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CalledbyHisName
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Name: David
Birthday: 9/14/1983
Gender: Male
Interests: language, philosophy, figuring out what makes people tick, Chinese culture, Babylon 5, all four major sports (football, baseball, basketball, hockey, in that order), tennis, chess, xiangqi, classical music, Death Note, Mushishi, Inuyasha, Kenshin, Trigun, Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, Fullmetal Alchemist, Bleach, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Chobits, Ranma 1/2, martial arts (especially all forms of kung fu)
Expertise: Christian theology, East Asian cultures, Buddhism (particularly Mahayana), history
Occupation: Student, Library staff
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
10/23/2002
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| Okay, since the Tibet situation is important for my upcoming career and I'm expected to have opinions on this sort of thing, let me clarify my thoughts on the matter. A good place to start is by asking a pertinent question: would independence be good for Tibet? Or would it hurt them as much as or worse than Chinese occupation does? What no one can question is that Chinese economic development is good for Tibet, and Tibet has prospered economically in recent years. Now, whose hands all that new money is in is another matter, and there's good reason to believe that it's not going to ethnic Tibetans. But the question must be asked, would the exit of the ethnic Chinese in Tibet hurt the standard of living there, considering the social/medical impact of modernization and urbanization? An independent Tibet would almost certainly drop to the levels of poverty seen in Bhutan and Nepal, especially under the hand of an absolute theocratic ruler like the Dalai Lama has historically been. On the other hand, there is little doubt that the Chinese government acts for its own best interests and not that of Tibet, so it is difficult to argue that the current situation is "working". The main strengths and weaknesses of the current situation are identical. Tibet is assimilating into mainland China. This has raised the standard of living incredibly, but it has also forced ethnic Tibetans to assimilate to a foreign culture in their own homeland. Is it worth the trade? I honestly don't know. I think the best the Tibetans could seriously hope for is to gain a status equivalent to Hong Kong, but de jure that's essentially what their status is now....and even in Hong Kong there has been a rising population of Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese changing the social climate. With all that said, I think that the Olympics protests and "Free Tibet" movement are seriously misguided. Full independence would be a disaster for Tibet, and at any rate you can never sway the Chinese government by causing it to lose face. All you do there is burn your bridges, as the Dalai Lama has long since done. My guess is that after the Olympics, all of these protests will die down, and things will go back to the way they were before. Which is not an ideal solution. But it may just be better than the alternatives, a "free" Tibet with no marketable resources and few trading partners, yet another poor Himalayan nation.
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| I had been considering the issue for a while now of why I've been so lonely lately. I came to one very large, difficult to deal with conclusion. The friends who have constituted my "inner circle" in the past are fairly distant from me at this point (for various reasons), and I've utterly sucked at making close friends at ATS, where I spend most of my time. When is the last time I saw or even talked to AJ or Alicia? I've seen Angela one in the last two-three months. I've seen Jimmy once in the last two-three months. Who is even my closest male friend after AJ and Jimmy? I've lost touch with Mary (my fault). I occasionally but rarely talk to Nate. My only really reliable friend that I talk to often at this point is Joyce. I very grateful to God for her, but it isn't good to rely too heavily on only one friend. How do I resolve this? The obvious solution would be to cultivate my friendships at ATS, but that's notoriously difficult. ATS people are famously difficult to get close to, or even really hang out with. Too busy, too cliqueish, you name it. That's so situation. Suggestions, anyone? | | |
