Visitation By Missionaries: The Discussion of Evil
My house had two uncommon visitors today - missionaries from a certain church came in to try and preach about the issue of evil. I did not receive them myself because I was busy playing Battlestations! on Facebook so I left the work to another family member because he was definitely capable of such discussions with the missionaries.
Although I was not there at the front door, I could hear the conversation, which spurred me to think and even post my thoughts of the discussion here on my blog.
Missionaries: "Have you heard about the escaped terrorist? How do you feel about it, that a person of great evil has escaped and possibly endangering your life? Do you think our government is capable of handling the issue, banishing such evil and upholding the goodness in life? I would like you to listen to us about how our relgion can help to placate your fears and lead you away from evil."
My family member spoke at length about his experiences with evil and danger with the two missionaries whilst I was mulling over the missionaries' approach to the issue of evil and how they organized their arguments that evil can be led away through religion.
I am a free-thinker, but I have no shred of disrespect to all the religions in the world (there must be some reasons why such religions exist in the first place) yet I have seen my share of evils and evil-doers in the world and my mind went into action after the missionaries positioned their line of persuasion.
1) The missionaries spoke as if the escaped terrorist has already committed great evil to mankind and must be exorcised through believing in their religion. As far as I remembered, the escaped terrorist had not killed nor injured a single person, even though he was alleged plotting to harm many people. Do people so easily classify another as evil all so quickly? He may be a dangerous person to the society, but evil? Would the thought of organizing something terrible makes one an evil person? How many people actually entertain evil thoughts but held themselves back? So do we classify all these people as evil? What is evil? The thought? The act? The belief? Or a certain combination of these? Who decides?
2) The missionaries mentioned about the government's ability to handle the issue. Although it is universally recognized that all governments are supposed to help to ensure the safety of the people under their governance, nobody will dare to say that governments have to shoulder the responsibility of banishing evil and bringing good. Governments are supposed to manage the countries, not participate in the battle of good or evil because governments consists of human beings, which are complex sentinel beings capable of both good and evil deeds, rendering governments incapable of such participation. The missionaries seem to believe governments are omni-potent, but I believe they are just like human beings.
3) The missionaries spoke of how their religion is able to placate fears and lead one away from evil. No doubt there is a relationship between fear and evil - the more one fears evil, the stronger the latter can grow. However, all religions can only teach and preach but none can claim complete effectiveness in removing evil from human beings because being sentinel beings, human beings can choose and choice itself leads to many possibilities. Fundamentally, 魔由心生，身由心控，part of the equation of whether one is good or evil lies in the nature of one's heart, beyond the reach of any scriptures or any amount of praying or worship. We can try but there is no such thing as a guaranteed safeguard.
Also, whenever choices are made, sometimes the nature of these choices is good or evil may not be obvious to the human beings choosing until very much later in time so come forth the problem whereby "The means may be evil but the ends is good" or "The means is good but the end is evil" or "The means and the end are neither good or evil or consists of both at the same time."
All these thoughts raced through my mind but I did not join in the discussion with those two missionaries because my family member had somewhat the same thoughts as I did but expressed them in other ways, using other examples. The missionaries left my house, no longer sure if they could ever persuade my family to join their religion. I hope they find peace in whatever they can find. As for the issue of good and evil, I personally think they are not ready to start a discussion on it yet since neither of them have any experience in encountering good and evil yet.
What is good? What is evil? Can we possibly have both in one? Or can we possibly have neither in one? I leave this section open for discussion and thought for all the interested readers of my blog to mull over.
2008-03-14 超级星光大道第三季 part 1
李宏武的演出很平淡乏味，没有尝试打动观众，就是张宇所说的“攻击性”。上台表演时，不只自己要入歌，也要诚恳地邀请观众入歌。很可惜李宏武没有做到这一点，而且唱得眼神，音准都有在飘，所以我不认为他很“稳”。
张棋惠没有爆发力，唱得好像很辛苦，而且跳舞的时候不够放，好像在背台步，而不是在把歌曲和舞步溶合在一起。Roger 说得蛮对的，工整可是没有味道，但张棋惠有用心尝试突破，确实值得表扬。
2008-03-14 超级星光大道第三季 part 2
Dinner Outing With The Busy Bee:
I finished my Friday early because it was a public holiday so I rang up The Busy Bee to find some dinner with her. We were supposed to meet up at Parkway at 6.30pm but she was so engrossed in her work that she forgot the time and only managed to reach at 7pm. We walked to the nearby Katong area and spotted this Western food restaurant with a long queue of awaiting dinners. It's called Aston-something but the queue was too long and I was too hungry to wait so both of us continued down the street to find some something-Bang 酿豆腐 and finally found some seats there.
The food was brought in on a huge plate and the only drink available seemed to be sour plum drink but it was deletectably light and refreshing because I had been eating quite a lot of heavy food for the past week. The dinner came up to be around $15.60 and even though The Busy Bee was late, I footed the bill because at least she brought me to a nice place for dinner.
The Busy Bee then said she wanted to head back to Parkway to collect some Singtel handphone advertisement for her brother and we took another stroll back. After grabbing the advertisement, The Busy Bee treated me to ice-cream (the one near Coffee Bean) and I ordered Chocolate Mint and Cookies and Cream there while she picked her Mango and Raspberry. Through dessert, we talked about things and odds and ends and I recounted to her on my camping experience on Pulau Ubin where we had Beggar's Chicken freshly roasted on charcoal on one of the beaches. The night was extremely windy then but the food was absolutely delicious to the campers.
When dessert was over, we headed back home around 9pm. I like simple outings with my VIP friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment