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01 July 2009

Is it July already? : Books read from April 09 - June 09

[April]

The Princess and Curdie ~ George MacDonald
Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers ~ S.E. Frost
The Day of the Barbarians ~ Alessandro Barbero
Triumph of John and Betty Stam ~ Mrs. Howard Taylor
Doubt in Perspective ~ Alister E. McGrath
A Severe Mercy ~ Sheldon Vanauken
The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul ~ Douglas Adams
Life Together ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Mammoth Book of Arthurian Legends ~ Mike Ashley [ed.]
Wyrd Sisters ~ Terry Pratchett
Ring for Jeeves ~ P.G. Wodehouse

[May]

The Code of the Woosters ~ P.G. Wodehouse
Proverbes du monde entier ~ Axel Schleffer
Les premiers temps de l'église ~ Manuel Goguel
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase ~ Joan Aiken

[June]

Passion and Purity ~ Elisabeth Elliot
The Prophet ~ Kahlil Gibran
Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation ~ William C. Placher [ed.]
Islam at the Crossroads: Understanding its Beliefs, History and Conflicts ~ Paul A. Marshall, Roberta Green and Lela Gilbert
Hind's Feet on High Places ~ Hannah Hurnard

Labels: books

posted by Anika Qing @ 7:31 AM 0 comments

14 June 2009

So...

...would it be hypocritical to join Facebook now, after my last post?

(Considering that my parents just gave me permission, and my dad just joined?!)

[Update: after 4 hours on Facebook, I de-activated my account. I seriously couldn't stand it...]

Labels: the internet is a funny thing

posted by Anika Qing @ 1:26 PM 6 comments

09 June 2009

Teenagers and Online Community

Teenagers are "highly motivated by the need for community" and community building is one of the core needs that drives them to use the internet. Thanks to technology, they now have access to a global community and consequently a perceived interpersonal freedom [1]. Blogging, for example, is one of the important ways that teens maintain and gain friendships [2].

However, online friendships are often not merely an addition to "real life" friendships. According to a CBS news article, friendships are now predominantly conducted online and even friendships made offline rapidly become online friendships that rarely involve physical meetings [5]. The internet being their primary source of community and friendship, teenagers often do not view online activities as public.

This gains a new twist as an increasing number of adults join social networking sites. Describing the social life of teens on the internet as "powerful but fickle", the Washington Post ran a story on the rapid "migration" of teenagers from one social networking site to another, using the move from MySpace to Facebook as an example. One of the reasons teenagers gave for the move was the increased presence of authority figures on MySpace and the resulting lack of privacy [4].

Teenagers view online community primarily as a community of peers, and are displeased that their parents and other adults are joining social networking sites such as Facebook. "Living in the world without the usual social barriers between generations is causing a little discomfort for some and downright angst for others" [2]. Blogs are used to communicate with 5-10 friends by teens who want to have a section of their life independent of and private to their parents [6].

A few of my thoughts on this:

Internet community can be dangerously attractive because it appears to offer freedom from accountability. When your freedom is threatened by people known in real life who have the authority to pull you into line and when you don't want to be pulled into line, "downright angst" is to be expected.
Internet community also gets rid of much of the pain of real community. It is far easier to manipulate people online for your own ego's sake. If online "friends" hurt your ego, "unfriend" them or block them. And what if they get sick? What if they are thrown in jail? Can you visit them? What if they are hungry? Can you feed them? If you have no real life friends, you have no real life trials...or opportunities to show the love of our loving Lord. Goodbye to real life friends, goodbye to real life self-sacrifice.
Are the "usual social barriers between generations" necessarily good? Not if these social barriers mean a complete lack of interaction. Sure, there are times for teenagers to enjoy each others' company exclusively. No problem. After all, we naturally tend to gravitate towards people with whom we have a lot in common. A certain level of age segregation tends to happen naturally anyway. The problem is if these times become the only form of community experienced and this segregation becomes artificial. Goodbye to interaction between generations, goodbye to the church as God intended it.

// Sources //

Labels: addiction, I evidently have no school reports to write, the internet is a funny thing

posted by Anika Qing @ 7:35 PM 6 comments

01 June 2009

Because I want to do this tag, I am going to do it.

Anya did this tag a while ago. As in, last year sometime. (She didn't tag me, either.) Along with Lloyd, I did it a few times just for fun, but didn't do it on my blog. However, having been reminded of this game for one reason or another, I've decided to do it on my blog. Lloyd (being a dear of a brother) is willing for me to post his answers too. Yes, this is a significantly silly, teenage tag..but it will be a nice intro to my upcoming series of posts on teenagers and their use of the internet.

Rules:

Put your iTunes/Ipod/mp3/mp4 on shuffle.
For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
You must write the song title down...don't cheat.

