In 2020, Jason Goh was stuck back in Singapore, with nowhere to go. He’d been running his ministry since 1999, serving children with childcare, and afterschool classes. It had grown from one small centre in Thailand, to what was now 30 different locations in both Thailand and Myanmar.
But he was now stuck in Singapore, fully locked-down. During that period, a board member invited him to serve on the board of The Helping Hand.
But after 4 months of being on the board, Mervyn Lim, who was the CEO then, asked if he would be willing to join the executive team and spiritually mentor the staff. Jason agreed. Why not? There was nothing to lose, and much to gain. He loved ministering to these ex-offenders and found them to be people with great heart.
Yet he could not understand why they kept falling back to their old ways, especially when some of them seemed gritty, strong, and fully able to overcome their addiction. As he spoke more to them, he understood why.
Three residents shared with him on three separate occasions, about the common thing their peers often said to them, when they started being more zealous for God.
“We’ll see how long you last.”
They would look at them raising their hands during chapel services, going regularly to church, and they would sulk, saying “We will see how long you last.”
This wasn’t just a case of ‘sour grapes’, where peers saw someone else’s recovery, and thought, “ah, that’s not very nice.” These peers wanted recovery themselves.
Rather, it was more like the “crabs in a bucket” mentality, where some were upset from seeing someone else’s recovery, and thought about how to pull down someone else.
You might think that such a remark “we’ll see how long you last,” does not sound very significant. Does it even mean much?
But it immediately sows a seed of doubt in the overcomer’s mind, making them think,
maybe it is a matter of time before I fail again.
So why fight so hard? Why not just get a quick high today?
But these things don’t only happen in a halfway house.
They happen in our lives too. You may have achieved something worth celebrating, like a promotion. But you see the rest of your colleagues sitting glumly there, not looking particularly happy for you. Instead they say, “I didn’t want the promotion and the added responsibility anyway.”
Worse still, you hear whispers behind your back about how you’re not very good at your new managerial responsibilities. None of this is easy.
But it is a necessary part of maturation in learning how to deal with criticism and people who may not always have your back.
Personally, something that has helped is from Daniel Wong's book, where he recommends people to write two things they are proud of, and one thing they can improve. This keeps you focused on progress, not perfection.
Once, as I was sharing this journey of imperfection with my therapist, and asking him why people didn't seem able to validate my progress, he said,
Shamed people, shame people.
Sometimes, people's criticism come from a place of pain. Recognising that, helps us to be compassionate to their pain, and to learn to move forward.
Not what humans say, but “What does God say?”
Jason is heartbroken when he hears stories like that. It often leads to those he discipled falling back into the vortex of drug addiction, because they could not deal with the words that were coming their way.
And that’s why Jason thought one vital way was to help them to improve their contact with God.
Because when that happened, church was no longer perfunctory, but transformational.
It was then, and only then their life would be different, from the inside out. Because their sense of security no longer came from what people said, but what God said.
Which was why when Jason arrived, he quickly thought of how to imbibe Christ-centredness in every area of the work. It started from pre-work prayers together, to centre one’s heart on Christ before the work began.
It then moved on to truly depending on God for every single thing, and not just using one’s human knowledge to think about how to earn or fundraise more.
Not just outward profession, but inward transformation
Because when we use our own knowledge, instead of God’s wisdom, then we may end up simply being a Christian by name, but not necessarily in how we live. We’re outwardly professing God’s name, but inwardly, we might not be truly depending on God for every need.
“Like a Christian atheist?” I ask. I remember the book by Craig Groeschel that sparked a deeper reflection about whether I was truly living as a Christian, or simply as someone who professed to be. It wasn’t hard to find the signs.
For example, I would pray when I needed something, but when things were going well, my prayers would disappear.
”My selfish Christian Atheist view was that God existed for me, rather than I for him. If he'd do what I thought he should, I'd trust him more. If he'd come through for me, I'd give him more of my life.
If he made my life better and pain-free, I'd believe him more passionately. But anytime God didn't meet my expectations, we had a problem. God created me in his image. I returned the favor and created him in mine.
The kind of God I wanted to believe in was this: if he's not what I want, then he can't have my whole life."
- The Christian Atheist: Believing in God but Living As If He Doesn’t Exist; by Craig Groeschel
Already, I could see this playing out in my new role as a fundraiser. I would try everything I humanly knew to raise more money such as running Facebook campaigns, writing newsletters, and talking to possible donors. But it was hard to think that I could pray for God to bless us with the resources that we needed.
Could I really call myself a Christian in this way?
Jason pauses as I spit out these concerns I have. He gently points out that professing, without transforming our core heart of hearts, easily happens for many.
But the first step to change is often that self-awareness.
And now that I was aware, I could begin to change.
As you read this today, perhaps some questions worth thinking about are:
- Where are the parts of your life that you find depending on yourself, rather than God?
- Might God sometimes be more of an afterthought, rather than the first thought?
- How might you like to change this?