Jeremy Lin... and the rest

i had another argument with my mum regarding the current business. she's deeply hurt about how deeply ungrateful and twisted i am, and has fallen into one of her dark silent moods which she hasnt been doing for a little while. but hopefully, this can put some breaks on her urges in the future... and hopefully not work the other way round.

it seems that I just turned my back to reality a little and now the whole world is crazy about this Jeremy Lin thing, well, especially the Asians abroad population. i know the mainland chinese population would very much like to as well... but the fact that he's twnese made everything just slightly awkward(...which i think is quite a welcoming relief).

i've been finding it hard to rejoice about this brother in Christ's achievement, despite the fact that any of us happen to achieve anything on such scales being rarities, and despite basketball being the only sport i can understand and enjoy spectating. i've attempted hard to inspire myself with his testimonies... but... end of the day it lacks the personal touch i was desperately looking for in someone at such a unique position, and its really not deviating far from what comes off the usual church assembly line. you hear similar things being proclaimed by aunties healed of back spasms so that they could serve soup in the church soup kitchen without spilling, or girls of their menstrual pain so that they dont have to go through the traumatising process of popping a celebrex before P&W rehearsals.

but maybe... such testimonies are exactly what christians should be doing. and i am just as savage as any fervent pagans for viewing them in such flippant ways.

i have an almost pathological aversion to the never failing connection between God's grace and "success" in all facets of life, and the distress and discomfort we invariably have to go through when we are being perceived as failing, that the christian and secular world are surprisingly, frightfully similar in meting out such perceptions.

its tough being cancerous. Its probably impossible being a christian, and cancerous. a melodramatic faith performance would be expected of you. anything short of a miraculous healing will likely result in bitter disappointment from, if not yourself, maybe the most of your social network, and especially the ones who likely will not even be much grieved by your departure.

Has JL's Christian views only become worthy up there on the pedestals because he succeeded in the secular world? and all his 3-pointers now automatically a form of somewhat christian triumph? and what if he becomes injured? then fails in the volatile professional sporting world? what then? we wait till his next surge of success to have the heart and gladness to say to the world that there is again good evidence that God is among us?

i love my list of favourite ojisan christian writers. not only that they are able write insightfully sympathetic things... every time i see an unimpressive photo of them i have the sense of comfort that they could just be the driver in the car behind me horning angrily as i doze off at the red light, or the grumbling customer in chinese restaurant after finding half a cockroach in his stir-fry. Strangely, thats the kind of ppl that earns my respect most easily.

i probably would be frightened working with bosses who like to motivate underlings to become superhumans or love machines, but i will have great respect for one who despite objective evidences of his/her successes, christian or secular, would through professional interactions, be able to reveal to me that he/she is just as painfully and ineffectually human as any other sons of Adam. and any chance of "love" or success, arises only from that.

and that, certainly is not a Christian exclusive ability. reflecting back, majority of the past registrars who managed to shape and inspire my work philosophy(...in their variable shapes and forms, and entirely not because of how perfect or respectable they were), were non-christians.
and i can only thank God for their presence and how much God has blessed the path of this life through them.

and how can i forget that my one and only role model of many years is a non-christian? certainly wish i can continue to learn many things from FM, and he could continue to be that one and only role model for me, for many years to come.

Mark Galli writes many redeeming words, and those were exactly the ones i had wanted to hear this week:
"We are too often tempted to justify our existence on this planet by doing something "significant," by "making a difference in the world," so that we can go to bed at night feeling good about ourselves. But the Christian message is about a God who judges and loves us in our insignificance—that is, when our selfcenteredness has sabotaged our ability to make any fundamentally sound contribution to our lives or to others'. This God speaks to us the frank word that not only do we not make a difference in the world, day to day we threaten to make the world worse by our sin. But in Jesus Christ, he has judged and forgiven us through the Cross, and now he uses even our insignificant efforts to witness to his coming work in Jesus Christ."

I recall an interesting occurrence with a pastor last weekend. He visits our church often, and over the years has said many great things. now that same wkend i happened to have upgraded my mobile to a smartphone for the very first time, and really... had very little idea how to use it, even in terms of making a call.

so as the pastor shared about his afflicted physical health in the last few months and how he was telling his treating doctor how dare anyone to suggest operating and removing anything from his body, i discovered with horror that my new phone was telling me that it didnt have a sim card and i could make emergency phone calls only.

i certainly wonder sometimes why i go through thoughtless panic at the most inappropriate times just like then i became paranoid of evil spidermen dropping from the church ceiling to attack me and my phone's only able to make emergency calls. (wait it can still make emergency calls? even if say the church... really... has evil spidermen hiding on its roof...)

so i sat there, insightlessly and panickingly fumbled and prodded and shook my new phone hoping to make it work again, and listened on, of the pastor launching into numerous attacks about the medical profession, of one about a medical friend of his, previously talented in evangelism now disappointedly just wanted to focus on his career, of another about how MBBS truly stands for something silly and ludicrous, of how all doctors are arrogant except for one (which i suspect is the only one he knows personally from this church)...

retrospectively i wondered... if the fumbling and preoccupation with the phone was really about delusional evil spidermen, or it was really a subconscious passive aggressive defense mechanism that someone shouting such ill-informed abuses from the pulpit really has nothing positive to offer to my spirtual life and hence not worth paying attention to?

i dont know how obvious my panicked movements in my usual low-profile back row position was, but towards the end of that sermon he related about how he once yelled at another church member of his for playing with a smartphone during his preaching, only later to discover that the person was checking bible verses and taking sermon notes on his phone.

it would be interesting to know whether the story was told by coincidence or on purpose, but i guess i wouldnt have the chance to know. at least, i was obviously prodding and shaking my phone, looked nowhere near bible flipping nor notes typing.

and i was unremorseful. as the church was dismissed and the pastor stood at the back shaking everyone's hand, i was still preoccupied about my spidermen, with head bowed and fingers picking at the sim card slot of the phone, when he stretched his hand right into my face.

my memories of sermons are usually poor, but that one with its medical abuses and associated inappropriate phone behaviour, and that hand stretched right into my face stuck firm in my head. retrospectively i feel genuinely sorry for the old man afflicted with probably serious health issues and God knows what kind of emotional torment to the point that he could only release his stresses by attacking the medical profession from the pulpit.

and i sincerely hope he could claim some sort of victory rather than ran into the risk of offending his social network, if not himself.

yet i would have much more respect of him, if instead of what he said, he could stand there and tell the congregation frankly that he now really dislikes doctors overall because of the stresses and traumas some members of that profession may have inflicted on him.

now, no spidermen dropped from the church ceiling that day, and my phone miraculously recognised its sim card as soon as i left church and arrived at box hill central. I wonder still what kind of lessons God was trying to teach me through that ludicrous little episode...

but first i must have some self-control in not being delusional about spidermen, and learn to leave matters when its completely unnecessary to sort them out on the spot.

and, this, really, is not that hard.