, Francis O'Connor! In addition to the usual use of spotlights, the central character of a scene was made to stand out from his surroundings by the contrast of colours, a vivid imperial yellowness or a rich redness of against a monochromatic background. Nice.

From Francis O' Connor's website

There has been some debate if "Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress" is a true and accurate account of the life of the much-feared Dragon Lady. I must admit that I first heard of her, belatedly, in the musical. Chinese language teachers in Singapore government schools would have inculcated their students with a sense of shame to accompany this sort of confession. An ethnic Chinese unable to speak Chinese?! A yellow-skinned person woolly-minded about the history of the country of his/her forefathers?! The disgrace! Without knowledge of this history, a Chinese person is surely without identity.

So if we order food in Chinese restaurants by pointing at pictures or trying to figure out dodgy English translations or if we rely on people like Peter Hessler (who wrote "River Town" and "Oracle Bones". Sample his work here, here and here) to tell us about contemporary China, or if Chinese hiphop sounds to us as foreign as Franco-pop or Ibiza dance, should the colour of our skin make us apologetic?
Chinese history has no bearing on my life: neither emperors nor eunuchs nor innumerable court intrigues nor effeminate scholars of generations past. To the mainland Chinese, it is obvious I am not one of them. Unlike Cassia, 中国不是我的母国. I do not look back to China as my homeland. Singapore is my *ahem* home, truly, where I grew up and whose accent I bear.

But yet again, my identity is less Singaporean than it is Christian, and my home is less Singapore than it is heaven. And if I should be apologetic, I should be apologetic about this: neither knowing the history of my Father working in human history nor knowing the history of my forefathers, the generations of men and women, regardless of citizenship, race or culture, who've gone before us in faith and obedience, and with whom we will one day share a home for all eternity.

"Shoe As World", Singapore Biennale and Contemporary Installation Art

"Shoe As World: Inability of Different Worlds to Coexist"

The thing about being home, sick, but with energy to spare is that you fiddle around in that heavy-headed twilight zone between (1) acetaminophen-codeine-prednisolone-loratadine drowsiness where both reading and playing musical instruments musically are impossible; and (2) raging high feverishness where there are nightmares about existential problems and irresolvable space-time relativities, and you thus create the monstrosity above.

And while we're at it, why not? In the spirit of Singapore Biennale 2006, an amateur curator's writeup of thatwhichwasaperfectlynormalshoemindingitsownbusiness is this:

A new world within the world of the human is created by the mere choice of the artist: the world of the shoe. A member of the audience, existing in the human world, is tempted to conform to the basis and assumptions of his world by imposing his own values on the shoe world by putting his foot in the shoe (so that he can go to school) and so "stamp out" this other, different, world. In this seemingly simple piece, the artist explores the complex questions of race, religion, politics, the war in the Middle East, the oppressiveness of the idea that wine and cheese go together and the tyranny of the innumerable decimal places of pi. However, this piece has no one meaning and the audience is invited to interpret it any way they want.

Or something.

Or I could have just filled a whole lot of shoes with butter and left them around the top of Bukit Timah hill:
Yu Xiuzhen, "Shoes With Butter" (1996)

but then, likedat, sure kenna corrective work order.

Or I could just have made like a conceptual artist and written a set of instructions describing the work. To be shortlisted for the Turner Prize, however, would require far less work:

• unmade bed? Check.
• holiday video? Check.
• room with faulty on-off switch? Not yet but I can fix that.
  

Now about that bovine and formaldehyde I ordered...

Singapore Biennale (Tanglin Camp)
The real accredited stuff was at the Singapore Biennale. And the wanderup to Tanglin Camp went like this:

first, was P.S. Café at Harding Road for afterwork fortification and for the gorgeous cake display. There was catching up and foccacia and different types of humus and fork-waving discussions about sermons and meltinyourmouth beef tenderloin and nattering and mash and holding aloft mushrooms as big as your palm and then some respectful quiet for the deadly chocolate cake lying stickily in its sticky chocolate sauce.

Then, feeling our way through the pitch-blackness to Tanglin Camp, someone looked down at the pitch-black ground and tried not to see undead people things. And I fought the urge to tap her ghostily on the shoulder just to hear her scream.

Safe under the lights of Tanglin Camp without a pontianak on a bad hair day in sight, we came first to Agathe de Bailliencourt's "Occupation Bleue"

Allegedly illegible scribbles of the word "Belief"

In the Exhibition Short Guide, Roger McDonald says:

Using existing smears and old marks on the walls and floors, she has intervened into this space, layering images and markings.

Right.

De Bailliencourt explains a bit more herself:

Why we look the way we do?
The rationale behind the creative concept of the Singapore Biennale 2006 stems from the strong belief of marrying visual art with street culture. An intervention of art into public spaces, allowing art to be an integral part of everyday life. This non-conformist mode of execution will reflect the omnipresence of art in almost every imaginable place or object and will evoke positive participation and interest from the general public.

Said Scornful Pleb: isn't that generally known as vandalism? If her art really "intervened" into our clean public spaces, the men in blue would have "intervened" with her - a fat rotan on her French butt. Besides, don't you think Banksy, Arofish and even our local The Killer Gerbil and White Dog Bobby deserve far more recognition by actually doing something on public property?

In the next room was Younès Rahmoun's "Ghorfa", supposedly a replica of the artist's meditation room under the stairwell in his Moroccan home.

Beyond formal and spiritual questions, the artist proposes the experience of the work and invites the public into a "recreated" intimate space. In this identical reproduction of his workspace (ghorfa), we may also perceive the care for symmetry that is so present in the Arab arts and sciences. Younès Rahmoun claims this practice, donating his imaginary and exchanging his workspace for a time of encounter with the other.

Scornful Pleb: Cheh. And I got all excited thinking it was aliens, I did. Right. Nothing to see here, move on, move on.


Then there was Charles Juhász-Alvarado's "Escala" (Stopover): a gigantic fooseball table installed in a room.

