It had been a really busy and fruitful weekend. On Friday night, in a bid to improve my spiritual life, I attended the first series of four talks on "The Living Faith" presented by a Dominican priest, as in he is the spiritual director of the Lay Dominicans, not from Dominican Republic. He is a Spanish priest, from Spain (duh!).
Friday's session was on the split between real life and the faith. How many of us actually practise the faith in our daily life? Not in preaching or trying to convert everyone, but living a good Christian life, adhering to the Ten Commandments. I guess being humans, our sinful nature, no matter how minor, always surfaces.
The talk was actually rather enlightening. I never knew simple things like carpark coupons, or various relationships in our lives, have made us not live life the Christian way. For instance, we are all supposed to be truthful, yet in the act of parking the car, we tend to state a false time, ie if we parked the car at 7:30pm in the evening, we tend to tear out the 8:00pm slot so we can "buy more time" and not get summoned.
Or trying to get along with a difficult person. We tend to just ostracise him / her and not welcome him / her into our activities simply because we do not like the person. But being Christians, are we not supposed to love everyone, even our enemies?
The talk ended with a discussion on practical situations. For instance, after a late night party to celebrate your birthday, you went back to the office the next day, with no inclination to do any work. Then the boss asked for a presentation which was due by noon and it was already eleven. You totally forgot about it. What would you do? Would you choose to tell a white lie and say it is in the process, or would you confess and say you totally forgot to do it, and would get down to it immediately, or would you confess that you totally forgot because you stayed out late partying?
How many of us have been in this kind of situation? I believe all of us who have worked for some time will have come across situations like these. To be honest, I normally take the first two options. Not that I am often in these situations, but I rather say a bended truth and get down to work immediately, than to confess the actual truth and get myself into trouble.
There were other scenarios too, but this was what my group came up with. All in all, it was a rather interesting first session, thought-provoking too. There will be three more sessions the next three Fridays, and I shall see how the rest of the sessions go!
Friday's session was on the split between real life and the faith. How many of us actually practise the faith in our daily life? Not in preaching or trying to convert everyone, but living a good Christian life, adhering to the Ten Commandments. I guess being humans, our sinful nature, no matter how minor, always surfaces.
The talk was actually rather enlightening. I never knew simple things like carpark coupons, or various relationships in our lives, have made us not live life the Christian way. For instance, we are all supposed to be truthful, yet in the act of parking the car, we tend to state a false time, ie if we parked the car at 7:30pm in the evening, we tend to tear out the 8:00pm slot so we can "buy more time" and not get summoned.
Or trying to get along with a difficult person. We tend to just ostracise him / her and not welcome him / her into our activities simply because we do not like the person. But being Christians, are we not supposed to love everyone, even our enemies?
The talk ended with a discussion on practical situations. For instance, after a late night party to celebrate your birthday, you went back to the office the next day, with no inclination to do any work. Then the boss asked for a presentation which was due by noon and it was already eleven. You totally forgot about it. What would you do? Would you choose to tell a white lie and say it is in the process, or would you confess and say you totally forgot to do it, and would get down to it immediately, or would you confess that you totally forgot because you stayed out late partying?
How many of us have been in this kind of situation? I believe all of us who have worked for some time will have come across situations like these. To be honest, I normally take the first two options. Not that I am often in these situations, but I rather say a bended truth and get down to work immediately, than to confess the actual truth and get myself into trouble.
There were other scenarios too, but this was what my group came up with. All in all, it was a rather interesting first session, thought-provoking too. There will be three more sessions the next three Fridays, and I shall see how the rest of the sessions go!
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