total depravity of man

Last week I had 3-day training and met new guys from other companies as well. On second day of training, I went home with a guy from Malaysia. He likes sports as I do, and ask me "Do you bet?" I said No. He then said, "Oh, you're a good guy!"

It seems clear that he knows the standard of good in this case. But, why he doesn't practise it? There's always gap between what man knows and what man does. God created us in His image, and He gave us conscience as our own judge against our wrong deeds. We know up to certain level the standard of good and evil. However, since the fall of man, conscience is the one who is most affected. Conscience would affect thought, and thought affects action. When conscience has fallen into sin, man can not do good things, that is total depravity of man.

However, the total depravity of man does not mean there's nothing good left inside man. Man as an essence is still God's creature. Man still has God's representative inside every people, which is conscience. Conscience avoids people become worsen, conscience makes people thinks twice before they commit an offence. Conscience as general revelation is also reflected to human law. However, conscience is not the standard since everyone would have different standard.

Why man can not do what he knows good? That is Paul's struggle in Romans chapter 7 (esp Rm 7:19). Every man has his sinful nature. An unbeliever, who does not have Holy Spirit cannot control his sinful nature. Although he is an educated person, but his flesh is weak, his sinful desires would control his thought and action. Often we heard that parliament members have an affair with his secretary or prostitutes. Don't they know that the action is against of moral value of society? It seems that common grace still exists clearly in society system in Indonesia, not like Western who even agreed homosexuality by law in some states. Common grace seems being neglected even more in Western country nowadays.

I think I don't have time to elaborate further now. I'm sleepy.
Anyway a little update, I have been offered for Master coursework part time. Deadline is this Friday, I am thinking to accept due to my calling. I want to have more "flexible" calling, so whenever God gives clear calls, my qualification would not be a problem.

capenya

Whoaaa... capenya... ga kebayang gimana cape-nya Pak Tong yang cuman tidur 4 jam sehari, ini tidur 8 jam ajah masih ngomel2... >.<...I'm trying to read few books. Quite surprised with my sudden mood to read books. I finished reading 2 books within less a week!! NEW RECORD by JETAN.. yayyy!!

I dont know what book should I read, I cant read English fast!!.. my Indonesian books are limited..huaaa... someone who borrows my book, please return dong, esp yang Indonesia.. tapi, gpp deh ada kelas Soter tiap selasa kamis yang bisa fulfil my need within this month =D..

*GEJE MODE*

Baptism Day

Today there was sacrament during service. Few people were baptized, SIDI, and atestasi. Remembering half year a go when I experienced this sacrament, my heart was full of praise and thanks. My spirit zeals and long for Lord. After half year past, I'm not sure how that day affects me.

To my brothers and sisters who received sacrament today. May you all be faithful in journey. We are witnesses today, and would be your witnesses for your journey... till the END...

Theology Test

Fiuh... I took test from this web
http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=43870

The result is surprising. I took this test few years a go. I think I was a fundamentalist/Neo-Orthodox at that time. Time changes, theological view changes, but scary 100% >.<


What's your theological worldview?
You scored as a Reformed Evangelical
You are a Reformed Evangelical. You take the Bible very seriously because it is God's Word. You most likely hold to TULIP and are sceptical about the possibilities of universal atonement or resistible grace. The most important thing the Church can do is make sure people hear how they can go to heaven when they die.
Reformed Evangelical
100%
Neo orthodox
82%
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
71%
Fundamentalist
68%
Roman Catholic
46%
Emergent/Postmodern
43%
Classical Liberal
36%
Charismatic/Pentecostal
32%
Modern Liberal
29%

Scary Experience

I was walking alone to buy my lunch outside. I have to walk about 2 bus stops away. When I reached the bus stop, there's one Indian guy called me.

Guy: Excuse Me
Me: Ya?
Guy: You know what, you are a very lucky guy. You know why? (His sharp eyes stared at me)
Me (just left without saying anything)

One thing I always kept thinking negative about that person. Feeling that I would be hypnotized etc. My brother experienced it once before. Soon after that, I'm feeling dizzy, but don't know whether it's due to tiredness or psychological reason. Then, I called Alen hahaha in case I have to meet the person again! Duh... It's a long story deh, until I asked my friend to accompany me back to office.

