Ying had a big lunch with some colleagues that made her feel ill for the rest of the day. Right now we’re home watching Iron Chef (铁人 - tetsu jin). The secret ingredient is curry powder!!! These are all repeats from Japan about 10 years ago, but it’s still a great show.

I’ve been asked to lead at Church again tomorrow. That means I don’t preach, I just lead the service. One thing I really enjoy when leading is that I get to choose the hymns.

Hi all, I’ve been a bit busy to post any original material here lately. I hope to soon.

I’ve just posted this clip while I’m waiting on the phone with my ISP TPG. I wish they had a clue what they were doing. Good downloading speeds, though. Last night I got the fastest I’ve ever seen - over 500kb/s.

To not understand the concept of grace is a very sad thing for a Christian. Grace (XARIS) is something that is shown by God to humans in the act of the Cross of Christ. What an act of mercy it was that was shown to us on that day! How undeserving we are to be the beneficiaries of such love!

To define grace I couldn’t do better than a friend of A.W. Pink, who he quotes in a footnote on page 25 of his book The Sovereignty of God:

“An esteemed friend who kindly read through this book in its manuscript form, and to whom we are indebted for a number of excellent suggestions, has pointed out that grace is something more than “unmerited favour.” To feed a tramp who calls on me is “unmerited favour,” but it is scarcely grace. But suppose that after he has robbed me I should feed this starving tramp—that would be “grace.” Grace, then, is favour shown where there is positive de-merit in the one receiving it.”

Now, Pink cites this illustration not to explain anything about human relationships at all. Rather, he is talking about God.

No doubt, there are times when we can be imitators of his grace. In Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (I’ve only seen the 1998 film which portrays this quite beautifully – I haven’t read the book), Bishop Myriel forgives Jean Valjean in a way that is a clear, stark reminder of the grace shown to Christians by God. Not that I deserve credit in any way, in a small handful of occasions I, myself, have been able to look to the Cross of Christ (and, of much lesser importance, to Bishop Myriel) and behave towards people in a more favourable way than I otherwise would have – and by my definition above, this only comes into play when someone has wronged me, not when it comes to run-of-the-mill human relations with no wrongdoing. However, even this is by no means the central thrust of the teachings about grace.

What is this central thrust? It may sound a cop-out, however, with regard to Scriptural quotations to illustrate my point, there are too many to number (and I do feel that “proof-texting” is overly maligned these days). I have on my lap my NIV complete concordance. A scan down the column indicates to me that grace originates in God, is of God and is primarily concerned with God.

There are three problems with Yancey’s book “What’s so Amazing about Grace” as I see it.

(1) Sometimes a popular book is so because it is populist. This book has the word “grace” in it’s title, and is a bestseller. Rather than reach for the book presented to us at the end of the aisle at Koorong (or, more typically, Word), we’re better off with C.H. Spurgeon’s “All of Grace”, for want of a book with “grace” in it’s title.

(2) The main enemy in Yancey’s book appear to be fundamentalist Christians. Sure, these guys have their problems, and I put aside for a moment the fact that I actually consider myself to be one of them. If we don’t listen to the fundamentalist Christians on the topic of grace, who do we listen to? Wasn’t it the Reformers and their progeny, indeed the Puritans and later the fundamentalists who inherited the teaching of the doctrines of grace? Indeed, a google search of “doctrines of grace” will show exactly where the term comes from. If the fundamentalists did not inherit the Calvinist tradition and teachings then which tradition did they inherit? These things cause me to conclude that it really is silly to write a book about grace whose main enemy is the fundamentalist Christian.

(3) As you know, Amazing Grace is a hymn by John Newton. To make use of the first line of this hymn as the title for this book, it begs the question: Would John Newton and Yancey agree or disagree on the subject of grace? Banner of Truth publishers refuse to publish any books that disagree with Calvinist teachings (doctrines of grace) – and they publish books about John Newton. John Newton is also known to have leant on the side of Calvinism, yet was relatively non-committal. He certainly didn’t see entirely eye-to-eye with the Wesleys on the issue/s. Given this, are Newton and Yancey on the same page? This is no small point. We’re talking about the very definition of grace, which is a very important subject to a Christian. To me it would be more forgivable if Yancey had written a book which gave God his rightful glory, rather than robbing it and giving it to humans, but had a spelling error in the title. “Whats so Amazing about Garce” or something. Maybe one could say that Yancey was more in agreement with Wesley. Let him quote Wesley then.

Further to the above, do even Wesley and Yancey agree on grace? A quick google found the following God-centered article: http://godonly.wordpress.com/2007/11/18/john-wesley-on-grace/

justaudio2008
learnfree2007

Robert recently helped me out immensely by making a video of the Roman numerals I-XII for Asher - all the numerals needed to tell the time. This is it here:

Hi all,

Usually when my visitors post a comment I receive an email notification, which lets me know that you’ve commented and gives me a chance to check it before publication. I then usually approve the comment and make it public.