Under colonisation came Christianity. In vibrantly multi-racial Puerto Rico, Indians and Africans were obliged to practice Catholicism. Ancestral rites were considered pagan and banned; Indians couldn't practice their ritual ball game (similar to football) while Africans were taught to pray to the Spanish saints. These impositions generated survival strategies, which are explored in Juhász-Alvarado's work for the biennale. "Escala" is a site-specific installation consisting of a gigantic table football game. Spectators interact with all the elements. The pieces are abstractions of the Christian saints worshipped by the Africans because their features were similar to those of the Yoruba's. This is how they fooled the Spaniards and maintained their own beliefs.

Juhász-Alvarado often invites his peers to make interventions into his pieces. For "Escala" he has invited five artists to create mini-installations exhibited on top of the tables and on the walls. All the invited artists have suffered because of their beliefs.

The third element of the installation, consists of two vast heads facing each other. Spectators can get inside them, and have the oppotunity to assume or possess different identities while they journey through the array of possibilities that "getting into another's head" suggests.

Three plots, three schemes, three strategies, three scales, three beliefs. The space is transformed into a confrontational zone that is simultaneously flexible, transformative and adaptable. It alludes to the Indian ritual ball game; to the African shift of beliefs, to the "3 Bs"; to the richness of Caribbean's hubrid culture; to all the manoeuvres Puerto Ricans have in order to believe in ourselves and deal with the burden of colonization. Enjoy this complicated game!

In another block was Brian Gothong Tan's "We Live In a Dangerous World"

When visitors enter the space, they will step up onto a small slop that leads to a platform which divides the room into two sides. This division of space is a metaphor for two visions which are in the Western context - the binary oppositions, and in the Eastern context - Yin and Yang philosophy. There will be sculptures dressed in white, a small Merlion (Singapore's invented national symbol), photographic images, LCD monitors, forests, the Virgin Mary and a Kuan Yin Buddha statue, a figure wearing a burkha and more.

Tan's intention is to mix things up semiotically, so that a sculpture or any one element in his installation doesn't necessarily have one meaning, but can be interpreted in multiple ways. The message of his artworks cannot be reduced to a single monolithic statement about a subject that he is exploring, but is rathr a multitude of poetic statements, rambling personal observations and refreshing insights. In this way, he effectively questions complex issues like religions, humanity, war, spirituality and the present situation of the life of people in Asia by drawing unexpected connections and without being simplistic or reductive.

He also uses humour and design to make his art accessible and more easily "consumable", which is a strategy he often deploys to communicate with and engage his audience. As he says,"In fact, sometimes all it takes is a shift of perspective to re-interpret old problems, to see things in new ways. This shift is something that I hope to achieve in my audience."

Drawn by some terribly repetitive Glam music, we opened a door to the glare of Philip Brophy's "Fluorescent" with the artist in full camp glory starring in a luridly-coloured installation.

In the possibly-trusty Exhibition Short Guide, Russell Storer says:

Fluorescent is a music video, starring the artist himself as the embodiment of a Glam Rock hero: the sexually slippery icon that turned macho Hard Rock on its head in the early 1970s and never looked back. For Glam was about the future: a glittering, tin-foil future of space travel and fluid identity, where anyone could fly to the moon or be a star as long as they had the right outfits. Glam's celebration of surfaces prefigured the explosion of music video in the early 1980s, a form that experienced a brief flowering of intense, raw-edged creativity before sinking into a generic soup of expensive effects and glossy marketing campaigns. In the spirit of this early moment, Brophy's pop star is riotously rough, favouring pancake make-up over airbrushing and swagger over choreography.

Driven by throbbing surround-sound and split across three screens, Flourescent plays with the crucial yet awkward relationship between music and image. Featuring both the full mix and remixed versions of the song, the work severs this connection at several points when the sound drops out as the video performance continues, throwing a focus on the elaborate artificiality of Brophy's act and the constructed-ness of our aural and visual perceptions. A widely published writer and theorist on sound and cinema as well as a film-maker and sound artist, Brophy encourages one to "think with one's ears" when watching a film to appreciate the sensory and psychological properties of sound, transcending its generally conceived supporting role to the image.

Fluorescent also derives from Brophy's long-held fascination with genre-busting cultural forms - manga, horror films, Glam, pornogrpahy - as well as their insidious influence, seeping into and transfiguring so-called "High Art" and popular culture alike. Each form stretches or dissolves the body in one way or another, reducing it to a amorphous, polysexual entity that defies easy categorisation and forces a reconsideration of our own drives and mortality.

Ah Beng: Eh, so if I download pron, then I superimpose Osama's face, then photoshop him some mascara and lipstick, then cut MTV, means I artist liao lor.

Happily for one increasing grumpy visitor, the next installation, Takashi Kuribayashi's "Aquarium: I feel like I am in a fishbowl", was both "interactive" and "fun" (as promised by NAC CEO Lee Suan Hiang). More "total installation" some would say, where one is simultaneously a viewer and a "victim". Victimising or not, it was, naturally, co-opted into participating in many a phone-cam-photo-for-my-blog photo.

From http://blog.so-net.ne.jp/bowmao/ cos cannot use my photo lah!

For once the curator note seemed far more confused than our little plebian audience. Fortunately, Kuribayashi explains in a separate interview:

When you experience this art work, you'll feel like you're looking into an aquarium, but at the same time, someone is looking back at you. For example, when you go to the zoo, you think you are looking at animals, but actually the animals are watching the human beings. I'm dealing with that kind of changing perceptions and situations here.

And She-Who-Was-About-To-Slink-Away thoroughly enjoyed Hiroyuki Matsukage's "STAR" (even though no one was quite sure what it was supposed to mean), glamming it up for her 5 minutes of fame.

"Thank you, thank you all of you fans. Thank you for flying in from Japan and America. You love me, I know you love me. I am the best in Singapore, JB and some say, Batam! I love you too! Oooh! Yes, I love all of you! C'mon, let me hear you scream for me!"