One thing learnt from this experience. We always think that we are safe enough in Singapore. However, actually we do not know how often we faced danger every day!! But God's hand always beside us. We should be really thankful for His providence.

God Enables Me

Fiuhhh... Last Saturday mellow-ness... I was in MRT thinking about why I chose Remaja... Am I suitable enough? Am I competent enough? Am I mature enough? All the questions lead to a 'NO' answer.

I would never be good enough, I would never be strong enough, I would never be mature enough to be their pembina. But one thing that I know, whenever God entrusted me, He will always enables me. He will also prepare my heart, mind, and attitude to be seen or read by others.

2Kor 3:3
Karena telah ternyata, bahwa kamu adalah surat Kristus, yang ditulis oleh pelayanan kami, ditulis bukan dengan tinta, tetapi dengan Roh dari Allah yang hidup, bukan pada loh-loh batu, melainkan pada loh-loh daging, yaitu di dalam hati manusia.

1Kor 15:10
Tetapi karena kasih karunia Allah aku adalah sebagaimana aku ada sekarang, dan kasih karunia yang dianugerahkan-Nya kepadaku tidak sia-sia. Sebaliknya, aku telah bekerja lebih keras dari pada mereka semua; tetapi bukannya aku, melainkan kasih karunia Allah yang menyertai aku.

A Day to Remember

A year a go, and a year to go...
I am thankful for the past, but don't know the future...
I am praying for what's best, not what's good...
I am considering future while remembering the past...
God made memory to recall His kindness...
God made this day so I can praise Him...

21-02-2008

Happiness is the Lord!!

There is no secret that most of mankind goal is to be happy.. When we talked about happiness, some relate it to contentment.. One could be happy if he satisfies with his current condition.. However, what we see now, people are not satisfied with what they are.. They always expect to be better than today.. Rich people want to get richer, powerful people want to get more power and so on..

In contrast, when we see village people, some of them satisfy with their condition although they are not rich.. They live a simple life.. What makes a man happy? According to Westminster Confession of Faith, the ultimate happiness of man if he can enjoy the source of happiness.. Man gains ultimate happiness by enjoying the ultimate being.. *Read chapter 1 Westminster Confession of Faith*

If we satisfy with our money and power, don't forget they can be gone.. They are temporary.. How if we satisfy with God, the source of wealth, power, happiness, etc? We can't find any reason for not to be happy.. Why men grumble? Why men self pity themselves? I think the answer because they are not satisfied with themselves.. Why they are not satisfied with their condition? It is because they are not satisfied with God who gives the condition or lets something happen to them..

Every man problem is a spiritual problem.. This sentence needs to be clarified further, but I am standing on this point.. Whatever human problem is actually because they are not content with God.. Atheist adalah orang yang paling nggak content with God (I can't translate this >.<).. How is the practice to be content with God? Start with thanksgiving for what He has given to you.. A writer said even though God did not give anything (cloth, money, intelligence,etc.) to you, it doesn't make Him a 'bad God'.. He's still good for us since He has sacrificed His own Son.. That sacrifice cannot be compared by others grace.. If God gives us love, money, power, intelligence, that's a bonus.. Actually we are not deserved.. So, learn to be thankful..

Let go and let God

New year mode!!.. Really want to relax and enjoy holiday.. I watched Freedomland just now.. It's kinda boring actually.. but I managed to finish that movie.. It tells story about a mom who lost his child, and the main character Samuel Jackson told her, sometimes we have to just let go and let God..

It's one of the answer for my previous post.. How to release from keterikatan? Probably you have to let it go and let God.. We could not forget what happened in past.. Somebody told me, that she can forgive her friend, but could not forget what her friend did.. Jesus never taught us to forget 'our enemies sin', but to love 'our enemies'.. Of course it's easier to forgive and forget.. However, our memories will still exist and that's the challenge for Christian to forgive.. It's impossible for us to forget a terrible thing that happened.. Our memories also 'prove' there is eternity indeed.. Therefore, forgiving is also in a process of time..

