The prophet kind: Such as Stephen Tong, R.C. Sproul, etc. These are the front liners. They are the reliable ones in both God and Church. They are not afraid of challenges, seeing them as God's lesson, aligning to theology of suffering. It's possible for them to see God's rebuke on Job for what it is: Man's failure in asking question pertaining to Adam's unfallen responsibility. The more harm coming their way, the stronger they become from God. True fellowship is found with these, as it spread like fire.
The priesthood kind: Passively follow all instructions. They are only reliable in Church, if they are. Prone to the older brother's jealous character in the Lord's parable. These are many found in my life: most Redeemer's pastors under Tim Keller, CCCNY's pastor Laura Lin, etc. They are afraid of challenges, seeing them as oppositions to God, aligning to theology of complacency. It's not possible for them to see the true lesson for Job other than: Don't ask too many question. The more harm coming their way, the more blame they are towards others, if not God. True fellowship is hardly found with these. Though they may create or participate what is labeled as fellowship, the fellowship tends to turn cold over time and another form of fellowship is labeled for the sake of keeping the "family name" going.
There could be overlap between the two. Perhaps Jonah was one such.
God loves both of these and both are in His salvation plan. The extremes for each in risk of their salvation would be, for type #1.: giving into self satisfaction and abandon God. #2. thinking themselves as good as Uzzah going to places where they should not be.
Interestingly, it's possible for type #1. to be saved, if they sinned a little bit like Uzzah, as long as return to the Lord upon shameful rebuke from the lowliest being (or else, they would seek the risky road of disappearing themselves once their service is over, hiding in denial masking their shame). And for type #2. to give in to self satisfaction, to seek comfort from demanding task, as long as they hold on to God, God's rebuke would be most effectively severe in their heart while the others, especially the type #1., blinded by the meaning of such rebuke, for it is never meant for the type #1. as it is beyond their mental capacity as well, could only see that as a gentle but twisted form of either comfort or God-on-the-high-horse (Do not ask questions) for themselves, instead of as loving but stern rebuke of God on his beloved prophets (type #2).
Conclusion, though both maybe saved, #1. is not recommended.
v.7: Here it begins the negative: fools despise wisdom and instruction.
My son... v.8: Father's instruction, listen; Mother's torah/law/teaching, forsake not. Forsake not = leaning towards memorization of the law; listen = pondering/theologize/deep thinking the instruction. Father/mother is more about honoring thy father and mother here, and less to do with God the Father/church, but the latter view is not uncommon among church fathers (Didymus the Blind, Bede, etc.). The two advice will be your...
v.10: Consent not: Before rejecting/not standing in the way of sinners, recognize first their enticement.
v.11: Lay in wait, lurk privily, reminiscent of Psalm 10:8. But this is not just about the most wicked whom even the pagans and secular could identify, this is also about those who think they are justified for taking advantage of the weak and poor, they think they are justified because they believe they have exercised their version of the law, as if they are on the righteous side and assumed the losers to the deal they craftily made with them are due to their own stupidity and not the slyness of the contract drafters.
v.13-14: This enticement is motivated by the strength in majority. A self-centered one. So it is not about trickery against the weak, as many would think they are justified for not following down this path. But it is about whether the ultimate goal is a self-centered one or not: We, our, join us.
My son...
v.15: from not consenting (v.10) to walk not in their footsteps. First it's outward relational (consent between two people, joining with sinners), now it's inward relational (self contemplation vs. curiosity, considering the ways of sinners).
v.17-19 is interesting. For the English versions all agree that it is in vain to throw the net by announcing first to your prey that you will throw the net. The Chinese version however, 网罗设在眼前仍不躲避, meaning even in the face of danger, one still lives in ignorant. Though I lean towards the English, but the meaning of the Chinese is not completely off rail. The Chinese calls them fools who fail to see the judgment of God in their selfishness. However, the Chinese is turning this into inconsistency. It makes more sense for the agents that cast the net are the sinners themselves, and neither Satan nor God. As shown in v.18. And v.19 concluded this a greediness.
