Part 1 Journal: Record from the Disgraced [December Retreat]

[Disclaimer 1]: It is difficult to comprehend my blogs sometimes. I believe that many people find reading lengthy commentary about lives being rather boring at times. Given a choice, they would rather read something brief to catch up with what's happening in life. Well, anyway I tried my best to write my journal being mindful of my target audience.

At times, it gets more impersonal when such writings occur. At times, such writings demand a lot of ‘perspective consideration’ from my readers. Thankfully (or regretfully, depending on how you see it) the readers are quite few in numbers. So the writing consideration inclined more towards own reflection and occasional ramblings. For this I hope you don’t mind the occasion exclusion of you, my reader, in the story to share certain insights.

In addition, there are some parts of the journal that were highly sensitive and could cause discomfort in digesting the element of vulnerability. Should such cases occur, it is okay to take some time off from reading my blog – and re-read it again after a day or two. I tend to write my articles on the same day in long windows because those are often the results of my contemplations for days, weeks or months sometimes. Please bear with me if you are visiting here for the first time.

[Disclaimer 2]:  There’s one special journal in this post entry that is quite sensitive for me, in which it may put myself on the immediate front of being judged as an exhibitionist. May I suggest that if you have reservation talking about sexual addiction in explicit and disturbing details – please skip Record 3, and move to the last Record (Record 4). It is one of my most intimate blog that I find it necessary to post (even though it might seem left hanging without any resolution). I have intentionally draft this post as such, though I felt genuinely easier to conceal my darkest secret in my own chamber and continuing to let it rot. Therefore, please be mindful. You will be warned of the content again when you reach the article.

[Disclaimer 3]: I wrote personal reflections, which most of the time has the element of my spiritual belief saturated throughout my writings. It may not be to your liking should you find too much element of spiritual accountability (if you happen to not share my faith being a Protestant), but I do encourage you to open your mind to read up articles from the standpoint of a friend (close ones perhaps). It is unlikely that if you are my close friend, you would find it distasteful to read such articles because you have seen how I live my faith (albeit positive and negative influences that I carry around). I don’t preach much in my blog post, but I do tend to reason out some of my endeavors by looking through the lens of a Christian spectacle. Nevertheless, should you think that such reflection may bother you, do what you deem well for yourself.

Record 1: Where in lies the biggest regret – is keeping in mind things he has never let gone.

I always sought to ask myself the purpose of me living all myself out – and I tend to forget the nature of giving my best for life most of the time. Perhaps the definition of ‘living-to-the-fullest’, despite the allegory on our consumerism-materialistic-successful living formula which of course has narrowed the scope of true living, has taken huge precedence in everyone’s living at least once in their lifetime. We often forget what it really meant to live well – for our own good or for someone we hold dear for.

It is quite possible to lose ourselves in the midst of trying to be someone – in which sometimes the struggle could become meaningless and tend towards fruitless striving towards a greater aim for many people. Therefore, many people sadly moved away from their initial strive and decide to settle for a simpler and easier alternative. Perhaps that was a good move – in that we all should always learn in contentment what is good in life.

In the context of what is commonly understood as ‘contemporary contentment’ sometimes, we seek for the easiest way out, and trying to get the best for ourselves even though we are in the ‘contented’ state. For example, we are prone to always want to get the cheapest solution despite the fact of seeking a ‘contented’ ideology when it comes to purchasing products. By and large – the act of wanting to buy something more than what we have is an act against the conventional contentment so to speak. Hence forth to put a ‘modern’ mentality towards the aspect of practicing contentment, we tend to justify the act of ‘careful selection of breed with quality at a best price justifiable for such product’ becoming our current dogma inculcated in our daily living – for the sake of alluding the fact that the desire of wanting something speaks of our nature of being discontented with what we already have.

With respect towards true contentment, I hardly see anyone walking on earth practicing such notion. In fact, it could be true that there’s no one in the world who would wish to fulfill contentment towards the end of their lives. Truth be told – being contented is easier said than practiced, especially when this is the decade of consumerism and individuality. No one would approve ‘loving themselves as who they are’ and strive to be ‘somebody’ – thus violating the foremost contention of being contented.

But why this debate? Why the argument of contentment?

