Join us for an informative time as we discuss trauma and its effects in adults and children. Although news reports and discussions tend to focus on war, abused children, domestic violence, suicide, and natural disasters, trauma can also be caused by a single event, a prolonged event, or repeated events. It overwhelms us with intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Trauma physically affects the brain and the body, causing anxiety, anger, and the inability to concentrate. Victims have problems remembering, trusting, and forming relationships. We will look at the long-term impacts of trauma on society and pathways to recovery, as we consider integrating Biblical principles and best mental health practices to bring hope into a hurting world.

Course Take-Away:

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• What is Trauma?
• The 3 Principles of Well-being for Adults and Children
• Trauma and the Brain
• Long-term Impact of Trauma

FREE ADMISSION

Date and Time: 24 October 2022 (Monday) – 10am – 12pm
Venue: 7 Armenian St, Bible House S179932

Hello brothers!

Celebrate 𝗗𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗮𝘃𝗮𝗹𝗶 on 23 & 24 Oct 2022 with us! Bring your friends along for a fun-filled afternoon playing games enjoying performance from our talented brothers trying on free clothes and signing up for computer classes

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There will be free meals and goody bags too!

Bollywood and Rangoli Competition is brought to you by Dorm Mums and Hope Initiative Alliance

Hello sisters!

Join us for 𝗟𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 on 16 Oct 2022 at The Bible House! Grace Church will also be organising an appreciation event for Ministry Partners and Best Migrant Domestic Workers Employers

We will also create a special rangoli made with origami paper hearts with our sisters! This will be a fun-filled Sunday afternoon of mental wellness activities Food will be provided

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Register now: https://bit.ly/ADEOoct2022

Special shoutout to Caring for Life !

Amid the global financial turmoil, looming recession, and inflationary pressures, we are pleased to bring you the N5Conference 2022 – the largest kingdom-focused conference of its kind on Money & Wealth! We have 20+ leaders from churches, marketplace, and missions from 4 nations who will share on kingdom stewardship of ‘old’, ’emerging’, and ‘new’ wealth!

Dates: 28-29 October 2022 (Fri-Sat)

Time: 9am-5.30pm

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Hybrid event at Metropolitan YMCA (Stevens Road)

GOBERTOTO

Join us for an informative time as we discuss trauma and its effects in adults and children. Although news reports and discussions tend to focus on war, abused children, domestic violence, suicide, and natural disasters, trauma can also be caused by a single event, a prolonged event, or repeated events. It overwhelms us with intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Trauma physically affects the brain and the body, causing anxiety, anger, and the inability to concentrate. Victims have problems remembering, trusting, and forming relationships. We will look at the long-term impacts of trauma on society and pathways to recovery, as we consider integrating Biblical principles and best mental health practices to bring hope into a hurting world.

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Course Take-Away:

Nawatoto

• What is Trauma?
• The 3 Principles of Well-being for Adults and Children
• Trauma and the Brain
• Long-term Impact of Trauma

FREE ADMISSION

Date and Time: 24 October 2022 (Monday) – 10am – 12pm
Venue: 7 Armenian St, Bible House S179932

The Alphabet Project has partnered with SSO @ Bukit Merah, We Love Learning Centre (WeLL) and Yayasan MENDAKI Singapore in the Happy Learners Programme for young children from identified families living in Henderson. Volunteers from Singapore Management University (SMU) and National Institute of Education (NIE) will befriend and engage the children through a 15-month weekly evening programme. The Happy Learners Programme comprises educational and teambuilding activities to develop the children’s social and emotional learning. Through regular engagement with their parents, the Happy Learners Programme also hopes to nurture strong parental support for the children’s learning.

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When reading a book on beauty and art recently, I stumbled across an intriguing paragraph that totally grabbed my attention. The words, by Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen, read:

The aestheticization of everyday life in postmodern society through the powerful impact of images in mass media, the arts and culture, the constant presence of music, mostly of the popular variety, and the cult of the body and of youth, are now ever-present features in our lives. The hunger for instant gratification, be it through exotic food, travel, films, music, body-cult, as well as the desire for religious or quasi-religious experiences, ranging from crystal-gazing to traditional forms of Christian worship, are all based in aesthetic, i.e. sensuous, experience and phenomena. (Thiessen 2004, 1)

Not only did the paragraph grab my attention and offer language to describe what is observed in everyday life, it also piqued my interest in contemporary cultural expressions of beauty. I began to explore topics like K-Beauty, the media’s and fashion industry’s influence on standards of beauty, cosmetic surgery, tattooing, and other forms of body art, etc. These expressions of beauty enhancement are increasingly commonplace and global in reach and influence. We in Singapore are certainly not spared their powers of persuasion and suggestion with “look and feel” considerations becoming more important in how we make decisions and order our lives.

