Posts by Pr Tan Hui Ru

In today’s world, we like to think that each of us are independent, self-determined, reliant only on ourselves, in charge of our own destinies. We tell children, “you can be whatever you want to be!” and we emphasise that it’s all up to their own effort and hard work. We also truly believe that for ourselves. But is that really the truth? Is everything solely up to us…

There’s a common denominator that cuts across all peoples, social classes, and ages – and that commonality is suffering. All of us suffer though to different degrees, and none of us want to suffer. We want to know why God would let us go through what doesn’t seem good to us. Isn’t He supposed to want only good for us (Matt 7:11, Rom 8:28, Jas 1:7)? And in trying to…

A number of years ago, it was very common for people to tag their social media posts with #blessed. And it was used when you feel blessed, when you got something that you really really want, or even just unexpected good news that gave you joy. For a while, it was even used by Christians as a way to say that these were blessings from God. What was interesting, however, is…

Much of the world around us gives us only two choices: it’s either black or white, night or day, right or left, up or down. And with that prompting from nature around us, we also think about our faith in this way: we either have faith, or we don’t; we either have doubts, or we don’t. There’s nothing wrong with these two statements of either-or, but the difficulty comes…

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12:31, Lev 19:18). We all know this. It’s one of the two greatest commandments in the Bible, and it summarises the whole of God’s law together with “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul”. In theory, we all also know what it means – treat others like how we want them to treat us. In other…

Today is the very last day of 2023. And while there’s nothing really but a societally imposed difference between today, the last day of 2023, and tomorrow, the first day of 2024, it’s still a useful marker for us. It’s a time when people reflect about the year that has passed and start thinking about new year’s resolutions, how they want to live differently in the year…