Explains Fumio Nanjo:

The piece reacts according to how audiences scream into a microphone. Directly in front of the mic, there is a photograph of 200 girls, who scream back at the screamer as if he or she is a star on a stage. This work symbolises the desire of many people to be a star, which reminds us of Andy Warhol's prediction:"In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes".

The last stop was Otto Karvonen's "Belief Board", which was basically a hut supplied with pens of different coloured ink, pieces of paper headed "Offered" or "Wanted" and thumbtacks to hold up the paper.

Marita Muukkonen puts it more curatorishly:

For the Biennale, Karvonen will create a "temple" in a small building of 12 square metres at Tanglin Camp, where people can seach for and offer advice for problems with the help of various saints and gods. Visitors can try to figure out what to do about the downswing of their portfolio, their love lives or unemployment. When Karvonen travelled to Singapore recently he visited temples filled with colours and sounds where people went to pray regardless of their religion. Religions as well as ideologies move the masses, yet the world in all its complexity rests on the tiniest of entities. Karvonen invites us to make leaps of thought that might help us connect with these realities.

Err...whatever. In any case, we offered salvation via Two Ways To Live.

Contemporary Installation Art
Contemporary installation art we are told, is meant to transport a person into a place that is strange and familiar at the same time. It is supposed to offer us new ways of looking at an old world. That's true if (1) the man-in-the-corner-kopi-tiam even recognises it as art in the first place (some people thought Yayoi Kusama's white-polka-dots-on-red wrapped trees along Orchard Road were advertisements for OCBC Bank); and (2) when they manage to recognise it as art (maybe it's hanging in a gallery or museum, or people pay loads of money for it, or there's a little white plaque beside it), if they can actually understand what the artist is trying to say.

As a medium, the installation art is vague and imprecise. It is difficult to grasp what exactly is meant, eg. by cups of urine lined up in a row or 7,000 trees planted in an empty field or disfigured dolls, without some explanation. But thus enlightened, it is possible to go back and look at the installation and feel an impact on the heart and mind greater than the mere words of the explanation. Or not.

It is possible that for this very reason, God ordained that the most precious message of all, the good news of the forgiveness of sins and the salvation from eternal death, the gospel of eternal life and a restored relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, should be transmitted not visually in paintings or sculptures, nor by installations or ornaments, but in language, in words, whether set to music or otherwise.

The Arts and the Christian

Most people who've been living in Singapore for the past few months would not have been able to miss the excitement surrounding the inaugural Singapore Theatre Festival, yet another installment of WOMAD, the Singapore Biennale and perhaps even the upcoming ArtSingapore, da:ns Festival and Sotheby's biannual (not biennale!) auction of Southeast-Asian art.

Some artists are disillusioned with the art world, victims, perhaps, of bad experiences with critics who were convinced that interpretation of any piece of art is inherently subjective, that meaning is assigned not by the artist but by the viewer and so felt free to ascribe their own, sometimes diametrically opposite, meaning to their artwork. But for all their/our mistrust, there is something that still draws us to see the great masters and inspires us to sculpt and mould raw material with our hands; that reels us into listening to wonderful music; that makes us itch to feel the intimate tremble of a good violin under our chins; that incites us to bop to a mean bassline and admire a beautiful pas de deux; that hushes an entire theatre audience; that gives actors a stage high, feeding off the energy from a crowd that understands and enjoys our craft.

At the National Library Building branch of Hans, we were talking about the Christian's interaction with the arts. Assuming Rand Miller's (yes, the Myst guy) generalist definition of "art" as a "work (something produced through effort) created by a craftsman with the intent to communicate truth", what should the relationship between the arts and the Christian look like?

Should Christians be involved in and even enjoy art?
It could be possible, though I am not entirely sure about this, to see the creative process of doing art is part of our God-ordained creational nature: just as God created the universe out of nothing, so we reflect that creational nature by taking the raw materials that the Lord has created and moulding it into a work of art (or what we hope will have some aesthetic value (if that can be measured objectively)!). Just as God brought order to the chaos that was before this world, so we, on a much more human level, through art, bring some order to our fallen chaotic world (then again, so does the periodic table).

It is also possible that art reminds us of God's beauty: creative works that we find beautiful recall the beauty of God's creative power and cause us to reflect on the glory of God. In fact, we also marvel at the goodness of God for putting in us the ability to appreciate and even find enjoyment in literature, poetry, painting, sculpture and dance.

However, the eagerness to avoid the charge of idolatry has made many Christians suspicious of art. Ever since icons and statues in churches were destroyed in the name of God during the Reformation, Protestants have had an uneasy relationship with the visual arts. There is no space here for discussion of those iconoclastic practices but the warnings against the making of idols from Leviticus and Deuteronomy onwards seemed to be less a complete ban on drawing, painting or sculpture per se, for elsewhere within Scripture, such creative work was expressly instructed by God in relation to the building of physical tabernacles or temples. God also tells his people to sing, dance, and play instruments as ways of expressing their relationship with him. Rather, the warning was against idolatry, specifically expressed in such forms.

In Exodus 31, God tells Moses that he has given a chap named Bezalel the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting and in carving wood, for work in every craft. If God is the creator of the entire universe, then all craftsmanship and artistic ability is a gift of God just as our lifebreath is.

However, we live in a fallen world as sinful beings, and we must be aware that there are proper and improper ways of exercising our God-given gifts; we must remember that the terrible incident of the Golden Calf came far too soon after God gifted workmen for the building of his tabernacle.

Some emerging church leaders claim that they, being far more enlightened than the Reformers ever were, will work to reverse centuries senseless repression of talent by the Reformers by encouraging Christian artists to fill the walls of church buildings with their works and promoting the performance arts.

But it is profoundly atheistic to encourage art for arts' sake. A Christian knows that all art, and indeed everything in life, must be done for God's sake, for that is the purpose of all creation. "Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God," says Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:31. And there is no such thing as a solitary Christian, for when a Christian is saved, he is welcomed into a community, a church, the body of Christ. Therefore, all creative work, and in fact, all things must also be done for edification and building up of the body (1 Corinthians 14:26 in the specific context of communal worship). All that a member of the body does must be done in love for the whole.