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The great irony today is that while there is so much talk about genuineness and authenticity, there has never been a time in history where we are surrounded by so much manufactured beauty. Behind the whole concept of “manufactured beauty” lies a shift in society’s thinking about outward appearance and external beauty.  It seems to me that there is a cultural shift toward elevating external beauty’s importance together with increasing pressure to conform to ascending beauty standards.

Seeking to look good has resulted in greater effort and urgency at personal grooming, physical exercise, and eating well. It is no secret that the beauty industry, and especially the K-Beauty industry, is flourishing in Singapore. Likewise, the nation has seen an increase in personal trainers and fitness clubs­–many offering 24-7-365 services–to help clients achieve a more aesthetically-pleasing self. Justin Chen’s short video A Beautiful Mind, which features a male model commenting on his efforts at looking good, perhaps captures both personal desire as well as societal pressure to reach for external beauty:

I think there is another side to beauty, and that’s your inner beauty which is all your inner traits. And I would weigh outer beauty 7/10 and inner beauty 3/10 because character building isn’t difficult. Anyone can do it. It’s easy.  Just be a nice person! However, looking good–like going to the gym, working out, and taking care of your skin–that takes effort and it deserves some recognition.

Beyond merely performing daily rituals to look good, some have taken the additional step of undergoing cosmetic surgery. Gratefully, this push toward manufactured beauty is not felt as strongly in Singapore as it is in South Korea. There, subtle as well as not-so-subtle suggestion is exerted by photoshopped images in lifestyle magazines, multiple media platforms, ever-present subway adverts, high school peers, and even family members. Nonetheless, the desire to undergo facial contouring and body augmentation procedures in order to look more beautiful remains a trend to be watched in Singapore.

While it is easy to single out manufactured beauty observed in physical bodies, the phenomenon is readily found in church body life– albeit in a different form. One of the interesting developments of this present age is how new music technologies have transformed church musical experiences. Consequently, worship services increasingly deploy these technologies and the expertise available to create beautiful, multisensory experiences to draw worshippers to God.

Analog as well as digital guitar effects pedals can be used to create swells and shimmers which serve as soothing background ambient sounds. With a press of a button, reverb, echo, delay, and other sound effects can be used to shape the soundscape of a worship service and support a range of emotional responses appropriate to the moment.

Likewise, voice effect pedals can significantly transform vocal sounds and add much colour to a worship leader’s voice. Common effects include the ability to transform the gender of your voice, generate different harmonies, and sound like a chorus of six singers. With these enhancements, you can literally dispense with backup singers and choirs. The best thing about them, however, is that the autotune feature can pitch-correct your voice. These wonderful modern technological innovations can “photoshop your voice” and leave you sounding more perfect than you can ever dream of being!

This brings me back to the quote by Thiessen cited in the opening paragraph. There she drew attention to the growing prominence of beauty and aesthetics in the world we live in. The fact is, people do gravitate toward the beautiful. For some, the draw­–whether toward natural beauty or manufactured beauty­­–has become a passion and an obsession to be attained at any expense.

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As one who has an interest in music technology, I find myself able to spend long moments soaking in sound effects produced with guitar pedals. As a developing flute player, I also enjoy playing worship songs on my flute into a microphone connected to a voice effect app on my iPhone. What better way of feeling close to God while totally immersed in echoey, long-tailed, reverberating sounds which fill the soul with beauty and love.

One time while I was giving a complete sonic makeover to a simple musical phrase using the “runaway echo” function in my VoiceRack™ app, the depiction of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah crossed my mind. I was at a point in my learning journey when I was pondering the missional impact of beauty and how it can be deployed for the extension of God’s kingdom. It suddenly dawned upon me then that the Suffering Servant described in Isaiah 52:13-53:12 did not hold fast to his world of beauty nor did he feature beauty as his primary outreach strategy. Instead, by adopting a counterintuitive approach and applying an unconventional missional strategy, he was able to usher much spiritual benefit and blessing to many.

^{Isa 53:2} He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him…^11b by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

As I thought about the words in the passage, I realized there was something instructional featured there. If for me, the way to God was in the allure of beauty, for the Suffering Servant, the way to God was in the forsaking and abandonment of beauty. He who was previously robed in beauty allowed himself to be robbed of beauty.

