I'm not going to speculate how and why "Shariah" law condones this kind of teaching. True, you may not be against any other religion, but what if you see your own as demanding the death of so-called "apostates?"
The whole issue of Abdul Rahman's conversion to Christianity from Islam goes even deeper than an "Afghan decision" as US spokesman Sean McCormack called it. It doesn't even go to whether or not you're Muslim, Christian, Hindu or anything else, but the whole issue of freedom. President Bush believes he has freed the people of Afghanistan from Taliban rule, but what is the point if the clerics keep calling for death to converts?
And I don't think I'm the first to see a sort of hypocrisy here. The "moderate" Islamic population has been called--no, exhorted--again and again to actively oppose radical teachings, and yet say nothing about the treatment of those from other faiths in their own countries. At best, it's a non-issue, nothing worth losing your cool over.
Someone is opening the persecution genie's bottle over there. God help us all.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Saturday, March 18, 2006
I have a question. Now I need an answer.
I am seated before my computer, typing this when I've the feeling I should be doing something else. I'm not a pessimist, or at least I don't like to think I am, but I guess I'm not cut out to write fiction.
Yet.
Okay, maybe I'm selfish. Maybe I've never talked about anything but me, me, me on this blog. Am I seeing it as a soapbox, a pulpit, or a journal? I honestly don't know. Much as I want to write, I can't simply have a technician fiddle around in my brain like Isaac Asimov's robot-writer Cal.
Beside me on my PC's desk is the black NKJV Bible I got at Funan Centre last year. It sits unopened, untapped, like a spirituality vehicle I use for two hours every Sunday and gathers dust the remaining 166. It seems to be accusing me, piercing my soul like the sword it says it is. Perhaps God is gently tugging at my heart, letting me know apart from Him I can do nothing? I'm not sure I like this--it seems to me a sort of blackmail, a sort of this-is-my-dream-it-isn't-fair anger toward the whole business.
Much as I love Him, I cannot fathom why He must do the things He does. They say our minds are too small, too incapable of truly understanding the riches He has in store for us. I think they may be right--when our children misbehave, screw up their homework, or go down the wrong paths do we all not desire they come to us, to make sense of it all?
Perhaps I should see God not as a cosmic sergeant-major, yelling over and over, "The Army way is the only way!" He is more of the Father He says He is, letting us fall when our inability shows, but being there to pick us up, and look to Him when we stumble once again. No matter how many stumbles we have, He doesn't look up from His list and sternly remind us, "This is your fourth time, Zhengping. Aren't you failing a few times too many?" He knows all the rejection He will get from us, all the mud we throw in His face, and all the pain we will one day feel for it.
But still, He loves us.
Hmmph. You think, when He created parental love, that was what He had in mind?
Yet.
Okay, maybe I'm selfish. Maybe I've never talked about anything but me, me, me on this blog. Am I seeing it as a soapbox, a pulpit, or a journal? I honestly don't know. Much as I want to write, I can't simply have a technician fiddle around in my brain like Isaac Asimov's robot-writer Cal.
Beside me on my PC's desk is the black NKJV Bible I got at Funan Centre last year. It sits unopened, untapped, like a spirituality vehicle I use for two hours every Sunday and gathers dust the remaining 166. It seems to be accusing me, piercing my soul like the sword it says it is. Perhaps God is gently tugging at my heart, letting me know apart from Him I can do nothing? I'm not sure I like this--it seems to me a sort of blackmail, a sort of this-is-my-dream-it-isn't-fair anger toward the whole business.
Much as I love Him, I cannot fathom why He must do the things He does. They say our minds are too small, too incapable of truly understanding the riches He has in store for us. I think they may be right--when our children misbehave, screw up their homework, or go down the wrong paths do we all not desire they come to us, to make sense of it all?
Perhaps I should see God not as a cosmic sergeant-major, yelling over and over, "The Army way is the only way!" He is more of the Father He says He is, letting us fall when our inability shows, but being there to pick us up, and look to Him when we stumble once again. No matter how many stumbles we have, He doesn't look up from His list and sternly remind us, "This is your fourth time, Zhengping. Aren't you failing a few times too many?" He knows all the rejection He will get from us, all the mud we throw in His face, and all the pain we will one day feel for it.