In any case, it is virtually impossible to be part of a community and not be confronted by the art of that culture. A Christian must not ignore secular culture but think and evaluate it according to God's word.

What should a Christian's artwork look like?
Does this mean that all Christian artistic endeavour must necessarily be evangelistic or pietistic?

Heavens! No, if that means kitschy figurines, plastic flowers and gaudy (not Gaudí, although some would think Gaudí as gaudy) depictions of Bible stories!

Inevitable Evangelism I
Yet, behind every work of art a worldview, is a commitment to either the truth or to a lie. Every art piece, every performance represents the inner thoughts and beliefs of the artist, and it either breathes a spirit of commitment to the true God revealed in the Scriptures, or attests an allegiance to an idol. In any artwork, the Christian inevitably presents his uniquely counterculturally Christian interpretation of the world.

Inevitable Evangelism II
Besides, as Christians, that which underlies our interest and involvement in the arts is not, after all, secular. Neither is that which underlies our interest and involvement in anything else in our lives (our work, our hobbies, our family or friends). As God's people, we are committed to using our lives to work for the redemption of all things in Christ. So we are purposeful in our involvements.

Egads, one might say. That's all a bit utilitarian innit?

But we remember that there will come a time when Christ will return to judge the world and he will punish those who do not know the true and living God or trust in the gospel of his Son (2 Thessalonians 1:6-10). Says C.S. Lewis:

It is hardly possible for [us] to think too often or too deeply about [the glory] of our neighbour. . . It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. ("The Weight of Glory")

When we think about those who will encounter our works, the audiences at our performances, we must keep before our eyes the fate of those who are perishing; the eternal destinations of unsaved sinners.

Importance of the Arts in Evangelism
Powerful Evangelism
The arts are potentially powerful vehicles for influencing entire cultures for good or for evil. There is something about the arts that reach out and break through to the hearts and minds of some people who might otherwise be unmoved, and that is where skilled Christian artists ought to be speaking the truth about the ultimate reality.

Dispensible Method of Evangelism
Yet, we know that in his sovereignty, God will work in any way that he wishes. Ultimately, it is not our skills in our chosen field of art that must be cultivated and nurtured but our passion for the lost, knowing that those whom we encounter are not mere mortals but will be immortal. And unless they repent and turn back to God, that immortality will be lived out in eternal hell and the terrible gnashing of teeth.

So C.S. Lewis makes the point about his own specialisation:

The Christian will take literature a little less seriously than the cultured Pagan...The Christian knows from the outset that the salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world. ("Christian Reflections")

Language, Thought, Reality and Bible Study

In order to set up a webpage for a new ministry, I've been tooling around with CSS. The last time I had a good sitdown with any sort of computer language was back in those murky dotmatrix days when a professor friend (the "distinguished professor" he was lovingly named because he was indeed distinguished by a shock of dirty ginger hair, a bottomless collection of ugly patterned cravats and horrendously worse body odour) taught me HTML.

Computer languages are things of real beauty that determine what data computers can process meaningfully. Is there a parallel in human terms? How much, if at all, do different human languages determine which aspects of objective reality humans can process meaningfully?*

The assumptions are, of course, firstly that humans have no means of construing and communicating our interpretation of reality effectively other than that which is linguistic; and secondly, that language is merely a finite means used to describe infinite reality. If, due to its limitations, language cannot help but be somewhat ambiguous, signs attempting to express that which is meant to be signified, then all our construals of and communications about the world must surely be limited in their capacity to convey reality, and our understanding of reality must inevitably be restricted by our language. (Anyone privy to discussions between programmers using their different pet languages to solve the same problem will know what this means!)

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf are usually credited as the people who first brought attention to the relationship between language, thought, and culture (although Bhartrihari appeared on the scene earlier, as did Wilhelm von Humboldt with his Weltanschauung hypothesis. Ah, pipped again by the Americans!). The Sapir-Whorf theory of linguistic determinism that states that the language we speak determines the way that we will interpret the world around us, while their theory of linguistic relativism states that language merely influences our thoughts about the real world.

(This claim has been disputed by the Chomskyan follower, Steven Pinker, in this popularist "The Language Instinct", where he argues that language is, in fact, innate and that linguistic categories reflect universal, native conceptual structures. Whatever observable differences we find between languages are irrelevant. However, others have laughed off Pinker as attacking strawmen so the jury is still out.)

If we don't have a word or phrase for a certain feeling, a certain colour of snow, a certain inflection of smell, then in all probability, we wouldn't notice it nor would we distinguish it in our experience. Language draws our attention to certain facets of objective reality. "We do not say what we see," said Martin Heidegger in Sein und Zeit ("Being and Time"),"but rather the reverse, we see what one says about the matter". In Unterwegs zur Sprache ("On the Way to Language"), he added,"Only where the word for the thing has been found is the thing a thing. Only thus it is. Accordingly we must stress as follows: no thing is where the word, that is, the name, is lacking." Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in his "Tractatus Logico Philosophicus" that "the limits of my language indicate the limits of my world".**

So George Orwell, who said that "if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought" ("Politics and the English Language"), showed how this might play out in a society where a language (Newspeak) was created to make thoughts unapproved by the state literally unthinkable by ensuring that there were no words in the language to express such thoughts ("Nineteen Eighty-Four").

So feminists are concerned with changing the English language to eliminate perceived discrimination, for example, by replacing the generic male gender with both the male and female genders. In eliminating discriminatory language, they hope to eliminate the concept of discrimination.

The irony of all this is, of course, that all these theories, discussions, arguments, experiments and reports themselves require the vehicle of language for their communication. It is also interesting to note that Sapir, Heidegger and Wittgenstein had German backgrounds. Heisenberg would have laughed.