What is deeply provocative and compelling in the example set is the willingness to let go of something so integral to his identity in order to enter our world. He did so, not to identify with beautiful people who were healthy and righteous, but with spiritually sick sinners in need of redemption and transformation (Luke 2:17).

Consequently, the beauty that he displayed was neither manufactured or manicured, but marred by choice and purpose. In this, we find a message for serious practitioners and consumers of beauty–which is that we must be grounded in a higher principle and purpose which guards us against becoming too insular, too trapped in our worlds, and too self-indulgence in immersive experiences.

The theologian Kevin Vanhoozer once wrote:

…to perceive beauty is to undergo a transformation of sorts from self-centeredness to other-centeredness. Experiencing beauty prompts us to give up our imaginary position at the center and forces us to recognize that we are in the presence of something larger than ourselves. (Vanhoozer 2004, 113)

While there is no attempt to displace or discount the place of beauty and the beautiful in the life of the church, his words offer proper perspective on our relationship with beauty. Further, it exhorts us towards a life of discipleship which follows the example of Jesus. May we in the church be true to this teaching and calling as we live life in an increasingly aestheticized world!

Reference List
Vanhoozer, Kevin J. ‘Praising in Song: Beauty and the Arts’. In The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, edited by Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells, 110–122. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004.

Notwithstanding the constant drumbeat of climate change “doubters” in the U.S. government today, there is overwhelming evidence that climate change and the effects of global warming are not only real, but will pose an existential threat to human society if left unattenuated.  Simply put, nature is unravelling under the weight of man’s action, and this is taking place at an alarming rate.

For an island-state like Singapore, the urgency of this matter should be obvious.  Indeed, as evident from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s recent National Day Rally speech (2019), it has hastened the government to articulate climate change as a policy priority.

I would argue that as Christians, we too, need to be concerned about global warming.  Beyond the scientific research and debate, we need to understand and express this concern in the context of the relationship between man and nature under God’s providence.

The Creation Mandate

In Christian thinking, there is the concept of human lordship over the earth.  As God is the omnipotent Lord and Creator and owner of the universe, man created in His image becomes the mighty lord and owner of the earth: “Subdue the earth and have dominion over every living thing.” (Gen 1:28).

But there is also a strong biblical tradition regarding the earth that suggests a more complex and interdependent relationship between man and the earth, both of which remain the subject of the creator’s pleasure.  We are told, for instance, that the earth “brings forth living creatures” (Gen 1:24).  So, while we do not subscribe to the notion of a “mother earth” the way some naturalists do, Scripture does testify to the goodness of God as evidence in the life that is woven into creation.  We also know through Scripture that God has made a direct covenant with the earth:

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“This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.  And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.  And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.” (Gen 9:12-16).

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Additionally, we know that the Spirit pours into the earth and makes it a fruitful field (Isa 32:15), and that through Christ all things are reconciled, whether in earth or in heaven (Col 1:20).  It is right to appreciate the good things that come to us from the world God created (and has enabled man to cultivate) with thanksgiving.  “Every creature of God is good,” Paul tells Timothy, “and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4-5).  Again, in 1 Timothy 6:17 Paul speaks of God giving us “richly all things to enjoy.”  God is not meagre and miserly; his creation at the outset teemed with life and goodness, and God fully meant us to enjoy the good gifts that He lavished on His world.

By this token, how we approach the blessings God has given us in nature – natural resources, for instance – should be governed by the way we are to approach all possessions bestowed upon us.  This approach must be rooted in our call to be good stewards of our possessions – the good gifts of God.  2 Corinthians 8 and 9 point in the direction of our plenty being given to us in the providence of God to share with those who have less.  In 2 Corinthians 8:13, as Paul urges the comparatively wealthy Corinthians to generous giving to the needy saints in Jerusalem, he writes, “I mean not that other men be eased and you burdened; but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance may also be a supply for your want: that there may be equality …” While communism as a social system, and the exact, equal sharing of goods, is not taught in the Bible, the principle of giving and receiving, and sharing with one another is.

Nature, the Curse, and God’s Glory

At the same time, we need to also tread carefully in how we conceptualize nature and the earth in Christian theology, so as not to slip into pantheism.  While there is certainly a place for elements of “ecological theology,” a school of thought that has emerged to draw a growing following in liberal Christian circles, we should be mindful that as beautiful as the world is to our eyes – and indeed creation speaks of God’s glory, it is still a fallen world, as made abundantly clear in Genesis 3 whereby all creation comes under God’s curse as a consequence of man’s original sin.  Indeed, we must recognize that ours is a fallen world.  Sin entered into the world through Adam, and because of his federal headship, we have inherited his sinful nature.  This includes all creation, which “groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Rm 8:22).

