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    Saturday, February 14, 2009

    Lets Talk About Love Bay-Be

    Happy Valentine's Day!

    So in line of the occasion, I thought it was best to post something relevant to this day dedicated to celebrating L-O-V-E love! Or if you choose to believe, a day that is a load of crap where businesses have an excuse to jack up their prices for love related consumer goods and disguise them as V-Day "promotions". Which ever version you choose to believe, this time of year always get people thinking about relationships and the idea of this weird emotion 'love'.

    So on Friday I attended an event organised by my friend's church. There was a buffet, a mini drama and a discussion on the subject of love. The drama gave three perspectives on this human emotion we call love: the advocate of love who thinks love is just a wonderful thing, the cynical view where love is something that is created by society to help the economy grow because if there was no love, there's no marriage, there's no babies, there's no people! And the final view was the more scientific view which included explanations about why the body thinks we feel the emotion of love with mentions of serotonin, dopamine... sounds like pretty heavy stuff right? But it was actually rather light hearted.

    Now, the serious stuff. There was a guest speaker, a lawyer, and she shared with us what she had found out about love. This included what love should be, such as "love suffers long, it does not envy, it does not rejoice in iniquity, love thinks no evil and love never fails" etc etc etc. She told us that there was scientific evidence conducted about love from the University of Denver where researchers found that the factors of love were the same as what the Bible says about love, and the researchers weren't even Christians themselves. Of course it had to relate back to Christianity somehow.

    She did bring up an interesting point later though, one which I could see the light on, so to speak. She said that pride gets in the way of love. Why? Because if we have too much pride in ourselves, we fail to see our own faults, we think that everything we do is right even when we're wrong. So you can see how that can be a recipe for disaster when it comes to relationships! Then the next bit was, for me, a no surprise moment...If we don't open our hearts we don't open ourselves to God which is why sometimes we may feel that we start questioning the existence of God. To be able to feel that God exists you must open yourself up to him. I couldn't help but think "isn't that the same with everything though?" She then shared with us when she was ready to walk out on her church because she didn't believe that God existed, she wanted him to show himself to her in some way or form. Her experience was somewhat interesting. She told us of what she thought was going to be her last service when she was 19, and she was saying her last prayer she felt a drip of water on her forehead. She looked up, there was nothing. So she carried on praying and said for God to show his existence, she wasn't sure of it anymore and she was going to walk out and then she felt another drip of cold water on her forhead again. Again she looked up and around and couldn't see anything but the ceiling (at this point I was thinking air coniditioning problems in the church maybe, or a leak somewhere in the ceiling?). Again she carried on but a little frightened until she felt a whole bucket of water had been thrown over her and then she heard an audible voice saying "I love you" and that was when she knew it was Jesus... I thought 'huh, interesting, why Jesus?

    I'm not saying I don't believe her, I do believe that she did feel the bucket of water and I believe that she heard that voice, but whether it was Jesus... I'm not too sure. This is where people will say to me that I think this because I'm not opening myself up to God haha.


    So what did I take away from the event yesterday?
    The thoughts of love are universal.
    The thoughts of God depend on the individual.

    Religion will forever be a tricky subject to discuss amongst others that may not all share the same view and you can go round and round in circles debating the facts and other view points, so I think it's best that I leave it here for now.

    I did find out a bit more about Christianity in Singapore though. I think churches follow more of an American type of service where people will belong to one church, and this church will have around 2000 members of something. The event I went to yesterday was held by the Cornerstone Church and organised by four different 'cells' within that church. Cells are just smaller groups that are formed to allow people to integrate with each other more and build their own smaller group within the church. Overall I think it was put together rather nicely.

    So I guess I have to thank my friend who invited me and honestly, it opened my eyes up a bit to a few things, and thank you to Cornerstone church for holding this event.

    3 comments:

    1. Thats a niice blog, sounds like a really interesting event that! Glad you're having a good time in Singapore :)
      x

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    2. I often think cases like that are related to Stendhal's Syndrome personally.

      So are you a religious crackpot now or what? XP

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    3. I had a similar experience to the lawyer. What I found interesting about this example was i also knew that Jesus had spoken to me and it was not some other being. I can't explain it but i just know it. There are some things that you know without having a rational justification for it. For example, have you ever met a person that you fell for instantly without knowing much about that person? Basically have you ever experienced love at first sight? Theres just something extraordinary about that person but you cant quite put your finger on the defining characteristic. Strangely enough, when you get to know more about that person it only served to confirm your belief that you had fallen for the right person. So i just wanted to make a point that you can know something without having a rational justification for it. Knowledge about God can be naturally imparted into the mind. Im going to write a blogpost soon about God and love. You should read it because this comment doesn't adequately express what i want to explain to you about God and love.

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