| As I never tire of saying, we know next to nothing about God-in-Himself. We only know what he is like in the context of relationships. That is to say, we know that he is good (a relational word), just (relational), beautiful (relational, remember that beauty is only beautiful if there is some person to appreciate it), etc. With this in mind, lets think for a second about God's glory. When I ask what God's primary attribute is, I can reasonably expect to get one of two answers: "love" and "glory". When you ask what "glory" means, you can reasonably expect to agree on two basic usages of the word. One is "God's manifest goodness, the sum total of his character and power in tangible form". This is what we mean when we say, "Lord, let your glory come!" The other is the idea of God's fame, his good reputation amongst other beings. In this sense God says, "I am a jealous god, I will not share my glory with another!" Now, I of all people long to see God's glory. But I believe above all that God's glory is his love. There are indistinguishable. Why? Let's think about this. Nowhere in the Bible can you ever find even one statement about God's nature in himself. You always find God's nature expressed in terms of his relationship to other people and things. The closest thing that comes to mind to describing God's "ontological" nature in the Bible is when he is called "immortal". However, describing God negatively as "one who does not die" obviously does not go a long way in establishing positive what he is. You can say that God has eternal life, or that he is glorious. But you cannot say so much that God is eternal life or is glory. Are these true? Who knows? But God has not chosen to reveal himself to us as eternal life or as glory, only as possessing these things. I believe this is intentional. Why? Because he could exist as these things in-himself, without reference to anything else. I believe that God intentionally chooses not to do so. This is because God has chosen finally and ultimately to define himself in relationship with other people (and things, i.e. creation), through that most excellent and ultimate of all of God's nature, his love. God has glory, God is love. What is the pinnacle of God's revelation of himself to us? Sure it is Jesus. How did Jesus reveal God? Who ever saw Jesus-in-himself? What was his intrinsic nature? The council of Chalcedon did the best that they could, but "wholly-God-and-wholly-man" does not go far into illuminating what Jesus tells us about the nature of his Divine Nature. So what did Jesus reveal? He revealed God's love in healing the sick. He revealed God's love in discipling his disciples, and especially in washing their feet (being a slave to his slaves, and a friend to his friends!) He revealed God's love through the Cross. He showed us everything about God that we need to know, everything that matters. Understand the nature of God's love, understand everything that God wants us to know about himself. All of God's manifest goodness is made known in his love. His love is his glory. Humans desire valuable things by our very nature. We want cool stuff. We want. I believe that this is why God doesn't tell us more about God-in-Himself. If we could see God's very inherent nature, we would think it was important and valuable, we would worship him for it, and most importantly, we would want it. Obviously, God knows this. So what does he do? He shows us instead what we should want. The true pearl of great price, worth selling everything for. His love. How great and how wide, and deep and profound, how dynamic and unfailing is this love! It breaks chain and creates its own ties. If burns, purifies, judges, destroys, builds, creates and heals. It reaches into the depths of body and soul and lifts us up into the highest of heavens. It humbles the proud, and exalts the lowly. To know this love, to experience it just a little deeper, just one more time, what price would I pay? What hurdles would I leap? Lord, give me--give us--the strength of heart, the willpower and desire to really desire your love, and to relentlessly seek after it. | | |
| No, my semester hasn't started yet. But I sat in on Mission Outreach in the Chinese Church, a class taught in Mandarin. Now, depending on the topic, I can usually understand anywhere between 30 and 80 percent of what a person with a reasonably clear accent is saying in Mandarin (this decreases substantially if the person has a strong accent, with the hardest being Taiwanese/Fujianese). For most topics, I'm right around 60%. Which is more than enough to figure out most sentences mean, in context. So I sat through three and a half hours of a Chinese class today, and I was never really lost. I always knew what the teacher was talking about. Of course, there were a few sentences which were really impossible to figure out without knowing what one or two particular words meant (the Chinese church needs to be more____!), but you can usually work those out with a few good contextual clues. In other words, sitting in on this class was very, very fun. :The teacher was Cyrus Lam, a major person in GO International, a sending agency for Chinese Christians. Despite being from Hong Kong, his Mandarin was quite clear, so I had no problem understanding him. And some of his illustrations were really funny.  In other words, today has been a pretty darn good/interesting day. | | |
| http://www.rahoi.com/2006/12/gwailophobia/ I don't remember the last time I saw anything this funny. Now, anything related to Manglish (think Engrish, but from HK instead of Japan) is bound to be funny. So www.rahoi.com is awesome anyway. But this is the best. Read it. Right now. | | |
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