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There has been much public furore over the issue of the AWARE change of guard. The issue has moved into the sphere of religion, with many arguing that religious views (in particular, Christianity) should not be brought into the secular sphere of civil society. One of the most sensitive issues in the debate is that of homosexuality. This post aims to answer a few questions. Firstly, what does the Bible say about homosexuality? Secondly, how should Christians respond to homosexuality? Thirdly, what exactly is the church-state divide. Lastly, how should Christians respond?
Please note that this is specifically written with Christianity in mind. I’m writing this because much has been said without substantiation, especially biblical substantiation.
But before we actually get into the issue, I need to make a clarification. If people claim that the new exco came into ‘power’ through underhanded means or ‘infiltrated’ the society, let’s be clear that what they did was constitutional. Now their intent may have been questionable, but the means with which they became the exco was not: they were voted in. So let’s not get caught up in emotive misnomers that imply that the democratic process was hijacked and subverted.
What does the Bible say about homosexuality?
The Bible is quite clear about homosexuality. It says that it is a sin. “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion” (Rom. 1:26-27).
How should Christians respond to homosexuality and homosexuals?
Now we know that the Bible calls homosexuality a sin, how should Christians respond? Evidently, Christians should stand by what they know as true and not condone homosexuality, in the same way we shouldn’t promote promiscuity among heterosexuals.
However, there needs to be a distinction drawn between sin and the sinner. Too often, Christians are very quick to condemn the sin and the sinner. Christians are called to have love for everyone (1 Thess. 3:12) and which, at the same time, hates what is evil (Rom. 12:9). We do not condemn the sinner because all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). The ultimate example that Christians can learn from is Christ. Christ associated with prostitutes, traitors, liars, thieves and so on. Yet, he did not condone the sin that they were living in (refer to John 8:1-11).
Likewise, Christians must stand for what is true, but not judge others (Matt. 7:1-5) as God is the only judge. The best response that Christians should have to homosexuality is to speak “the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15).
What exactly is the church-state divide?
The church-state divide is a doctrine that government and religious institutions should be kept separate. It gained prominence as the First Amendment to the US Constitution in which there would be a wall between church and state (as Thomas Jefferson put it). Note that it started as a divide to prevent the state from interfering with religion, something put forth by the Anabaptists or Danbury Baptist Association. Over time, it has also meant the reverse: that political decisions should not be made on religious grounds (often known as secularism). As such, many have decried the expression of religious sentiments in the political sphere, the issue of the possible repeal of Article 377A being just one example in Singapore. Moreover, many have argued that the inclusion of religious opinions in debate on public issues infringes on others’ right to hold an opinion (quoting Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights).
The separation of church and state is especially important in Singapore, which has a variety of religions. Religion has always been a sensitive issue with Singaporeans always being reminded that we are all citizens “regardless of race, language or religion“.
How should Christians respond?
In a society of such plurality, what should Christians do? First of all, Christians are called to take an active role in society, being “salt and light” (Matt. 5:13-16) and standing up for the truth.
Christians tend to go from one extreme to the other. Firstly, some become extreme and dogmatic in their beliefs, refusing to listen to others. We want to avoid another Spanish Inquisition. In this case, we need to couple our belief in the truth with love. There is no point speaking with great fire without respecting others (1 Cor. 13:1), for if we do so, our message simply falls on deaf and hostile ears.
On the other hand, much of Christian society (I don’t know if this is simply a symptom of Singaporean society as a whole) have become apathetic and fearful of voicing their opinions on contentious moral issues for fear of backlash. Many argue that Christians (or any other religion) should keep their religious opinions to within the church. Now, that is an extreme that Christians must not go to. For in those circumstances in which we accept the truth of relativism, we lose the essence of Christ being THE truth, THE way and THE life (John 14:6). In doing so, we also lose our “saltiness” (Luke 14:34-35a) and we become lukewarm (Rev. 3:15-16).
It is a hard balancing act but one that must be done by ALL Christians and churches, actually by any person who believes in the absolute nature of morality (I personally haven’t found anyone who believes in total relative morality, but enough with the paradoxes). But for Christians, good examples that we can look to are Joseph, Daniel and Esther. Joseph could have claimed credit for the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream but he gave credit to God (Gen. 41:1-40). Daniel could have done what was popular and safe by obeying King Darius’ decree to not pray to any god or man, but he still chose to do what was right (Dan. 6:1-28). Queen Esther could have saved her life by allowing King Xerxes to kill her people, but she stuck her neck out by admitting that she was a Jew (Esther 7:1-6).
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To those who argue that Christian opinion (or any form of religious opinions) should be kept out of public debate, let me tell you what kind of world we’ll be living in. We’ll be living in a world where slavery still exists because William Wilberforce would have never pushed for the abolishment of slavery, the civil rights movement would have never taken place. Even what we believe as universal and secular human rights are based on religious texts and belief in the value of man.
