Category: Religion

I’m desensitized.

I’m sick and disgusted with myself.

Today on my way home from a summer ministry trip planning meeting (wow that’s a long title), the trains stopped. It was a 人身事故, or, directly translated, a “human body accident.”

In Japan, this is used whenever a train collides with a person, more often than not a suicide. In fact, whenever I hear 人身事故 at a train station or on the news, I automatically assume that someone attempted or committed suicide.

Tonight was such a night. Walking back from the meeting, I see that a train is stopped right before the railroad crossing. Trains don’t usually do that for more than a couple minutes—it looked like it had been there for ages. I knew something wasn’t right. I had come to a conclusion—it was a 人身事故, or in my mind, a suicide. Soon, an ambulance and firetruck came to the station, sirens full blast. I am ashamed to admit that I was thrilled that my conclusion was correct—I had predicted something from deduction!—I was actually jumping up and down.

“Awesome! It’s a suicide! Now since we know that the trains won’t be running for about an hour, let’s go kill some time!” is basically what I said to the people that were with me. We wound up going to the station to see what was up, because one of our friends was already at the station to head home.

Now, keep in mind that were were a group of 20-30 people. Here we are, a majority of us foreigners, huddled together waiting at the train station so the trains could resume.

What was going through my mind and others’ as well, was “Great. This person just HAD to commit suicide and now I’m getting home late.” Not once did I think about the person or their family. But, being a group of Christians, we began praying by an adult leader’s suggestion.

Of course, we had all assumed that it was a suicide. Later we heard that the person just fell in. Two girls in our group saw the body—the tarps that were used to shield our eyes had draped down and they saw it. Needless to say, they were traumatized… I heard an EKG while the paramedics were carrying the victim away, so I knew that at least at that point the person was alive.

What is it with us, especially myself, that we’re so used to a suicide that we don’t even blink about it? This has to be said of the entire Japanese community. Instead of sympathizing with the family members and friends of lost ones, we shun the victim’s method of exit from this world. This is completely and utterly wrong, and I’m a part of the problem.

The whole thing that changed my perspective and made me realize how sick I am was the Christian community of those 20-30 people. People were breaking down crying. People were on their knees praying for the darkness in Japan to disappear, specifically the darkness in the form of suicide.

I need to change my mindset about suicide and right now I’m so disgusted with myself that I don’t know if I can sleep. And I have Spanish and Advanced Algebra finals tomorrow.

If I can get back to it, I will, but for now I’ll leave you with this: every 15 minutes, someone in Japan commits suicide.

Lazy Christianity

Again, long time no see.

I hate lazy Christianity, but I am also a lazy Christian. Maybe I shouldn’t be writing this–it would be considered hypocrisy, but I’m working on that.

A lot of us Christians pray for various things: things like the end of poverty, the release of those caught up in human trafficking.

I’m not doubthing the power of God; however, we shouldn’t just be praying. We should also DO.

We often speak of tithing; less of us actually give a tenth of our money as offering.

I understand and know people who are not in the financial position to give a tenth of their income. However, what we can do is give a tenth of our time.

If you are a lawyer/prosecutor, a Christian, and have a sense for justice (which I hope you do if you’re a lawyer or prosecutor and Christian), there is an organization called International Justice Mission which brings criminals to justice in countries where the authority that is supposed to stop injustice is easily bribed or corrupted. That’s giving time.

There are organizations like Compassion International or World Vision where if you give financially they will use that money to help someone. That is giving your money.

You can make a difference in your own community too. Go out with your children and minister through actions, not with words. People will wonder what makes you different from all the other humans they have met.

It’s a new year!

Sorry for the long delays between posts.

I’m a good procrastinator.

Apparently, it’s become 2012.

Apparently, the world will end on December 21st of this year.

Which, IMNSHO (In My Not-So-Humble Opinion,) is pretty absurd.

Because there are several problems to having an exact date or time to an apocalypse or, for that matter, pretty much any global event.

Living in more than one country kinda makes you realize that dates can be different at the same time across the globe.

For example, at the current time, it’s about 4 PM in Japan on the 2nd of January. In San Francisco, it’s 11 PM on the 1st of January. In SF, people are still recovering from their hangovers of the previous night’s partying. Here, in Japan, people are gearing up for work tomorrow.

No place in the world will have the same date at the same time.

So, there can be no exact date or time UNLESS a time zone is specified. Though still not believable, if the apocalypse were set to December 21st, 2012, at 12 PM GMT/UTC, the “apocalypse” would become plausible.

Still, since the Bible mentions multiple times (Mark 24:36, Acts 1:7, and more) that ‘no one knows the exact date’, I won’t believe any claims of people knowing the date or time of the end of the earth.

And since this blog post on http://www.patheos.com/ thinks that I have a weak argument, let me ramble on.

Revelation is a pretty interesting book. It’s pretty very insane and everything inside makes you think “WTF!?” I encourage you to read it through once.

You think we’re in a pretty bad situation economically and/or have lots of natural disasters (Japan just had another M7.0 earthquake the other day. Don’t worry, as far as I know, only one person was hurt and that person tripped and dislocated a shoulder.)

According to Revelation, things are going to get a lot harder when the end of the world (as we know it) is near.

