A Christmas essay

STEVE OH

Christmas reminds us that the old year will soon be gone. A new one arrives in five days but will it bring a joyful year of beautiful blooms or a gloomy 12 months of the weeds of scandal and pain?

Will the flame of truth burn brightly or be doused by the flood of repression?

In reviewing the year, it has been a testing one for a country like Malaysia, born into hope but bogged in the quicksand of disappointments, despair and delusion.

Disasters one after another dogged the nation, besides the Cameron Highlands tragedy and the blight of the choking haze on the country’s health and economy and of course the sad MH370 and MH17 air mysteries.

Its favourite son, its badminton ace, was dragged down by a doping scandal and lost his World No 1 ranking, as if global bad press from the MH370 disaster had not done enough damage to the country’s image.

Many foreigners did not know where Malaysia is but many do now after the air disasters of MH370 and MH17. And it still takes much convincing to draw back the tourists from China who should be intelligent enough to differentiate between MAS and other airlines and a country from its government and return to enjoy the ‘Truly Asia’ Malaysian experience.

Malaysia does not qualify as a failed state but belongs in a league of its own – a flawed democracy, a floored state and a floundering hope.

Hope deferred does make the heart sick, indeed.

It is a ransomed state, as the country’s leader is weighed under the pressure of demands on him from within and without – some asking him to call it a day and quit and others supporting him to stay.

It depends where your vested interests and political future lie and observing how politicians change as quickly as a windsurfer changes directions, it is all part of the unpredictable in ‘Malaysia Boleh’ country.

The doomsayers predict ‘the end is nigh’ and ‘the writing is on the wall’. It is deja vu and the last days of his predecessor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Pak Lah) come to mind. And incidentally the poor likeable man is on the global terror list! Poor Pak Lah(above), what do those foreigners know about Malaysia?

I suppose God has a sense of humour. And Anwar Ibrahim must be chuckling somewhere. Now Malaysians know what it is like to be falsely accused.

I suggest the government swallow its pride and drop all the sedition charges against the sons and daughters of the nation – the long list of citizens falsely and unfairly accused of sedition, not to mention Anwar’s sodomy appeal.

Malaysians live in a country that is utterly unique – so ‘truly Malaysian’ – a country where retired leaders still call the shots and teach the government how to suck eggs when they have no credibility.

It is called respect

It does not happen anywhere I know. It is called respect. Past leaders show present leaders respect. They do it out of respect for the people and because of the office. How can unelected politicians dictate to the elected leaders?

If past leaders still want the job so badly they should not have left politics. They can still make a comeback and earn their political credibility through the ballot box. The country owes those who have enriched themselves in high public office nothing. They owe, not own, the country.

But I doubt they have the gumption to do it because they know they don’t stand any chance of success. More and more Malaysians now know better and the majority voted for the opposition in the last general election.

We are told that Jesus (the name means ‘Saviour’) was born in a manger because his parents could find no room in an inn. Immanuel – ‘God with us’ – another name given to Jesus,  became a human so that he can reconcile sinful man to God and so Heaven and Earth can sing, “Joy to the world – a saviour has been born to you!”

Jesus is the most misunderstood and maligned historic figure in the world. So much so the Bible has a word to describe his enemies – antichrists and the arch-enemy Lucifer himself – the Antichrist, that will in future ruin our world as we know it.

Some say Jesus never lived, some say he is only a prophet, some say he is a homosexual, some say he had sex with women, some say he is demon-possessed, some say he was a hoax, some say he was only a man, some say he was only a spirit, some say he was a wizard and so on.

But to most people – the majority of the human race – he is their Lord and Saviour – God who became a man to save the world – to die on the Cross for their sins, who died and rose again from the dead having overcome death – so that he can give everyone hope, who receive and believe in Jesus.

And he forgives our sins and heals us of our sicknesses as many of us who have been forgiven and healed can attest.

Yet hope in Jesus is banned in many places. And in those places today as it was when Jesus walked on earth, to be a follower of Jesus is to be a martyr. And in Malaysia persecution of Christians is seen in the banning of words and confiscation of Christian books and restrictions on Christian activities.

It is nice to know, however, that many Muslims and a government minister will greet Christians with the seasonal salutation, “Merry Christmas,” though you will not hear me uttering it.

I prefer ‘Happy Christmas’

Like the Queen of Australia, I prefer “Happy Christmas” because ‘merry’ has lost its meaning today and has a hint of naughty un-Christian-like over-indulgence. Still, I would rather say, simply, “God bless you,” which is more biblical, but that’s the Queen and I. There is no compulsion, remember?

Last night a Malay friend sent me a video about Jesus. In it the Muslim preacher said that “Jesus was a Muslim.” And he claimed that all the prophets before him were also Muslims. How to argue? After all the generic meaning of Muslim, an Arab word, is ‘one who submits (to God)’ and all the prophets and Jesus in his human form submitted to God.

I would not mind if someone described me as a Muslim if the definition of a Muslim ended there.

But the word Muslim is more widely understood as ‘a follower of the religion of Islam’. And I certainly don’t claim to be one, God forbid.

I know whom I have believed and am confident he will guard my soul until that day. God is one, God is good, God is great.

Most Muslims will accept as a Muslim anyone who has publicly pronounced the syahadah (declaration of faith) which states: “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God”, the words in Arabic that the recent Sydney terrorist forced his hostages to hold up in a black banner.

Jesus certainly wasn’t a Muslim by that definition either. If Jesus was a prophet why don’t Muslims follow his teachings, I wrote to my friend.

It goes to show that a word may have different meanings as words often do. Ultimately it is the use and understanding of the word that matters. And if we are intelligent enough we should know how to differentiate.

