Living with Aliens

Hi all, its been quite a while since I posted anything for this blog, however, I thought that I would like to share this article, produced with permission, about the experiences of a missionary from Sarawak, Borneo. Some of the language and terms used here are Sarawak localized. Be encouraged.

Living with Aliens
Rev. Lenita Tiong, Bintulu

For years I have been living with aliens, but actually I was the alien. The Khmer word for foreigner is "boh-re-teh". The older folks however use the word "barang" which mean French as the only foreigners they knew were the French who colonized Cambodia from 1863 till 1953. I was called "barang" by my first landlady.

As a "boh-re-teh", I was well respected as I lived in a big house and drove a car. At the market, I represented economical advantage and so I was addressed "madam" even by hawkers who know only two English words "madam, buy buy." In the Christian circles, I represented the church leadership and so with the ecclesiological and academic status, I was the "neak krew" (female teacher) and I received "kow-taos" every where I went.

Local Yet Live With Aliens

But now, back in Sarawak, I am a local, but I still live with aliens. At first, they were the Indonesian maids in my brother's house in Miri. I was "kakak" to them. In a house of two maids, one teenager, an elderly ailing lady and this kakak, we had to be a family. We had meals together and I bought treats (ice cream, chendol, kuehs etc) for all. What mum ate, we all ate together. Initially, the maids insisted that the fruits and treats were only for "nenek" since they were given to her by her friends. One maid even cried when she shared with me about her first employer who insisted that she ate in the kitchen only after the family had eaten.

I took all to the beach and my sister commented that I "spoil" the maids. My response, "I spoil them so they can spoil mum." I realized then that I reflected one with an ulterior motive for caring for the maids. My love was not unconditional. Now that we are in Bintulu and live in a big house in an Iban community, we are aliens and yet locals. The neighbors know my parents as "uncle and auntie Cina" as we are the only Chinese family in this community. I am merely "anak uncle or anak auntie". A few ladies call me "madik Dicky", identifying me as Dicky's sibling. I have become a commoner, with no social standing and no more "kow taos".

But word somehow got out that there is an alien in the house and last week a group of kids stood outside the kitchen window and saw Kosal, my Khmer helper. They stuck their tongues out at her and went "neh-neh-neh- neh-neh-neh". I was shocked that even kids would know how to treat foreigners differently. Living with foreigners allows us to see how racist we all can be. Like a mirror, we see our true inner self. Unlike the kids who would shout and stick out their tongues, we are more sophisticated in our reaction and disguise our true feelings well.

Another Experience With an Alien

This week, I took a whole set of documents to be photocopied. The worker at the shop was a Bangladeshi. Soon after he started copying, an original document was stuck in the document feeder. I then asked him to copy the conventional way and not to use the feeder. Then I realized that he was doing only one set when I need two. His explanation: do one and then use the copy to go thru document feeder! I told him that the copy of a copy would not be as clear. But he was already half way thru and I asked if he remembered which he had done and which he hadn't. He confidently said yes. Then I realized that he had rearranged my original documents. They must be in the right order for the submission of the work permit! What can I do but laugh! The boss then commented that the worker is always like that, he has his own idea about what to do and then passed a racist remark on his skin color. Immediately I found myself on the side of the worker and defended him.

Treat Your Aliens God's Way

As a missionary, I lived among the foreigners and the aliens, people very different from me, people who do things in ways which baffled and often times frustrated me. Now I am a local, but I still live with foreigners. They still baffle and frustrate me or is it now the other way round? They have come to our land and they live among the aliens. Do we frustrate them with our ways? I am sure we do.

As I reflected on what God wanted the Israelites to do with the aliens living among them, I realized that, to the aliens, the Israelites' ways must be equally frustrating and baffling. No work on Sabbath, not even the animals. Who had ever heard of animals needing rest? The land resting too? How odd.

And when it came to harvesting, they were supposed to leave some for the foreigners to harvest. What were the workers of Boaz thinking when their boss told them "pull out some stalks from the bundles and leave them for her to pick." (Ruth 2:16) What an odd boss, not just allowing this foreign widow to pick the leftover grains but purposely dropping some good stalks for her!

God's love for the foreigners and aliens is truly out of the norm and must have been so odd not only to His own people, the Israelites and I am sure to the aliens who lived and worked among them. God's command to His people was "Do not mistreat the alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt." (Exo. 22:21) The word "alien" is used in NIV while KJV and NLT uses foreigners and strangers. God's command to His people was to ensure that the foreigners living among them have certain rights as well as limitations. They were to be loved, treated fairly and generously and were to be provided asylum when in trouble. The psalmist went to the extent of saying that God watches over them as He sustains the fatherless and the widow. (Psalm 146:9)

A Question For Us

My question and thought is that for the aliens now living among us, do they find our love for God and for them odd and out of the norm? Is there a difference if our Indonesian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Chinese, Myanmar and even Cambodian helpers and workers work for a Christian? Is God's love for humanity through us obvious to them? My prayer is that it would be and so to all Connection readers who live with "aliens", let's make a difference. (The author is currently on leave and at home in Bintulu to care for her paralysed mother who had a stroke 8 months ago.)