Wisdom personified (v.20-33):
v.20-25: reminiscent of Jesus crying against the ignorant ones often times. (Chorazin & Bethsaida in Matthew 11:21, Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37)
v.26-32: Consequence of sinners. Wisdom/the Lord, turning away from the fools.
v.28: The sinners are smart enough to realize they need help, but the Lord/Wisdom is not there.
v.29: The cause of the rejection by the Lord/Wisdom is not because the sinners were too late, but because of the lack of fear of YHWH, which is the requirement for the beginning of the knowledge that they hate. Interesting, that the author placed knowledge before fear here. So there's a circular causation here: True love for knowledge will bring one to the fear of the Lord, which would in turn increase in knowledge. Thus, those who fear the Lord, already loved knowledge to begin with.
v.32: Complacency of fools (愚顽人安逸) is interestingly added. For here it seems to allude to the fact that wickedness is not just those who are satisfied in their wickedness, but satisfied also in their peacefulness, prosperity, etc. in a selfish way. Such is folly.
v.33: ...dwell secure, at ease, without dread of disaster (必安然居住，得享安静，不怕灾祸). Without fear of harm doesn't necessarily just mean no temporal challenge will come, but this challenge is nothing to be feared for. So first, wisdom takes us away from intentionally walking into harm's way, but it also place our mind in the fear of eternal God instead of the dread of temporal harm.
Chapter 2
My son...
v.1-5: Reiterating 1:29's circular causation, starting with seeking and cherishing the father's commandments to wisdom, resulting in the true fear of the Lord, getting true knowledge, that of God.
Chapter 3
v.31 "Do not envy a man of violence..." ESV. For his happiness comes in falsehood and its days are numbered.
v32 "...but his secret is with the righteous" KJV or "the upright are in his confidence" ESV. God is willing to reveal His secret to his servants and prophets (Amos 3:7, Job 29:4). Such is the Gospel (~Gill).
v.33 curse is on the house of the wicked (1 Samuel 5: The Philistines took the ark and were struck with illness); Obed-Edom had the ark and was blessed (2 Samuel 6). The very blessings of the wicked are curses (Gill).
v.34 on the humble: "those who are made truly sensible of sin and lie low in their own sight on account of it...submit to the righteousness of Christ...own the deficiency of their duties...think the worst of themselves and the best of others...patient under every adverse dispensation of Providence, God first gives grace to these...to make them thus humble and lowly which they are not naturally, and then more grace - James 4:6, " ~Gill.
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
v.1: This security, some call it a vouching, we can also consider this as a kind of recommendation, putting our reputation on the line for someone.
verses 6-11 (lazy/no initiatives) should contrast the first 5 verses (over initiatives).
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
v.31: Christ loves to dwell among His people, His brothers. Stephen Tong links those who see this wisdom (敬虔的奥秘 mystery of godliness: incarnation, virgin birth, union of two natures ~ Gill) are those living in godliness, 1Tim 3:16:
They are as easy as typing a question in a box and let them work wonders. I've tested all of them and they do prove to be very useful and are good for cross-referencing results as well since they run on independent LLM.
Thus far, only Copilot does image creation, of all 4 listed above.
The potential of these are great. I've used them to convert a messy list of items into well organized spreadsheet for my manager. Used it to create instructions and write essays and such.
Since I came to Grace Church (Bridgewater), there's these sayings going around: "Life is not science", "The math folks won't get this", "You can't explain this with mathematical equations", etc.
I think these stupid phrases come not from this church alone. It's perhaps my beginning personal encounter of the shallowest fundamentalist influenced kind of Christians. It's likely they've failed math and science. They cannot define terminologies properly. Their guru is probably Ken Ham and the likes. I have yet to pin point the source of these quotes of theirs. So I'll leave this in the Questions category as well.
Recognizing, lots of Bible study verses they touched on are beyond their (only them in most cases) own understanding, they would rather conclude that these are something the science folks (instead of themselves) cannot figure out/understand. Yet, I looked at those verses, I don't see any problem with a rational interpretation of them, especially most of these verses have to do with the aesthetics, artistic literature.
What they actually meant, is "lean not on your own understanding".
The Reformation influenced some of them a bit, or else they would place faith and science mutually exclusive. But they still do not truly grasp the distinction between general and special revelations. They do not see that we are mere interpreters of both revelations, that is, if they get what revelation truly is at all. The rest of their consequent failure is just out of pride and jealousy.
In general, rationality, logic, Math and science are just what we do to make sense of ALL God's revelations. Since these are God's given tools, they can never be wrong, but the users themselves can be wrong.
You can say that God or faith is beyond rationality, supra-rational. If there's something beyond mathematics, for example: love, all mathematicians know this is not something you use mathematics or science for. You cannot say that there's even a slightest chance for faith to contra-reason. To be fair, to say that "this doesn't fit the mathematical equation" can be seen as the insufficiency of human reasoning, which would be correct, however, the folks I was referring to above do not treat it that way. They are implying that either nobody else can figure/understand what they themselves cannot understand or math can be wrong, which has nothing to do with the insufficiency of our own understanding. To say that there is a chance for any of God gifted tools to be wrong is to call God a liar.