Yet despite the curse and the fallen state of the world, it continues to attest to God’s glory.  As the Psalmist sings: “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof.  Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice” (Ps 96:11-12).

So, even as we are called to subdue the cursed earth, we must try to still seek out its beauty.  And we do so being good stewards of and demonstrating frugality towards what the Lord has bestowed upon us.  In other words, it is about not being addicted to and desiring excessive enjoyment of worldly possessions.  Our duty is not to throw caution to the wind and plunder the earth, but to care for and nurture it as it is still God’s creation, even in its fallen state.  As the opening stanza of that beautiful hymn reminds us:

“This is my Father’s world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.”

“Soundings” is a series of essays that, like the waves of a sonogram, explore issues in society, culture and the church in light of the Gospel and Christian understanding.

The coronavirus pandemic has presented immense challenges to people all over the world. COVID-19 has ruined the lives and livelihood of scores of people. Necessary public health measures such as social distancing have made many feel isolated and lonely, thus increasing the incidents of stress and anxiety.

An article published in March by the Straits Times reports that mental health professionals here are attending to more cases during the past year as the Covid-19 pandemic persists.

Christians are not spared or immune from the anxieties that the pandemic has brought in its wake. However, they can draw from the inexhaustible spiritual resources found in Christianity that would enable them to cope. (In fact, numerous studies have shown that religion or spirituality play an important role in mental health. )

Since the dawn of Christianity, Christian writers—theologians and pastors alike—have stressed the importance of spiritual activities such as prayer and Bible study in the Christian life. In his important work on the spiritual disciplines, Richard Foster explains their significance thus:

The classical Disciplines of the spiritual life call us to move beyond surface living into the depths. They invite us to explore the inner caverns of the spiritual realm.

It is this grace-enabled capacity to see reality more deeply and truly, to penetrate the surface and the superficial, that would give the Christian the strength and fortitude to remain steadfast in the midst of great uncertainties.

Without doubt, prayer is one of the most important of the Christian spiritual disciplines. As the conservative Norwegian Lutheran theologian, Ole Hallesby, has so beautifully described it,

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Prayer is the breath of the soul, the organ by which we receive Christ into our parched and withered hearts. As air enters in quietly when we breathe, and does its normal work in our lungs, so Jesus enters quietly into our hearts and does His blessed work there.

In some mysterious way, God hears and answers our prayers, changing the present as well as the future according to his unfathomable will.

But prayer does not only change things. It also changes the person who prays, transforming him in subtle but profound ways as the Lord does his work in the inner recesses of his soul.

One of the defining features of stress and anxiety is the transient or even stable loss of the sense of meaning and purpose as one’s life is tossed to and fro by the current of events that are beyond one’s control.

Faced with such circumstances, it is quite natural to be assailed by existential and theological questions. Why is this happening to me (to us)? Where is God in all of this? Why doesn’t he do something to rescue us from this tribulation?

In prayer, the believer brings these vexing questions before God. But he does so in a posture of humility as he kneels in the presence of the God who is at once sovereign and loving. In prayer, the Christian is not only reminded of his own sinfulness and frailty, but also of God’s faithful presence even in the midst of life’s darkest moments.

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Prayer can reduce the stress and anxieties endemic in these uncertain times. By this, I don’t mean that the act of prayer itself is therapeutic. This would reduce Christian prayer to just one of the many exercises for stress relief or mindfulness.

Christian prayer reduces the stresses of life because it brings us into the presence of God, in whom alone we can (re)discover the meaning of our lives. In ushering us into the presence of the almighty and sovereign God, prayer slowly changes our perspective. It enables us to “see” the things that we were unable to see before because our vision was clouded by anxiety and confusion.

To recall the words of Richard Foster, prayer enables us to “move beyond the surface into the depths”. And as we penetrate the depths of the reality that engulfs us, we find the God whose name is Emmanuel there. And the presence of the Almighty alters our vision, heals our astigmatism, and enables us to see the things that are visible only to the eyes of faith.

This is the experience of Jeremiah, who in the midst of the desolation of the once glorious city of Jerusalem, could declare: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lam 3:22–23).

When these words were uttered, nothing on the surface has changed. The city still lay in ruins, her population ravaged and killed (2:12; 2:21; 4:10). But the prophet was able to “move beyond the surface into the depths.”

And there he saw the merciful God, whose nature is unconditional love—the God who is ever in control.