Application of justice

A while ago, a news story came out on CBC, of a lady that handled OHIP cheques for doctors. Instead of depositing them in the doctors' accounts, she channeled it into her own account, stealing over $400k, and had a lavish lifestyle. In the article, she was quoted crying, terrified that she would go to jail. Curious to see what people would think about someone stealing from the 'rich doctors', I scrolled down and read the comments...

...and perhaps unsurprisingly, people were not sympathetic, and the general consensus is that she should pay it back (which, of course, she can't) and that she should go to jail, for stealing from the public. No pity at all (and perhaps she doesn't deserve any, given that she spent the money on herself), and in many cases, stated that the 9 month jail sentence she was handed to be too lenient. 10 years, they cried. Justice must be served, says them.

Justice and grace
Once in a while, I would think about the principle of grace. Even though this is a while collar crime, and evidently, didn't hurt the doctors enough that they didn't even notice this until after 4 years, people were outraged that someone could've done something like this, and that "The bottom line was ... some things you just can’t do. No matter how sorry we feel for people personally, we have to uphold the law as it exists." The public agrees that the law must be upheld, regardless of how much the perpetrator insists that the crime wasn't that bad.

I think that's the point that people miss when they ask why a loving God punishes the unrighteous. It isn't that God enjoys dishing out punishment. What parent enjoys punishing their children? But a God that judges to perfectly uphold the Law to ensure perfect justice must punish the perpetrators (else justice is not served). So how can one shout "justice must be served", and still stand against punishment from the Judge?

Perhaps they feel that the laws outlined by God is false and invalid. But even if we don't look at the greatest commandments of the Christian (Love your God, love your neighbour), people agree that there are a common moral standard that people uphold. For example, tenets that's common between Christianity and other faiths, such as Buddhism. But we can never do enough.

But what if someone paid back the $400k and took the jail time on her behalf? But it is precisely that no one is righteous that we need to be bailed out.

Backtracking

I think a good trait of leadership is to acknowledge your mistakes. To accept that we're not perfect, after all, and being humble enough to listen to criticism and to know your limitations.

Communities past
Over the years, co-op has brought me to many cities. Along with it, I got my hands involved in many churches and communities. With that, my email got added to numerous mailing lists that I left intact so I can hear about what's going on with various communities that I was once part of.

A while ago, I got an interesting email from my church in Toronto. It seemed to have involved a pastor criticizing some members of a fellowship for attending normal fellowship events, but apparently skipped fellowship when it was a prayer meeting. It turned out that the said members did not skip, but was simply late. The pastor later on apologized when he found out what happened. To a bunch of high school kids. Don't see that everyday.

Qualifications of an Elder
But the story that's been burned into my mind is one I read a long time ago. Don't remember where anymore, but it went along the lines of something like this: there was a teenage son who's dad was an elder at their local church. The teen did his share of teenage rebellion. Can't remember what he did, but it was probably something serious. Although the dad has tried to speak to his son on several occasions, he wasn't able to get him to listen.

Finally, he sat his son down and told him this: "I know that I can't make you see things my way. I can't force you to listen. But if you continue to behave like this, I am going to have to quit my post as an elder."

The son understood the implications immediately. The two verses that applied to this situation would be...

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. 

- Ephesians 6.4

[A man that desires to be an elder] must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) 

- 1 Timothy 3.4-6

The dad tried to follow Ephesians, and upon failing, risks violating 1 Timothy. The thing that shocked the son the most is that his dad takes the state of his son more serious than his reputation, is acknowledging that his life isn't perfect, and is acknowledging that he isn't perfect. It was enough to make the teen reconsider his ways.

Recognizing that we're not perfect, and putting our pride on hold, is always difficult. But it is every part of growing, being a Christian, and Biblical living.

MATLAB

And MATLAB crashed (seg fault) at 2.40am. I think it's a sign to go to sleep.

And Canucks won. A Canadian team making finals for the first time in four years. I'll refrain from commenting too much, just another bandwagon jumper. Haha.

