The good oil of good etiquette

I have to say that one of the great things my parents taught me when I was growing up was good manners and etiquette, and having lived here in Korea for 14 months, I can see how bad etiquette can create relational distance between people and just plain awkwardness. My wife and her family have good etiquette, and when my kids grow up I want them to know how to be pleasant towards and around other people, including teaching them things like:

- saying please and thank you (not enough people say it enough);

- not cutting in front of people, reaching over people, invading others' personal space, and sqeezing behind people. Respect people's space, saying 'excuse me' if you need to reach in front of someone or move past them;

- never wolf down food. This is not only good for avoiding indigestion, but we want to enjoy the food that we're eating and appreciate it;

- eat with your mouth closed, elbows off the table, no slouching;

- chew with your mouth closed, never slurp soup, and don't talk with your mouth full;

- show appreciation for what you've received, both to God and the provider;

- NEVER spit;

- put used toilet paper in the toilet when you're finished using it. For some really strange reason in Korea, people put it in a rubbish bin next to the toilet, which is not only foul but unnecessary because the pipes are big enough to take it);

- be clear in your communication. Don't leave any question unanswered and be clear about what you want. Don't prevaricate and be assertive, knowing what your bounaries are and maintaining them, so others don't walk all over you.

- put others before yourself and try to imagine things in other people's shoes.

- be discerning, discrete, and be judgemental in a good way- learn from your mistakes and don't leave your brain on autopilot or sleep mode. Always use the brain God's given you because there are 4 kinds of people in this world:
1) people with no brains whatsoever,
2) those with brains but don't know how to use them;
3) those with brains who know how to use them but choose not to, and
4) those who have brains, know how to use them, and aren't afraid to use them. I want my kids to be the kind in the 4th category.

- be humble and have integrity. These, I think are the most important. Don't lean on your own understanding but trust God and don't get too far ahead of yourself (Proverbs 3:5-6). Never be too proud to say 'I'm sorry', 'I got it wrong', and 'Please forgive me'.

- don't let anyone other than the Lord dictate who and what you are. Know yourself, know God, and don't compromise, even if that means laughing in the face of those who oppose you, dragging you down, or seducing you away from the truth.

I'm sure there's more but yeah, this is what I want my kids to live by :)

Trends in Gospel Music

I'm not sure if it's just me, but I've noticed recently in American gospel music that there's a trend towards people singing music like 'I am Beautiful to You' (as in, I am beautiful to God) and other songs that pay subtle and overt tribute to man's love of God. Many of my Christian friends on Facebook, particularly those in the States and Canada and, to a lesser extent, those in the UK and New Zealand, seem to find those songs appealing and will weep with hightened emotion when they sing them.

I can see why people like them; for one thing, it celebrates the fact that God cleanses filthy, dirty sinners, and that when we are cleansed by God we are acceptable in his eyes because of Jesus' work on the cross. It also acknowledges that people must and should respond to God's love by loving Him back, not just merely obeying Him because they have to.
Funnily enough though, many of those friends of mine who sing these songs have difficulty trusting and obeying God, even though they find such songs so uplifting. But that, for me is a moot point. What I think is risky with songs like this is that they seem to miss the focus of why the gospel is so splendid in the first place- the message of hope in the Bible is so tremendous because God loves His enemies (Romans 5:8), offers love and connection with people whom He actually personally hates because of their sin (Psalm 5:5). The message, and even the shcoking offense, of the gospel is in the fact that God first loves us, not that we love Him (1 John 4:10). As we are we cannot and will never love God, even if we try, because our sin is so deep, wide, and nasty. Our love for God in comparison to His love for us pales into insignificance, that's how great it is. Sin twists all that we are, even our love for God at times, and if Christians forget that then we're left with a salvation that's determined by what we do. It's a form of justifaction by feeling which, in the end, is another form of justification by works and not of grace, and given how fleeting feelings can be, you might start to wonder if you're really saved or not when you hit an emotional low (imagine the torture, for instance, that someone with bipolar disorder would go through).

