My 1st Published Letter to the ST Forum

11 Jul 07 - The Straits Times Forum

MR JANADAS Devan's article, 'Can mum, mum and kids make a family?' (ST, July 7), suggested that Singapore should, in the long run, come to accept homosexuality on the basis of statistics, genetics and helping Singapore become one of the creative cities of the world.
To cite the example of a lesbian friend who is observed to be in a stable relationship with a same-sex partner, and who are loving parents to well-adjusted children and are model citizens and then invoking demographics to suggest that homosexual behaviour is more prevalent than one thinks do not make it acceptable.
This line of argument, taken to its logical extreme, suggests that one day in the future the world should also come to tolerate and accept other alternative lifestyles involving loving relations between consenting adult siblings or parents and their children (with adopted children thrown in to avoid defective genes being transmitted) when they become demographically prevalent.
Positive examples and high statistics cannot be the factors by which we decide what are acceptable, in the same way that negative examples and low statistics do not make the same behaviour unacceptable.
Raising the possibility that homosexual behaviour may be proven in future to have a genetic basis as a reason for acceptance is gaining ground, given that even Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has articulated this line of argument recently on two occasions.
If that happens, should we believe that those with the same DNA (as in multiple births) containing the 'homosexual genes' would all necessarily turn out to be gay? Should we not then take the argument to its logical conclusion and suggest that God is to be blamed for implanting defective genes that caused the many degenerative diseases and medical conditions?
Many, Mr Janadas included, have seized on biblical passages selectively to question the Church and its beliefs. The same Lord Jesus Christ that Mr Janadas quoted in the article also said on the same occasion that he affirmed all the Laws that had been laid down in the past and one of them included God's abhorrence of homosexual practices, as stated in the Old and New Testaments.
If actively catering to talented and creative homosexuals is critical to Singapore's desire to become one of the most creative cities of the world, this Singaporean would rather pass and stick to a traditional family-based Singapore.

Who's Being Replaced?

Some 6 months ago over dinner, one of my friends casually introduced to me a book entitled "The Footsteps of the Messiah" written by Arnold Fruchtenbaum, an American Messianic Jew. Never would I imagine what the book would do to my own christian and methodist upbringing.

In short, the book was an exposition on the Book of Revelation or God's revelation about the end times. While the subject of the End Times could probably creep out in my future blogs, it is not the subject of this particular one.

Many of us Christians would have been taught the following basic theology - Jesus came to this world. The Jews of His time rejected Jesus because He did not fit their model of the Messiah and because Jesus offered to them a spiritual kingdom rather than a physical one. Because of the rejection, Jesus offer God's salvation plan to the Gentiles and the Jews have been cast off.

One of the many new insights that Arnold Fruchtenbaum has given me was the concept of dispensationalism. Jesus did offer the Jews of His time the Kingdom of Heaven. The Jewish leadership rejected it not because the offer wasn't about a physical kingdom but that Jesus did not conform to their brand of Pharisaic Judaism.

The proof is actually right at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles 1:6-7.

So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?"
He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority;

Can you imagine what Jesus' reaction would have been, that after teaching the disciples about the Spiritual Kingdom, their last question before He ascended into heaven was to ask about this physical kingdom to Israel?

It is important to note Jesus' actual reaction. He did not admonish the disciples' questioning but just answered matter-of-factly that only God knows when this physical kingdom will come to pass. Does this sound like Israel has been replaced?