more than watchmen wait for the morning

March102013

When I was in JC, I remember going through a crisis sometime in March I believe of 2004 where I sat at the void deck in ACJC and having processed all the arguments for historicization and revisionism and post revisionism, I was in an epistemological crisis. I remember going through the S paper question that “history is written by the victors” and thinking that nothing is true if that were a fact of history.

And I remember sitting down with Charles Ng and telling him about my woes and confusion - how can I know anything is true? Even the gospel of Jesus Christ and the bible which contains it! What if it were all a construction?

And that was when Charles introduced me to this man, Ravi Zacharias and lifted me out of my crisis. He helped me see that is was possible to be intelligent and still a believer and have a reliable and robust epistemology.

Since then, between 2004-2007 I must have listened to every sermon on the RZIM website, and stretching out into the Case for Christ and Faith which also contains references to Ravi and others. Studying Willkam Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Ben Witherington III, Michael Behe, D A Carson and others was food for my mind. But it all began with Ravi.

So I am thankful for the man who taught me the law of non contradiction and other reasoning tools that I carry to this this day. And i was so pleased that we could sit down and hear him speak for 3 hrs. Cheers.

zacharias apologetics singapore conferences

November182012

Great New Places

singapore food resource

November132012

10 things I am grateful for

1. For new life in Jesus Christ where I live for Him and for His glory

2. For all of the beautiful truths and riches in God’s Word that have sustained my wonder and amazement all these years

3. For godly parents and Christian siblings who have loved me and shown me grace and built me up as a person to know and serve The Lord

4. For an education which has cultivated my character, honed my mind and established my faith

5. For an imperfect but healthy body which God has given me to steward

6. For a church which is human, full of sin and disaster, but sovereignly guarded by God’s grace and not abandoned by and to His purposes

7. For a nation in which justice and righteousness is upheld, rule of law is stable and discharged, where governing authorities are true, where man has liberty to practice faith and freedom

8. For a professional occupation in which I pursue God’s calling and I can serve His purposes under secular employment and do meaningful, remunerated work

9. For wealth that God has given me to bless and serve others and enjoy His provision

10. For friends who love and care for me though I and they are both imperfect, and are willing to befriend me as an individual, not a resource or tool but a person

gratefulness thankgiving singapore

November62012

Harmony is not tolerance

Today at the Conversation meeting at SST, I decided to muster my courage and make a comment about how racial tolerance is not the same as racial harmony. There was a Muslim Malay fellow educator present, but I thought what the heck, since we’re doing a no holds barred discussion, why not? VPs and other middle management staff all around, but oh well, into the pond we wade.

So I explained that in an ideal world, racial and religious tolerance exists when we have differences and yet we persist in maintaining our civic respect and deference to one and another’s rights to belief instead of imposing, ignoring or caricaturing what others think and feel. This results in healthy dialogue, discussion, and cultivation of genuine respect. This kind of ‘tolerance’ then agrees to respect differences after they have been voiced, dialogued over, and mutually understood.

However, what we practice today is a form of tolerance that is so wary of the individual to discuss and learn from one another, so much so that we passively just sit and endure one another’s existence. Yes, we might compromise pragmatically for mutual convenience, but inside, our attitudes towards these foreign and different groups are anything but positive or respectful. We caricature them, distance from them, and God forbid that we should talk to them, or worse, disagree with them. Consequently, we live in a politically correct age with little real understanding or sharing of common ground.

It woudl be plenty to suggest a move from the current ‘tolerance’ to the other sense of the word tolerance (as per the second paragraph) suggested though going one step further into harmony. How might we learn from one another? Dialogue, question, query and even disagree with one another? Of course, ultimately, our harmony depends on our ability to respectfully and healthily tolerate one another’s different beliefs, but to harmonize means surely more than that. Of course, I do not advocate a blind celebration of differences in a stereotypical fashion, but how might we have different races in true harmonization?

The answer to that elusive question, is surely, only when we something that makes us sing together to harmonize about - something much bigger than mere national identity.

singapore philosophy

September182012

fellowship apologetics keller evangelism singapore

September102012

annaibib:

#IDMC 2012

chan conferences god's will singapore

September82012

conferences singapore chan god's will

September62012

“God’s will is totally sovereign, gloriously redemptive, sometimes puzzling but always perfect!” Edmund Chan, IDMC 2012

chan conferences singapore god's will

September22012

Singapore’s Night Festival 2012

singapore

August272012

Laksania!

Food Singapore

August212012

World Magazine: Into exile

“The result is real: The University of Texas denied Woodberry tenure. He then applied to 108 other schools. No U.S. institution offered him tenure. One Christian college interviewed him and made a tentative offer, but it did not make a formal offer. No other school invited him for an in-person interview or made him a job offer.

To get a job, Bob Woodberry last month moved nearly 10,000 miles. The National University of Singapore is giving him a 50 percent increase in salary, free housing for up to nine years, the first semester off, and $85,000 for his research.”

education singapore

August172012

Singapore's rebuttal of the US' condemnation of ISA. Interestingly worded

singapore cool

August112012

44 things you may not know about Singapore

Here are the more fun ones I liked:

1. We fought independence, and independence won.
If Lee Kuan Yew is to be believed, then we are probably the only country that gained nationhood by not wanting it. Of course, the other founding fellows have been quoted as saying that leaving the Federation (of Malaysia) was the “best thing that ever happened to Singapore”.

5. Um… actually, we were independent once before.
On August 31, 1963, in agreeing to merge with the Malaysian federation, Singapore unilaterally declared independence, several weeks before the Malaysian government did so in September of the same year.

7. The national anthem was written six years before independence.
It was written to be played at state functions in 1959, and was later officially made the national anthem. The Malaysians had roughly the same history with theirs (Negaraku) - an anthem they adopted from the Perak state anthem, which was created because an aide to the Sultan, when asked by officials at the coronation of Edward VII what his state anthem was, proceeded to hum the tune to an old French drinking song he had heard in the Seychelles.

10. Singapore is one of three surviving city-states in the world.
The other two being Monaco and the Vatican City.

13. The national flag was designed before independence.
It served as a State flag to fly beside the Union Jack, and then beside the Malaysian flag, before flying solo in 1965. Originally envisaged as an all-red background, white was added to the lower half to placate fears that the color might serve as a rallying point for the then rampant Communists, and perhaps, bulls.

15. If you’re Singaporean, you are also a citizen of the Commonwealth.
Technically, you are allowed to vote in British parliamentary elections.

22. Lions never lived in Singapore.
So the name Lion City, derived from the Sanskrit Singa Pura, is a misnomer. Sang Nila Utama probably saw a tiger, or was smoking something strong.

32. We may be small, but we have over 3000km of roads.
Singapore is only around 42km from east to west, but has over 3,000km of roads.

35. It is actually warmer and drier in the eastern part of Singapore.
This is due to a meteorological phenomenon called the rain shadow effect.

41. Bukit Timah Nature Reserve has more species of trees than the whole of North America.
Now, that is one big redeeming factor.

singapore history humor

August92012

Happy 47th Birthday Singapore!

Singapore

7AM

Why my colleague drew this I have no idea. But this apparently is what people at TWSS think of me.

Teaching education Singapore Penn literature