Thursday, July 14, 2005
curses and sins
There's this popular evangelist among the Charismatic/Bethel community in Indonesia named Gilbert Lumoindong. He has often been accused of being too shalow-minded and public-performance-oriented and stuffs, but personally if you can get through the layer of Hallelujah Amens you could actually absorb some deep philosophies from his sermon. And also of course there's that silly laugh, but that's another topic. This morning instead of going into the church hall late and getting through the thick cake of staring eyes upstairs I spent the morning listening to his radio sermon. My mom just went in.
Anyway there were several interesting humanitarian philosophies that he was going over, his sermon was about curses, but I'm just gonna highlight one. In one part he was talking about the origin of curses, and how it was said in the bible that one (of among three he mentioned) is from inheritance. It is written in the bible (can't remember the verse, of course) that the sins of our fathers causes us his descendants to have curses befallen among us. Some would argue that it isn't fair but that's God's law and we have to accept it. But its not just that simple.
The thing is that we see it as unfair because we see it as, like, some other dude fucks up and we gotta take the shit, and like why the fuck do we have to take that shit anyway and stuffs. But then we read about how the blessings of (say) David flows down upon his descendents and then we say its fair. Think about it for a moment.
We say when its curses its unfair, when its blessings its fair.
Now that doesn't quite fit does it? That's the thing that nudged me this morning. We gotta realise that we're social creatures. What we do affects others; being egoistical does not stop us from getting shit from others, and being egoistical does not stop us from being responsible to others. The other sub-point he was getting to in this point of his sermon is that we can't do much anything about the sins of our fathers, but we can control what happens to our sons.
It is possible to change our culture. It is possible to change this society. Just because (perhaps) we won't feel the effects in our generation does not make our responsibility to change the future any less significant. Just because the culture of corrupt material hypocrisy is so prevalent in our society does not mean that it has to be that way for all eternity. We can make a difference, but not only that, we have to make a difference.
Oh and by the way of course he didn't put it quite like that; these are just my personal reinterpretations.
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
