St James' Church

Everything starts with the heart. We are all aware of how helpful Christianity is to order our daily lives in areas of moral values, choices, spiritual well-being etc. Once you get that right, much will follow. Thus, if a Christian politician or civil servant wants to make lasting Christian impact, he needs first to get his own life right before God. This includes a sound family life, regular participation in worship and parish ministry and so on. We can say the same for the Christian influence of a teacher over her students or a worker in the office over his colleagues. In this sense, the influence and impact of Christianity in Singapore flows primarily from the sound personal devotion of individual Christians worshiping in the over 400 or so local churches here. The local church is the spiritual engine room for the nation.

Well and good. This is an important starting point for our further reflection. However, is this alone sufficient? Does the church, apart from preaching the Gospel of personal salvation, also need to interact with the contemporary ideas and philosophies underpinning and shaping our society? We have a message within the four walls of the church. But do we have a relevant and engaging ‘public’ message?

I find that too often, there is either a caving in to then public world of ideas (Christians cannot discuss rationally with any confidence) or for some, just plain indifference as these ideas are considered irrelevant (anti-intellectualism). The former makes one live in two worlds, where the spiritual and intellectual hardly intersects. It seems like the thinking stops on Sunday, only to resume vigorously when work and ‘real life’ resumes. The latter makes one live with only felt needs in mind and the Christian life is a constant pursue of private and personal spiritual satisfaction with nary a thought about where society is heading. 

These need not be. The challenge is for us to apply our minds just as vigorously in our reading, discussion or reflection, and guided by the Spirit, be salt and light in areas where the nature of our society is being shaped for the long-term. These of course include areas like evolution and creation, materialism, justice, bio-ethics and so on. We regard these as “chim” areas. However, this clash of ideas is also being fought in our daily lives in our family, financial choices and the way we treat each other.

In fact, this involves real discipleship. If we are to ‘love God with all our soul, mind, spirit and body’ - it means just that.  The 3-week mini series is a simple attempt at looking at how the early apostles spoke in the public arena. May these inspire us to live and grow in our personal spirituality, intellectually and our public witness.