The Long Way Up

I have recently seen this worship set aired on Facebook Live where the song leader sang out a few ‘artistic and rhetorical phrases’ toward God and toward the audience: a common practice that worship ministers do apparently. This reminded me of the times when I had been a part of such worship sessions, where I myself have said certain pleasant, spiritual-sounding quips, which in hindsight were, at best, impulsive and, at worst, presumptuous; I guess our emotions can get the better of us sometimes (most of the time?), even in such a hallowed setting. As I continued to watch this band play and sing, I had to fight my own judgmental and self-righteous tendencies since I — as previously mentioned — have been in that position of being on a pulpit to sing songs to God and have gotten carried away with my words, releasing statements that now feel awkward, out of place, and even embarrassing. How many times must I have said and sung words, phrases, and sentences that were not inspired by the Ho...

I stalk people on social media every now and again. Last night, I was perusing the older posts on a friend's blog and caught a glimpse of the changes in her tone of writing, life priorities and outlook in general. Upon telling her of my stalkery behavior, she later on mentioned that she herself has noticed her growth over the years as documented by her voluminous posts. Today, I decided to start reviewing my really old posts from another blog. I only did a light browsing through the titles of former entries and the first paragraph previews, but I could already see the vast difference between the old me and the now me. There was an overabundance of naivete and legalism peppered all over my writings... but at the same time an obscured depth of understanding of biblical truth. This is one of the blog entries I found from around ten years ago... and found it quite amusing. - - - - -  I was having lunch at the office cafeteria the other day when I overheard so...

You can choose a lot of things in your life. From the time you are able to form your own thoughts and make decisions for yourself, you can pretty much exercise your right to abide by your preferences -- in clothing, in food, in friendships, in employment, in entertainment, in leisure, in religion, in political affiliation, and so on and so forth. Life, however, reserves the right to make some choices on your behalf and deals you with certain givens that you do not have a say in. One such given is the family that you are born into. Another is the country wherein that happens. In my entire life, there have been moments where I wished, perhaps prayed, to have never been born in the Philippines... and to have never become a Filipino at all. That's as honest as I can be about this subject matter. These thoughts came to me when I was much younger, more inexperienced about life, and reacting to my country of birth and nationality without the benefit of intellect and time. I was e...

A month ago, our church Facebook page got a series of queries from a random guy on the Internet. His line of questioning was geared towards the origin of the Bible and the formation of the "one true church" (his words; not mine). As one of the administrators of this FB page, I took it upon myself to answer his inquiries to the best of my abilities and with as much politeness and sincerity as I can extend. In response to his first question regarding how the Bible came into existence, I told him that his answer required a really long reply (which would not be properly addressed in a chatroom) and then referred him to some legit online pages that I felt somehow answered his query. He then proceeded to throw his second question: "what church did Jesus Christ establish on earth?" At first I thought he was simply an inquisitive guy who was probably seeking answers in his journey of faith. So again, with as much aplomb I could afford him, I proceeded to explai...