The problem in the ‘Allah’ word row is because the prohibitionists don’t think people are intelligent. They need a nanny to protect them. So they ban this and that until the world is tangled in knots. You can’t say there is only one God, Allah but tell others “don’t you dare say that if you are not one of us.”

That is why you see 25 intelligent Malaysians come out into the open to stop the spread of the logical fallacies and try to rescue Islam from the clutches of the self-appointed religious police and nanny. The magnificent 25 have lit the fuse and whether there will be a rippling effect of support from others is left to be seen.

And the video my friend sent me went on to explain what Muslims further believed about Jesus, how much he was respected and how Muslims show him respect by not ascribing any image to him, etc.

I replied to my friend, “I know – that is old stuff.” And I reassured him, “I am not guilty of shirik”, but knowing his good intentions I reminded him that once when I was a Buddhist he had through me subscribed to the Buddhist idea of the Middle Path, and I reassured him that I am now on the Right Path.

Sincerely wrong

People can be sincere but they can be sincerely wrong.

Jesus said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life…” John 14:6 and we are told, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16.

Take it or leave it and there is no need for those who believe in God to get upset because someone else thinks and teaches differently from them.

When I first became a Christian in 1973 at university abroad, many of my friends thought I had gone crazy. As a student leader then one foreign student even came to see me to find out ‘why I had gone crazy!’ But the young man from Cambodia, he, too, became ‘crazy’ after I told him about Jesus.

The Apostle Paul says we are to be “fools for Christ” because the world thinks faith in God is silly, but God says “the fool has said in his heart there is no God.” He is no fool who gives in exchange something he can’t keep for something he can’t lose, wise words said by an American, Jim Elliot, a missionary who was killed by the Auca Indians, many of whom later came to faith in God instead of in the spirits of trees and rocks.

Andy Gibb, the youngest brother of the Bee Gees pop group, died of a broken heart. “An empty heart,” said one fan. “He had everything – fame and fortune,” but after 10 years of drugs and drink, his body had given up on him.

We all have a God-shaped heart that only the Holy Spirit of God can fill and Jesus was given to us to fill that void. This is what the birth of Jesus is about, a day called Christmas by Christians, the genesis of God’s rescue plan for humanity, that was planned long before the world came into being.

We can accept or reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ but we can’t avoid it. To stop it is to go against God himself and those who tried to stop the apostles from preaching about Jesus who had the wisdom to know that and did not continue in their prohibition. And God was able to add to them those who were saved two thousand years ago.

Those who think they are doing God a favour by persecuting Christians must learn from the story of Paul of Tarsus. This Jewish leader, an expert in the Jewish faith, had tried to destroy the fledgling faith of the Christians, then only a small sect. But on the road to Damascus, he met Jesus in a miraculous encounter and the rest is history.

Don’t take my word for it. Read Acts and find out for yourself what happened to Paul. This amazing man who became the greatest apologist for Jesus explains that the devil who masquerades as an ‘angel of light’ will stop people from believing in Jesus by placing a veil over their hearts so they can’t believe and return to God in humble submissiveness, repentance and trust.

Secularisation of Christmas

Many Christians celebrate Christmas but do they know its origins? Do they know that the secularisation and commercialisation of Christmas is strikingly similar to the festival on which it is adapted after the Roman Empire became ‘Christian?’

The Christmas tree, the giving of presents, the mistletoe, the date Dec 25, Santa Claus and more, they all have pagan origins, albeit adapted to Christianity. Even the word Christmas means Christ-mass, a Roman Catholic innovation and Protestants don’t subscribe to the mass, though remembering the Lord’s Supper is an integral sacrament of faith.

“The truth is stranger than fiction,” they say but the Gospel truth is inviolable if we stay true to the Bible – the Word of God and the foundation of true Christian faith. Churchianity and Christianity may be worlds apart when the teachings of man supersede the teachings of Jesus Christ and the New Testament scriptures.

That is why every truth-loving person must never allow their democratic society to be overrun by those who force any ideology down their throats and compel people to believe their doctrines and act in their image. Whether they are the Taliban or communists, we must resist them and never allow them to succeed in their agenda of oppression.

No one who believes in the God of truth shall be afraid of the truth. And we must defend the right of others to speak their minds however offensive or contradictory their ideas are to our own. Light is better than darkness.

God himself does not oppress us. He says, “Come, let us reason together,” recorded in the words of his prophet Isaiah. God reaches down to us when Jesus became a man. He was not just a man but as Paul wrote, “All the fullness of the deity dwelled in his bodily form.”

That is why Jesus is also called Immanuel which I explained earlier means ‘God is with us’. We may or may not believe it but that is what is stated in the Bible and no one but an anti-Christ would want to stop it being considered.

When Steven Gan (above) recently defended Malaysiakini’s aim to get a print licence, it is the same challenge they face in getting the right to be heard and the freedom to publish truth.

The enemies of Malaysiakini do not want the truth to be published, or in Gan’s own words, “a closer version of the truth”,  so that readers can “separate the wheat from the chaff”.

The truth comes with a price when you encounter the enemies of truth. “Give me truth or give me death” may well be the catchcry of those who think their lives worth less than the truth they believe in and their souls worth saving in being loyal to God and to the truth than the ideas of man.

“What is truth?” asked the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

That is for each individual to discover. That is why the freedom of conscience is a fundamental human right, a God-given freedom, I should add, and it behooves us to keep it that way.

Like the blind men and the elephant

We should not tell another the truth when we don’t know what it is. We are then like the blind men and the elephant. And the blind leading the blind does not fit in the pursuit of the truth.

We saw the most desperate act of the cowards in murdering 132 school children in Pakistan and stopping them from learning the truth.

They know that when people know the truth they will be set free as Jesus said. We should not be afraid of the truth because God does not want us to live a lie.

May God bless Malaysia as we remember the day Jesus was born.