News comments

After reading news articles on CBC or Globe and Mail, or wherever, I typically spend some time to skim through some of the comments as well, just to see what people have to say. A few things I've noticed, or stood out in my mind...

General Comments

• I've been listening to some Youtube bands recently, like Boyce Avenue, Kurt Schneider or Kina Grannis...and appreciate the lack of auto-tune in their songs. If you think a given group sucks, I don't know why you would go to their page to obnoxiously point that out. No one is making you listen to it...  trolling doesn't really get anyone anywhere.

Canadian Politics

• General disdain - People on opposing sides really don't like each other. I've read countless comments about how dumb Liberals are or how stupid Conservatives are. Canada has 33 million people. It's not easy to manage that much people. Give them a break sometimes. Also, don't expect to have more public services when you're clamoring for for tax breaks. At least they're trying to do something about it. Someone on the forums noted that the boards are becoming increasingly mean spirited over the years. I can't help but agree.
• Party leaders - Harper isn't the most likeable person, but honestly, no one else could've done better during the Recession. Ignatieff isn't the most likeable person either, but he happens to have more education than more of us. I'm not a Liberal, but I'm glad he's staying in Canada to teach.
• Voter apathy - 61.4% voter turnout. As I was leaving high school, one of the biggest things drilled into me by my World History teacher is that I need to work towards being a good citizen. That means I should read the news and vote, as a duty of democratic citizen. If you're not voting, you really shouldn't be complaining. I was happy to note that more university students came out to vote this year. Not so impressed about lack of attention that party platforms gave towards students and research, but that's another rant altogether.
• Long-form census being long - Is it really hard to believe that tax dollars are distributed according to census results? How about public services and policy making? Sigh...

 British Monarchy

• Queen Elizabeth II - The amount of bashing Canadians have of the Monarchy is shocking. No Canadian taxpaying money goes to England, so why are people so upset that that the Queen is our head of state? She's cooler than our recent arrays of Prime Ministries anyway, as a representative. Being a Commonwealth country is part of Canadian culture. How could people so quick to reject immigrant cultures and promote "Canadian culture" and be so quick to bash one of our biggest culture symbols?
• Governor General - I didn't really follow much of Michaelle Jean, but when David Johnston was appointed GG, I looked up his background...to find that he was actually pretty ownage (Order of Canada, was dean of law at UWO, principal of McGill and president of UW, among other things). When Harper nominated Johnston, he noted that Johnston was among "the best of Canada." It's hard not to agree. I think it's pretty awesome to have someone of his caliber representing our country.

Religion
It seems like people just enjoys going to these pages and rant against religious intolerance, without realizing that they're behaving intolerantly themselves, against religion. Isn't no faith a religion itself?

• Muslim extremists - I am friends with some Muslims. They're pretty nice people. Extremists happens everywhere. Atheists (ie Stalin), Christians (ie Ireland)...apparently, there's even Buddhist extremists. 
• Anti-Christian sentiments - Unsurprisingly, I spend a large amount of time browsing Christian articles and pay more attention to moral/theological impactful news articles. Like the Rapture claims, or the Bountiful polygamy case. I found it surprising that people would log onto a newspaper like Christian Post and bash general Christianity. Makes me wonder how much they actual know about Christians  and what causes these sentiments.

Perhaps too much of an opinion piece today. 

Elections

Motivation
High school education was mostly a blur (actually, undergrad classes were a blur too, now that I'm thinking about them). I remember some minor details about organic chemistry. A bit of physics. Some biology. Almost nothing about calculus (XD). But in terms of direct life impact, Social Studies has had the heaviest direct lasting impact on me: regular reading of the news, and being a more aware citizen. Social Studies has repeatedly attempted to drill into my head that voting and being an aware citizen is a responsibility of a citizen in a democratic country. Democracy only really works when its members participate. Voting is a privilege, like drivers licenses. When I voted in the 2008 election, that was my biggest motivation to vote.

