Fighting the Four Evils

The essence of a real woman is one who knows God's purpose for her life. She is one who is kind, wise and strong. Many in hyper-conservative Christian circles think that the ideal woman, or the real woman, who exemplifies the paragon of virtue is one who is supposedly 'truly liberated' from the feminist lifestyle of working and 'coming home to an empty house', by being domesticated, that is a woman who is married, has children, stays home and not university educated. But what they really mean is that the ideal woman is one who is weak, oppressed, and to be relegated to obscurity.  To be clear, it is not wrong to be married, have children, stay home and not be university educated. Nor are these characteristics signs of oppression of women. What I am saying, however, is that that is the lifestyle that hyper-conservatives seek to impose on women for the purpose of making her weak, subtly oppressed by coercing her to marry as young as possible, and threatening to dest...

Work is indeed part of God's design for Creation (Genesis 2:1-15). So, work is good because God created it. However, since the rise of the Protestant movement which taught that hard work is for the purpose of accumulating wealth, the entire Church has been blinded by the idea that work may be done for mammon. This idea is an extremely subtle one, in perverting the purpose of work which is for the glory of God, in serving Him, as one which can be done to serve not only God but mammon as well. Jesus made it extremely clear that no one can serve both God and mammon (Matthew 6:24). Yet, so many in the modern Church do not realise that that is exactly what they are doing, and that is is precisely the stronghold that satan has over the modern western Church. Claiming that hard work is for accumulating riches, or even ultimately for one's family to 'enjoy' such riches, is itself to deny that work is for God. Many use 1 Timothy 5:8 to justify serving mammon: But if any pr...

Many in the modern western Church rightly regard careerism as worldly. Careerism can be defined as a pursuit to achieve earthly professional or business success for personal glory. It is an achievement-orientated pursuit that is focused on earthly achievements. It craves for the fame one can have in one's profession, the money, and thrives on pride in achieve what one can achieve in one's own strength.  There is a difference between working hard and careerism. A person may be a very diligent and wise worker who strives to serve his employer, but not be a careerist. A careerist may be one who is not a truly hard worker and faithful servant of his employer, but be one who is lazy and unfaithful to his employer, but yet "succeeds" in obtaining promotions because of his flattery of his boss. However, careerism need not be so outwardly crass, where all one does is seek earthly achievements. As long as one treats one's work as the ultimate means of satisfaction or s...