September 9 2004

well...today was my first day of classes in uni here at Mac...and guess what?  i screwed up already!  hahaha!  wicked...i have a bio class this semester, and it's obviously a very common course...lotsa ppl signed up for it, so the class is gonna be repeated several times during the day...there's one at 12:30 to 1:20...then another one at 2:30 to 3:20...mine is at 2:30, but i went to the 12:30 one...that's cool...wrong time to go, but it's essentially the same class, same material and everything...the problem, tho, is that i ended up skipping out on my 12:30 Psychology class cuz i mixed up the times between bio and psych...which is so uncool...hahaha...ah well...i'm pretty sure psychology is a common class too, so maybe i won't miss out on anything...hehehe...we'll see how it is...dodododo...well, i'm off to have a bit of personal time with God

How can there possibly be a God with all this suffering and garbage in this world?

Charles Templeton was a preacher and a writer who was very much about God.  He was a very close colleague Billy Graham, as a matter of fact.  He died refusing to believe in God.  He died because of Alzheimer's disease.  Charles Templeton stated that he simply couldn't believe in a God because of all the pain and suffering he was enduring.  After a lifetime devoted to God, his life was ending in extreme emotional and physical pain.  Many people feel the same way as Charles Templeton did.  How can anybody believe in a God who doesn't care?  How do could you possibly say that God is loving and compassionate if he won't even relieve such incredible pain?  Anybody would ask a question like this after looking at the misfortunes of the people who endured war, broken lives and absolute suffering.  Before I answer anything, allow me to pose a few questions of my own.

My first question is this: how do you know that things could not possibly get any worse?  I remember reading the Garfield comic as a little kid.  Garfield is just having his fun, running around, and he runs straight up a tree.  He stops, realizing there's no way he's going to get down.  He's up there for hours, and he thinks to himself "Here I am, stuck up in a tree.  Things couldn't be worse."  Then it starts raining, and he starts thinking, "Okay, okay...now things couldn't be worse"  In the next frame, lightning strikes, and there's a huge BOOM!  That's exactly how it is with real life too.  We often look at things pessimistically before we actually assess how things could be much worse.  I don't think that it's fair to say that there is no God because we go through tough times.  Perhaps God is already sparing us from situations that would be much worse, and we're already taking the easier way out.

Secondly, did God promise a rose garden and an easy life, or did God promise a hope and eternal life?  There is nowhere in the Bible that says God will make our life easy, where we can have all we want in life, where we have a beautiful spouse, perfect children, all the money in the world etc.  On the contrary, the Bible tells us to prepare for difficult times where people will persecute us, where the devil will tempt us, where God will put us through tough times to build character in us.  God is to us as a silversmith is to silver.  He puts us in the hottest situations, and he knows when to take us out when he begins to see his reflection in us.  It's difficult to go through it, yes, but in the end, it makes us far more beautiful than we'd imagine.  Through difficult times, we must turn to God so that we can have a hope by depending on him to lift us above anywhere we can reach ourselves; he will take us to a rock that is higher than us to give us hope and an eternal life.

To answer the original question of God's existence despite hardships, all I have to say is that God is there through it all.  God sustains you, even when you do not know it.  It says in Psalm 3:5, "I lie down and rest; I awake because your love sustains me."  God is there when we need the rest, and we wake up everyday by his grace.  Let me also pose this question: did God not give you a second chance when you woke up this morning?  Did he not give you a third, fourth, fifth chance every single time you wake up?  We even take the gift of life for granted, and we forget that it is by the grace of God that we can get back up and continue to tackle the challenge laid before us.  There is a story in which a man has passed away, and he looks back upon his life while in heaven, and noticed that his life was summed up by footprints on a beach.  He observed that during the most difficult times of his life, when there seemed to be little or no hope, there was only one set of footprints, so he asked God, "Why did you abandon me during my times of great need?", and God replied "I didn't.  There is only one set of footprints because those were the times I carried you."  Rather than questioning God's existence because of our hard times, we should look more at the small blessings that God leaves along the way to pick us up during our trials.

Protestants vs. Catholics -- What's the difference?

There are several things that I feel is wrong with Catholicism, but there are three main differences that are essentially all summed up in one phrase: Faith vs. Deeds.  However, allow me to clarify that both believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ and his resurrection, so just because we different in some beliefs, it does not mean that I am, in anyway, claiming that Catholics are not saved.

1.  Overall, Catholicism relies very much on deeds, especially in doing good deeds.  By doing good things on top of believing in Jesus Christ, you complete your salvation, and it also reduces your time in purgatory.  Purgatory is kind of like a waiting room before you go to heaven.  After you die, you spend a certain amount of time enduring punishments, and after you've served your time, you can enter heaven.  We (Protestants) do not believe in the necessity for deeds, but we believe in the sole reliance on our faith in Christ Jesus.  If we are required to do good things in order to save ourselves and to reduce the severity of a punishment, then this would defeat the purpose of Jesus Christ.  Jesus paid the price, and he paid it in full.  Jesus would not build a bridge that reaches only half way and leave you to build the rest, otherwise you might as well build the entire bridge yourself.  All that Jesus requires you to do is to cross the bridge, which would be to trust in what he has done for you.  Also, if the punishment has been paid in full, why would you be required to pay more through purgatory?  It does not make sense.  Jesus Christ died upon the cross, taking upon himself the sins of the world, and suffered the wrath of God to take our place so that we may be saved.  Through this, the punishment has been paid in full, and that is it.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that you shouldn't do good deeds once you've accepted Jesus Christ.  Good deeds should naturally come as apart of a life that has been truly touched by God.  That is what is meant by "faith without deeds is dead."  It doesn't mean that you are required to have good deeds, but good deeds is proof of a life changed and renewed by God.  Besides, what about the people who accepted Jesus just before they died?  They wouldn't have the chance to do any good deeds, which wouldn't be fair, and God is a fair and just God, so that wouldn't make sense either.

