Celebrating the Challenge of Christmas!

by Martin Jalleh
Christmas Day, 2010

Christmas is here. For many of us who are Christians, we have allowed rampant commercialisation and the “Walt Disneyfication” of Christmas to reduce our Christian spirituality to mere sentimentality.

By all means, let us enjoy the carols, cakes, cool cards and cozy nativity scenes, but let us also put Christ back into Christmas and remind ourselves that Christ did not enter a world of comfortable spiritual sentiment.

Whilst commenting on what King Herod represents in the Christmas story a Bible scholar describes the real world in which Jesus Christ entered into and why He did: “Herod represents the dark side of the gospel. He recognizes something about Jesus that in our sentiment we fail to see: that the birth of this child is a threat to his kingdom, a threat to that kind of domination and rule. Jesus challenges the very power structures of this evil age.”

“Jesus enters a world of real pain, of serious dysfunction, a world of brokenness and political oppression. Jesus was born an outcast, a homeless person, a refugee, and finally he becomes a victim to the powers that be. Jesus is the perfect savior for outcasts, refugees, and nobodies. ” Continue reading “Celebrating the Challenge of Christmas!”

Winners ignored, 5th placers lauded?

by Ooi Chin Wah
Letters
Malaysiakini
Dec 22, 10

The World Robot Olympiad (WRO) is an event for science, technology and education, that brings together youths from all over the world in order to develop their creativity and problem solving skills through challenging and educational robot competitions.

Participating teams need to create, design and build a robot model that looks or behaves like human.

This year the task of organising the competition was given to the Philippines. The Ministry of Education and many private companies in the Philippines jointly sponsored the event.

The steering committee consists of well-known academicians from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Singapore. 250 teams from 22 countries participated. Continue reading “Winners ignored, 5th placers lauded?”