I’m not denying that religion has its problems or that there will be no abuse at all due to fundamentalism, but it is difficult to deny that religion (whether Christianity or otherwise) has had a positive role to play in modern society. It would be impossible to try and shut out religion from public discourse without negative repercussions. But religion does need to be engaged (as the Singaporean government does) while being sensitive to the fact that we live in a plural society with myriad beliefs.
John Stuart Mill was famous for his essay, “On Liberty”, in which he argued that the state (or anyone else) has no right to force people to believe in something or to quash the voicing of those opinions. He argued that Christians should not prevent others from voicing their opposing opinions in the name of protecting their “sensitivities”. Nowadays, secularists do the same thing. They say that the expression of religious opinions cannnot take place because of we need to protect everyone’s freedom of opinion and expression. Yet, the irony is that in doing so, they are quashing others’ freedom of expression.
As Ronald Sider wrote, “Because we respect the freedom and dignity of every person, we will nurture not a naked public square free of all religious reasons for political proposals, but rather an open, pluralistic, and civil public square, open to all the different religiously and philosophically grounded arguments and proposals that every citizen and every particular community wish to advance“.
I started off with talking about AWARE and I do know that I haven’t provided any concrete responses. To make it crystal clear, I think that Christians should be involved in society but respect others and their views without necessarily buying everything everyone else says. I guess that’s the point of civil society, that we differ, yet we are still civil, something I hope the members of AWARE and Singaporean society as a whole will be.
This is Adrian Tan’s speech at the convocation of students at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (NTU).
Adrian Tan is a litigation partner at Drew & Napier LLC.
LIFE AND HOW TO SURVIVE IT
I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address.
It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation.
I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one.
She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living.
She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator.
Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are.
I make my living being disagreeable.
Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home.
That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.
And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men:
when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.
Marriage is considered one milestone of life.
Some of you may already be married.
Some of you may never be married.
Some of you will be married.
Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.
The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.
You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process”
and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on.
You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers.
Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest?
They are in the business of learning, after all.
Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.
The good news is that they’re wrong.
The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone.
That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties.
People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.
I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people.
But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.
You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy.
We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long.
We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless.
There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup.
Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.
Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years.
Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.
So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go.
Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old.
Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation.
They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.
I’m here to tell you this.
Forget about your life expectancy.
After all, it’s calculated based on an average.
And you never, ever want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family.
You are told that, as graduates,
you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you.
And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people.
I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them.
And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.
What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it.
Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it.
Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment.
Your degree is a poor armour against fate.
Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies.
Just live. Your life is over as of today.
At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look.
This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.
What does this mean for you?
It is good that your life is over.
Since your life is over, you are free.
Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.
The most important is this: do not work.
Work is anything that you are compelled to do.
By its very nature, it is undesirable.
Work kills.
The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork.
That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways.
If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left.
A rock has been ground into sand and dust.
There’s a common misconception that work is necessary.
You will meet people working at miserable jobs.
They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not.
They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.
People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free.
The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps.
Utter nonsense.
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort.
You may never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play.
Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again.
You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often.
Soon, that will have value in itself.
I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator.
I enjoy it and I would do it for free.
If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.
So what should you do?
You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard.
By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do.
In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions.
By this time you should know what your obsessions are.
If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.
Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession.
Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm.
If you don’t, you are working.
Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication.
To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth.
I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things.
The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth.
Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating.
There is also great skill.
Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences.
It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.
In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it.
That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.
I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth.
I now say this to you: be hated.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you?
Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many.
That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.
One does not have to be evil to be hated.
In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions.
It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions.
Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average.
That cannot be your role.
There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself.
Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.
I didn’t say “be loved”.
That requires too much compromise.
If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.
Rather, I exhort you to love another human being.
It may seem odd for me to tell you this.
You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false.
Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings.
It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise.
Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance.
It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits.
There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness.
In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way.
We learn the truth worthlessness of material things.
We celebrate being human.
Loving is good for the soul.
Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person.
Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor.
It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming.
It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated.
You are not doing it to be loved back.
Its value is to inspire you.
Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone.
You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology.
It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.
You’re going to have a busy life.
Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.
From my IB physics notes:
Distinction between Precision and Accuracy:
- Precision has small scatter, but may not be close to the actual value.
- Accuracy is close to the true value, but may have values that vary greatly.
This academic year (especially this semester), I’ve been extremely unfocused, both on the task at hand (in terms of studying) and because I have taken on so much. I was serving in 4 areas in church, in the debate exco, coaching, debating in general, plus the usual studying. More than enough. Yet, I’ve felt flustered and very unfulfilled through it all. Not that I haven’t enjoyed what I’m doing, I have and do. It’s been a long semester and I’ve felt that I haven’t been able to do my best in everything that I’ve done, not least of all, studying. :/
This coming semester, once the madness is over, I’m going to find a focus. I’m going to cut out as many areas as I can and just focus on where I feel God calling me. It may mean sacrifice, but what is service if it isn’t sacrifice?
