In today’s world, we like to think that each of us are independent, self-determined, reliant only on ourselves, in charge of our own destinies. We tell children, “you can be whatever you want to be!” and we emphasise that it’s all up to their own effort and hard work. We also truly believe that for…

There’s a common denominator that cuts across all peoples, social classes, and ages – and that commonality is suffering. All of us suffer though to different degrees, and none of us want to suffer. We want to know why God would let us go through what doesn’t seem good to us. Isn’t He supposed to…

A number of years ago, it was very common for people to tag their social media posts with #blessed. And it was used when you feel blessed, when you got something that you really really want, or even just unexpected good news that gave you joy. For a while, it was even used by Christians…

Much of the world around us gives us only two choices: it’s either black or white, night or day, right or left, up or down. And with that prompting from nature around us, we also think about our faith in this way: we either have faith, or we don’t; we either have doubts, or we…

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12:31, Lev 19:18). We all know this. It’s one of the two greatest commandments in the Bible, and it summarises the whole of God’s law together with “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul”. In theory, we all also…

Christians are part of the Body of Christ, interdependent on each other (1 Cor 12:12-31) – many of us know this and understand this, at least in theory. We know that we need different gifts in the church, we know that no one gift is more exalted than another, and we know that we should…

Singapore is a very busy place to live in. It feels like everyone, even children, have their calendars chock-full of events – things to do, places to be. And it just seems that if there isn’t a “serious” item on the agenda for that time slot, it’s up for grabs for something else. There’s a…

Today is the very last day of 2023. And while there’s nothing really but a societally imposed difference between today, the last day of 2023, and tomorrow, the first day of 2024, it’s still a useful marker for us. It’s a time when people reflect about the year that has passed and start thinking about…

Humans are hard. That’s not a typo or a grammatical error, by the way. Being human is hard, being around humans is also hard, relating to humans is hard. This is true everywhere. But when faith and discipleship come into this equation, many times it means humans are harder. There’s just more at stake when…

Which is more important: the self, the immediate community, or the wider community? I suspect when it comes down to it, all of us would have the self as our primary motivation. Each of us is the centre of our own universes, and the immediate and wider communities are only important insofar as they impact…