When we forgived others, it is probably not a 'complete forgiving'.. Our forgiving attitude and heart has to be sanctified day by day.. Have you experienced when let say you have forgived someone, but in the next days you remind him about his mistake? Or you forgived him yesterday, but hate him today? Forgiveness is a process since we are not perfect.. Therefore, we should learn humbly to forgive others..

My Biggest Sin

I'm confused now.I have been overwhelmed with this thought for few days. I think it has taken a big chunk of my life nowadays. When Ko Billy said every person has "keterikatan", I also have this kind of keterikatan. Ko Billy said his keterikatan is that he always wanted to continue his study in Germany, which he is doing right now.

I think keterikatan proves that I don't depend on Him. I can't enjoy the freedom that He has given and prefer to be bounded by something else. It's one of worst sin for Christian when keterikatan becomes your idol, which I think it's the case for me.

I'm in the state of refusing to let it go, I have hopes and dreams about it. I'm praying for His answer. I know that for every answer that He would give me, it would be very difficult for me. Am I ready to sacrifice? I still can't escape from my keterikatan, from my past, from the thought of my future. I think this is one of my "worst sin", I cannot escape from idolatry, I keep doing this although I know it's wrong. Forgive me, Lord. Let me surrender to Your will. Amen.

SEMANGAT mode!!

Lagi dengar banyak berita yang amazing seputar KKR minggu nanti. Pertama, ada temen sharing berhasil ngajak temannya yang atheist untuk datang ke KKR. Selanjutnya, lebih amazing lagi. Ceritanya waktu pembina remaja meeting, ada usul untuk ke sekolah2 publikasi KKR. It's almost impossible in Singapore, dimana kegiatan agama dilarang di sekolah2. Well, aku memang agak kurang iman and very skeptical about this idea. I even asked my friend who is hall guardian, tp dia bilang ga bisa lewat jalur resmi sekolah.

These few days, some people came to some schools to publicize the event, and amazingly the principals of each school agree to encourage their teacher and invite their student to come to KKR since it will be translated to English. Thank GOD for this amazing opportunities, thank GOD because I can see God worked through my friend (although not me). It inspires me more to invite people to KKR. Once again, God makes the impossible possible.

In Memoriam Pak Harto (between justice and hope)

Yeah, it's not a new news. Everyone knows it, I'm one of the latest person who knows about the news. One of the issues about him is the unsolved case about corruption. For Christians, we believe there is a final judgement where human cannot escape from his action in world.

People often asked, if God is justice, why there's no justice in this world? Atheist concludes there's no God since there's no justice, there's suffering! Christian worldview is not based on worldly seen things, but based on faith and hope we have in Christ. Christians always have hope, that's why suicide is impossible for Christian. Suicide is done by someone who doesn't have hope in this world.

Christians have both hope in this world and world after death. We do know that injustice in world would not escape from God's punishment. We often heard about faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13). These three things are correlated to each other. Faith without hope is not real faith, hope without faith is not true hope, love without faith and hope is not genuine love. When Christians have faith in Christ, he must have hope in God and love to Christ and others. Christians have faith there's always hope in Christ. This is very complicated and I honestly think I cannot explain the relationship between them by words.

ends justify means?

I'm no mood to blog, more precise no mood to do anything. Being melancholic person is always moody, and when you are in no mood, you can't do anything. You prefer to be lonely, not to be disturbed, enjoying loneliness. What a mellow man!!

One of thoughts today: does ends justify means/tools? A lot of phragmatical Christian thinks this way. Christian is happy religion, so why need to learn so many about doctrines. Why make things so complicated? If the ends is good or if I have good motivation, why I can't do this? A lot more similar questions were thrown by a pragmatist.