But since, I've gained another reasoning: my faith. I've realized that Evangelicals tend to crowd amongst ourselves. "What? Unchristianly influences? Lets pull out"...as William Craig noted in his article:

Who among evangelicals can stand up to the great secular or naturalistic or atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship? Who among evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? Does the evangelical mode of thinking have the slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode in the great universities of Europe and America that stamp our entire civilization with their spirit and ideas?

...For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ Himself, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.

- Charles Malik (Quoted in In Intellectual Neutral)

[...our seminaries] produce pastors, not scholars, is that it is precisely our future pastors, not just our future scholars, who need to be intellectually engaged and to receive this scholarly training. Machen's article was originally given as a speech entitled "The Scientific Preparation of the Minister." A model for us here ought to be a man like John Wesley, a Spirit-filled revivalist and at the same time an Oxford-educated scholar. Wesley's vision of a pastor is remarkable: a gentleman, skilled in the Scriptures and conversant with history, philosophy, and the science of his day.

- William Craig (In Intellectual Neutral)

What he is trying to say is...Christians are so focused on just a single field (spiritual stuff, for example) and not about science or archeology, that we're propelling the stereotype that Christianity is scientifically backwards and not intellectually viable in today's day and age. As a result, when Christians pull out of scientific debates (and, given the context of this post, political/philosophical debates as well), which simply allows the "rest of the world" to continue as is, without Christian influence, which just allows the world to become more secularized. That's the reason he gives for his participation in religious, scientific and philosophical debates. That's also the reason why we should go out and vote.

Details about the Election
Since I'd be in Waterloo anyway between terms, I thought it would be interesting to sign up to work at the May 2 election. Coming from Electrical Engineering (at Waterloo, ECE is like 50% asian, 45% brown), you don't often walk into a room that's 90% filled with old Caucasian retirees...but I guess that's the typical demographics that can work on a Monday election. Maybe that's why they stuck me at the UWP polling station. Haha.

You should've gotten a Voter Information Card in your mail that tells you what your voting station is, based on your home address. Vote there. If you're not in your home region on May 2 (like myself), you could still register in KW, as long as you have a photo ID and proof of local residency (so like a utility bill or something). If your KW residency region is voting in UWP (you can check here), you can use your VIC as proof. Though, I'm guess that stuff will get lost in the mail between terms, so I'm not really expecting that much people using VICs as proof of residency at my polling station. Thus, the best thing to do is to participate in advance polling at your home region (which starts today, till the coming Monday).

Links and information
Rick Mercer (of "Talking to Americans" fame): video link. Apparently his videos are the instigator of "vote mobs" that's been popping up around universities all over the country. It's a short video with a simple message: university students need to go out and vote. He's right though. Not that much platforms addresses us, the university students. And no one cares about NSERC (funding agency for university research). Sighs.

In case you didn't want to look at everyone's platforms and figure out who's standing for what, CTV and Globe and Mail both have a platform summary of the major parties. And if you happen to be in Waterloo on May 2, your vote is pretty critical. Peter Braid, the current Kitchener-Waterloo MP, won by just 73 votes (though, it says 17 votes in the Waterloo Record) in 2008.

Elections Canada links: Information for students. IDs needed for voter registration at polling day (also applies if you're not in your home region).

Okay. Enough soap box for a day.

Social justice

Social justice is always one of those things that sits in the back of my mind, that I wish I didn't have to think about. Never sure what I should be doing in these circumstances. Would it be best to walk on by? Offer him some change? Offer to get him some food? Give him some attention?

It takes active effort to approach a panhandler and talk to him instead of walking on by like everyone else. I've read the stories. I know some of them are just victims of their circumstances. Still, it takes a lot of effort to remind myself that they're not there because they want to, but because they have to. Still. It's hard not to think of something negative when you see the same guy there, year after year, and the many negative stories I've heard about people's encounters likes to lodge itself in my mind as well.

Snowing in April
It started snowing again here suddenly. After lunch today, I encountered two such people. At first, I thought about walking around (the first guy). Didn't really want to think about it or deal with it. I had a lot of things I gotta deal with. But...