But still, He loves us.
Hmmph. You think, when He created parental love, that was what He had in mind?
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Your look into Bunker 13
You know anyone reading this will understand your use of the second person the moment they set eyes on Bunker 13. But you hope they'll understand this first look into the novel is through researching rather than moralistic eyes, and so let you describe it as fairly as you can.
You didn't read very far into Bunker 13 before realising the main character, MM, knows an awful lot about the history, tactics and techniques of parachute warfare. Due credit must be given writer Aniruddha Bahal for his research--as a journalist he's gathered way more than enough information for his words to feel you are really there with him, feeling each drop, each gust of wind, each dose of heroin with the crazily-living MM.
That's right, each dose of heroin. You think the drug references are a little overdone, but given how they ruin the body of an anti-hero you have a hard time liking it's quite a reminder how they continue to be rampant in today's world. And if you think it's cool you need help more than anyone.
But more than that the story is a military thriller, following MM through double-crosses, battles among the Indian Special Forces and Kashmiri warlords. And as military thrillers go it's extraordinarily well-researched, as if Stephen E. Ambrose or Mark Bowden suddenly turned and decided to do something about a drug-addled paratrooper who figures out how to inject heroin ('H') in freefall, and enters a lawless world of arms dealers, double-crosses and soldiers with more than their country's defence on their minds. You'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind you writing about books written years ago and with a strong enough stomach.
But since that isn't really your thing, you figure you'll take your time going through and figuring it all out.
You know right away it's a dirty book. But then you must admit, it's a dirty world.
Of course, you think you've something to say about the second person narrator, the kind of writing that calls the viewpoint character "you" rather than "I" (first) or "him/her/it" (third). In her fine book Get That Novel Written! Donna Levin calls the second person good for an experiment and not much else; besides, it distances readers from the story, coming across as more of narrative ego than anything else (think someone praising himself all the length of a novel) while Christopher Leland in The Art of Compelling Fiction says it draws the reader into the action--it's you complicit in whatever happens, you in whose head the wildest fictional forays occur.
All a matter of taste, talent and style, you guess.
You didn't read very far into Bunker 13 before realising the main character, MM, knows an awful lot about the history, tactics and techniques of parachute warfare. Due credit must be given writer Aniruddha Bahal for his research--as a journalist he's gathered way more than enough information for his words to feel you are really there with him, feeling each drop, each gust of wind, each dose of heroin with the crazily-living MM.
That's right, each dose of heroin. You think the drug references are a little overdone, but given how they ruin the body of an anti-hero you have a hard time liking it's quite a reminder how they continue to be rampant in today's world. And if you think it's cool you need help more than anyone.
But more than that the story is a military thriller, following MM through double-crosses, battles among the Indian Special Forces and Kashmiri warlords. And as military thrillers go it's extraordinarily well-researched, as if Stephen E. Ambrose or Mark Bowden suddenly turned and decided to do something about a drug-addled paratrooper who figures out how to inject heroin ('H') in freefall, and enters a lawless world of arms dealers, double-crosses and soldiers with more than their country's defence on their minds. You'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind you writing about books written years ago and with a strong enough stomach.
But since that isn't really your thing, you figure you'll take your time going through and figuring it all out.
You know right away it's a dirty book. But then you must admit, it's a dirty world.
Of course, you think you've something to say about the second person narrator, the kind of writing that calls the viewpoint character "you" rather than "I" (first) or "him/her/it" (third). In her fine book Get That Novel Written! Donna Levin calls the second person good for an experiment and not much else; besides, it distances readers from the story, coming across as more of narrative ego than anything else (think someone praising himself all the length of a novel) while Christopher Leland in The Art of Compelling Fiction says it draws the reader into the action--it's you complicit in whatever happens, you in whose head the wildest fictional forays occur.
All a matter of taste, talent and style, you guess.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
All that fuss over a video?
I've saved my take on a Nanyang Polytechnic student's recorded bedroom video that's making its rounds on the Internet for now, after all the hoo-hah's died down.