I have no mood to discuss this issue concisely. Just a brief summary: both ends and means have to be good. A lot of people who think like Robin Hood, to help by stealing. In worship to God, God not only judges our heart, but also what we offer in worship. Both heart and offerings have to be the best. Can you imagine if a very rich person only give a dollar for his offering? He would say he is very sincere, and he is joyful to give that dollar to church, but it is certainly not his best. Both his heart and money is not for God.

A Christmas reflection while I was Indonesia taught me one thing. If I love God, not only I give offerings sincerely, joyfully, but also I have to feel the pain of giving. I know that this money is worth to me, but I sincerely give it for the kingdom of God. It's paradox; Christian life is always full of paradox.

This is a very often debated issue: if rock music can bring other people to Christ, why not we use it? For discussing this, people who knows music would offer better explanation than me. Does ends justify means? The answer is obviously no. That's why Christian ethics is always not easy.

Minority Report

I finally watched Minority Report (MR) today, coz of someone who made me curious about it!! During a conversation with few ppl in PU, I told them in MI (dunno I or II), Tom Cruise used other person eye lens to open one of the safety door. She told me about eye plantation in MR. So I decided to rent this movie while taking my rest at home.

In the first part of the movie, I was thinking I really don't like this kind of movie. The technology is beyond logic to me. Anyway, I won't say much about the sci-fiction part. I would like to analyze the philosophy behind the story.

Danny Witwer about Pre-Cogs "In a way, they give us hope, hope of the existence of divine. It's interesting that some people have begun to deify the Pre-Cogs."
Jad (one of officer) replied "Well, come on chief. The way we work, changing destiny and all, is clearly more like clergy than cops."

First of all, it is clear that almost all human are looking for something eternal. That's why they created a divine image through statues or natures. Human created their own god!! Well, exactly the same in this movie, they created Pre-Cogs and deify them. But wait!! I didn't see any human worship to the Pre-Cogs. Of course NOT!! If they worship the Pre-Cogs, that would be "kerusakan manusia yang terhebat" (I don't know how to say in English lolz). As Pak Tong said before, the most corrupted sin is that human created a creator, then worship the creator that he created.

Deification is not only about worship like in church or worship to baal. So, what does deify mean? How can I say they deify the Pre-Cogs? Deification always comes with these two characteristics: Faith and Dependence. It is clear that Tom Cruise said many times that the Pre-Cogs is infallible!! He has faith 100% that the Pre-Cogs would never fail to predict any event in future. Although they never explicitly deify the Pre-Cogs, they depend so much on them to decrease murders. They can't even do their precrime task without these Pre-Cogs.

The concept of God in Pre-Cogs certainly was not taken from Christian Trinity. Pre-Cogs to some extend disagree with each other, while Holy Trinity's will and action is always synchronous. Probably, the concept of God was taken from Hinduism, where one of their gods creates more impact than others. I won't comment further about this.

However, the point is human created gods in this movie!! Why? Because human wants to become god!! This movie is created in humanistic spirit, what they want is to reduce the crime by their own way. Human always see phenomena; crimes are phenomena, while sins are actually the cause of the problems. In this movie, Precrime is acting as god, they can change so-called destiny or fate of other people. They can see what will happen in future with Pre-Cogs help and try to prevent the murder.
Jad "The way we work changing destiny and all, is more like clergy than cops."

Well, this case mostly happens in Indonesia as well. If you watch the advertisement, ketik REG RAMAL to 9388. People always want to know their future, and try to alter it as if they are god. What I am thinking is: why they want so badly to know their future? I think this is because the spirit of evolutionism. Tomorrow is always better than now. Today is always better than yesterday. With the hope of technology development, it always gives false hope to give better life for people. What I can say is the better technology doesn't necessary make human better, but it always makes human feel and think themselves as god!!

This writing is my subjective opinion for no one is objective!! It might be extreme. Yes, probably. But it also reminds us that thousands movies out there probably are not biblical. Every day when we read books, see advertisement, or watch television, there are some values which are unconsciously implanted inside our mind. Therefore, it's important to learn the right worldview, so we know how wrong is others!!

Dilemma!!