It makes me think that many of those who are the most likely to be saved by God are those who utterly despise Him and do all the things that they shouldn't, like sleeping around, cussing, drinking themselves to death, because they have no allusions that they're separated from God and hate Him. Knowing how dark their hearts really are, it's truly transforming when they come to the light of Christ, and know that they deserve grace. As they say, the utter darkness of sin helps to accentuate the light of grace, the way a black cloth accentuates the glorious light in a dismond. But if you're under an illusion that deep down you're okay with God because you love Him, or that your aceptance by God and spiritual growth and connection with Him is contingent upon how much affection you have for Him, then the splendour of the cross is gone and you're left with an insecure sense of where you really are in relationship with Him. The truth is, even Christians are not always beautiful to God, especially not when they continue to defy His commands. That's why 1 John 1:8-9 says that Christians need to repenting, lest they deceive themselves and make themselves liars. The Bible says that any Christian who goes back to sin after they've been saved is like a dog returning to its vomit...

Like I said, I can see why such songs like 'I am Beautiful to You' are seductive, but I wonder if they're a distraction from the Biblical message. I was feeling quite spiritually low a few months ago and a American Christian friend of mine told me to not feel so down because God thinks I'm wonderful and beautiful. He told me that I'm wonderful because I love God so much. As seductive as that was, I knew it just wasn't so... Yes, God has saved an cleansed me, but there's still sin in my heart (as there is in all and sundry) and I need to keep trusting on grace. I reminded my friend of that message in 1 John 4:10 and that I'm only right in God's sight because He first loved me and gave me what I didn't deserve, that I don't deserve His goodness because of my love for Him. My love of God can never compare to His love, and I can never give Him enough love and affection to compensate for sin. My friend admitted to having forgotten that message of grace and thanked me for the reminder.
Oddly enough, I find the adjectives 'wonderful', 'beautiful', and 'lovely' strange adjectives to ascribe from God to people. As I see things, I am valuable, acceptable, mde right, and precious in God's eyes 1) because He made me to have a relationship with Him and 2) because He took such expensive measures to save me. But to say that I'm 'wonderful' sounds like the worldly language of self-help gurus and the Joel Osteens. It gives, I feel, oneself a sense of entitlement because I'm wonderful 'just for being me'. One Psalmist wrote in Psalm 139:

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

The emphasis here is on the maker of the person, not the person who was made. It doesn't read 'I praise you because I am fearful and wonderful', in which case the first four words of the verse would need to be dropped because there'd be no need to praise the maker, since the made object is so busy praising himself.

But back to the music of 'I am wonderful and beautiful'. I find myself quite awkward when it comes to singing and listening to this kind of music, because it just doesn't seem to align properly with what Scripture says of God and people. I'm willing to grant that the words of such songs may actually be more faithful to Scriptural messages than the titles that they've been given, but songwriters need to be careful that they're not subtly selling wordly doctrine of self-love.

The song Amazing Grace is such a wonderful song, and no wonder it's popular, because it's so explicit about the saving of someone who is so worthless and wretched. Here's Nana Maskouri's rendition of the song:




I hope American Christianity returns back to the fundamentalist roots that it inherited from the British. There is freedom in Christ, but it's not in what we feel for God or do for Him. It can never be so, because it's God who first loves, not us. I sincerely hope that contemporary Christian music reflects that focus.

********

As an aside, here are some wonderful classics that helped me to understand the gospel and become a Christian. Don't mind the grey hair in the videos, just take in the great words. I used to sing these at university and at church, my spine tingling every time that we did:



(by Wesley)



(by Wesley)

Guid Me O Thou Great Jehovah (by William Williams).

What does it take to forgive?

I want to say that I really love and admire my mother-in-law. Even though we have many cultural, linguistic, generational, age, and gender differences, she's a great woman of faith and cares a lot about the spiritual welfare of my wife and I. For me that has a deep impact, because she cares about the most important things from our lives, and although she's caring about the day to day stuff of life (like the way we look after our daughter and spend money), she's concerned about what's most important. How different that is with some of the people whom I know who speak my own language and with whom I have more things in common with!

She said to me the other day that key to forgiving those who'd hurt be, both past and present, is to think upon Jesus' parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18:21-35. In it, Jesus tells a story about two hypothetical men, the first of whom much is forgiven but who, in turn, fails to forgive his brother, who owes him very little. It's gotten me thinking a lot, and the need to let go of those who have hurt and continue to hurt me and the need to maintain a healthy distance. It's a story that begs the question: If someone has been forgiven much, how can that person not forgive another who owes a much smaller amount? Hmm... It's giving me a lot of food for thought, which I will write about later :) I think it's fair to say though that to forgive, you need to have a willing and humble heart.