2.  Catholicism also believes in penance -- self afflicted punishments to help attone for your sins.  This is, again, a reliance on deeds to save yourself from more punishment.  As afore said, Jesus has paid the price in full, and there is nothing left for us to pay.  Architects do not design half a bridge and have only half of it built, expecting the people using it to build the other half.  Jesus is the perfector of our faith, and a job is not perfect unless it is complete.  Therefore, what Jesus endured upon the cross is all that is required, and we are saved through this.  On top of that, penance only leads to guilt, and guilt is not of God.  Guilt is a very twisted form of pride, as it focusses on the yourself, and looking to satisfy yourself next time avoiding having to feel remorse for what you've done.  By doing this, it draws attention away from God, and you begin to make yourself the focus of your life.

3.  Catholicism prays to saints.  Protestantism prays directly to God.  I don't understand the use of praying to saints.  I have heard that we are to pray to a saint who will decide if it is worth presenting it to another saint, who will also decide whether or not to take it to another saint, and so on until it finally reaches God.  This still doesn't make sense.  God is perfect in knowledge, so God knows our needs and what we pray for anyway.  It says in Psalm 139 that before a word is even on your tongue, God knows it full well.  So why does it need to be presented before God by another saint if God already knows it?  It's a waste of time.  Now, I'm not saying that it's pointless to pray because God knows what you need before you even pray.  It's still important to develop a habit of prayer because it excercises discipline and dependence on God.  Also, God tells us to pray, so we should do it.  Another reason why we do not need to pray to saints is because we have a direct relationship with God.  God is like a Father to us.  It wouldn't make any sense at all for an incredibly loving Father to communicate to his children only by having a chain of messengers who will decide if they will pass a message on to the next messenger to eventually present it to the Father.  That would not be a loving Father at all if he wouldn't want to talk to his child directly because there is no intimacy involved.  In the same way, if we are not allowed to talk to God directly, then it means that we have no intimate relationship with God, and there would be no point in God saving us because he wouldn't even love us that much anyway.

These are the three main issues that separate the Catholic faith from the Protestant faith.  However, let's not forget that both still have faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which still unifies us under the same body.

God?  Which one?

Before I begin, I would like to clarify which God I follow.  I follow the God described in the Bible, and nothing else.  The Bible only describes God as Holy.  The word "Holy" is often seen as a very fancy word used only by the incredibly religious people.  However, the word "Holy" really has an incredibly simple meaning.  To be "Holy" is to be "set apart" -- nothing more, and nothing less.  For example, Holy scriptures really means writings that are set apart from all other scriptures because it refers to something that is set apart from things of this world.  You're probably thinking something like "well of course God would be holy, then, because that's what makes him God."  What's funny is that all gods described by anything or anybody apart from the Bible is not very holy, or set apart, at all.  All other beliefs apart from the Judeo-Christian texts tend to attatch humanistic traits to their gods.  For example, the Greek gods were very humanistic, as each of them had weaknesses, and were mortal.  Sure they had mystical powers, but this really makes them nothing short of great magicians.  Another example is the god known as Allah of the Muslim faith.  Muslims believe that on the day of judgement, Allah could simply choose for you to go to hell just because he feels like it.  This very humanistic, because Allah then has no sense of divine morality, but only judges based on whether or not he's having a bad day, or because he had a bad impression of you, even though you were a good person.  Besides these set religious beliefs, many people who are searching for God often take ideas from several beliefs and choose what they like about the different gods, and customize this god to fit their personality, almost like a custom-combo at a Harvey's restaurant.  You don't get any more humanistic than that.  However, the Bible repeatedly states that God is a Holy God who is set apart from mankind.  God is set apart because of his perfection in all aspects: love, power, morality, knowledge, etc.  His perfection in all these aspects clearly set him apart from us, as we know that nobody is perfect.

Now, because God is perfect in love, he is compassionate.  Because God is perfect in patience, he is slow to anger.  Because God is perfect in power, God can do everything, and nothing is impossible with him.  Because God is perfect in morality, he is fair and just.  Because God is perfect in knowledge, God knows all.  Because God is perfect in all aspects, he is set apart from all people and from this world.  This is the God described by the Holy Bible and the Jewish Torah.  However, I differ from the Jewish belief in that I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, who died and rose again on the third day after his crucifixion to save us from all unrighteousness so that we can be with a God who loves us.  This is the God I believe in.  This is the only God I believe in.

Well, I'm very much about Philosophy and Apologetics.  What are Apologetics?  It's not apologizing or anything.  In fact, it's quite the opposite; it's defending a set of religious beliefs and doctrines through intellectual arguments.  In my case, I am defending my faith in Christianity.  On this page, I'll do what I can to answer questions about God and His nature.  If you have any questions you'd like to throw at me, go ahead and let me know about it, and I'll do my best to answer them.  Let me warn you though, I'm not exactly a professional at this, so my answers may not be TOTALLY satisfying, but I'll do what I can.  I'll put each question/topic in separate entries.  The defending shall begin after this page is devoted to God through this short prayer.

My God,
You are the reason for living.  You are the reason that I am alive.  You are my sufficiency.  You are my Rock, my Fortress, and my Deliverer.  I want to devote this to You.  If there be any wrong way in what I do here, Lord, teach me and change my ways.  You are my Guide, and I pray that You would lead me on level ground so that I can do Your perfect will, O God.  This is for You.  May it be pleasing in Your sight.
          Your Son,
                    Cedric Wai

Let the defending begin.