there's IVCF on thursdays, Singapore cell on Fridays, Church on Sundays. I think i'll prob go to Grace Church full time, it's so similar to Bartley in many ways.

and there's a mountain of Christian (and anti-Christian) influences, through friends, people I meet, and books i read. every week i have compulsary readings, some of them by good godly men, for my Reformation class. and the professor actually demands a high level of participation, so i gotta do my readings for that class. which is very rare for me. i never ever do readings. this is the first course that i'm doing every reading for. partially cos the prof demands it, partially cos it's so interesting. it gives me new insight into my faith.

Erasmus encourages us to carry the cross, to abandon the world. he wrote against the Catholic Church of the 1500s, which was corrupt and worldly and materialistic and self-centered and not following the example of Christ. the beauty is that these traits plague Christians to this very day.

Luther espouses the way of the cross too, as a means to salvation. to rely on Christ's grace rather than to work our way to salvation.

however this week's Luther reading will be very hard to stomach. It's entitled "The Bondage of the Will", and in it Luther argues against humans having any free will at all after Original Sin, and argues that God predetermines who will be saved and who will not be saved. the worst thing is that Luther is actually extremely convincing. (helped by the fact that i am a very gullible reader).

of course the problem is that we are made to sound like robots just obeying God. and what of those millions of non-Christians, who, under our belief system, are going to hell? does God send them there? and what of the whole "we are made in God's image" thing - is God a robot too?

actually, perhaps. God is bound to do good, just as we are bound by Original Sin to do evil.

Ok whatever. these are issues that will never ever be resolved. but this week's reading does paint humanity in a bad light. and God too, for he "hardened Pharoh's heart".