It isnt too late for Malaysia to do all it can to oust Najib Razak. Certainly, the family of Altantuya would be appreciative.

Najib Razak is so tainted efforts to to oust him should not stop. At every turn, Malaysians must spare no efforts to resist him and have a go to oust him. Bring him down.

I just found out a certain Putri Norlisa Najib is a practising lawyer in the KL firm of Kadir Andri Aidham and Partners. I wonder if she has a corner office, driver and no billing targets…

I guess Altantuya would never get to see her children building a career in law, or any other profession.

Tress attended a colleague’s baptism in a church on Swanston Street in the city yesterday. Kiddo was playing the keyboard so I had to drop her off by 9am for their pre-service practice. I went to get a coffee after that, at Gloria Jean’s on Kingsway at Glen Waverley. I took the opportunity to scan through the Sunday Herald. It also meant a different kind of start to our usual Sunday morning routine.

The jagged nature of last Sunday continued when I got to church and the band started to play. I thought the volume was way too loud and went outside for a while. After a few minutes I thought it was probably not a good idea to remain outside for the duration of the service so I went back in, but the band remained very loud so I stayed right at the back of the hall.

The singing session tapered off and the chair (Jason) started, saying something to the effect that we ought to proclaim healing. Perfect, I thought. I have been asked to lead the communion and my little piece was going to be on how I believed physical healing wasn’t part of atonement, contrary to what this church believes. I guess I was just trying to make my little statement of what I thought. The only problem was it jarred badly with what Jason had said just a few minutes earlier. However, like Tress often said to me, my little statements often had the effect of an ant peeing because it was a non-issue with most people.

And so it continued. Jason felt it right to let the service flow by having people come up to say their individual pieces instead of having a sermon delivered. I guess it’s good to have members say their piece but I wonder if the worship service is the right place and time for this. I have little doubt it does a world of good for the person who spoke, but it often does little for the listeners, especially if the speaker had no idea where he (or she) was going and went in circles as a result. Or worse, what was said actually trivialised the whole experience of being a Christian.

Not every speaker made me cringe of course – some were marvellous punchy testimonies. I’m afraid however, that even after all these years in this church I still have to wrap my head around to the idea of letting anyone speak, regardless of what that person was saying or the message that was actually being communicated.

Take this one about receiving a message from God about taking sports drink to alleviate a pain in the leg. There was prayer for a problematic leg, and then there was “a word” – about a remedy. It turned out that person has been exercising a lot and was losing mineral salt. Naturally taking a mineral supplement helps in this situation. But the message was that it took prayer and “a word” – which was confirmed because more than 1 person had that same “word” – for God to deliver a healing which has been deprived for years.

Later that arvo I talked about this with Tress and kiddo. I had to stress 2 points. The first was that you could easily have a group of Muslims or Buddhists or Atheists discussing their religion or philosophy and come to the same independent conclusion. Does the confluence of conclusions prove the veracity of God or the message? Does the fact that there was unity of message (conclusion) prove that God is real and that the message or conclusion actually came from God?

The other point is that the very prescription of taking a banana or sports drink to alleviate a mineral depletion condition is a common one. In my past life, fellow runners and gym addicts have got together and spoke about the same thing. An affected runner would get the same advice from a bunch of other runners, all independently. Does that make the prescription a godly one? I don’t know. I think confluence can come from a variety of circumstances. If the remedy is a common one, or if a group has had the same exposure to similar thoughts, ideas or teachings, the chances of common conclusions – “word” – just escalates. It doesn’t prove anything.

I’m not saying the person’s experience wasn’t real or that it wasn’t a thing to be thankful to God for. All good things come from God and we are to be grateful to Him. I am concerned however that we don’t attribute things to God when simple explanations work much better because by carelessly attributing things to specific messages from God, we may actually trivialise what He does for us. God has given us brains to think. It is perfectly kosher for some of us to share a same thought. That thought, just because it is shared, does not become a special “word” from God. Not even after prayer. It is part of the mindset created by a belief that signs and wonders must permeate our lives so we seek them out at every turn, even from car registration plates.

Maybe I was being a proud pain-in-the-neck, I don’t know. Maybe I was simply demonstrating years of being in a conservative church. I thought however that the Sunday pulpit is sacred in that you need to ensure that it is a platform from which God’s word is appropriately and reverently taught. It is not a platform to encourage a feel-good session delivered at the expense of fast and loose theology.

I watched “Burn After Reading” over the weekend. I sometimes wonder if ICC is often like that. I love to be spending time with God’s people but I sometimes wonder also. Life is an even more terrible thing to waste.

 

It’s a bright sunny morning. The tree at a neighbours visible from our TV area is usually green but lately, these red leaves have been sprouting out. It looks gorgeous.

It’s a beautiful morning.

After fixing brekky for kiddo, tress and myself I dropped kiddo off at church for a band practice.

We later went back to church at 11am, to do yet more stage work. The stage looked better after a full day’s work by about a dozen people – ready now for an upcoming wedding, the first for the church for a long time. It will look nice for the occasion.

I got this email just a few minutes ago.