If someone asks, "Is this okay?", you reply...

Anika: Contend ~ Sons of Korah

Lloyd: 999 ~ BBC

[At least he doesn't say 666...]

What would best describe your personality?

Anika: Plein de joie (Full of joy) ~ Unknown

Lloyd: Peer Gynt Suite #1 Op. 46 ~ Grieg

What is your life's purpose?

Anika: When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along ~ Al Jolson

Lloyd: Take One Down ~ Sounds Like Chicken

[Anika, timidly: So...what's in that suitcase? Lloyd: Uh...the chicken factory's greeting card design scheme.]

What is your motto?

Anika: Dieu, unique joie du coeur (God, only joy of the heart) ~ Saint Augustine

Lloyd: Nuisance ~ John Reuben

What do you think of the guy/girl you "like"?

Anika: Dieu est au-dela de la memoire (God is beyond the memory) ~ Saint Augustine

[Hopefully, guys are not put off by a reluctance to keep on topic]

Lloyd: Let it go ~ Manafest

[Lloyd: Put down the suitcase, dear...]

What is your life story?

Anika: Behold the Lamb of God! ~ Handel

Lloyd: Night Rhythms ~ Michael Dulin

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Anika: Will lightning and thunder in ruin engulf them? ~ Bach

Lloyd: Bowling Ball ~ Super Chick

What do your parents think of you?

Anika: The Lord Gave the Word ~ Handel

Lloyd: Beautiful ~ Soul Frame

What will you dance to at your wedding?

Anika: Ne m'oublie pas (Don't forget me) ~ Unknown

[Evidently I'm not going to get married until Alzheimer's has well and truly set in...]

[*Lloyd imagining the scene*: Anika: No, sweetheart, I'm the other one...]

Lloyd: Never take friendship personal ~ Anberlin

[?]

What do you think of your friends?

Anika: Unless the Lord Builds The House... ~ Sons of Korah

[...I'm not inviting them 'round to tea.]

Lloyd: Stereo ~ Fourth Avenue Jones

[Amusing, considering a portion of the lyrics goes, "All I need to survive is a simple stereo."]

..and we couldn't bear the fun to end, so we made up some questions of our own...

How are you feeling?

Anika: Psalm 15 ~ Sons of Korah

Lloyd: Glass Houses ~ Wishful Thinking

What is your worst nightmare?

Anika: Recois Ma Vie (Receive my life) ~ Sylvain Freymond

Lloyd: Take this life ~ Paul Wright

[Neither of us is into assisted suicide, evidently.]

What is your fondest dream?

Anika: Jardins de Novembre (November Gardens) ~ Louis Chadourne

Lloyd: Letters to the President ~ Hawk Nelson

What is your worst memory?

Anika: Let Your Kingdom Come ~ Sovereign Grace Memories

Lloyd: Can You Hear Me? ~ Audience

What will they play at your funeral?

Anika: Nothing without you ~ Eric and Leslie Ludy

Lloyd: Caroline ~ Seventh Day Slumber

[While people find it hard to believe how they can survive without Anika, they can't even remember Lloyd's name...]

Labels: brothers, music, the internet is a funny thing, why do I do this?

posted by Anika Qing @ 6:51 PM 1 comments

26 May 2009

The best things in life are free....

...this, for example!

Labels: links, music

posted by Anika Qing @ 3:42 PM 0 comments

22 May 2009

Honesty and openness

Living with an attitude of honesty and openness is very important. Some thoughts I've been pondering...

Honesty requires faith
If you are going to be honest, there are times that you are going to have to admit both your frailty and your sinfulness; admit you're not God and admit you're not good at being human. It is only when you can trust God to be God that you can relax and be a joyful human and it is only when you trust Jesus to fully pardon that you can walk in the light which exposes sin. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. ~ 1 John 1:6-7

Getting over yourself
If you are going to be honest, you are going to have to acknowledge that other people are equals. You will acknowledge that you don't have to suffer as some sort of martyr whose exquisite thoughts of joy and sorrow (that undoubtedly adorn your heart at every moment) are too precious to intimate to the crude and unsensitive hoi poloi. You are going to have to realise that maybe not all your profundities are pearls, and maybe not everyone else is a pig. Simply put, you have to be sensible enough to realise that we're all pilgrims on the same journey, with the same struggles and in God's sight, we're all the same. If you can give help with your words, do so. If you need help, ask. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. ~ 1 John 1:2-3

Discretion: you have to be honest about God
In other words, you have to (again) acknowledge your frailty. You are not God. There are some things that are none of your business and as you don't make the rules, you have to abide by His. You have no right to betray confidences, for example. Additionally, you're not really interesting enough to bore everyone with every emotion you've experienced since birth. You have to be honest about the fact that telling some people some things in some settings is dishonest, because it may be giving impressions that you don't want to give. Because the point is not self-disclosure or yet hiddenness. It's about serving God. It's just that serving God entails being humble, not patronising others, giving others help and receiving it.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. ~ 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Thoughts about how this works out practically?