Today I sat back while writing my essay and wondered yet again. My kids did badly in the tournament. I’ve told them that the results don’t matter and that it’s a learning process. And yet, I wonder if the results do matter and whether I’ve actually done my best in helping them in the learning process.
I didn’t see them fall in love with debating as I did and maybe in that respect, I’ve failed as a coach. I’ve failed to impart in them a love that I myself have, much like a teacher who wishes that he managed to teach in such a way that made his students fall in love with the subject.
I love coaching but I can’t cope. I can’t cope with the time, the energy, but most of all the part of me that I invest in coaching. Everytime I do something that I love, whether it be writing, debating, coaching or simply loving, I invest part of myself in it. I don’t feel any smaller or less for doing so. In fact, I realise that the returns are so great. I love coaching but I’m just getting tired.
I find even more satisfaction when I can teach one of my kids to deliver an argument well, when I hear a well rebutted point or a brilliant response to a POI, perhaps even more than if I were to deliver it myself. I don’t think that I’m living vicariously through my kids (as creepy as that sounds), I just desperately want them to do well. I want them to believe in themselves, after so long of being told that they can’t make it. I want them to believe that they are better than their previous coaches told them.
But at the end of this run, it just feels like I got nowhere. I’m told that I’m a good coach, but what is a good coach if there is no results to show for it or even the feeling that your kids now love debating?
Nothing I guess.
Now, before you go on to read this, much like my entry on abortion, let me remind you that I am a Christian so I do come in with my opinions as you would when you read this.
I know that I should be writing my essay on Burma and Malaysia right now, but bear with me.
This post was sparked off by reading this and this. Now, last Sunday, I spent my day in what some would call a very ’secular’ environment: at debate selections. During lunch, I had an animated debate (Sigh, yes, I know, we debate even when we don’t have to) about religion all because I asked a friend who I thought was Hindu why he was eating a beef burger. We then went on to talk about religion, pre-marital sex and Dawkins.
I heard much about science this semester. The above mentioned friend said that the reason why people still go to religion because of a lack of explanation and understanding, which is why we have to attribute it to a higher being. Now, I don’t actually have any problem with that, because I personally don’t have a problem with faith. But then he said that one day science with answer anything. It reminded me of a rather closed minded guy that I met in the USP seminar who told me in the discussion forum that one day science will take over life because it is the higher plane of knowledge.
I’m not here to argue about the supremacy of science. But I just wonder if we’ll ever know if science has explained everything, because there is so much to explain. I don’t quite know how to put this across, but with each discovery of science, we discover even more questions. To me, it just seems like someone must have known the answers when these things were created (or exploded or whatever you believe) for them even to function in the first place.
So I shall be unoriginal and copy Xin Ling. X)
1 more week of coaching.
2 more weeks of school.
3 weeks till exams.
4 exams to sit for.
5 essays to hand up.
6 days to get my kids to be able to be amazing at impromptu debating.
7 hours till selections are over and I find out whether I’m going to Bangladesh.
I feel tired and anxious just thinking about it.
My CAP will probably drop drastically this semester and I might just collapse from exhaustion when I finish this semester. Hopefully, it’ll be after my exams and not before or during.
I know that I need to prioritise and I promise I will.
But I also need to trust… and I’m trying.
Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your hearts to him,
for God is our refuge.
- Ps 62:8
Sometimes I wonder why I coach. Sometimes I wonder what my coaching achieves.
Do I coach for the money? Maybe, but I don’t think that I would stick it out if it was simply for the money. Money doesn’t hold sufficient draw for me that I would keep at coaching day in and day out.
Do I coach for the glory? I used to think that I would get some kind of reflected glory from my kids doing well. But well, I’ve begun to feel that the glory doesn’t matter anyway.
So what do I coach for? I used to want to coach to help my kids believe in themselves. I’ve seen previous coaches short change them, give them less of their time and energy, make the kids feel lousy about themselves. They are the underdogs in the debate circuit. I’m not coaching the top debating teams. I didn’t get a team like that because it was a first coaching job.
But, to be honest, I don’t think that I feel like I’ve impacted their lives at all. They just take debate as something fun to do, but it stops there.
And I’m getting tired.
I guess that I’m in it out of obligation in the end. I don’t want to let them down. I care about them because I know that they are people who deserve to go to the competition with the best chances possible. They aren’t simply my kids, they’re people and my friends.
And I still am waiting to see the underdog triumph. To prove people wrong when they believe that my kids have no worth or won’t make it very far.
So who commented?