I believe that we all lived long enough not to deny that in our walk in faith; we tend to always console/comfort ourselves with the kind of living in the contemporary world that we should be thankful that we are not ‘as fallen’ as the people who lack the faith we embraced. Often when we walk up a street and a see a fellow believer, we often engaged in a seemingly convincing conversation of our daily walk and the ‘faithful journey’ that we have walked through. There are a few saints that I have talked with that commonly uphold their mentality being ‘out of the world’, and practicing street evangelism as means to ‘be in the world’. Though there’s genuineness in these acts of evangelism I often wonder how effective/damaging such testimony could bring towards our non-believer (who in the humble opinions of the evangelists were in deep trouble of going to hell, ‘unfortunately’ – a very sarcastic way of seeing our fellow humans as mere commodities meant increase the assets they have).

The common thought they would always try to bring across is the contentment they feel after being a Christian, the change in the worldview and of course, ‘the feeling that I am now good and saved.’ I am saddened whenever such evangelists come to me and share all that they could, without first trying to hear out what I have gone through, for instance. After all the talks, I would normally briefly share that I share the same faith, but I hold some reservations over some doctrines that I see to be rather mistaken.

Apart from the doctrinal error, I would tend to think that those people who often regarded the idea of ‘contentment’ as the best tool for evangelism will never work. I believe contentment has its rightful place in lieu with what matters most, but not in ‘materialistic worth of physical things in life’. That, in my humble opinion, is sorely lacking in our conventional yet contemporary evangelists (implying that this problem is no longer a new observation)

Record 2: What it meant to live and to love from him, yet far from where he should be

Too often, we let the sanguinity of our language gets in the way when we try to converse with people – especially when it comes to asking further about ourselves things that is closer to heart. It is as if we often like to put a blocking view on what’s really happening, and tried various means so as not to reveal what really happened. Not too sure how this works for different group of people, but at least to me – this is one big bad one coming to me. I have to admit that many times, my tongue was caught in action whenever a certain statement was stalwartly thwarted.

Couple of days back, I was conversing with a familiar old friend that we haven’t met for decades. She used to be my classmate back in elementary school and we shared a common interest in math (her being the superior one though – but when young we always tend to create unnecessary competition among ourselves to improve and claim dominance). In our conversation, several times we circled back to living in laidback lifestyle and how different it is between Melbourne and the small city of Singapore. I intentionally iterated many times the difficulties of keeping up with the swift pace in Singapore, in which I made much comparison with Australia, knowing that they have several surfer’s paradise and good ol’ countryside places. Slight backtracking: I always yearned for contemplative living, of course which farming and admiring the rising/setting of the sun being one of my definite ‘must-do’ endeavors.

When she hit the mark of asking what would I like to do, I let the fluency of my subconscious takes place, in which I dwelt onto ‘liking to travel’ being the common answers to whichever mode of questions she inquired of me. Many statements like ‘wanting to explore other places, wanting to settle in a slower pace country, not wanting to stay in Singapore but still would dwell somewhere in Asia’ has become part of the sanguine assertion I put forth.

As I drove home after the conversation, unbeknownst to physical world outside (with my parents obviously disappointed to hear that she is attached – of which my parents tried very hard to put chances between us to develop into more than friends – a possibility that I actually welcomed at that point of time), I was actually rather disappointed with ‘yet-another-attempt-to-be-impressive’ outlook. And true, when I suddenly realized of the ill-intent I had to agree that this had become something that commonly sticks in me whenever a casual conversation took place.

Throughout the night, I contemplated over the conversation, and let it played in my mind several times. As minutes went by, I dwelt more into the frequency of the ‘impressing-myself’ conversation I often had with friends, be it close or distant. There are only a handful group of people that I could say that I shared my heart out, but never fluidly. Most of the time, people who got to know the sincerest and most authentic part of me comes from the fact that I made a human effort to be vulnerable. There’s a part of me that I tried to hold dear, and only those that I bear close friendship with that has the privilege. To date, the closest I have happened to stood by me on the night when I shared my darkest fear in a cold room within a campus. Sadly because of my naiveté embracing on withholding new close friends, we parted our company and since then I hated myself more for rejecting the wider perspective.

It has been a while since I put myself in deep thought over my failure in living, and there are several instances within the train of thought that I would like to revel in my stupidity. In this regard, I decided that I really need to ‘open-up-and-open-wide’. It is no good for any man to be alone, truly spoken by John Donne himself.

I took most of the day the next day just being meditative retrospectively, and took this meditation as a lesson that I need to unlearn – the part of being less ‘impressive’ and be more authentic. If that’s not enough, then the next step to ‘unlearn’ is the part where I am especially reserved and needing so much privacy that I ended up pretty much alone.