Due to a recent (and ongoing) spam attack I’ve opted not to receive this notification every time you post a comment, thus, it may take slightly longer for me to notice that you’ve commented. Currently I’m deleting about 15 spam posts a day off this site. By not receiving the notification at least I don’t have to delete 15 emails as well as the spams themselves.

Aside from deleting spam I’ve been spending much of my spare time recently keeping up with my Supermemo memorisation. As a result I’ve been spending less time actually posting articles here. I’ve got plenty of things I’d like to say - like how I felt this morning when I saw a sign on a shop window advertising for a shop assistant, who “must speak fluent Chinese and English”. Discrimination against all non-Chinese basically, at least this time the sign was in English, they’re usually in Chinese. Anyhow, longer posts (and hopefully more photos, I know I keep promising) to come.

James

Williams has written a very enjoyable and thoughtful apologetic work, published by the ABC only in June of this year. This book is not only a solid defence of the Christian faith, but also traverses great distances when it comes to extending our general knowledge and appreciation of the vast corpus of written material on the subject that Williams only gets a chance to skim across.

Some very compelling cases for Christ’s authenticity are made in terms of being who he claimed to be and also that he clearly existed as a historical figure. On pages 175-6 I was waiting for him to make a point which seemed to me would be natural for him as a lawyer to make, namely, that if others wrote about Christ, rather than he himself, this is more trustworthy testimony. To illustrate. If Joe says “Hi everyone, I’m a really great guy!” we would dismiss him as another person who’s just too full of himself to be paid any attention. However, if Jane says “Hi everyone, I’d like to introduce my friend Joe who is a really great guy!” it causes more heads to be raised because not only is her behaviour unusual, but there could be some measure of truth in what she is saying. Williams doesn’t make this point at all, however, all he had to say on the matter of Christ’s divinity and so on I found to be quite valuable and judicious.

A point that was particularly helpful to me is worth quoting at length because of it’s instructiveness (p174):

Also relevant are the claims that Jesus made about his capacities and authority. The most inexplicable claim, if Jesus was not divine, may be that which He made to scoffers before curing a paralytic: ‘So that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…’ (Matthew 9:6; see also Mark 2:5-12). This ‘throwaway line’ amounted to an explicit claim that Jesus could forgive sins committed not against him but against other people. Why would a sane man say a thing like that? The same question arises as regards other statements in the Synoptics (see, for example, Matthew 4:5-7, Matthew 10:40, Matthew 11:27, Luke 10:16). (emphasis mine)

Helpful endnotes and an index are included. Furthermore, Williams has a nice way of reminding the reader of certain points that he has written (and points to things he will write in following chapters) by mentioning them occasionally, especially when there is an overlap in material.

A few minor points that I was disappointed about when reading this book:

* Placing the appellation “St” in front of New Testament characters like Paul, John and Peter is alienating both to non-believer and thoughtful Christian alike. If we are to rightly use the language of the apostolic age, all Christians are both saints (hAGIOI - necessarily in the plural here) and priests (hIEREUS). Thus it is an anachronism - and I say anachronism because it sounds positively medieval - to refer to the apostles as saints.

* Williams gives the reader the impression, possibly quite rightly so, that he is well-read. Given this, his commentary and quotations on Spong and others really should be limited to refutations. You may ask “Shouldn’t we make our agreement known on points where we do agree?”, by all means, but not at the expense of using a more apt quote from a biblical scholar worth actually listening to, rather than the rare occasion when Spong or some other liberal give us the rare pearl of wisdom.

* The section on grace misses the mark by a long distance. I was grossly saddened to see this. For Williams to derive any true satisfaction from both his Christian life and also the writing of this book he really needs to reconsider the depths of the beauty of God’s grace and bring out a second edition with appropriate changes. On page 229 (see endnote) he even points to Philip Yancey’s book “What’s so Amazing about Grace?” as a book worth reading on the subject. Come on, we all have limited time - and definitely not enough to spend on such worthless trash. You can see my unfavourable and quite badly written review on Amazon.

* There’s a typo in a Latin quotation on page 92, and on the first line of page 223.

Great tune. Youth subcultures really don’t have the same substance as they used to.

It was great to see Mum in Singapore on her way through to Denmark. This is a picture of her and Asher at Gloria Jean’s (apostrophe?).

This morning I forgot my tie. No big deal. I just had to go back home about half a block to get it.

But it made me think. What a stupid unnecessary anachronism from another era the tie actually is. I can’t see an end to this silly madness - no one’s actually going to stand up and say “There are other ways to look smart, you know, we don’t need this shiny cloth”.

Anyhow, back to lesson preparation.