One: Which pervert uploaded the video? Have you no shame, no respect for those people as human beings? Anyone reading this, correct me if I'm wrong, but uploading a sex video for ALL to see requires a measure of dehumanisation of the couple involved--they cease to be intimately (lovingly is another issue I'll take up in a minute) engaged with each other and now become objects to sate another's lust. People with minds and hearts, thoughts and feelings, pasts and futures, are reduced to simple moving pixels for the sole purpose of--what?
Lustful indulgence?
Humiliation?
(Perish the thought) Fame?
I won't speculate. Congratulations, anonymous One Who Uploaded. You have succeeded in replacing two people with lives to get on with with a spectacle to behold in public. I hope you're satisfied so no one else need suffer this.
"Ell-ooh-vee-ee, that's the way it's meant to be," Hi-5 sang a few years back. To that C.S. Lewis wrote about the danger of separating sexual pleasure from the other pleasures it is meant to accompany. Monogamous sex within marriage is the only way, I feel to keep your fire under control and your message a clear "I'll be with you forever" to your spouse... especially with so much immorality, destroyed families and broken bodies and lives.
"But I have a legitimate need," someone might protest. Yes, but we have legitimate needs for food, fun, and shelter. Orson Scott Card once said growing up is learning how to delay your pleasures so you can get more than ever out of them when you finally do. Eg. you put off 24/7 fun and games to get a good education so you can enjoy a greater measure of fun than ever you did, and ensure your children get to join in. You withhold your appetite for solid food so when your teeth finally grow and take root you can partake of it without worry of a malformed jaw. And you delay sex until it is with the one you've pledged your life and future to, for that is the best, the freest of all.
Max Lucado compares sexual pleasure to an heirloom, an old black family Bible passed down through the generations. It is a precious record of his roots, plus containing the words of God Himself--so is opened and used in "special times and special places". Think about it. When you need a scrap of rough paper to jot down a number, you don't tear out a page. When you need a prop for a too-short chair leg, you don't jam the Bible under there, he says. Rather than deny sexual pleasure, Christian belief affirms it as a true gift from God, something I imagine Him crafting as carefully as possible. The flow of hormones to awaken us to this reality. The abundance of nerves in the right areas... I'd better not go any further.
But the Christian view does. It has struck many a person through the ages that those who sinned sexually were drawn towards Jesus, rather than away from Him--the only one who could see them for the erring human beings they were instead of crimes to be punished. He saw their sin as something dirtying them that only He could clean and restore. And that is precisely the Christian message: that people are fallen, and people can be redeemed.
The parties in the sex video--enough is enough. Mistakes have been made, judgement has been passed. And the punishment? Look to Calvary. We have already been punished--let the restoration begin.
End of sermon.
One: Which pervert uploaded the video? Have you no shame, no respect for those people as human beings? Anyone reading this, correct me if I'm wrong, but uploading a sex video for ALL to see requires a measure of dehumanisation of the couple involved--they cease to be intimately (lovingly is another issue I'll take up in a minute) engaged with each other and now become objects to sate another's lust. People with minds and hearts, thoughts and feelings, pasts and futures, are reduced to simple moving pixels for the sole purpose of--what?
Lustful indulgence?
Humiliation?
(Perish the thought) Fame?
I won't speculate. Congratulations, anonymous One Who Uploaded. You have succeeded in replacing two people with lives to get on with with a spectacle to behold in public. I hope you're satisfied so no one else need suffer this.
"Ell-ooh-vee-ee, that's the way it's meant to be," Hi-5 sang a few years back. To that C.S. Lewis wrote about the danger of separating sexual pleasure from the other pleasures it is meant to accompany. Monogamous sex within marriage is the only way, I feel to keep your fire under control and your message a clear "I'll be with you forever" to your spouse... especially with so much immorality, destroyed families and broken bodies and lives.
"But I have a legitimate need," someone might protest. Yes, but we have legitimate needs for food, fun, and shelter. Orson Scott Card once said growing up is learning how to delay your pleasures so you can get more than ever out of them when you finally do. Eg. you put off 24/7 fun and games to get a good education so you can enjoy a greater measure of fun than ever you did, and ensure your children get to join in. You withhold your appetite for solid food so when your teeth finally grow and take root you can partake of it without worry of a malformed jaw. And you delay sex until it is with the one you've pledged your life and future to, for that is the best, the freest of all.