Rick Warren: Author of the book "Purpose Driven Life"

I had the opportunity to hear Ps Rick Warren, author of the book "Purpose Drive Life" last Friday, 7 July 2006 at my church in Trinity Christian Centre, Singapore. What struck me was the humility of the man who wrote the New York Times #1 Best Seller. Rick basically gave us an insight into how he and his wife Kay (here's their story in Wikipedia) were called by God to start a small church in Los Angeles, the Saddleback church, which grew from just 3 people to the 20,000 strong congregation today. Rick also talked about the peace plan which is his God-give vision to eradicate the fiv global Goliaths of today.

Heand his team has also created several websites which drive home the message that "you are not an accident" ! www.purposedrivenlife.com is one of them.

Back from my June holidays and business trip to Osaka Japan

Hi everyone,

You might be wondering why I have not posted any thing since 17 June, well its because I was on holiday in Sarawak with my family, and then it was off to a business trip to Osaka Japan. Well, I am back once again. The photo you see above was taken at the Marriot in Miri, Sarawak, Borneo Island. The sunsets there were really beautiful.

Error #3: The Gnostic Gospels present a positive view of the feminine

The Gnostic tests are said to picture a human sexualised Jesus who embraced the sacred feminine. Actually the Jesus presented in the Gnostic materials is often simply weird, and the underlying ideology tends to be radically anti-feminine. Consider this bizarre passage from the Gospel of Thomas:

"Simon Peter said to them, 'Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life'. Jesus said, 'Look, I will gide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.'"

In today's context, it would seem that the Gnostic texts, which some modern historians and theologians take to be authoritative Christian texts, are similar to the internet's blogs; they cannot be taken too seriously. Hence the early church fathers and elders have taken pains not to include them in the canon.

God's Book of Life and the World's Kings List

Taking a short break on posting about factual errors in the Da Vinci Code novel, I found an interesting post on Russel Smith's blog about The Book of Elites vs. The Book of Life. Arousing my curiosity, I actually did some very quick research myself on how the ancients kept lists of kings. There's this internet article on Lists of Kings or Pharaohs or other monarchs which indicate that many ancient civilisations such as those of Egypt, Rome, Assyria and so on meticulously kept lists of kings.

But what struck me most is that our King, Jesus, meticulously keeps a list of His subjects ... US ! And that list is the book of life. What a constrast. Indeed we have a King who knows us all by names and loves us. Quoting Russel Smith:

While ancient pagan religions honored the elite – the powerful and clever and strong, Christianity honors the humble and the faithful. While pagan religions had imperatives to goodness based mainly upon philosophical notions, Christianity based its imperatives upon right relationship with the living God.

Error #2: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels were the "earliest Christian records"

Dan Bown's novel mentioned that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels were the "earliest Christian records". Bible historians say that this is not the case. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 and were dated from 250 BC to AD 100. However, these documents have virtually nothing to do with Christianity but with various Jewish groups, rituals and ideas before and during the time of Christ.

The Gnostic gospels offer a twisted and heretical version of the Christian faith, but they didn't come into existence until about a century or more later after the death of Christ. The earliest Christian records are the writings of the New Testament.

Error #1: The Bible was invented by Roman Emperor Constantine

The Bible consists of 66 books which were written over a period of around 1,500 years by 40 different authors in three languages; Hebrew, Aramic and Koine Greek (Reference: Bible facts). The Old and New Testaments consist of 39 books and 27 books respectively (Reference: Summary of the Books of the Bible). The 66 books of the Bible vary in size from one page to almost a hundred pages. The English word "Bible" comes from the Greek term which means "book." The Bible is the divinely inspired record of God's revelation, and as such it is the final authority for both Christian faith and practice. The Bible teaches its own completeness (Revelation 22:18,19) and sufficiency (II Timothy 3:16,17). (Reference: Origin of the Bible).

The Da Vinci Code mentions that "Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible", one that left out the Gnostic texts and included the four traditional Gospels. In fact, Constantine had nothing to do with the making of the Christian Canon. The traditional gospels were recognised by virtually all Christians 150 years before Constantine. The canonicity of a book (that is, its right to be part of the canon) is dependent upon its recognized authority. This is important to understanding the canon of Scripture:

• Many people think the books are considered authoritative because they are included in the Bible; the historical truth is the opposite; they are included in the Bible because they are considered authoritative.

The canon of Scripture is the result of the collecting together of the various writings which Christians of previous times recognized as authoritative. The Biblical canon is thus an exclusive list of books written during the formative period of the Jewish or Christian faiths; the leaders of these communities believed these books to be inspired by God or to express the authoritative history of the relationship between God and his people (although there may have been secondary considerations as well).

20 inaccuracies in the Da Vinci Code novel

Over the next few posts, I will be putting out some more thoughts about the Da Vinci Code. This time, I will comment on and take some excerpts from an article entitled "20 Big Lies in the Da Vinci Code" by James A. Beverly, who writes from the evangelical Christian perspective.

Within a short timeframe of three years, Dan Brown's novel became one of the best sellers of all time. It has also come under fire by many people within Christiandom because of some of its radical claims. "But its just a work of fiction right?" is the refrain from many who have read the book. The only problem with that statement lies in page 1 of the novel where the author asserts that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."

Many critics, however, have noted its inaccuracy and mistakes in many areas or subjects it addressed in the story. Thus, it would be important that people get to hear another perspective of the ongoing argument; that of the critics of the novel's historical inaccuracy. We will examine these inaccuracies over the next 20 articles.

Stay tuned !