I dropped some money into his hands, "get something warm, alright?" (perhaps would've been better to actually bought something, but oh well, in a rush), and walked by the Subway that he was sitting in front of. 30 seconds later, in front of Williams, I ran into another guy. Well. I guess it's only fair if I forked over some stuff here too. Apparently the church/shelter he was staying at closed when it got warmer, so the sudden cold/snowing was a bad turn for them. "oh...sorry to hear that. hope things work out for you". I remembered this guy. He was telling me about his plans to get back onto his feet, a few years back. But I didn't comment on that. We chatted for a bit. Then I walked quickly to my E5 office, wanting to get out of the cold, wanting to finish my report that's due soon, wanting to just do my duty to the poor and move on.

Reflecting on Elena and Phil's posts, I find myself wondering if I did it more to alleviate my guilty feelings that I know I would get if I just walked on, or if I actually cared about reflecting His glory on this field. Sucks.

Isaiah 6

In my opinion, the most intense calling of an individual happens in Isaiah 6. God mosying around in the Jerusalem temple with a bunch of angels, with special effects everywhere? Atonement, and a possible Trinity reference? Yup. Beats Paul getting knocked off a horse and blinded. Beats Moses talking a tree on fire. Beats Ezekiel...wait. Never mind. You can't really beat Ezekiel...

But yes. The most amusing part is probably verse 8.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
   And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” 

- Isaiah 6.8

It's not hard to imagine God just looking around, pretending not to see Isaiah, and Isaiah just jumping up and down, waving his hands. "I don't know what's going on, but I'm here, I'm here! Send me!" (Maybe I watch too much anime...). A good reminder for myself that He calls the willing, and equips them to become the ready, just like what He did here for Isaiah.

CCF Sharing Night (W11)

Once again, the minutes of the recent sharing night is here. I will note that my minutes were more designed for people who were at sharing night itself, and so I made it more concise, more to remind people who were there. I stuck it in Google Docs this time because there were co-op people who wanted to be in the loop. So they were listening via laptop mic and reading the minutes at the same time. Haha. I first originally started taking minutes to loop co-op people in as well, so it's kind of nice to go back to that tradition.

• Link to the W11 minutes are here. It was assembled by myself (first half of the night), Jorge (second half of the night) and Josh Kung (random comments). Lasts until 4AM.
• For those of you who want more conclusive minutes, James' set is more detailed, found here. Lats until 1AM.

If you notice quality of minutes dropping off, I will point to the fact we ended at 4am, and are getting seriously old and starts losing focus earlier and earlier at night. =P

God makes it grow

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn as a serving Christian is that results will usually not come immediately. In WKTRM1/2A, a group of us, having benefited greatly from the fellowship, decided to take on Frosh Cell. Not really knowing what to do, 4 of us 2A'ers (Josh, Vanessa, Kevin, myself), as well as one upperyear (Betty), signed up to lead Frosh Cell and related events.

New Student Reception
I remember talking to my upperyear corespondent (Connie) for NSR, and she asked me what my overall vision for NSR was. I replied that, if even one person who didn't know about fellowship, walked by and stuck around for NSR, and came to fellowship because of that, it would've been worth the effort. I'll never know if anyone came to CCF because of NSR.

Frosh Cell
I think this is the question that all of us were asking ourselves at the end of the term. Did we make an impact? Were we helpful in making the fellowship more welcoming? How much of them learned and grow and had fun under our planning and programs?

I remember, when hearing that people of that year stopped attending fellowship (2nd year retainment ratio: 30%), or got into situations, we'd be asking ourselves if there was more we could've done. If we could've talked to them more. If there was some hint we overlooked. If we could've tried harder.

I remember seeing one of them later on and asking him why he doesn't attend fellowship anymore, and got a nasty respond. I remember telling myself that we can't be everything to everyone. I remember being shocked when I saw him again in fellowship, a few years later. God is working.