However, all is not lost. A good awareness of the possibility of linguistic determinism or relativity could lead to a better understanding of cultural diversities and help to bridge intercultural communication gaps especially in cross-cultural mission work.

Also, if there is even a hint of truth in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and if, as nicely articulated by Bertrand Russell, "words may get meaning only by coming to represent some entities already encountered by us: We must attach some meaning to the words we use, if we are to speak significantly and not utter mere noise; and the meaning we attach to our words must be something with which we are acquainted", then Bible study is important (in addition to all those other reason why it is important) because it is only by studying the word of God that we are able better able to learn and flesh out what God really means by "Christian" words like "love", "sin" and "salvation". And by learning the language of God, we are better able to interpret the world as God sees it.

* naturally, questions of this genre have occupied a good many linguistic brains for centuries, the scope of which this post cannot even hope to address!
** Núñez and Sweetser recently published a paper demonstrating that the Aymara language reflects the idea Aymaran speakers have in their minds that the past is in front of them and the future behind them, that is, a reversal of the spatial metaphors we use in English. The New York Times, picking up on this, asks if human concepts of time can vary this much because of language and culture. Well, the Chinese talk about the future as 以后 and the past as 以前. Does this mean that a traditional Chinese speaker imagines that the past is spatially in front of him, and the future behind him?

PS: If the 6,912 or so different languages in the world are not enough for you, you can create your own language with the Alphabet Synthesis Machine, or add to the existing artificially-created language LOGLAN.

If the ram complains to the SPCA, wouldya call him a bleater?

Adult Meeting: Overview of 1 John

Hooray! We are starting our series on 1 John, that epistle that has long flummoxed me with its lorsor-ness and OTT terms of endearment.

Here are the notes from the overview that Chris Chia gave on 1 John at tonight's ARPC Adult Meeting:
1. 1 John: Major Themes
a. Who, what and why?

Who are the main characters in this epistle?
John: John was most likely the same John who wrote the Gospel of John. Many commentaries may be unhelpful when they spend too much time discussing who this John was instead of focussing on the contents of the epistle. But we take it on internal evidence that the John who wrote the epistles also wrote the Gospel.

Recipients: They were the Christians in house churches.

Cessasionists/Separatists: They were leading the churches astray and had separated from the churches.

God: The most important party. He is spoken of as God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Spirit. John repeatedly appeals to God, God's character and God's purposes as the reason for right belief and right behaviour as God's people.

Why does John write this letter?

1. John writes to make his joy complete (1:4). As a Christian and as a pastor, his joy is somewhat dependent on his fellow Christians and his flock and their Christian health. Christianity is a team effort. There is no such thing as solitary Christianity (unlike life in a Buddist temple or in a monastry when worshippers can worship alone without bothering about anyone else).
2. John writes so that the recipients of his letter will not sin (2:1). It is to give them a proper understanding of proper behaviour and sin. We may understand overt sins but he is writing about covert sins - sin that we are not aware of as sins.
3. John writes to give true Christian confidence, true Christian assurance, that they have eternal life, that there will be victory over sin and over death. People who are hale and hearty do not usually ask questions about death. We gather here and in DGs, not in a mechanical way, not because it is part of the ARPC church programme but because we have Christian confidence and true assurance.

So John writes as a shepherd and a true pastor to protect his beloved children from the mistaken marks of spirituality. Coming from pagan backgrounds, we all have different mistaken marks of spirituality. He also writes for a polemic reason - to counter the seductive false doctrines and the divisiveness of the separatist group. We may come from churches in which divisiveness is the church air. We may take it for granted that it is what church is about. But divisiveness impacts our members. When there is a split, when there is backstabbing, when there is hurt, people will walk very tenderly thereafter, very tentatively.

b. Tests: Three?
Robert Law popularised the view that there are 3 tests in 1 John:

1. Truth of the doctrine test: what we believe about Jesus Christ matters. The truth does not allow for free-thinking in God's church. It is wrong to say,"Oh, as long as you believe anything sincerely, it's ok."
2. Moral/obedience test: how does biblical truth show up in obedience in your life? Is the Lord Jesus Christ part of your life or are you part of the risen life of Jesus Christ? Think carefully before you answer. Soya sauce and MSG can be part of your life. It's not too difficult to add Jesus Christ to your little pantheon, because in the end, everything continues to rotate around you as the centre. But if you are part of the risen life of Jesus Christ, then all your decisions are subject to him and all aspects of your life will be in submission to him. Disobedience is hypocrisy.
   
3. Social/love test: what does obedience to Christ look like? In his commentary, David Jackman wrote that at the end of his life, John had become so frail and weak that he could no longer preach and he would have to be carried into the congregation at Ephesus and content himself with a word of exhortation. "Little children," he would always say,"love one another." And when his hearers grew tired of this message and asked him why he so frequently repeated it, he responded,"Because it is the Lord's command and if this is all you do, it is enough."
   
   At the end of his life, John summarised tests 1-3 as "love one another". Most tests are to exclude people, from admission, from membership, from citizenship. But this test is to include people into the church of God.
   
   (John Stott had the view that there was a fourth test: the test of anointing. Whether you had been anointed with this Spirit.)
   

c. Tests: Or...
Actually, there is only one test. If we understand the truth, if we pass the truth test, then we pass the rest of the tests, because we cannot have the truth without right living and love for one another.

2. A Structure?
There is no structure (in the way we commonly understand it) to the epistle. The chapter numberings and headings are put in for our ease of study but in the original Greek, there was nothing of that sort. John sounds like a bit of a nag. He employs rather a rather circular, circuitous Hebrew style. It doesn't have the logical flow of Paul but ideas and concepts get repeated and fleshed out throughout the letter.

We can possibly attempt a loose structure below but strict adherence would be unhelpful:
Chapter 1: conditions to Christian fellowship - God is light, walk in the light.
Chapter 2: barriers to Christian fellowship - the world and the anti-Christ.
Chapter 3 and 4: characteristics of Christian fellowship - God is love, walk in love.
Chapter 5: consequences of Christian fellowship - if we have true fellowship, we pray for each other and bring back the brother who is falling away.

