still not xanga

Current Mood: Happy

So it’s been a while. So I made a longer comic this time.

For every successful pick-up line a guy uses, there’s a whole slew of terrible ones that he’s used and was rewarded with a generous slap in the face. We’ll follow our favorite hero Dracula around women as he tries and tries again. If you’re reading aloud at home, use a Transylvania accent; remember: w=v, v=v, and all sounds are lower and sleazier sounding in general.

Um, SURPRISE. A comic Monday on Wednesday. Enjoy.

Center Yao Ming kept an eye on the start of the China basketball finals — sort of.

The Bayi Rockets defeated the Guangdong Tigers in Game 1, Yao heard.

He did not, however, follow it live online, as he would have in Houston.

“The hotel would charge $10 for the Internet, so I didn’t get it,” Yao said. “I just waited for friends to call to say they lost Game 1.

“Hey, that’s not cheap. You pay $10 for 10 minutes; that’s not fair. You can wait 20 hours to get home, where it’s free.”

It’s good to see that Yao has not lost touch with his Asian roots.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

–Theodore Roosevelt

I was talking to a co-worker the other day about what I believe in and I remembered that I had co-wrote this article in the Duke Chronicle (our student newspaper) about Christianity. It dealt with a lot of what we deal with today, issues of intolerance and how Christians should act in the world around us. It was a response piece to a several articles that had been printed earlier in the Chronicle about Christianity and what it means. Here is a link, courtesy of the Chronicle, to the original article. The article is reprinted below:

We would like to first use this space to make a useful public announcement: Good news! You’re not all damned to hell. It’s not our place to tell you something like that. Anyone who can tell you that, and knows the will of God, would probably not be writing in The Chronicle.The purpose of this commentary is not to convert you to our faith.

Rather we hope that you (Christians and non-Christians) better understand what Christianity is about. Many recent writings in The Chronicle have tried to attack or defend Christianity. Despite expressing opposing opinions, they all shared one common feature: they left out Jesus Christ.What is Christianity? It is the belief that Jesus Christ, the embodied form of God, was born as man, suffered and died on the cross and rose again after three days in order to save humanity from our sins. While there is much more to Christianity, there is nothing more fundamental than this creed. As Christians, we cannot accept that Jesus was merely a great man, a great philosopher or even a great prophet. He is our Savior. He is God. Anything less is not Christian. Hence, Christ put the Christ in Christianity.

The problem we encounter in our culture is that Jesus is subtly deemed politically incorrect. His preaching, and the dogma of all Christians, presupposes that there is a right (His way) and that there is a wrong way in a world where moral relativism pervades. In our society, we are encouraged to believe that every idea and every philosophy have their merits and that we cannot discount any of them. This is what is revered as tolerance. We are told to accept all religions and ideas as equal, and, in effect, told not to believe in anything at all. As Christians, we cannot and will not accept that every spiritual path is the same. We have to believe that Christianity is better, or else we have no reason to call ourselves Christian.

Strangely, there is little tolerance for Christianity in our society that professes freedom. Our society makes Christians feel politically incorrect and insecure when we talk about Jesus Christ. Our society thinks that rationality takes a backseat when discussing spiritual matters and tells us that Christianity must take a backseat to everyday things. Our society forces us not to assert our faith publicly because of negative backlash from being labeled a fanatic. Our society welcomes individual spiritualism, just so long as it does not interfere with everyday living.While society blasts Christians for intolerance and for stifling free discussion, it itself is guilty of suppression. It claims to promote the free expression of thought and word, but in reality it is conducive to neither.

Unfortunately, our firm beliefs have been confused with intolerance. Intolerance is an unwillingness to grant equal freedom of thought and expression. That’s not what Christianity wants. We do not want Christianity forced on anyone nor do we want mindless, Bible quoting, Christian zombies walking around. Open discussion? We want open discussion, so that we are free to express our religion and others are free to accept or deny it.

So why should Christians evangelize? The entire Christian life is a form of evangelization. Our every thought and action is shaped by the life, death and resurrection of Christ. As St. Francis said, preach at all times and when necessary use words. We refuse to be suppressed by society’s intolerance. We will openly share our faith and preach Jesus, rather than be ashamed of our faith or compartmentalize it into one aspect of our lives.

The Christian life attempts to imitate the life of Jesus through service. Missionaries sacrifice lives of comfort and relative ease in order to work in impoverished nations. The point is not to force the Christian agenda onto foreign cultures, but to be models of the Christian life that people are free to emulate. Their work is a living testament to the life of Jesus Christ. So that’s it.

No bible quotes taken out of context. No preachy tones. No condemnation. We offer nothing but Jesus Christ in this space. We went to the very root of Christianity. Unfortunately, we do not speak for all Christians. After all, some Christians have tried to use our faith to justify atrocities. We argue that this is a result of a misunderstanding of the basic fact of Jesus Christ.

Of course, there is far more to Christianity than what we have laid out before you. The purpose of this commentary though, is to remind you (because it seems we often forget) that Christianity is about Christ. It is not based on compassion or equality or any other abstract quality. While virtues are tremendously important to Christianity, they are unintelligible without understanding and believing in the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

We would like to leave you with a quote from C. S. Lewis: “I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I am ready to accept Jesus as the great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Will Lavy is a Trinity Junior and a member of the Newman Catholic Student Center. Isaac Chan is a Pratt Junior and a member of the Alpha Omega Fellowship of the Raleigh Chinese Christian Church.