Recently I was participating in a discussion which touched on “Christians and the State”. I was disappointed at the direction it went because it ended up being the typical assertions of “God is in control” that has been regurgitated many times - we didn’t manage to discuss the practical issues that concern all of us today.

I took issue with one point in particular: the pastor wrote on the board that governments were “appointed by God”. I pointed out that if I were to vote for the opposition, knowing full well that the current ruling party would return to power anyway, then that’s saying I’m going against what God wants. To which the other side backtracked and said that God grants us free will to choose, but will use whatever government that is in place to carry out his plans. The pastor also added that we should pray that we choose according to God’s will.

The root issue here is free will. In fact, the pastor adhered nearly exactly to an earlier post that I made, the Superlative God.

First you have an argument along the lines of Calvinism: God appoints the government. This would, of course, be very attractive if you are in government yourself.

Next you have the Arminian-influenced belief: God has granted you the “free will” to choose, but we should all try to choose our candidate according to His will.

The last alternative is in the fashion of Open Theism: People do indeed freely elect their own governments, based on the qualities they want in the candidate or party.

Many, if not all denominations will say they believe in “free will”, but I’ve realized that most of the time it starts and stops with the Garden of Eden. Just far enough to blame Eve for the apple.

The rest of the time what most people do is “pray” that they will “follow God’s will” - often I wonder if they really mean what they say. I have never, for example, seen a patient just diagnosed with cancer immediately ask whether it is God’s will for them to be cured or to seek treatment; but (if) the patient passes on everyone says it was God’s will and part of God’s plan. On an exam graded according to a bell curve ( where a fixed percentage of students will get a certain grade ), you won’t find any students - or their parents - thinking that it’s God’s will for them to NOT be at the top.

The most cynical interpretation of this phenomenon is that people use God’s mandate for their actions. Mike Huckabee, for example, claimed divine intervention when his poll numbers unexpectedly improved. And of course we have Rafidah Aziz - Malaysians saw a weak PM not daring to fire her, while she claimed a mandate from God.

A more empathic way to see this, which is probably closest to the truth, is that humans will usually only leave it “up to God’s will” when they are unable to help themselves or have no other recourse. The more devout will seek God’s will to override their own, the egoistical claim that whatever they do is by God’s will.

Here the questions arise: how sacred is free will to God, and how important is it to you? There are plenty of instances in the Bible, for example, where God manipulates man’s will, the most famous being the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart [Exodus 7:1-3], followed by horrific plagues upon Egypt because of his refusal(?) to let the Israelites go.

How important is free will to you? I can already imagine some looking up a rebuttal to the verse I quoted; it might save you time if I gave you the typical answer: “Pharaohs heart was already hardened, God merely completed the process”. To which I would reply: how receptive would you be if your neighbour came up to you and demanded that you release your Indonesian maid? More to the point, what decision would Pharaoh have made if God hadn’t hardened his heart? If Pharaoh would have decided to let the Hebrew slaves go anyway, why did God harden his heart and kill the firstborn of all Egypt?

The Free Will Defense, a term coined by Alvin Plantinga, is a popular argument that tries to explain the problem of evil. The problem of evil has its roots in the very first chapters of the Bible: Why did God place the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, and allow Eve to eat it? The proponent of FWD argues that humans must have the free will to choose God of their own accord. Here free will becomes a sacred thing.

But the question now is this: what is the “free” in “free will”? The mere ability to choose has no meaning, just like randomly crossing boxes on a ballot wastes your right to vote. Some people misuse the FWD by saying that “God cannot reveal himself to us because it violates our free will; we would have no choice but to believe”. But free will is only meaningful when you acquire or are provided enough knowledge to weigh the pros and cons and make an informed decision - something that comes across as ironic, since Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from the Tree that would provide them this very ability.

I would like to take time here to discuss whether God himself has free will - if God knows the future, he knows what decisions he is going to make. Even if you bring forward the argument that God is outside time, basic principles of logic dictate that you need to be capable of logical sequences (if A, then B ) - but it’s getting late, my brain hurts, and wills me to stop :).

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Fong Po Kuan of DAP [Batu Gajah], the youngest MP, announced her resignation due to internal party issues.

Dammit DAP, get your act together! Now is not the time for drama and internal squabbles.

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Have been planning to blog for some time but things keep popping up. Been telling myself “I’ll go home on time from work today!” for the past 2 weeks but wind up going back late anyway.

I blame this on Edison Chen and his horniness - damn network traffic spikes. Pratically half of all keywords searches going through Nuffnang blogs now seem to be some variant of “edison chen s*x sc*ndal”.

But the just-announced dissolution of Parliament warrants an entry.

- I wonder how long the campaign period will be this time. IIRC, the last elections saw a record-short time of 7 days.

- AB was splashed all over the papers today claiming that he wouldn’t be dissolving Parliament, yet here we are. If he doesn’t take the elections seriously I wonder what he thinks about other things.

- Asia Times has an excellent take on the image campaign that AB has been on (is anyone sick of the newspaper articles blaring “so and so: Up to the PM”?)

Brilliant quote:

And so the excessive use of his portrait would seem almost counterintuitive, even in the runup to general elections, which are expected to be held in March. “For those who feel deprived it would seem to have the opposite of the desired effect: ‘He deprived me and now he’s smiling at me’,” said the president of Transparency International Malaysia, Ramon Navaratnam.

After all, when Dr. M was president did you see posters of him everywhere? Dr. M was a slimeball too, but at least he didn’t need an image campaign, his achievements were clear. AB hasn’t DONE anything, so an image campaign is all he can do.

- The sudden “fund allocations” that go around during election time are really, really insulting to the rakyat. And I don’t mean because they are little more than bribes. You can’t even call them bribes, because this is taxpayer money. OUR own money. Why are you throwing our own money at us? We should be even more pissed off! You insult our intelligence.

It’s even more demeaning when they expect the Chinese to vote for them just because they build Chinese schools. But then again, they’ve been thinking along racial lines for so long. The Deputy Education Minister, an MCA vet who is stepping down, even boasted that his achievement was building more Chinese schools. And we wonder why Malaysia isn’t racially integrated?

- Today’s paper had AB giving HIMSELF a favourable report on his performance since the last GE. No kidding.

- A bit old, but I really had a laugh last week over how the MSM was trying so hard to spin for AB. One day they were saying how much the PM has improved our economy, quoting the Second Finance Minister saying that our GDP increased by 55% (yes, 55%. Don’t waste time trying to find this story in an international paper though):

“If we compare in terms of US dollar, the per capita income has risen by 55% due to the depreciation of the dollar against the ringgit.

“The Barisan Nasional Government is confident that we will get the people’s mandate again based on the improved economic resilience.

Two days later, they ran an article trying to spin how Malaysians only care about the economy, not about govt leadership:

“People are concerned over the rising prices of basic necessities and the high cost of living, especially with the looming global oil prices.

Comedy gold. ( I must take this opportunity to state that I don’t actually buy The Star, I get it from my mom’s office ).

Misc Stuff:

- If you haven’t heard yet, the Sun is being bought out. An obvious ploy to snuff out the only paper where the journalists haven’t prostituted themselves to the govt. If you haven’t taken out a Malaysiakini sub yet, you’re an idiot. Freedom of speech under Pak Lah my ass.

- Almost all my old schoolmates aren’t registered voters. Good at complaining though.
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- A little bird told me that the PFS Board of Governors is suing the current HM of PFS.

2.30 am already! This is why I don’t blog as often, Malaysia is just full of so much crap. Ta.

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