Forum Ministry?

So it's been a while since my sabbatical from CBC, which turned out to not be a sabbatical coz' I didn't leave anyway. I don't visit Acts' evening service anymore, even though I want to coz' there are just too many things on my plate and too many other things I want to do but have no time to do. And work has been super busy lately, compounded with the occasional period of demoralization I go through everytime I do something I'm not supposed to do, or not do something I'm supposed to do, and my boss tells me off for anything I do wrong while completely ignoring anything I do right. I've gotten along perfectly fine with my bosses in my previous jobs, so I can only surmise that my current boss and I operate and think in too different manners, yet anytime I try to ask him what exactly he wants from me, he brushes me off coz' he's too busy. So for the sake of my career and sanity, I need to learn how to become psychic. Wonderful, I'm sure that skill would look fantastic on my CV. *Sigh* I've also come to realize that very few companies actually run as well as Accenture did, so my dream of getting a future job where I do environmental or conservation work but the company runs as well as Accenture will probably never materialize. *Double sigh*

Among other things I've been thinking a lot about is what sort of ministry to go into. I'm already doing stuff in church like teaching kids in Sunday School, and recently I decided to rejoin the worship team on choir (was on guitar before this until I got downsized coz' of being outstation so often I couldn't make practices... I'd still have the same problem in choir, but hopefully it'll work out. I think I sing better than I play guitar anyway. :P). But I wanted to do something else where I can meet new people outside of church, people who don't know God and whom I will have the chance to tell them about Him. Yet I don't want to commit to a ministry where I have to regularly go out somewhere to do something for people, like visiting an old folks home or something... just coz' I'm afraid work will take up too much time and I can't be committed. Plus, I already go out a lot as it, for work and church and God knows what else, so much that my parents don't see me around the house often enough. So I need to chock up on my good-filial-daughter points by spending more time at home... though it's not like I spend a great deal of time talking to my folks at home anyway. We all just end up doing our own thing and not talking much... just that when I'm at home, my folks don't complain that I go out too much. -_- Must be something that all parents are programmed to do...

Anyway, I thought, since I spend half my life online at home anyway, I came up with the 'brilliant' idea of going to online forums. There are plenty of people who have questions about Christianity and God who post their questions at such forums, so I thought it would be good to get in there and try to give some good answers, and maybe make some new friends along the way. Plus, making the effort to try and answer other people's weird and wonderful questions about Christianity forces me to do my own research to get good answers, and in the process, I learn new stuff. So now I'm using my previously-dead-coz'-I-can't-be-bothered-with-it Friendster account to check out forums there. And the rest of my post below is my reply to one of the forum posts from this atheist guy who had quite a few questions and I answered each of them to the best of my knowhow. I'm probably opening a can of worms here, coz' whatever answers I give will have flaws and will lead to more questions... to which I may not have a good answer for. But it's ok, then I'll just have to find the answer and learn more new stuff. :P

So here's the fella's post (in bold) and my answers:


Q: what is the act of god?
A: I don't totally get your question here. God has done many acts, so there's no ONE specific 'THE' act that He has done. I'm guessing what you actually mean is, what can be considered as an act of God. Most people would probably say anything extraordinary (miracles, for example) or extreme natural events are acts of God... but Christians believe that God works is less supernatural ways all the time... by working through people or allowing certain events to happen. So I would say that God is acting all the time.

Q: who created god? who create the creator of god?
A: This is pretty funny, coz' it's implying that if God was made by a creator, then that creator must have been created by another creator, and thus THAT creator must have been created too... and so on and so forth. So where the heck did all these creators come from?
The Bible says that God is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. This means that God has always existed even before time began (as someone already mentioned, God created time itself). And since He's always been there, He has no creator. God is the creator of everything else.

Q: how can u say that u have faith?
A: If it were possible to prove beyond any doubt that God exists, everyone would be forced to believe. Unfortunately, we only have evidence that God exists, and different people interpret the evidence differently. Since we cannot completely prove that God exists, that where we must have faith.

Q: how do u know if i have a soul? is soul's even true?
A: Most people would define a soul as the 'essense' of a person that makes up their personality and consciousness. By this definition, we would of course have to agree that everyone must have a soul, since everyone has different personalities and a conscience. It is the thing that makes us different from other living things like plants and some animals. Plants and animals are alive, but they don't have souls coz' they don't have personalities and don't worry about doing what is right or wrong. They just grow or do what they do to survive (though some very smart animals like dogs and cats do have their own personalities, and so whether they have souls or not, I am not totally sure).
I think the main issue with having a soul is, if we DON'T have souls, then religion is a waste of time coz' once we die, we just die and that's the end of the story. We don't have to worry about what we're supposed to believe or what good we need to do to make sure our soul goes to heaven and not to the other fiery place. But IF it is true that people have souls, then whatever we believe and do while we are alive probably DOES make a difference. We have to wonder what happens to the our after our physical body dies.
Again, it's hard to prove the existence of souls coz' we can't examine it under a microscope, but consider this: If we do all we can or whatever we think is right in order to get to heaven after we die, but it turns we actually have no souls and when we die nothing happens after that, then we don't really lose anything, except maybe the time we spent doing the practices of our different religions. BUT if we DO have souls, and we do nothing about it, after you die, your soul will live on forever... which is much longer than the years you have alive on earth. Wouldn't you think making the effort to ensure your soul goes to the right place would be a somewhat worthwhile investment?

Q: when did the believing of god started?
A: Well, if you believe that we evolved from cavemen, then it's pretty hard to pinpoint exactly when man started believing in God. But Christians believe that man was created by God, and the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) has a relationship with God. So I would say it started from the very creation of man. Now if you want to argue that creation is a load of bull, and evolution is true, then that's another long discussion altogether.

Q:why is god a man and not a woman?
A: God isn't a man or a woman... God is merely referred to as a masculine being, ie. we call God a 'He' instead of a 'She'. To Christians, I think this is because we also refer to God as our Father...as we consider Him as something like our earthly fathers who take care of us.

Q: for me.. being atheist.. whats the point of discriminating me?
im not discriminating god believers..why do you discriminate us? and whats the point?
A: Well, in perspective, Christians and people of other faiths are also discriminated against in different parts of the world, so it's not just the atheists. But anyhow, I have nothing against you, so I would not discriminate against you. Unfortunately I cannot control the actions of other people, and sadly some people of certain religions (even Christians) sometimes think they are better than anyone else who does not share their beliefs. I won't say anything about those of other faiths or why they act like that, but for Christians, I think this is not the right way to act. Being a Christian does not make me any better than anyone else, and certainly does not make me perfect. I'm just as screwed up as the next person, except that I know that God loves me and He accepts me through my screwed-up-ness.

Q: wheres the freedom of expression? wheres the freedom of speech?
A: You're free to say anything you want to me. :)


Q: for my opinion..there is no god. god was created by man so man can have power to other human beings.
A: In my opinion, God does exist and God loves us, and people who use God and religion to have power over other people deserve a good smacking around.

Q: there is no point if u go to church at sunday. why not just go to a community and serve the people?
A: It's difficult to understand school subjects if we don't bother to attend classes...so if we don't fully understand difficult subjects like Science, how can we go out and become Scientists? Similarly, Christians go to church because we believe it is important to be with fellow Christians so we can help each other grow in our faith and learn from the Bible. Without church, it would be quite difficult for us to understand or grow on our own. And it is from there that we are supposed to go out and serve the community and bring the love of God to others.
Unfortunately, it is true that most Christians don't really take the time to go out and do community work, but we serve the church and serve people in other ways.