Friday, October 29, 2004

[transmission start]

thoughts: thou shall not sell out... OR... thou shall stand up for thy religion

right. had a bit of an issue. about religion - my religion in particular... ok, before anyone starts ringing alarm bells and thinks i'm going to renounce my faith (or anything like that), hear me out... please.

question: how far would you go to stand up for what you believe in? (i've got tons of other questions like that, but that's for another time)

as some of you might know, i'm in canpus crusade (albeit for 1 sem). there's this thing called harvest week, where we go around asking people to come for this thing called GIG (groups investigating God). basically it's an evangelism thing where we go up to total strangers, ask them if they want to know about God. it's a pretty scary prospect, if you've never done it before....

so what's my point? 'direct' evangelism isn't my style. i don't believe it works. it turns people off... but evangelism is something we have to do. scary as the prospect sounds... not just scary for us, but for the people we approach as well (or at least that's what i think).... i mean, how would you feel if some guy came up to you and started talking to you about God? but i'm going off point here... back to the issue...

right. so evangelism is something we're supposed to do, and i didn't do it because i 'wasn't comfortable' with how it was done. that's not how it should be. never. i didn't do it in the end, but it left me feeling a bit... thoughtful. if i can't even do this, how can i stand up for my faith? how can i be a testimony for my religion? how can i testify for God? when push came to shove, and i had to put my life on the line for God, would i? or would i put up my hands in surrender (albeit figuratively) and say 'i don't know him', and like Peter deny his relation to Jesus Christ?

pride and fear gets in the way of standing up for my faith, for what i believe in. that's not how it should be.... but i'll tell you this - Christians struggle with this, just like anyone else, when you 'compromise' your beliefs so to speak... if this happened to you, what would you do? would you hold firm to what you believe in, or deny it for your own safety / comfort / pride?

i know i'm definitely not being a good testimony for Christians because of what i've just said... perhaps even turning some people off... but that's it... nobody's perfect, and ever is. we all have fears, we all have insecurities, free thinkers or otherwise. religion isn't the answer to all problems. Christianity is about relationships with God (albeit difficult sometimes because He's 'intangible' in a sense), and in any relationship there's difficulties, disappointments, problems. it's not the magic bullet, the be-all and end-all... it doesn't mean having a relationship with God solves all your problems just like that. it doesn't.

right. that's it from me. i'm sorry if i've offended anyone (quite a lot of people i should think)... i don't want to start some super arguement on this. that's not how it should go. it's never how it should go.

till next time...

[transmission end]

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chr1s0ng put the word on the street at 8:55 AM
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