The only way to cure them, I think, is to keep fixating on "lean not on your own understanding" instead of "this is not an math equation" (because maybe it is and you just can't figure it out), which is bad English, bad reasoning and bad science. I can try to brainwash them out of this error subtly with care or harsher when needed.
The Company that's owned by its employees. This concept is new to me. When SP started this, I just saw it as some sort of internal IPO stocks. From the point of stocks, that's great, from the point of employees become the boss, that sounds like the union. But now TLDR has this article "Every company should be owned by its employees" by ELLE GRIFFIN:
The American/Western fundamentalists do not get this. They are easily turned off by the Scientism folks and embraced a kind of spirituality that is devoid of rationality. They would try not to be anti-rational, if they could, but they really do not wish to follow the rational path because they have lost their wits not the scientism, but to anyone who are smarter than them in rationality. Their jealousy pushed their pride to finding refuge in fake humility which is taken as their new found spirituality, not realizing that they've already fallen into the theological errors practiced in the far East for thousands of years.
That is the second part of the quote. The first part of the quote is obvious, that we do not just think, but we have live it, in Christ, taking us not against, but beyond rationality. So the faithful saints will not need to fall to pride when facing rational opponents who are smarter. In fact, they would show true humility and desire to learn if possible.
8/3/2024 So the bathtub overflow cap broke off upstairs when Nadia was doing some cleaning. Apparently there are various overflow pipe, found this diagram from Amazon, red check is the one we have upstairs, I guess it corresponds with BIG-3SHO, but problem is, the screw is broken in the screw hole and I have no clue how the broken piece in there looks like the screw came from the other side in as the broken side seems sharp and well threaded, was it modified by whoever trying to repair this before?:
This company (BlueVue) sells all kinds of gaskets/brackets for the tub overflow.
I really hope I won't need to drill extra holes.
Step one: Try extraction of the broken screw.
Stephen Tong on where the Apocrypha came from: (from the great historical afflictions of the Jews in the 400 years between OT & NT where there's no prophets) Wikipedia dated them to 200BC - 100AD.
Stephen Tong on Jewish Christology: Unlike others, Tong would not deny the Jews of believing the right Messiah/Christology. That they are not completely wrong about their version of Messiah, because it is biblical. However, what they got wrong is the process 程序 of Christology.
The Procedure/Order of Christ that was lacking among the Jews: 先受苦，后得荣耀； 先死，后复活； 先降卑，后得尊贵；
Why Jews cannot accept Christ: They only accept the glorified Christ, not the suffering Christ.
Therefore: Masada became a stumbling block for Jews to believe Jesus is the Messiah? "Never Masada/shame again!"
8/2/2024The Gender issue has finally come to the Paris Olympics when XY-chromosome (male) Imane Khelif of Algeria easily won the women's boxing match. Khelif had been barred before in Algeria but IOC (International Olympic Committee) allowed "her" to compete as a female, since "her" passport and birth certificate indicated female, in spite of chromosome test showing XY, instead of XX. "She" was treated as female since birth because of underdeveloped penis deformity that made it looked like a vagina. I was brought to this news from David Tong's FB and it interested me to look it up. Based on these facts, this is clearly a rare birth deformity that would label him as an intersex or even hermaphrodite. However, in sports where there's clear distinction of male and female because of genetical differences/advantage, it should at least be genetical based. I suppose sports is where the most foundational basis of gender is clearly defined today.
Alex Tseng & David Tong had some interesting exchanges on this topic: A, D.
AI that splits voice and instrument. I think I stumbled upon it in Facebook or something but I can't remember the name of that AI. However, a quick google search lists a few: https://www.lalal.ai/ which I tested using Mozart's Magic Flute Queen of the Night aria, and it was 90% impressive. I do not doubt that unlike the extraordinary piece written for soprano, most songs can easily be split by this technology now. I'm very eagerly awaiting the split between lecturer and translator, that would really reduce lots of Stephen Tong's lectures/sermons by half as I really do not need to listen to the Cantonese/English translations.
Selective Perception, good phrase to remember as vocabulary. Tong used it on the Jews' view towards Jesus - They cannot accept that "...for the suffering of death..." to be applied to their Messiah:
8/1/2024 My comment on our church's Bible study on Proverbs 3, probably verse 19. We were late about 5 mins, they were discussing about how God knows everything, a shallow accounts, as if the pastor worried that there are some whose definition of God is a kind of God that may not know everything: "theories put out as fact", "God doesn't know what's going on with the Bermuda Triangle", etc.