Record 3: His setback and the Achilles’ heel that survived for decades

One of the saddest reflections I have had for years whenever a discussion came across on the subject of my maturity is that I struggled the same sin I kept committing year after year. And what’s even sadder is the fact that I seemed to ‘enjoy’ being in this mode of sinfulness because of the short term pleasure it gave me to. Addiction is the rightful word for such misery, but I think what’s deeper within the motivation is what’s bothering me more.

[Disclaimer – reminder]: In the past, I make this part of my reflection sublimely implicit; therefore it seemingly sounded applicable to various addiction struggles. Therefore I intend to make it as clear as possible. Be advised that you might not like what you read. If you are genuinely uncomfortable about this, I pray that you skipped this article altogether, and read the next Record. This may not be easy to stomach through. You are warned.

Since young I have unspoken curiosity over having the aroused pleasure ‘under-the-legs’ whenever chances break in. Various form of arousal came and went, and they served me so well that I had the days gone by feeling satiated by the physical ecstasy and the apparent rush of my heart beat when an orgasm is reached. There said, my tendency to get myself satisfied came from various questionable means.

It is difficult to apprehend the root cause at this stage of my life, when there’s so many instigators that could easily ripped my mind off the conscience. From a simple look at a woman who had low cut jeans and a tight top revealing the mark of her bra to a complicated look at sexual act on the screen could get my mind wandering into my own fantasy within my mind prison. Furthermore the accessibility of my bathroom leaves no doubt that my valium is easily disposed and mindfully hygiene conducts is still upheld. Sad to say, despite the cleanliness of how I maintained things (cleaning myself to make sure no stain and making sure there’s no record of ‘dirty-surfing’ can be found in my laptop), at the end of the day I would be bugged by the question of my dirtiness. Sometimes, I put that off as being ‘relieved’ because of the hard work I had throughout the week, and sorely needing to satisfy myself. Sometimes I was quite upset about certain situation that really got me to my nerve, and releasing the valium was a mean of disengaging me away from the situation. Sometimes, however, for no particular reason, I was turned on by just looking at a woman who apparently is dressing the way that would entice me to fantasize her. Regardless of which mode, I know that I have constantly fed my desire, such that I forgot what it meant to look into a woman engaging in a sexual act on the screen and think of her as a child of God – and possibly needing to get out of the porn industry.

For years I wondered if I have truly gotten better or worse – now that I have subdued a lot of my adrenaline rushes that I embraced in the youth. Couple of years back, I remembered having my first sexual experience with a girl – to the stage of penetration and mutual orgasm. Though it was a great encounter and in finality of fulfilling the fantasy of making love with the embodiment of two becoming one, the subsequent days of guilt was too painful to bear, especially during that time I had to lie to everyone attending the church – giving them the benefit of assuming my walk in faith was upright. In addition, although both of us are consummated with ‘love’ at the point of time when both of us are together, at the end of the act I felt perpetually dirty about the entire affair, and so is her. I remembered asking her why she seemed distant to me after such a passionate sex. Apparently to her this is a common thing, as she always felt the same with whoever she had sex with. Ouch.

That forbidden relationship was over long time. For years we have not met each other, and on that single evening of ‘love consummated’, I have yet to see the relationship blossomed into forever after ever. In fact, I was greatly saddened now that I have tasted the physical feeling and wished that ‘for one night’ I want to enjoy it again. And so, through yearning and finding, I manage to find a casual friend on recent note (a year), and mutually agree to have sex to satisfy our desire of wanting the orgasm. When there are days unbearable, we find time to meet, and have that one night, and the next day go off as friends like it never happened the night before.

When reflecting I was saddened to see how far I have fallen from the tree. Yet because of the addiction I have, every night I had the thought of wanting the feeling consummated again. Plenty nights I waste them all in the toilet vanity. On days when I was extremely horny that I gave a call to meet up with her and have that short moment of ecstasy. I could fully agree that sex is a great thing, and that it really is a blessing for both husband and wife to fully consume themselves in the passion of love. Nevertheless I understood the feeling too well. The cuddling, the embracing, the kissing, the fondling, and eventually the penetration. These are great moments that should encourage married couples to relive the physical passion that God has given graciously. However, as for where I stood – and many of those who have tasted the forbidden fruits – the part where we felt different from the legitimate consummation is what happened after. The penetration ended with orgasm and cleaning up the mess, and sleeping on separate beds for sexual partners only. Not so for couples. They embrace, kiss, hug and eventually smile at each other and look at each other – without feeling guilty or dirty.

I often think about my singleness and the predicament of where I am at the moment. I can’t help but think that I need to get out of my isolation and start doing more productive things. In particular I always yearned for being able to write out stories, concentrate on improving my work ethics, start writing songs, spend more time in devotions, start simple acts of night prayers, and give some thoughts on confessing my sinfulness. But whenever night crawls in, I tend to wish that I could have that single moment with the lady I saw that turned my head towards what’s hiding ‘under-the-legs’.

Many a time – I wished this reflection will bring me back to Christ and start repenting of my besetting sin – the habit that caught up with me for ages. However, too often I fell prey into the hands of ‘pleasure-addiction’, and find it hard to leave it. Reading so many motivational and detracting books did help for a while, but I believe that community is important and in this case imminently helpful in making sure I detract my mind away from sexual temptation. Truth’ll be told – no matter how many motivational tools are made available, if the person remained singularly motivated, no one would see that he is making progress. He could claim that God is seeing progress, but such a testimony proved fallacious. We are commissioned to go out and spread the gospel, and in Paul’s testimony, he willed himself to speak of his unrighteousness and his murderous past in order that Christ’s glory is magnified in his story. So what’s there to glorify if only God knows whether he has become better or not?

A friend dropped me once in a while a note that he is praying for me, and that he wished that I have grown better in my journey of faith with Christ. Nothing more is said because often time I let the time slipped by (supposing to reply him), with a hand ‘under-the-leg’ to satisfy unnecessary pleasure which is a dirt-cheaper alternative to possibly enjoy a fellowship with a dear brother. Another who has counsel me for a year or so wanted to see that I have improved from thinking selfishly about my sexual innuendoes to start thinking about living for Christ. When mails like this come, often time I would put aside things that I am doing, and start reflecting. However, a man’s weak spot will soon fall in when lethargy kicks in, and remembering a girl he saw earlier that turned him on is good enough to bring him to engage wrongfully.

In this regard, I have to sadly say – being truthful really hurts. I have friendships lost because of my sexual appetite, and I have difficult conversations engaged yet finding myself evading because of wanting to show my impressive record of walking in faith. Sadly – none of these actually made me a better man. I might have become madder everyday by such engagement. Hypocritical and divided. Never single-minded. This might be the one area that I know needs attention (understating the fact that it is quite a serious matter).

Record 4: Moving on, and moving forward

In all that we see in life, we often forget how much we neglected the simple steps and promises when we partake the first steps towards maturity. With so much complication in life, we tend to overlook the fact that these hardships were not meant to be stalling us immensely. Rather, those hurdles should never be moments that detracted us against making our steps ahead into completion: completing the race.

When we read about Hebrews, we always forget the context behind the letter sent to the Hebrews in Rome during the time when Nero reigned in late first AD century. We forget that those people were facing persecution of embracing Christianity in ways not in direct aversion against the crude governance of Nero, but on compromising their belief to subscribe to what the government endorsed – Judaism. On first note when we read up the epistles to the Hebrews, we often neglected the significance of various parallelisms between Judaism and Christianity inside. In addition, towards the end, the famed ‘Hall of Faith’ of which we have our forefathers running ahead in the journey towards attaining the glory of Christ predominantly encouraged everyone – to ‘put off everything aside and let’s fix our eyes upon our Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith’.

Anyway, it would be good that reading up more on the context will enable you to understand the epistles better, and in turn helping you to see clearer why and how it can apply. Anyway that’s another day for intensive bible study articles. Back to where I was.

We have the tendencies to look at our present failures and start thinking if God loves us after our failures. Some will take to the other extreme and think that God will definitely forgive us, so why don’t we engage all the more? Both mentalities have been inculcated within churches, and definitely plagued many of us along the way of growing in faith. I personally was inclined towards a judgmental God too much at times.