I just received this message from a friend.  I don’t know the source of the message; I also don’t know the credibility of the content, but just be aware.
Below is the content on the message:
“Hello there. I just wanted to let you know to stay away from the beaches in the month of July 2009. There is a prediction that there will be another tsunami on July 22^nd. It is also when there will be an eclipse of the sun. It is predicted that it is going to be really bad and countries like Malaysia (Sabah & Sarawak), Singapore, Maldives, Australia, Mauritius, Si Lanka, India, Indonesia and the Philippines are going to be badly hit. Please try and stay away from the beaches in July. It is better to be safe than sorry. Please pass the word around and also pray for all beings.”
Thank you and have a nice day.
Bless you

I don’t know what to make of this.

We live in an age where it is easy to be park our brains somewhere while we hit the “forward” button. We do it with the best of intentions. We think we are doing something good. In fact when we receive something like this, it almost behoves us to hit the “forward” button lest we be accused of receiving information but failing to act.

I disagree.

It may very well be that come July the quakes do happen and the tsunamis do hit. But I could also win the lotto grand prize and Manchester United could win the lot.

Nice maps and charts accompanied that email. But so what? It wouldn’t take a 10^th grader 20 minutes to cook up a graphic illustration like that. Does the picture legitimise the content? It certainly prettied it up. Maybe it would make more people also hit the “forward” button than if there were no pictures. It doesn’t however make the content any more legitimate.

It didn’t make me want to forward it more than if it did not have any pictures. I am just as likely to delete it, and I did.

Why does someone send an email like that without trying to do anything to verify the contents? If there were attempts to verify, then why not let the recipients know? Even share the outcomes of the research? That would then really be doing the recipients a favour. To “forward” it blind is no help.

Am I withholding information or failing to act on information if I don’t “forward” such emails? Don’t be ridiculous. What am I withholding? Scuttle bug. If there were more to it, then why were the additional bits left out?

The recent long weekend over the Easter break was fantastic. Tress, Kiddo and I had a good break and I do feel like I had a good clean break. I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling refreshed and happier than before the break.
On Thursday we went out to PP for dinner. The next day, after sleeping in a bit, we went for a drive to the Mornington Peninsula. I charged up the GPS the night before and early on Friday, I poked around with it to see where we could go in the peninsula. Even though I woke up just a bit after 6am, I still felt like I had slept in. I browsed the Melways and then randomly picked out Arthur’s Seat at the peninsula as a spot to visit.
We took off a bit after 9am, hit the Eastlink and drove up to the peninsula. We hit Dromana a bit under an hour later. At a toilet break, we picked out a spot for a maze adventure. It turned out that the “POI” in the GPS was also for the same place – the enchanted gardens or something like that, at Arthur’s Seat just off Dromana.
Kiddo was particularly excited about going into a maze. It turned out that the place had several mazes, including one made of corn tree – a maze’s maze, if you like.
We spent close to 2 hours there and then drove towards Mornington for lunch. We had wanted to go to the “Old Bank Café” but it was closed, so we ended up having fish and chips. We walked around the town for a bit after that before driving further along the esplanade. We wanted to stop again for coffee but couldn’t find a spot we were after.
We got home close to 5pm.
Later that night we had a Good Friday service in church. Steven was not well so some of us spent the whole night attending to him.
On Saturday kiddo had practice in church so I sent her there again. I brought along some bibles which we were going to give to baptism candidates, and left them in the office. After attending to some mail, I went home and went for a walk with Tress. We then went grocery shopping to cook for Easter Sunday lunch at church the next day. After picking kiddo up we went for brunch at Glen Waverly. It was some quickie yum cha after which we went to get some wine for Steven’s birthday party that night. We went back after that and Tress did her gardening while I did the vacuuming. Tress then did the cooking while Kiddo and I played some video games. She thrashed me of course, as usual.
Steven’s birthday party went really well that night. It went so well he actually walked out of the restaurant without paying! The matre de looked around to see who would foot the bill but hey, it was a 10 course meal for 7 tables so no one was in a hurry to volunteer to “pay first”. I think as I write this the bill still hasn’t been paid. Gotta learn this trick from Steven.
Because Kiddo was playing the keyboard, we went to church early on Sunday morning. We helped around with the water for the baptism tub, set up the tables for lunch and generally got busy. Church was full that morning and after I was done and wanted to join the service, I actually had to look for a seat – an unusual occurrence.
My mate had a big cookout later that arvo but I couldn’t go – had to play driver for a bit and then Tress was down with a bad headache. She went to bed to rest up and Kiddo and I took out an old DVD (Two Towers) and tried to outdo each other reciting lines. I think she won but only just.
We lazed around on Monday morning, Tress looked and felt much better – even cooked lunch. After lunch we dropped Kiddo off in church – again – a whole bunch of them were meeting up to go to the Planet Shakers’ concert in the city. It’s a 4 night thing and she’s staying over at a mate’s house each night, along with 6 other girls. Tress and I spent the first of 4 nights by ourselves. We had durian for dinner that first night. See the previous entry…

Kiddo’s away with a bunch of folks from ICC at a Planetshakers’ conference which runs till Thursday. She’ll be staying with Sarah, together with the rest of the girls.

Tress and I decided to indulge in a durian dinner, so we went out and got the Musang King frozen durian pack.