3. What if we did not have 1 John?
Then we wouldn't have one of the boldest, most confident epistles. 1 John is a no-holds-barred letter: if you have the truth, don't let anyone take away your assurance.

When you come to this Adult Meeting or to service or to your DG, it is an outworking of these 3/4 tests. Are we friendly to people we don't know? Do we greet each other? Do the DG leaders arrive on time to arrange the chairs? Do the DG members arrive with a heart willing to serve?

Rain and Strawberry Jam

The day was grey and cold and it rained and rained and rained, not hastily, not blusterously, but languidly and steadily the thunder rolled and the water come down, as if they had all day (they did). Unhurried Friday rain. Lastdayoftheworkweek rain.

"Il pleut," she murmured sleepily, cocooned in the mellow tenderness of Kings of Convenience. "Il pleut sur la ville," she said, for Artur Rimbaud not Émilie Simon,"il pleut doucement sur la ville."

It was the right weather for jam-making, and from the kitchen drifted the heady sweetness of ripe strawberries simmering, sweet like the fresh cottoncandy breath of hot summer days, sweet like the syrup of soaked sunshine and green fields forever. This voluptuous dark red happiness we bottled in old jars, for ourselves and for sharing with friends, luscious berry goodness to be taken out and spooned onto hot buttered toast for many not nearly enough rainy days to come.

When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Although we had no claim, you held out your hand of mercy to us, that we might be saved from the pain and death that we deserve for all our work on earth to delight in you and your creation forever.

How Strawberry Jam Is Made

1. Wander into a strawberry farm.
2. Employ free child labour.
3. Liberate sugar from the hotel breakfast table.
4. Store strawberries in an empty mineral water bottle and cover with a thick layer of sugar.
5. Allow strawberries to macerate in their own juicy sweetness for the entire daredevil ride home.
6. Add more sugar and a squeeze of lemon and simmer in a pot.
7. Voilà! Un pot de confiture de fraises!
8. Crowd around the pot to wipe up last dredges of jam with pieces of bread.

Road Trips

I love travelling. Give me a whiff of a map and I'll beat a path out the front door before anyone can think of saying,"Pack yer bags and gas up the car!". Of all forms of travel, roadtrips beat 'em all, especially when the mode of transportation is a mean machine with a roaring turbo and steady handling (and neat cupholders).

From our little sunny island of Singapore, the only direction for a roadtrip is north up the Malaysian peninsula. Armed with valid passports, a wad of ringgit and the Bible and a change of underwear in the backseat, the wide open country is but a border away where empty highways reach beckoningly into the horizon; where you can rev past sweeping fields and oil palm plantations and forests of rubber trees, collecting splats of bugkill on the windscreen; where you can brave thick fog, go off-roading on dirt tracks and cross rickety wooden bridges of dubious stability.

There is no timetable, no itinerary to follow. Anytime you want, you can pick a town to stop in, chow down, wander around and discover new places, new foods, new cultures and get to know new people.

It's been a lifelong dream to do a Jim Rogers or just an epic roadtrip up the Malaysian peninsula, into Thailand, hop over to Beijing and then bounce overland across Russia, past some of those little 'stans, through Western Europe and across the Channel to England. Hopefully, when the time comes to do it, technology would have advanced enough to allow us to "kick the oil habit" and run on some environmentally-friendly clean-burning fuel (we might even be able to convince a carmaker to sponsor our ride. No, not quite "What Would Jesus Drive?".). Perhaps there'll even be some help from a local version of Road Trip Nation by then!

Compared to that dreamy odyssey, last weekend's trip was a mere babe: we whizzed up the North-South Highway to Simpang Pulai in Perak and then across the peninsula on the Second East-West Highway from Simpang Pulai to Gua Musang in Kelantan and then down again through dusty trunk roads skirting Fraser's Hill, Kuala Lumpur and Genting Highlands. But boy was it a fun one. The speed demons (who were on 2-3 hour feeds to keep them happy) had great fun chasing each other round exhilarating hairpin corners on mountain roads with thousand metre drops. There were stops for plates of mee rebus, bags of fresh hot Dunkin' Donuts and coffee, a hearty steamboat dinner accompanied by cover versions of Michael Jackson/Bryan Adams/All-4-One/Debbie Gibson, smoky sticks of satay seranaded by an old jukebox in a corner (yes, the satay was seranaded), sukiyaki fit for alcoholics, a huge bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and stacks of scones lathered with cream and strawberry jam and washed down with innumerable pots of tea.

For thousands of miles, we sped past the huge billboards and glittering steelwork of cities and the wooden houses on stilts with chickens resting on their corrugated iron roofs of shanty towns. We passed people crammed in dirty hovels and crowded graveyards on the sides of hills. We passed old mining towns with vehicles rusting in abandoned buildings, devoid of life. We passed people in their colourful best, streaming into a white Malay wedding tent, gold thread embroidered into its sides. We passed homes and trees and corners where lives were lived and dreams were dreamt and loves were consummated and babies were bounced on laps and deaths were mourned. Intimate spaces inhabited by generations which passing strangers would never be able to penetrate.

