One of my PhD advisors, who was born and raised in China, told us the story of how in the Second World War, hundreds of Chinese soldiers taken prisoner could be guarded by a lone Japanese soldier armed only with a rifle. To escape and break free, the Chinese soldiers could have rushed and overpowered the soldier. But they didn’t.

My advisor told us this story to illustrate his viewpoint that Chinese culture, at least back then, lacked courage and drive.

I’m not going to touch that one directly but in my personal experience, when there’s smoke, there’s fire.

But as I have repeatedly stated, I am Malaysian. So that’s that.

This one time, there was a speaker at a chucho retreat who used some pretty graphic sexual descriptions to illustrate his lesson on Hinduism. We’re talking porn level quality here. The audience included some elementary school age kids. So I said something. I was under 20 at that point. And you can guess what happened next.

Excuses and a lot of nothing,

My daughter recently told me that religion is made up. Perhaps some but I don’t think mine is.

I told her how the OG Christians died for their faith – fed alive to lions, burnt alive, crucified like the one we purport to follow. And how made up is all that if people are willing to sacrifice and even die. It would be so easy to deny and renounce.

This all takes courage.

Carrying that cross and dying it takes guts and more. A supernatural strength.

And who has that?

Those are the worthy.

The ones who can stand by, with, and for you.

The ones who have your six, come hell or high water.

The rest can enjoy their thousand deaths.