Today's sermon is about relationship with people, I dunno how it can be exactly the same topic about my struggles lately. But the crucial part has not been answered.

I've always been too skeptical, the more I think about myself, the more confusing it seems. I don't understand myself. People I think are too complicated and its very blurry, confusing, complicated. I've searched hard, and I do think that motivations are straight, but then again, every people think their motives are straight. No one recognize their biases. How can I know myself exactly? How do I know my own heart's wickedness and how can I really be sure of myself? And this question is very important to have an answer as it determines everything else. If we are wicked, how can we proceed? How can we interact with people for that would just bring destruction and not constructive. If we think we are biased, shouldnt we just keep quiet? This is the confusion about myself. Perhaps there's some connection with 'undecisiveness', as the question always appeals for the other possibility 'what if I am wrong?'.. How can we settle this?

And yes, sometimes I do think that people are so arbitrary. Take a concrete example of being a hypocrite. We can't know others motivation exactly, what we see are just phenomenon. How can we judge other people's hearts? How can we judge that someone is a hypocrite while not knowing the inner struggles of the other person? Hypocrites are those people whose heart and words are different. But then again, no one is perfectly consistent! How can we judge the other person as hypocrites if they are people who are not perfectly consistent? Aren't the lines always drawn arbitrarily? Surely, it requires wisdom to discern, but that is exactly what I don't understand! People do speak in vague terms, and I still don't get what is meant by wisdom to discern.. I tend to think about 'how', the more practical aspect of how wisdom is implemented, what kind of judgements are to be made, what are the thought process, or in other words, how wisdom works in every details..

Anyway, today's message is about self, that we should not always criticize but being constructive. When we see things are bad, instead of complaining, we should seek to improve it. For Jesus comes not to judge (destructive), but to save (constructive). But it is very difficult to be constructive honestly. In relationship between people, to be constructive, it is insufficient to just have love, but we should have wisdom. (Again, wisdom used in vague terms. What are its principles basically? I dont know and no one tells..) What is the measure of wisdom? When relationship between people falls apart, do we call it not wise? And when its peaceful, does it mean wise? Should we measure wisdom based on peacefulness? Or should wisdom be measured in terms of effectiveness? Or any other criterias? Again, we have not perfect wisdom as Christians, still stumbling here and there so often. We might as well be stumbling block to others...

Oh everything seems so blur and arbitrary... And in the end one who give counsel can only say.. 'Men is not wise enough, just have a good relationship with God and seek His wisdom.' And yet I remain asking a lot of questions to myself, and no answer has been given.. and I still think that men speaks in vague terms.

Paul Washer's comment on 'Before the throne of God above'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnCxpbDYx14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xUK2Dx5RkY

http://www.youtube.com/user/ILoveTortLaw#p/a

Yeap.. just to record down. Honestly, I still dunno what I'm going to do with this life. Working as a software engineer, i've learnt a lot. But so what? There are too many things to learn in this world, in this lifetime. Questions keep popping up are, why am I here? Why do I have to work in one particular industry? I can't seem to figure out what is the real meaning of all these. Life is not simply to work, to get salary, to get old and die. Why do we want to achieve things? Many problems of significance comes in. But am I being to prideful? Too hungry for meaning? Too discontent about what my portion is? Or is it right to seek further and be discontent about my current position?

Last time I had a dream to open up a company. But why? Or a desire to pursue master's degree, or further education, but why? We should define a purpose too shouldn't we? Or else life would become meaningless. From chit chat with some friends, its good that they have a clear goal in their life, or what they call 'vision'. I don't have one yet. Living day to day, what should I hope for? Well a friend lend me a book that precisely tackles this issue. Read it a few chapters and flipped through the rest. It says that we should try to read our lives, and see our strengths, and try to glorify God with those. Perhaps its just seems to vague for now to me. Strengths? There are no particular strength that clearly outstands everyone. Maybe it doesn't have to outstand everyone, but just what I enjoyed doing and have a pattern of doing well. Hm..but sometimes I find that my strength are not that outstanding to one particular area but quite well distributed and hence i am confused. And even if I identified a set of strengths, then I should figure out a mapping from those set of strengths to an ideal job that people with those strengths will pursue, which seems quite difficult.. hmm...

1) Gaining knowledge / power / money / etc is not always a good thing (why i singled out those three is because i guess many ppl think that gaining them are always good). One should know when to stop learning/earning (for a while). Gaining things are bad especially if its not balanced with having self-control or controlled pride.

2) We should not be very honest about things and tell openly about everything. People gain partial knowledge, have biases and we must take precaution that others might not be objective. (Of course, our discernment is subjective as well, but prevention is always better.) I think it is wise this way.