My Journal

I'm going to use these terms very loosely. Postmodernists = humanists, etc.; Fundamentalists = legalists, etc.

After encountering some French literature, art (i.e. Les Misérables, Les Combattantes, etc.) I must ponder upon the significance of the religious debate deeper than the mere Fundamentalist–modernist controversy of the early 30s.

The humanists' motto is human-centered; The Fundamentalists' is God-centered.

So one can easily see from the surface how the Fundamentalist would win, especially from a Christian world view. If we are ignorant of the accusation that claiming God-centered doesn't necessarily make one God-centered. In fact, the Lord was particularly harsh against those labeling themselves strict followers of God. Simply because they create their own fitting version of "God-centeredness", thus making themselves prouder humanists instead.

But then, one must ask, what's wrong with the claim of truth first? Let's say both humanists and legalists care about it, why wouldn't they. Take white lies for example. When the humanists are challenged by it, they would justify it with a selfless benefit to the humankind as they see fit; But the fundamentalists would either condemn it or avoid the topic all together. The humanists' sin here is that of self-centeredness, which is common. However, the fundamentalists could either be justified (by rightly calling white lies still as sinful lies) in all godliness or hypocrites by masquerading godliness with mere exhibition of the knowledge of the Text. The latter would fail horribly more than the humanists here because honesty in this case, even against white lies, come with a cost that they would not be willing to bear. For example: A humanist lies (from the series Les Combattantes) to her employer in order to get a bunch of prostitutes a job and thus taken upon herself the responsibility to train the girls for the job; A legalist would have told the truth to the general that these girls were not qualified to be drivers and may not be prepared to take on the responsibility of the cost of the truth - viz. to find these girls their livelihoods. How God's mysterious providence here is irrelevant as it's not a subject of debate. We are talking about the sense of responsibility as a human to one's own neighbor. I think the humanist would have committed only a minor sin with her white lie; while the indefensibly irresponsible fundamentalist would be a pharisaic hypocrite, the very antagonist in Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan.

What then? If you want to be perfect, then be the fundamentalist who's willing to be there for the storm you are bringing others out of your honesty against white lies. Whether God chooses to alleviate your (and others') situation or to teach you a hard lesson here is of no concern for the discussion here.

Why sometimes we see the humanists, even secular ones, win the battles? It is in a sense, a battle of the right understanding of the philosophy of being vs. becoming. We are not to absolutize what is relativistic nor vice versa. Because here God is justifying the humanists over the fundamentalists who only know how to memorize the Sacred Text and justifying their inaction with their mere declaration of their godliness. Take out the white lies, it is as simple as the good Samaritan vs. everyone else in the parable. Judgment against white lies is inevitable, but there is a deeper context here and it is more important: What a responsible neighbor truly is.

01/02/2026 Friday

Nadia and I visited Joe (our former neighbor) and Joanne's place by Manchester (near Toms River). We dined around 3pm at Nonna's Place (Ristorante Italiano). Joe treated us. Nadia's Linguini with Clam Sauce (Under Pasta $18.95) was the best. We went from 1:30pm at their place to around 6pm by the time we got home. I have recording on Youtube, but not in my drive, too much work.

01/01/2026 Thursday

Nadia found a rather apt message from one of Tim Keller's sermons, that can deal with the self-righteousness of GCC with a serious blow. This is SO GOOD! When Pastor Chris and others said something like New York City is not a place for humans to live. Keller's message: "This is the reason, by the way, why your attitude toward New York City is one of the best ways to tell whether you're a Christian or a religious person. Because when you take a look at New York City, you're going to see two things. First of all, you're going to see some things falling apart. And religious people say, who wants to live in there? Which shows you have no saltiness at all. They're going to say, you know, religious people look around and say, what's wrong with these people? And you see, which of course is my sin is a speck, your sin is a plank. And not only that, when you take a look around New York City, one of the things you can see right off the bat, you can see them just walking down, you can look at some people and say, here's somebody who does not obey the Ten Commandments. It's not that hard to see. And Christians aren't turned off by that. And religious people totally are.":

12/30/2025 Tuesday

It always intrigues me whenever I see American ministries trying to solicit donations. If only they pursue fellowship with believers as eagerly as they fundraise from the same. What's ironic is that many of such ministries are rather edifying. But does it mean we should give because of it? That's like putting Six Flags on Jesus. The only reason people give is because they believe they are serving the Church which is the children of God, which is forged in fellowship with one another before God. There is no other way I see this giving can be done without turning it into a business for circus.

12/29/2025 Monday

Leland Vittert, I don't think he is really autistic, but what do I know. It seems that this interview by Allie Beth Stuckey is really just for her emotional fulfilment and his book (Born Lucky, reading the negative reviews helps and is good enough to not buy the book) promotion and perhaps something she agreed with his past along the right wing issues. He's more of an introvert "spectrum" (Asperger's? Which is just an excuse for being more self-absorbed) I would say, but many of such is diagnose as autistic as a cop-out by either the professional or the parents to truly face adversity in life. At least Vittert's father helped raising him up. But the methods really aren't for autistic children, it's just common sense.

Posted this on Facebook, it was a long time coming. Targeting not just folks like Alex Tseng (he did love to contrast the fact that when he bragged of how open-minded he was to have LGBT friends, he was in the right, when other spoke of the problem of LGBT, they are in the wrong if their answer was other than "the Bible says so". This was about 20 years ago, in a Bronx Bible study), but others who seem to want to make people think that they are more open-minded as perhaps a mask to cover their rebellious attitude:

When a Reformed/Fundamentalist preacher/theologian/Christian likes to brag about how many LGBT friends they have, watch that red flag!

They have no true care (not even for their LGBT friends, not really) but are mere hired hands with eloquence of words, or sophisticated academic degrees and networks.

Because of a fundamentalist connection, once their complex encyclopedic articulation is decrypted, it's really no different/harder than 1+1 in context. Big words, but small mind.

They do care about one thing though: That they want to be known as wannabe-images of those who truly care.

I was tempted to add "If you are offended by this post, think twice before commenting, for you are not equipped for this battle." But never mind.

12/28/2025 Sunday

At Crossroads, Jeffrey Jou was preaching as his final stage of being hired as the Youth Pastor. Sermon's on Zacchaeus, Luke 19:1-9. Nadia/Willy noted the similarity of the message to Tim Keller's. So they believe Jou is a fan of Keller. My first impression was more cynical: That he was doing these Keller quotes to boost his acceptance into a church that was once connected to Redeemer, indirectly. I could very likely be wrong as I should have given Jou the benefit of the doubt, seeing that I don't know anything about him at all.

But this is interesting, both him and Keller, as Nadia (Willy?) pointed out (so I looked it up), spoke of this:

Jou: Zacchaeus climbed onto a tree to see Jesus. But Jesus climbed onto a tree to save us. Jesus tells Zacchaeus to come down from that tree so that he could stay at his house, protecting him from scorn and shame.

vs. Keller @21:33: Zacchaeus came down from a tree. Jesus Christ went up and was nailed to a tree.