Labels: application, commanded to post, honesty, humility, I wish I knew the answer to tricky questions like this

posted by Anika Qing @ 9:15 AM 1 comments

11 May 2009

We might be more holy if we "forgave" less often...

...in so far as if we took the time to take off the garb of the martyr and stop thinking pious "forgiving" thoughts, we might actually find that there is nothing to forgive, and that our woundedness stems from our own sin problem as expressed in touchiness.

Seeing as a part of holiness is being willing to acknowledge our own sin...

Labels: incomplete thoughts

posted by Anika Qing @ 1:52 PM 2 comments

13 April 2009

O Perfect Love is a hymn about marriage?

I starting to think I'm hopelessly naive.

This evening I get out my Rejoice! hymn book* for my daily half-hour of hymn-playing, open up to O Perfect Love and start playing and quietly singing the words. For the umpteenth time the question flashes into my mind as to why the committee decided to put this hymn all the way at the back, right next to a version of Psalm 128 and Happy the Home that Welcomes You, Lord Jesus - indeed, under the "Christian Marriage and the Home" section. I always play it right before launching into The Church's One Foundation...

And then it dawned on me.

O perfect Love,

all human thought transcending

lowly we kneel

in prayer before Your throne

that theirs may be

the love that knows no ending

whom, Lord, forevermore

You join in one.

Really, "joining in one" should have sort of given it away. Except that I was thinking more along these lines:

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. ~ 1 Corinthians 10:16-18

...rather than along these lines....

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. ~ Genesis 2:24

My mistake aside, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter, giving thanks to the One whose perfect love and sacrifice has not only given the example and foundation for Christian marriage but brought together sinners from every nation into one body, the church and bride of Christ!

*Hymn book commissioned by the PCA(ustralia) in the 1980s; that's where I found the version of Be Thou My Vision that Mrs. CarpeBanana liked.

Labels: Christ, gospel, hope, love, wedding

posted by Anika Qing @ 6:11 PM 3 comments

03 April 2009

Quick note

If you're interested in home-schooling, you might like to read Mr. Bird's interview of me on his blog. (Here's hoping that I didn't make any grammatical errors. That would be distinctly embarrassing...) While you're there, be sure to look around - he writes about things in a very thoughtful way.

Labels: home-schooling, links

posted by Anika Qing @ 8:29 AM 2 comments

31 March 2009

3 months of reading

[January]

Transcending Terror: A History of Our Spiritual Quest and the Challenge of the New Millennium ~ Ian Hackett
So Much More ~ Anna Sofia & Elizabeth Botkin
C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer: Lessons for a New Century from the Most Influential Apologists of Our Time ~ Scott R. Burson & Jerry L. Walls
What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf
A Rare Benedictine: The Twenty-First Chronicle of Brother Cadfael ~ Ellis Peters
Monk's Hood: The Third Chronicle of Brother Cadfael ~ Ellis Peters
Puritan Papers: Vol. 4: 1965-1967 ~ J.I. Packer [ed.]

[February]

A Mighty Heart ~ Mariane Pearl
Midi, la nuit ~ Marc Baconnet
A Short History of Australia ~ Manning Clark
Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia ~ John Fitzgerald
Unravelling Identity: Immigrants, Identity and Citizenship in Australia ~ Trevor Batrouney & John Goldlust
En Prison ~ Frédéric Boyer

[March]

Seeing With New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition Through the Lens of Scripture ~ David Powlison
Squire (Protector of the Small, Book 3) ~ Tamora Pierce
Nothing in My Hand I Bring ~ Ray Galea
Respectable Sins ~ Jerry Bridges
Early Christian Writings ~ Maxwell Staniforth
The Power in Prayer ~ Charles Spurgeon
Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairy Stories ~ Diane Purkiss

Feel free to ask my thoughts on any of the above and provide your own thoughts on those you have read. I'll do this after every three months, seeing as I deleted my "currently reading" list from the side-bar. (Oh, and just because I've read 20 books doesn't necessarily mean I'm a good reader. I have some very poor reading habits which mean that I don't always profit as well as I ought...)

Labels: books

posted by Anika Qing @ 7:00 PM 2 comments

...if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)

About Me

Name: Anika Qing
Home: Queensland, Australia
About Me: "I'm a poor sinner and nothing at all, but Jesus Christ is my all in all."
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