At times, we were dwarfed by magnificent limestone cliffs dotted with enticing caves, and at other times, by hills of black cold hard slate. There were lakes covered with water hyacinth, spectacular waterfalls, hundreds of tomatoes ripening on vines, eagles riding the wind drafts, scavaging goats and giant squirrels scampering across the roads. And when we reached a place where the sun shone so beautifully in the blue sky and the lush green hills were laid out so gloriously, everyone burst out in spontaneous praise:

All Heaven Declares
All heaven declares
The glory of the risen Lord
Who can compare
With the beauty of the Lord

Forever He will be
The Lamb upon the throne
I gladly bow my knee
And worship Him alone

I will proclaim
The glory of the risen Lord
Who once was slain
To reconcile man to God

Forever You will be
The Lamb upon the throne
I gladly bow my knee
And worship You alone
Noel Richards, Tricia Richards © 1987 Kingsway’s Thankyou Music

For God's invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So man everywhere is without excuse (Romans 1:20). So, inevitably, what followed was the Psalms set to music and then err...Christmas carols... How brilliant it was to roadtrip with likeminded friends. :-)

There shouldn't be a need for specially-designed Christian road trips like those by Nieu Communities, Share Jesus International or Road Trip Mission to get Christians evangelising in foreign places, because the essential Christian-ness of a Christian should not be something that is turned off when the Christian is on holiday (but that is not to suggest that they are of no use whatsoever). Wandering about and meeting fellow travellers, buying each other drinks, exchanging road gossip, chatting with a diversity of locals, bartering life stories, it takes no special effort to talk about the gospel and about Jesus because these are so overwhelmingly present in the life of a Christian. "Making the most of every opportunity" (Colossians 4:5-6) should already be an intrinsic part of our lives. And stories like that of Alan Quigley and Chris Forbes of The Most Important Thing help to remind us that wherever we are, there are people to be saved. And sometimes, they are more amenable to hearing the gospel from a passing traveller than from their local Christian friends. Of course if you happen to be Stephen Baldwin, Livin' It extreme sports vids are tantalising bridges all on their own. ;-)

PS: No, it wasn't like this at all:

from xkcd

(But Casting Crowns does sound better when blasted at 160.)

Leadership, David and the Promises of God

Claustrophobically cloistered in at a leadership conference where we were meant to be inspired (to do what, it was not said) and to learn valuable management lessons from seasoned leaders (a lot of whose theories seemed to contradict each other), the natives were restless at being taken out of their corporate jungle:
Finance Director I (looking at the garish lights above): Beam me up, Scotty!

Finance Director II (passing round a note with a doodle on it): Eh, guess who? Heeheehee...

Listening to John Woodhouse before and after work was much better.

Judges
In the Book of Judges, we read about the chaotic anarchic life of Israel as she lurched from one crisis to another, punishment for rebelling against God and worshipping other gods and taking on the abhorrent practices of people who had no knowledge of the true God. They are horrible tales of rape and murder and pillage. But everytime the Israelites found themselves in trouble, they suddenly remembered the God who had saved them in earlier times and cried out to him. Amazingly, God, instead of ignoring them as he could rightfully have done, saved them again and again and again by giving them a judge (not the pasty-faced fogey with a white wig and a black gown but a military leader who would deliver them from their enemies). Unfortunately, these periods of living under the security of God did not last long. When one judge died, the people would forget God again and the whole cycle of events would repeat itself.

At the end of the period of Judges, the situation is summed up succiently: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).

There are 2 observations contained in that verse: (1) in those days before they had a king, they had no permanent leadership structure, no fixed political establishment. There was just God, really. There were 12 tribes and the only thing that held them together was God. When there was a crisis, God would raise for them a leader. That leader led Israel for a while, and then he died and they were again without a leader until the next crisis; and (2) there was social anarchy which led to terrible atrocities.

Are we meant to understand that (1) was the cause of (2)? That, because there was no king, there was chaos and anarchy? The text doesn't actually spell out a causal link; it doesn't say that if only Israel had a king, they would be ok. But this sets the scene for Books of Samuel.

Looking for a Leader
God, the creator of the world, had expressed his purpose for the nation of Israel in his promises to Abraham and Moses: they would have their own land and live under God. They would be God's people and he would be their God. They would be a great nation and a blessing to the whole world. But Israel at the end of the Book of Judges was looking distinctly like she was barely holding on to her own land. She wasn't living with God as her god. She didn't look like she could ever become a great nation. She was not much of a blessing to anyone much less a blessing to the whole world.

The issue raised at end of Judges is what kind of leadership do these people need to become the people God wants them to be? Even under Moses, Israel was failure - the Israelites didn't trust God and refused to go into the land he had promised them. Under the leadership of Joshua things were fairly ok but only for a generation. What kind of leadership would make them a great nation through whom the whole world would be blessed?

Leaders in 1 and 2 Samuel
In the Books of 1 and 2 Samuel, we are introduced to 4 leaders: Eli, Samuel, Saul and David.

Eli was a priest and also a judge in the style of the judges in the Book of Judges. He did not care much for the name of God and his sons were worse. So the next leader was Samuel - a prophet and also a judge. He was a godly man whose leadership takes up the first 7 chapters of 1 Samuel. However when Samuel grew old, his sons did not walk in his ways and, as instructed by God, he appointed Saul, Israel's first king.

Saul was a disaster and he was not succeeded by his son, which is the sort of thing you would expect to happen in a monarchy. (One of the benefits of a monarchy is that there is great certainty about the identity of the next leader (barring terrible horseriding accidents and assassination attempts by ambitious relatives). You watch him grow up from an infant to a teenaged prince who will one day take over the throne from his dad. Kingship is hereditary (unless, of course, you are poor old Prince Charles).)

The brand new king who succeeded Saul was not his own son but the son of Jesse (like, who's Jesse?). David was a very different kind of king from Saul. He waited in the wings for much of 1 Samuel and really only took the crown in 2 Samuel.

From Eli to Samuel to Saul through to David, we see the transition from judges to kings in Israel's leadership. So what? Who cares about pieces of the political history of this tiny little nation in the Middle East? It matters because Israel was God's chosen nation; by his grace, they and the office of king were a critical in the preparation of the coming of Jesus on whom the fate of the entire world would rest. As the leadership question took shape in Israel as they moved from Eli to David, we see what kind of leadership the people of God really needed to fulfil their role in God's salvation plan and why, ultimately, Jesus is the leader that the world needs.

David
But first, David or "Great King David" as he was fondly remembered through the subsequent generations, for the years of his glorious reign were not forgotten by the people. David was anointed king while Saul was still on the throne. So things did not go well for David and Saul had designs on his life and spared no effort in trying to kill him. Since David had already been announced as the newly appointed king-in-waiting and God had already proclaimed in no uncertain terms that Saul had been rejected as king over Israel, all that was left was for David to take over the throne. However when opportunities arose for David to dispatch Saul quickly with a sharp implement, he declined to do so.