N: "You can't do evolution with science", alluding to the scientific method, which is in itself flawed, because it is only as good as its controls. Already evolution fails even in theory, you don't need experiments to prove it. And then he moved on to strawman arguments against Big Bang, Dark Matter, etc. N then said that these gave science a bad name. I would push back that they don't give science a bad name, because they are not science. That's like saying the Mormons gave Christianity a bad name.
I say shallow because the pastor only went as far as "pursuing the knowledge of the world is a good thing", which is understatement. But more importantly, as Tong would agree with me, not pursuing the knowledge of the world is sinful, it was commanded by God in Genesis, and very clearly in the last chapters of Job. I am not sure if pastor Chris would agree to this one because he's using the excuse with the verse "all in God's time - discoveries, and such".
Then the pastor moved on to suggesting that Solomon did not know how rain drops, not completely wrong. But, to be accurate, I would say we don't know that for sure, whether Solomon knew or not.
@11:10 For verse 24, not sure the need why the pastor divided fear into various aspects: Theological (your soul is secure), Imaginative (considering the what if's), Literal. I think it is unnecessary to do all these if your relationship with God is right. I-Thou, not I-It.
@16:00 Talks of "Universe" in place of God, also shallow. Because they fail to realize that the reason the secular culture gets uncomfortable with the word "God", is lots of time due to fundamentalists' twisting of the meaning God. This does not happen in other cultures that never twisted the word "God" as the Western influenced fundamentalists.
@19:00 Testimony of some miracle was brought up where two girls weren't raped by rapists in the German war as they walked right in front of the rapists as if the rapists were blinded. Patty responded by asking if this was due to the girls have more faith. Pastor refuted that rightly, calling it a form of bargaining. However, I would go as far as saying that, on the contrary, the ones with more faith are usually the ones who do not need such miracles, it is often times, the ones that lack faith, these miracles are given. The pastor fail in this probably due to Charismatics influence in America.
Patty then continued to ask if it's sinful to fear, since Jesus said fear not. I think this question caught the pastor off guard, based on his response. He compared Patty's question to Jesus sweating blood as a kind of "fear", the kind that we "have no control over, due to chemical reaction", which was why N taking further with the error of defining fear with different levels: being shocked/startled = as types of fear as well. The pastor also wrongly assumed that everyone would fear a gun pointed at them, regardless of their faith. But I think this was due to him trying to balance pastoral care, so that people like Patty would not take it too harshly. Dirk was better at bringing Daniel's friends for not being afraid.
There also seeks to be some confusion between fear and being alert. @25:25 when the pastor spoke of using the dread kind of fear in battles as a good thing.
Verse 27 was badly dealt with @27:00. The pastor prefers to treat this as referring to known neighbors rather than strangers. This way of interpretation won't work well in NYC nor in evangelism. He then used the strawman of someone trying to safe the entire continent of Africa. "...to whom it is due..." commentaries and Tim Keller nailed this "due" to the original text meaning that this was owed. So it's far from the direction of the strawman argument.
@30:25 Mary then wrongly thought that only Christians do selfless charity works. A lack of a global knowledge.
@32:15 D suggested that it's better to immediately pray for someone right in front of them when they shared their troubles. I think not everyone would like that, though in most cases, that might work. One needs to assess the motive and true need, lest making vain prayers and thus worse testimony.
@39:40 On verse 29, the shaking dust off the feet was mentioned and Nadia seemed developed an annoyance against it. I think I ought to tell her to focus on the true meaning of "shaking dust off the feet", because the pastor used the verse correctly here: when facing aggressor, just leave, do not engage.
@40:00 B asked about one denomination if all are faithful. The pastor responded "probably". He failed to understand the problem of the One and the Many. But he still answered the denomination question better than most, that there's no way to avoid denomination on this side of glory. I don't think I would use "this side of glory" much in my own talks, it's a western jargon, if not American, which I don't find useful.
@43:00 Eleni got it wrong by quoting union in God as Jesus' intent against denominations. The pastor was at least able to retort that with a quick rebuttal: But there must be organizations, etc. I definitely applaud the pastor for daring to say "I believe other denominations are wrong", though I'm not sure how far I would agree with him on his context. I believe the best way to answer that is just the sound bite: Even the non-denomination is a denomination.