I’m not looking forward to the bad things, but what needs to happen has to happen. And until then, I won’t be scared by any apocalyptic claims.

Oh, and Harold Camping, you’re one of the reasons a lot of people think that Christians are douches. Thanks for all you’ve done to (further) ruin our reputation.

Where do morals come from?

In my World Views and English classes we’re doing things on morality/human dignity.

I like how my school ties together different subjects at the same time, but that’s another post.

We, as humans, have a heightened sense of morality. As children we know when something unfair or unethical has been done to us.

Humanists believe that these morals come from past experiences. I forget if it was past experiences in an evolutionary kind of way, like moral values being passed down genetically, or experiences as you are alive. I’m guessing a combination of both?

Post-Modernists believe… well what they want to believe.

Christians believe that after we were created by God, that we instinctively know what good and evil is from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (should I capitalize that? It is a title, right?) after our ancestors ate from it.

Also, it is thought that “morality” genes exist. So, according to Christian theory, that tree would have been  the fastest-acting and first gene-modifying drug 🙂 . According to Modernist theory, that gene is evolving with every human experience. Again, Post-Modernist believe what they want to believe.

But a major thing about morals is upbringing. Would a boy that was brought up in a cannibalistic village think that there is anything wrong with killing another human and eating him/her? No! On the other hand, some of us might feel like puking at just the thought of it.

Still that child may feel like their human dignity has been violated when something dear has been stolen. At our core, we know what is wrong. We just learn to ignore what is wrong through our upbringing. I could give countless examples but that’d be pointless.

I have a project due soon that’s supposed to contrast what is wrong with different crimes according to what belief, and I’m having a hard time with Post-Modernism. I mean, everything is different according to the person, right?

That’s what is wrong with Post-Modernism. Developed as a response to “there is only one truth” Modernism, most people born after 1970 have PoMo tendencies.

But, even Post-Modernists have to agree that there is something wrong with killing. One Post-anarchist said that it’s fine to commit a crime if it makes the offender feel good. But what about the victim? I really doubt that that anarchist would be saying “Hey, it’s cool with me if you’re enjoying yourself” while being stabbed to death.

I, too, am a Post-Modernist. I identify with that. I want to be tolerant of other people’s beliefs, and a result find it hard to share my faith despite the Bible telling me that I should be telling people about Jesus.

But I try to follow the moral code given to me by the Bible, and I know that at least 95% of humans on this earth would agree that the 10 Commandments are a good basis for law, except for ya know, that part about coveting what a neighbor has. It’ll be impossible to enforce, and how are we supposed to live out the American Dream without a goal like attaining the wealth of, say Bill Gates, and we are in fact coveting Bill Gates’ wealth.

What I’m trying to say: we as humans all have morals. It doesn’t really matter where it comes from, it matters that we have it. As a result of experiences we may learn to blatantly ignore those morals, but we still have them buried somewhere deep.

ADD time!

Today, I’ve finally collected enough material to do another blog post.

Well, I have enough material for a few posts. But I forgot what they were about. I seriously should invent like an auto-note taker that attaches to your brains and then somehow makes you recall what you were thinking about.

Anyhoo, more world views.

I’ve been diagnosed with “potentially” having ADD about, say 5 or 6 years ago? Which from a doctor’s perspective in Japan, means I totally do have ADD.

I just had a great discussion about ADD with the family I’m staying with’s mom.

I go to a private school and my parents are getting ready to move close by, but in the mean time I’m staying at my friend’s house.

I should give some context, I guess.

My friend has this one sibling that is particularly annoying at certain times. My friend tells me that he gives siblings a bad name. Oh well.

Sometimes he has these CRAZY temper tantrums. We were talking about that and what he possibly has medically or physiologically. I was talking about myself probably having ADD and how I can’t focus on studying. The funny thing is that she has ADD, too.

We got into a deep discussion about how ADD would have been essential in caveman times. I mean, what if everyone in a hunting team were determined to get that one mammoth and no one noticed the saber-toothed tiger stalking them? They’d all be probably dead.

Since caveman times were quite a while ago, evolution’s probably not working.

No, I don’t believe that evolution is applicable today.

I’m a Christian and believe in creation. Well, there could be two methods of creation. One is just as it is, creation.

The other is that God created just one species and allowed it to evolve according to his desires, meaning he directed the flow of evolution.

After a certain point, God took away the ability of evolution.

And I know that “coming out of the closet” and saying that I’m a Christian online or even in real life is probably a bad decision because I don’t really like angry discussions. I’d have a discussion about anything if I know something about the topic, but I’d leave the second the argument becomes really heated unless I’m really determined to defend my position.

Yes, I know that throughout history, Christians have pulled some pretty bad moves (I’m a protestant by the way, so some [most] of the stuff I’ll blame on Catholics). I don’t like how internationally, America is supposed to be a “Christian” nation. Please read the Treaty of Tripoli. I am also kinda mad that America likes war so much. Video games are fine, but not IRL.

There goes my ADD again. Off topic :D.

So yeah please Darwin fix my ADD so I can evolve out of it.

My world view on ADD until now: ADD sucks, I should blame it for how I become so distracted.
My new world view on ADD: Hey, I should try to put in policies to combat my ADD. Maybe check in with myself 2 or 3 times an hour to see if I’m on focus with my original intention.

That’s it for today.