Graduation Dinner
Yet despite all the drama and situation. All the uncertainty and struggles. I realized that grad dinner was an encouragement to us alums as well. Knowing that the time we've poured into the "kids" has been used by God to grow them. One of the few times that God is gracious to show the fruits of our labour. I wonder if this is how my own upperyears felt when we made it too.

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe - as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

- 1 Corinthians 3.5-7

Congrats, 2011 grads.

Survival

Throughout undergrad, I found myself wondering if I'll survive. Make it through the tough hours and confusing math. Pass through school without getting getting owned. Not aiming for stellar marks, or anything. Get by, so I can do the stuff that comes a bit easier. Survival and desperation was always in the air. Engineering was hard.

We celebrated when we survived PHYS115. MATH212. ECE433. ECE370. ECE471. When we passed PDEng. When we got our Iron Ring.

Over the grad dinner weekend, I talked a bit with my peers. People who has been working for a year now. Shared stories of what we've learned. The difference between work and school. Long work hours. Difficult assignments. Tough deadlines. Reading through Proverbs, it's filled with verses like Prov 6.10. And we often forget that we were pulled through before.

I remember getting annoyed before. When we were in first year, they told us first year is the hardest. When we were in 3rd year, they said 3rd year is the hardest. When we were in fourth year, they said FYDP is the hardest. It never gets easier. It wasn't suppose to get easier.

But I think grad school (and FT work) is hard because you chose it. We chose to do grad school. We chose to work at Sandvine, or Deliotte, or Petro Canada. We chose Bell or Hydro One or Microsoft. Of course it's hard. We've never seen this stuff before. We've never applied these concepts in these ways before. But I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given... (Luke 19 - Parable of the Talent). We've received much. And more to come.

We're given much because He believes we can handle much. For those of you discouraged, press on.

Context

PSYCH studys
I was in the SLC and walked by one of those PSYCH study booths. As a fellow research, I try to stop by at these type of things and participate when I can, but usually, when I'm in the SLC, I'm in a rush and don't have the time to check them out, but I had some time yesterday. So I stopped and chatted with those guys a bit (they seemed kind of annoyed that they're not getting much N, thus causing poor confidence intervals) and offered to take their study. It turned out that their study was on chocolate eating. My job was to comment on the chocolate. Interesting study. I think I can handle that.

There's a part where I'm suppose to memorize a 8-digit number to distract me from the chocolate. Two girls approached the booth when the examiner was telling me this, and quickly shuffled away with "eww, memorization..." Well...actually...the study is on chocolate eating...they heard the examiner's comments out of context. Actually, the 8-digit number didn't matter at the end.

Reading in context
Often, when I pick up a journal paper (yes! Viterbi-powered HMM sequence clustering of Gaussian motion distributions! Motion segmentation with dynamic programming and time warping! Intuitive drag-and-pin inverse kinematics algorithm for animation and motion capture!), I have roughly 2/3 of a page to get up to speed on the Related Works (context building). But even that is hard at times, because these know their work so well that they don't understand what it's like not to understand. The only papers I feel vaguely understanding is perhaps the ones I read the actual related works papers cited, to understand the rationale of the article I'm actually reading

Bible reading in context
Bible reading is like that. You can't read a chapter from a letter in isolation, but we often do. I think, it's often too easy to forget that because we're so used to conducting Bible studies in small chunks. Knowing the context and the background often serves to color the passage appropriately.

For example...knowing that Romans is a "teaching" letter, and that 1 John is a "encouragement" letter allowed me to suggest to a friend wanted to get more into the Bible 1 John as a book easier to be understood, even though they both revolve talking about God's love and how we should think about it. Knowing that Paul is pretty Calvinistic (predestination) and that John is all about love and Jesus dying for the whole world (unlimited atonement) also led me to suggest 1 John as an easier book to understand. (Calvinists reading this, please don't hurt me =P)

Anyways. Read in context. I feel like this is something that everyone knows, but this post was suppose to be published before BBW did its OT/NT context meetings (which I'm totally behind in). But yes. Context is good.