Max Lucado compares sexual pleasure to an heirloom, an old black family Bible passed down through the generations. It is a precious record of his roots, plus containing the words of God Himself--so is opened and used in "special times and special places". Think about it. When you need a scrap of rough paper to jot down a number, you don't tear out a page. When you need a prop for a too-short chair leg, you don't jam the Bible under there, he says. Rather than deny sexual pleasure, Christian belief affirms it as a true gift from God, something I imagine Him crafting as carefully as possible. The flow of hormones to awaken us to this reality. The abundance of nerves in the right areas... I'd better not go any further.
But the Christian view does. It has struck many a person through the ages that those who sinned sexually were drawn towards Jesus, rather than away from Him--the only one who could see them for the erring human beings they were instead of crimes to be punished. He saw their sin as something dirtying them that only He could clean and restore. And that is precisely the Christian message: that people are fallen, and people can be redeemed.
The parties in the sex video--enough is enough. Mistakes have been made, judgement has been passed. And the punishment? Look to Calvary. We have already been punished--let the restoration begin.
End of sermon.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Book review: The way religio-SF should be done
Did I mention the opus I was working on? Scratch that.
Having read the novel Radiant by James Alan Gardner, I feel like an illiterature (SEE?) reading Dickens and feeling lucky just to experience some of that creativity. Gardner's Radiant is a masterwork, and I picked it up at one p.m. today and didn't put it down till half-past five when I finished it. He keeps the protagonist guessing, and you with her, and the result is one long roller-coaster ride that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go till you read the very last page and slide your eye off its final word.
Guess I've my homework cut out for me, eh?
His tightly-drawn first-person style is one of the best I've encountered to date, and puts us squarely into heroine Youn Suu's head (or what's left of it, anyway). And the religious themes don't scream This is the One Truth in your head, so it reads more like the action-adventure story it is and not some religious tract straight out from Campus Crusade (sorry, fellows in Christ--just making a comparison here) like religious fiction's wont to do, whether consciously or not.
But godlike aliens that "transcend" with their super-advanced technology? The idea of gods as metaphors and theological concepts to be explained away? Puh-leeze. Gardner's science is silly, but not that that matters with this rollicking-good tale.
I'm gonna go read this again. Never mind I didn't get any of the few League of People's references within; the book can be read on its own, whoopee! And considering this is only the second Gardner novel I've read, that's quite a plus.
PS: The first was Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Man of Bronze. Didn't like it as much, but in his own League (sorry, couldn't resist), that's a different story.
Having read the novel Radiant by James Alan Gardner, I feel like an illiterature (SEE?) reading Dickens and feeling lucky just to experience some of that creativity. Gardner's Radiant is a masterwork, and I picked it up at one p.m. today and didn't put it down till half-past five when I finished it. He keeps the protagonist guessing, and you with her, and the result is one long roller-coaster ride that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go till you read the very last page and slide your eye off its final word.
Guess I've my homework cut out for me, eh?
His tightly-drawn first-person style is one of the best I've encountered to date, and puts us squarely into heroine Youn Suu's head (or what's left of it, anyway). And the religious themes don't scream This is the One Truth in your head, so it reads more like the action-adventure story it is and not some religious tract straight out from Campus Crusade (sorry, fellows in Christ--just making a comparison here) like religious fiction's wont to do, whether consciously or not.
But godlike aliens that "transcend" with their super-advanced technology? The idea of gods as metaphors and theological concepts to be explained away? Puh-leeze. Gardner's science is silly, but not that that matters with this rollicking-good tale.
I'm gonna go read this again. Never mind I didn't get any of the few League of People's references within; the book can be read on its own, whoopee! And considering this is only the second Gardner novel I've read, that's quite a plus.
PS: The first was Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Man of Bronze. Didn't like it as much, but in his own League (sorry, couldn't resist), that's a different story.
I'm already interested, how?
Seen in a CapitaLand shopping centre: "For interest in space in our malls, call 6 XXX XXXX."
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