Since young, I have been educated to view every step as impending path towards irreversible consequences. This mentality not only paralyzes my present state of faith, it also causes inferiority for me towards relating to my church friends. Their apparent ‘do-well’ outlook and conversational content dominate the entire discussion, and sometimes I would be left to casually talk on things apart from more meaningful conversation. I longed to talk more on my struggles within the family (of the difficulties with my mom on the subject over my subscription towards believing in Christ when she is a pluralism Buddist), over my sexual struggles (awkwardly, I often see such subject brought out with immediate hushing from the crowd), over my identity crisis in church (I often tried hard to make conversations with people but they seem to put up the mask that claimed that things are running well and I seem to be the only one that’s not doing well), over my awkwardness of engaging in the music ministry (I always had difficulties being stable with my band mates within the same worship team because of the already not-so-close-relationship I have with them. So whenever during practice and the actual worship session, I tried to sublime myself, and ended up making a lot of mistakes in which I know I would not if I have concentrated on the band’s chemistry – which I find it hard to keep up with), over the contention of the meaning behind each activity organized by church committee (there are moments when I have reservations towards what are the objectives and the purposes behind organizing certain get-together events)… the list could go on and I would always find reason that detracted to think that my duty for church is merely to sublime my troubles and difficulties and just ‘serve & worship God’ – which evidently didn’t help much since I am distracted by the thoughts as listed above. It has been a struggle so long that after a year, I have gradually found myself isolating from the group spiritually and emotionally. By keeping such distance, I thought that I would make things easier for me to communicate and learn to understand them. However, by such doing I found myself detracting away from what God has willed and intended for us as the body of Christ.

I definitely have forgotten how much important it was, as the body of Christ, to not only engage in ‘meaningful’ conversations with fellow churchgoers, but also making effort to talk deeper and understanding their spiritual state and being mindful over their physical needs. These are the acts of being a disciple of Christ, all embodied to serve others. One important lesson I have learnt though, that in the act of serving others for Christ, I mustn’t put separate needs over people (and even myself) – and rather being a disciple, I should be there for them, pray for them and serve them whenever I could as a brother in Christ. We have separated our ministries so much that we have sections where we care for physical needs, and sections on prayers only where we care for spiritual needs, and sections on fellowship where we are concerned on how people are doing (therefore mental needs).

[Background]: Greek’s teaching has influenced our mindset for centuries, and its apparent influence has also dropped into the doctrines within our churches. Evidently if we understood the teaching of Greek philosophy, the element of mind, body and soul were segregated and should be taken care of on separate account. Gnostic elements were drawn from Greek’s philosophy that infused Jesus being only the soul and not the flesh of the living God – in which the shadows of this mentality sipped throughout generation. If we understand the essence of Scripture reading in our Jewish roots, it is that mind, body and soul are in one same element, that whatever we take care of the body (nourishment), will also consider the mind (the engagement in conversation during partaking a meal – or even the traditions of the meal taken) and also the soul (the depth of the conversation that will touch the heart especially when meaningful conversations were engaged. Of course there are elements of which the actions alone speak louder than words, for example the act of feeding, the culinary skills involved, the act of serving others during a meal, etc).

At this point of juncture I believe there’s a need to review on my journey to continue being Christ-like. Compared to the previous years, I wouldn’t want to make promises that couldn’t be committed (and in the end fell off because of difficult circumstances. Rather, I decide to work on this in a small group setting, with my mentor (who I have detracted for 2 years due to differences I had with him in the past – but on recent months we manage to find the reconciliation and started to meet at least for prayer and sharing). This time, as determined as I could, I believe that the major need is not to fight against porn addiction (as what I have always struggled with for years) – but the need deeper than the porn addiction. Much of which could be traced back to the need for intimacy, a person who I can look to and love her for (therefore the act of physical consummation is probably the result of consensual and passionate adoration towards the gift of God – which will be quite a while I suppose). This will have to work out in different stage.

Besides, I am thinking on my concern with the church, and now that I have moved to coastal Malaysia, there will be slight inconvenience in travelling around Singapore during weekends and going to church is no longer as easy as how it was. There isn’t any church back in coastal Malaysia, though it is not that far off to go to the church in Singapore (a 1.5 hour single trip perhaps). I will explain on separate account the decision to move to coastal Malaysia, but it would suffice to say that I didn’t fully agree on moving out – yet seeing in the long term the importance of having better savings return (which I am not doing too good in Singapore) – this would probably seem to be a better choice.

Many things have happened that caused multiple revisions in my decision-making. They are often time confusing and purposeful in causing more difficulty to engage in a community that serves Christ. Perhaps this will serve a good lesson to retract all the privileges that I used to have, and start feeling the pain of difficulties and yet still holding on to Christ. I learned through my darkest days that those moments taught me the value of God’s grace the most. This will be yet another period of ‘hard time’ for me, but I hope for prayers in strengthening my walk in faith with Christ – through the good and the bad times, especially… the bad times.