More Harry Freaking Potter

Here's a funny article by one British lady on why it's best that Harry Potter just goes away. She, like I, was 17 when the first Harry Potter book was published (back in 1997); when the next movie will be released, that will be in 2011, when both of us are 31... As she said at the end of her piece, that doesn't help to make her feel young, it makes her feel old. She's right, and there's no magic in that. Good stuff!

Are we THIS obsessed with sex?

Are we SO obsessed with sex that journalists have to write turgid nonsense like this? I want to roast writers like this over a spit for writing this stuff to get people's attention. Yeah, coming back as a dust mite is just the ticket.

Slasher Movie: May

The other night Ji Hyun and I watched this crazy slasher movie called 'May'. It's basically about a reclusive loner named May Kennedy, who lives alone and talks to a boxed doll named Suzy. Suzy 'puts' ideas in May, who happens to have an obsession with people who have perfect features. She finds herself attracted to men and women, not because she wants necessarily a friendship or relationship with them, but for their features. She falls for one guy with wonderful hands (he used to be a hand model) but she finds that he and the others that she meets are turned off by her bizarre fetishes. So one day she snaps, kills 5 people (two men and four women), amputates different parts of their bodies, stiches the parts together, and creates a person... She even cuts out her right eye to add to the face. The result is kind of Frankenstein, which May calls 'Amy', a name she chose by rearranging the letters comprising her own monica. At one point she said something like, 'I need to make a friend'... Make a friend, indeed.

The doll, Suzy, was one of those freaky porcelain ones the heavily feature in horror movies, and I was sure that Suzy was one of them when the glass casing that she was boxed in kept cracking of its own accord. Alas, Suzy wasn't the weirdo.

I'd give it a 7 out of 10. It was creepy, but not very scary... Its one redeeming feature is that it included the actress Anna Faris, who is a great actress who won my admiration after performing the blonde bimbo Kelly in Lost in Translation and her performances in Scary Movie 4 and The Hot Chick.

Impassioned religious environmentalism

Wow, Prince Charles is now a green Earth advocate! In his recent Dimbleby lecture, Dear Charles went so far as to say that if we fail the Earth, we fail humanity. Hmm, that's quite a stretch since a) Charles failed his marriage to Diana, which is a far greater sin that failing the Earth, and b) there are bigger ways to fail humanity. Like governments stopping Christians from spreading the gospel, allowing abortion. People giving up on their marriages, abandoning their children, and not giving their kids the attention that they deserve. Those things let humanity down. Sorry Charles, you've not got this one right. Were you to become king, your job title is defender of the Protestant faith. Not faith in the Earth, but faith in Jesus... It's just as well this man isn't king.

Ban on bottled water in Sydney?

More instances of bureaucratic stupidity: the New South Wales state government plans to ban all bottled water in government agencies and force people to drink tap water. I can see why they want to do it: bottles create excessive landfill waste problems. But forcing people to drink Sydney tap water, which suffered a bacteria outbreak back in the mid-90s, is just dumb. Why not invest in water dispensers, like the ones they have here in Korea (see picture below)? They purify the water and practically noone here carries bottles because the dispensers are literally everywhere. Korea, you have something here to sell to the west! THIS makes logical sense.





On a better note, it's terrific to hear that the IMF have revised its economic forecasts for next year, predicting a growth period. China and Australia are both in strong recovery, whereas the US is not really going anywhere and Europe is flatlining.

Mark Driscoll (almost) cried

I was watching Pastor Mark Driscoll's second talk on false doctrine and it was interesting to see him almost weep at the thought of his kids being teachers of false teaching. Check it out here (the key moment is around the 50th minute):

Gay adoption - no, no, no

It was sad to read today that the New South Wales state government is considering allowing gay couples to adopt children. As Margaret Thatcher once said, 'No, no, no'. Gay couples, in choosing the gay life, opt out of the married and family life, because marriage and family are for heterosexuals. To put it another way, if you choose not to drive a car, why would you own one?! By choosing not to have a licence, you choose not to be a driver. I hope this doesn't progress.