7/31/2024 Alex gave a good critique on Christian criticism of the Paris Olympics 2024 opening ceremony, depicting either Leonardo DaVinci's Last Supper or The Feast of the Olympus Gods (or of Dionysus, the Greek god of festivities and wine), by Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert. David Tong also shared his own view about it, which is similar to the popular conservative Catholics and evangelicals. Unlike David Tong, who criticized it harsher, Alex tried to find a middle way about it with the Gospel instead of criticism, calling it clothing these naked French with Christ instead of stripping them of their last "fig leave", after Alex presented a history of the why's between Germany (Lutheran influence) and France (hypocrisies of king and pope). I for one just think that the word Olympics already gave a hint, that it was originally to honor the Olympus Greek god Zeus, so why get so upset about it as if the Olympics is a Christian thing. If the art is intentionally mocking Christianity, then there are many more anti-Christian movements to be of our concern. You don't talk to the slaves but the master for any conflicts.
7/30/2024 Running One-man SaaS, Healthchecks.io, 9 Years In: since 2016, now, in 2024, he has 652 paying customers with monthly revenue of $14,043USD. This SaaS monitors cron jobs. He's kind enough to share his experience. I should come up with something as it's good money.
7/26/2024 Stephen Tong on Paradox (反合性), using Christ's dual nature. And also using the paradox of "humility": Are you humble? The more you deny it, the more humble you are - And if you disagree with this statement, you are even more humble.
Chinese Translation of PARADOX that weren't satisfactory by Tong: 吊诡性, 逆反性, 似非而是性 (much better because it's not 似是而非, better, qualitatively speaking):
Also, Tong interestingly brought up Hebrews 2:5 as the proof text that when man lost his place to have dominion over the world, angels were not the one supposed to be in charge.
7/25/2024FAANG refers to the 5 Big Tech giants: Facebook (Meta), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google (Alphabet). And this forum discusses about benefits being better from FAANG than non-FAANG tech companies. More stable, relaxing as well.
Last week we harvested our sweet corns (bought from the now recently closed down Dieker's Farm on Bordentown Ave.), half were slightly too old. So the lesson is to harvest early in the future, perhaps before July.
With President Biden stepping down, the table may have turned, despite Trump's near death experience. Vance's rhetoric on foreign diplomacy is shallow at best, especially with the "China slavery" exaggeration as an excuse for tariff. Unfortunately, as much of a clown as Kamala is, her opposition might underestimate her enough to lose to her, if they remain obtuse. I posted this on my FB in response to Kishore Mahbubani's short clip for fun. Mahbubani was the Indian geopolitical commentator my dad introduced me when we were on our way to Koh Lipe last year. I thought he should be a great resource for me from being trapped by American/Western political propaganda.
Impressive, I could even download Hagar in the Wilderness by Camille Corot. However, not all arts are available, for example: Briton Riviere's Daniel paintings.
Nevertheless, it's a very good source for study of painters as it can list paintings by artists.
This study began with Rodolfo leading the Men's Fellowship at GCC. Especially after the pastor's post end prayer comment/blunt critique of Rodolfo's context (v.25-26), I felt imperative to look this up as this is not a chapter I was that familiar with. Pastor Chris' note was to point back to the theme of the Psalmist: Not to judge the book by its cover. Rodolfo's lead was a shallow one as it only focuses on those two verses, which is out of context with the theme of the entire chapter. And like Bill and Bob and some others, there's no discussion nor desire to have discussion, just to end in prayer after reciting all their notes, this is their Bible study method.
The Psalm starts with the subtext: A Psalm of Asaph. Many commentators said Asaph is a person. Calvin seems to think differently, that David was the real author and Asaph was just being charged to the singing of it. It is not something I would debate about at this point. Calvin gave a good introduction of the chapter in the beginning.
v.2-3 Shows that the Psalmist is perplexed, R got this one in his Bible study. Phil considered the Psalmist was blinded. Calvin only dared to go as far as temptation, that it was the Psalmist's temptation, having the steps well nigh slipped, not the Psalmist's iniquity. Ecc 9:2 is a good reference: all things come alike to all, and there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked
Ebay sells those rubber roller exit tires, less than $10 for 4 pieces. Search keyword: fi-6130 roller tires. Just bought these because mine are apparently melting due to heat or something and causing the papers to jam up in all directions.
Since the area near to rollers keeps getting hot or staying warm even when not using, I decided to just keep the top unit open/separated when not using.
These two videos helped in the assembly of the unit:
