Crossroads - Back to the Future

Remember the adventures of Marty McFly and Doc Brown as they now leave 1985 and time travel to the year 2015 in slick DeLorean which ran on trash using a machine called Mr Fusion? That was 2 decades ago. Today, I wasn't in church because I was at Crossroads, a VCF camp for final years to prepare us for the work place.

As we heard Soo-In (the speaker) share, a thought came to Evan and she reminded me that that in 10 years time, it would be the year 2017. As I pondered about living in 2017, a sense of surreal-ness gripped me. I remember in our childhood, the imaginings of science fiction authors would produce movies like Back to the Future or even the animation Robotech. All envisioning what the future would be like. I remember a time in my childhood where I considered the morbidity of how long I would live. I was curious to know if ever I would live to see the envisioned future of these science fiction "prophets".

As I counted with my fingers, I realised that I would indeed live to see such days and imagined if hover crafts would truely be as common as Steven Spielburg would like us to believe or if in the year 1999 the Zentraedi forces will invade the planet earth in the search for the ultimate power source called Protoculture; under the command of the Robotech Masters.

Robotech -Macross Saga was set from 1999 to 2014

Crossroads was a time of serious reflection. Indeed its namesake is justified at least for myself. I was reminded to look in retrospect the life that I have lived, the journey of life in which I have walked as life moves into another sphere. Here was the time to replace childhood fantasies with sober reality of what should be the next 3 years after graduation. Here was time to go consider the future. A time to go Back to the uture.

As I rummaged through the nostalgic emotions of the past to consider its ups and downs, Soo-In's encouragement was for us to look back at how our live have been to search for good reference for what should my future choices be.

Although I found no clear direction for what to do, I did glean a number of insights:

I am reminded that my life which revolves around service in church was not accidental nor was it coincidental. I remember my JC days was a juggling act of tearing down the old Youth Fellowship structure and setting the Youth Ministry structure with the conviction that my peers in church will be challenged to come to faith with a personal and living God. That they may "fall in love with Jesus again" as I myself came to recognition and acceptance that Jesus truely the Son of God and my own need for His gospel of salvation for purposeless life such as mine.

I charted my life with it's ups and its downs and noticed a common pattern that the lows of my life revolve around feelings of self-worth and loneliness.

I saw that my lows were always the direct result of unsatisfactory academic performance. Doubts about self-worth and frustration follow when personal standards were unmet or the quota of As were absent on the report card. The most painful of those times were the self-initiated or other-imposed comparisons of academic performance between my brother or my peers. I get a sense that perhaps too often I have subscribed to religiously to this meritocratic philosophy of the modern capitalistic Singapore and so measure my self-worth with how well I have done academically. Yet the Bible which I have come to hold even stronger regard in my life for the truth that it speaks of such measures of self-worth as idolatry.

For a Christian's worth is based not upon comparisons with others or world standards of academic excellence, materialistic possessions or accumulation of wealth; but instead on the steadfast certainty of how God Himself perceives us. For Man is worth the infinite cost of Jesus death on the cross. Worth the indignity, suffering, pain and emotional anguish of loneliness of the Jesus His Son. If such is the truth of Christ's message that this gospel IS good news indeed.

I presume that my struggles in the workplace will entail non-academic but still seductive challenges. I foresee the comparison with my peers and determining my worth through fame, recognition, salary and positions of leadership to be particularly enticing. For this is the message of the world we live in. This is the 'gospel' of politicians, the media and the prevalent culture this generation.

Rather let the gospel of truth that speaks counter-culture to "these patterns of the world" presents to us a means of Hope; reminding Humanity that we are not imprisoned by the perspectives of others or our self-worth determined by the tangible things we hold in our hands.

For certainly we are made of much better stuff and indeed of much greater worth than these alone.