Yesterday Once More

I just LOVE The Carpenters... Yesterday Once More is brilliant:

SSsA conversation

I thought this was an interesting post, a conversation between a middle aged man with SSsA (same sex sexual attractions) and his wife. I'm always interested to hear how middle aged couples have gotten through this kind of thing together, with all their life experience and wisdom. Thanks, TCM, for posting this.

Reflections on Michael Jackson and his father

I thought this was a very interesting op. ed. piece on Michael Jackson's relationship with his father, Joe. Kylie Orr, the author, asks a pointed question:

At the BET awards, Joe Jackson was asked how he was doing following his son's death and his response was: "It has been really tough. Remember, we just lost the biggest star in the world."

Sorry, Joe, did you mean your son? Or did you mean to say, it's really sad your son died but a great way to replenish your bank account now you can use his death as a great promotion tool?

It's an interesting question, and I think it's one of the saddest things about Michael Jackson's life. The fact that such a renowned superstar died at such a young age is not, despite what most people think, is the biggest tragedy about Jackson's death. It's that in spite of his success, he still wasn't able to shake off the inner pain that he'd endured from his father. Having had a look at his bizarre life and some of the things that he said and did onstage during his performances (such as telling everyone 'I love you' and hugging a teenage girl for the entire duration of his song You Are Not Alone), makes me wonder if he wasn't trying to convince himself that he was loved and not alone.
It made me realise that a lot of hurting people express their deepest needs and voids by expressing outwardly what they want for other people. Some with love deficits will say to complete stragers (and I find myself doing this too), 'I love you', because deep inside that's what we want them to say to us, particularly in actions and connecting with them.

I think Jackson died a very lonely and broken man, and I really wonder how he got along in life without Jesus with all that pain in his heart. Yes, he did some strange things with kids, but in a way I can see where he might have been coming from: the world of adults is painful, with people more likely to reject you and kick you out. Kids, on the other hand, don't do anything like that; kids are very trusting, and thinking like a kid in a Peter Pan-like fantasy is an attractive means of opting out of the world of grown-ups. But that was the problem with Jackson: he was an eight year old with love deficits in a 50 year old's body. He wanted to get back a part of his childhood world that he'd missed out on and avoid the pain of being a grown-up, and he really saw nothing wrong with it. Even when he was being prosecuted for child molestation, he went on air with a news reporter, Martin Bashir, and confessed that he continued to have kids over to his house for sleepovers. He really thought he was getting something back, when what he really needed was to heal, to grow up and to be a man.

Jackson's pain was actually quite public, and it's possible that so many people, including myself, can connect with him to some extent. As successful as he was, we knew a bit of what was going on inside him and in spite of all the weird things that he did he was visibly an imperfect person. Jackson's life and death though speak as much about the need for strong, supportive family environments as much as it does about the man himself.

Australian economy on the mend

I was happy to see that the Reserve Bank of Australia decided today to hold interest rates at 3%, after the world economy showed signs of improvement. Australia, to its credit (pardon the pun), has a much tighter regulatory system than the US and has prevented the banks from making the kinds of mistakes that the banks made in America. Australian governments can see that economic rationalism and the 'invisible hand' of the market needs to be properly restrained so that consumers don't get screwed by companies. What is of great worry is Vice President Joe Biden's confession the other day that the Obama administration misread how bad the world economy was; after all, it was this mis-reading that lead the president to pass an unprecedented stimulus package, which in turn encouraged the Australian government to do the same. It'll be interesting to see how much better (or worse) things will get from here.

Other news? The world's oldest Bible goes on auction today, and Robert McNamara, so-called architect of the Vietnam War, died aged 93. This video shows what an unusual life he had. McNamara later said he refused to comment on the war in 'Nam because people 'thought he was a son-of-a-bitch'.

Muriel's Wedding- so close to home!

Muriel's Wedding is one of the great Australian movies that made it big almost 15 years ago. It came out when I was 15 years old and it's really close to the bone for me, as it would be for many guys with SSA :D Here it is on Youtube :D Enjoy! The man who plays Muriel's father, Bill Hunter, is a great Aussie actor. He was the voice of the dentist character in the movie Finding Nemo and was in Baz Luhrman's flick Australia.

It's because of this movie, and Priscilla Queen of the Desert, that I got into ABBA back in 1995 :)