Even if not for patently godly reasons, self-preservation should have dictated that David should strike Saul first in pre-emptive self-defence. He couldn't be on the run forever with his small motley crew and it would have been only a matter of time before Saul caught up with him.

However, David proved that he was a man after God's own heart by steadfastly refusing to assassinate God's anointed (1 Samuel 26:9,11), even if his own life was in danger. He was more fearful of God's displeasure (26:9) and he trusted fully in God's own judgement and God's own timing (26:10).

David's Suffering
Because of how intent David was on acting rightly in God's eyes, he suffered terribly. Many of the psalms about the suffering of God's king and his ultimate vindication by God, were written in this period when he was on the run and his life was under threat (1 Samuel 18-31). David's righteous suffering was a foreshadowing of Jesus' own suffering, which is why Jesus taught that the Christ "must suffer".

David God's City
After Saul hari-kiri-ed himself, David's first act as king was to take the city of Jerusalem. His second act was to bring the Ark of the Covenant from where it had been neglected by Saul (the last we heard of it was in 1 Samuel 7) to his new city, Jerusalem. The Ark was the most powerful symbol of God's claim on Israel as God's people. God's presence with his people was represented by his Ark. When the Ark came to Jerusalem, it said that this was the city in which God's king reigned and the real king in the city was not David but God. Which is why David was so excited he danced naked when the Ark was finally brought into Jerusalem.

David God's House
By 2 Samuel 7, David was enjoying good days. He'd built a palace for himself but he realised that the Ark had been kept in a tent as it had been for centuries. "That can't be right," said David and he wanted to build a nice shelter for it. But God said, through Nathan,"not yet" and "not you". Rather, this is what will happen:

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. (2 Samuel 7:12-16)

The extraordinary thing about God's promise to David here is that it's unconditional! It's very different from the promise to Saul in 1 Samuel 12 which was conditional (if you are obedient, all will go well. If not, be afraid, very afraid). Of course, even with the current promise, disobedience will be dealt with. But disobedience will not stop David's kingdom from succeeding.

David was not the hero of that story, not according to him. We always like to find something for ourselves in the Bible. We like find the human characters to follow. But David said, "Who am I, O Lord GOD, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?" (2 Samuel 7:18). God's promises to David were not to the result of the multitude of David's pious virtues (in fact, after the Bathsheba incident later in 2 Samuel, it is obvious that God's promises to David were in spite of his lack of virtue). God's promises to David had solely to do with God's will, God's grace and God's heart. God set his heart on David. David was God's choice. And it was God's decision to establish David's kingdom forever whatever David might do.

And there is nothing more certain in the world than a promise from God, for whatever God says, he will accomplish in his time. And God's promise to David was this: David will have a son and David's son will be God's own son and the kingdom of David's son will last forever and David's son will build God's house.

In due course, everything God promised in 2 Samuel 7 happened in 2 Samuel 8-10: David did secure his kingdom. David was powerful and just and kind and gentle and generous. We see the goodness of this king and the effectiveness of his godly reign. What an impressive king David was. How wonderful it was to live under he who exercised God's rule in his world.

Many of the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi (eg. Isaiah 11) foretold that the kingdom of David would be revived and, recalling God's promise to David, that a son of David would reign gloriously on the throne forever. The reign of David was important, it was the start of something very very big and very very eternal indeed.

David's Sons
David had a son with Bathsheba named Solomon, and Solomon's kingship turned out to be magnificent and he built a great temple for God (1 Kings 6). What glorious days they were. He was a great and wise ruler who reigned over a secure, prosperous kingdom. The thing that God had promised happened.

But then, it all crumbled. The reality was that the kings in David's line (beginning with David himself) were all flawed. And flawed people can only beget flawed children like themselves. And so we see that the promises of God were only fulfilled in some measure, for a limited period.

By the time we are introduced to more of David's sons, Amnon who raped his own halfsister and Absalom who murdered his stepbrother and conspired against his father (2 Samuel 13-18), we are wondering how God's promises will be fulfilled. What hope is there for God's kingdom? What hope is there for humanity? We see what a fragile unstable weak thing David's kingdom was. His throne was weak, his family was a mess.

This sorry state of affairs was finally put out of its misery in 580BC when Jerusalem was burnt to the ground, the temple was destroyed and the king was made an exile in a foreign land.

It was all over.

Finally! Fulfilment
Or was it? Not for anyone who heard and believed the promises of God, for God's promises can never fail. A few centuries later, in the New Testamental times, the faithful few, having remembered God's promises were looking forward eagerly to the coming of the promised son of David. And a man came preaching about the kingdom of God and he exercised extraordinary power. They ogled at Jesus and asked,"Could this be the one? Could this be the son of David?". Could this the one that Amnon plainly wasn't and whom Absalom definitely could not have been?

And Jesus asked his own followers,"Who do you think I am?". And Peter replied: you are the Christ, the messiah, the anointed one, the son of the living God. That is to say, you are the son of David who is the son of God. And what did Jesus say in reply? You're absolutely right, Peter. I am the one in the line of David. I am the one through whom God's purposes and God's promises will finally be fulfilled. I am the one whose kingdom will last forever. I am whom all those sons of David failed to be. Indeed, I am the son of God. And you know what I will do, Peter? I'll build my church and hell will not prevail against it.

Years later, Peter wrote a letter to Christians and he said:

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2:4-5)

The house of Jesus consists of stones who are people who have come to know him and come into his kingdom. We are the temple he is building. We are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken because it is the promise that God has made and God does not regain on his promises. And that promise is coming to its realisation as we are built into this kingdom. What a marvellous thing God is doing and what an extraordinary thing that he has let us be part of it! How much shall we serve him, our king and the king of the world, in gratitude.

Pwned

Awww, maaan!

Ah, those halcyon Infocom days.
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