Hidup memang penuh dengan pilihan. Di antara begitu banyak pilihan tapi tetap harus memilih juga, hidup memang dilemma!!! >.<...

Jumat ini ada PU HUT NUS-ISCF ke-8, I was expected to come (cieeee... orang keren sih ^-^). Terus baru dapet sms ada master class Pak Tong juga huhuhu. Really a difficult choice for me. What should I do? Which should I choose?

Aku dan Dirimu

Disclaimer: Don't judge the content by its title >.<...

Kalau dilihat title doang pasti tema-nya tentang cinta. Well, partly true sih. Emang ada kaitannya tentang hal itu. Kalau yang baru balik dari Indo, pasti pernah denger lagunya Ari Lasso and Bunga Citra Lestari (BCL) kan, yg judulnya Aku dan Dirimu


Aku dan Dirimu

tiba saatnya kita saling bicara
tentang perasaan yang kian menyiksa
tentang rindu yang menggebu
tentang cinta yang tak terungkap

sudah terlalu lama kita berdiam
tenggelam dalam gelisah yang tak teredam
memenuhi mimpi-mimpimu malam kita

reff: duhai cintaku, sayangku, lepaskanlah
perasaanmu, rindumu, seluruh cintamu
dan kini hanya ada aku dan dirimu
sesaat di keabadian

jika sang waktu kita hentikan
dan segala mimpi-mimpi jadi kenyataan
meleburkan semua batas antara kau dan aku, kita


I dont want to discuss about love and music yang udah dieksploitasi di Indo. Let's talk about other more essential.

The bold sentence is very important statement for Christian. We live in the world only "sesaat", but we have essence of "keabadian". Every man has their alpha point, but no omega point. Lagu ini sangat duniawi, tapi ada unsur keabadian. Why? I believe although ada total depravity of men, tp ciri khas man as image of God never lost. They realized there is an eternity, but they do not know how man connects with eternity.


We can invite our friend to KKR Pemuda and Remaja 2008, 3Feb 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roTuii0YJGY .

Thanks be to God

I am grateful today. One of them is because I can attend church service today. Until last night I thought I would miss this week service. But I recover faster than I expected.

Begini ceritanya: Sabtu pagi2 sekitar jam 2, aku tiba2 bangun dan found out that I had fever. Sepanjang hari badan lemes, mulut kering, ke WC terus, kepala sakit, suhu badan naik turun 3x. I really want to go remaja, but cannot. Malamnya, aku pergi ke dokter and he was very kind to give me 2 days MC. Now, my fever is getting better and I can attend church although badan masih lemes.

Well, menyambung sharing-ku waktu PU NUS-ISCF kmaren, I realized that sakit itu ga enak, so was thankful for the health. Walaupun skarang masih sedikit flu and cough, but it was much better than yesterday. Intinya, I often takes grace for granted.

Dapo bilang manusia adalah makhluk yg paling kurang ajar, since so many grace that God has given, but manusia gak pernah bersyukur untuk hal itu.


Kol 3:17 "Dan segala sesuatu yang kamu lakukan dengan perkataan atau perbuatan, lakukanlah semuanya itu dalam nama Tuhan Yesus, sambil mengucap syukur oleh Dia kepada Allah, Bapa kita. "

About This Blog

Finally I created another blog after 1 year. My previous blog was not maintained due to my laziness. I named this blog Alpha Point. This was inspired by Pak Tong Master Class. Every opportunity has to be seen as Alpha Point (first opportunity) in fear of God. Therefore, we would give our best in every opportunity we have.

On the other hand, every opportunity also has to be seen as Omega Point (Last opportunity) so that we don't waste the opportunity. Many cultures and beliefs believe that opportunity will return as time goes on. Life is a roller coaster and so is opportunity. However, bible teaches that opportunity never returns. Every opportunity is unique and we have to grab it when it comes.

Therefore, in the beginning of 2008, I have decided to start a new blog, to write my perspective and journey throughout my days. Let this opportunity be a wonderful chairos for me and those who read. Let this opportunity would keep me faithful to maintain what I have started.