Goodbye 2011. Goodbye solar-powered Bible
Goodbye 2011. Goodbye solar-powered Bible!
Do you remember Plain Truth? If not let me refresh you, Plain Truth is a magazine, a colorful and glossy magazine famous in early 70s. Back in the 70s Plain Truth was a hot magazine in STAR and everyone (or almost everyone) subscribed to it because it was free, colourful, glossy and very much similar to the layout of TIME and Newsweek. But one thing not many people knew back then, Plain Truth was a Christian magazine. At its peak almost 8 million copies of the magazine were distributed free worldwide. The original Plain Truth was founded by the Worldwide Church of God, not a mainstream Christian denomination but nevertheless a Christian entity. With the death of its founder in the 80s the original Plain Truth folded. Plain Truth is still available as a magazine. In fact today there are two versions of the magazine available, one in UK and one in the US of A though their contents are radically different from the one in the 70s. Today, the magazine is no longer associated with the Worldwide Church of God.
Many of us, the 70s generation, had read the magazine but let us ask ourselves this RM5 million question? How many of these students converted to Christianity because of the magazine? The answer is zilch. As far as I knew, no one from STAR became a Christian (including my two Chinese classmates) because of the magazine.
There were many other peculiarities in the 70s. The 70s were the booming years for heavy metal bands like Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep and Deep Purple. The singers of these bands, besides wearing odd-looking and multi-coloured bell-bottomed pants that would look out of place today often had big chains (or shall I say necklaces) around their necks with that familiar Christian symbol. And how many of us followed suit. Many. While Mr Lawrence Foong was not looking or was busy with other things, we toiled during the Industrial Arts class to design an aluminium cross so we could wear one just like our favourite rock star. Of course, wearing crosses would not make us Christians. It was just a fad for even the rock stars that we industriously imitated were not Christians, most of them back then were either Buddhists, atheists or believers in some obscure religions like Kaballah.
And then there were Gideon Bibles. Once upon a time, Gideon Bibles were everywhere and in every hotel room in the country.The Bible took its name from Gideons International, an evangelical Christian organization dedicated to distributing copies of the Bible worldwide especially in hotel rooms. It is believed they have distributed almost 2 billion copies of Bible since 1908. When I was young I had travelled a lot and spent many sleepless nights alone in hotel rooms. When you had nothing to do in a hotel room, you either watch TV and remember in the days when they had Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms TV shows were lousy or you could choose to read something in order to fall asleep. Many times I had gone through this Gideon Bible out of curiousity. And I am sure a lot of other people did the same. But up until now, I have not heard of anyone, especially Malay, becoming a Christian just because of reading the Bible.
In fact, I have not met any Malaysian Malay Christian all my life - converted or not. Of course, I had read about Aishah Bukhari who converted because of love. She is the only Malaysian Malay whom I knew (not personally but through newspaper articles) who converted to Christianity. So when I read a few years ago that 250,000 Malays had quietly converted to Christianity I was a bit surprised. How come I had not known anyone if the number was so huge. Either I was a "katak bawah tempurung" or I was too stupid. But the figure was a blatant lie and when confronted the high cleric who cooked up the figure admitted it was a hoax. A church was almost burnt to the ground because of that.
Later on the same guy decided to ban a book by Lee Kuan Yew because of something the former Singapore PM had said about the Muslims in Singapore. Isn't it funny when everyday you come across all sorts of negative reportings about Islam, for example as recent as a few months ago we had a story of the bigot pastor who embarked on a crusade to burn Quran in America. Are we going to ban all newspapers because of such reports?
Christianity is a declining religion.The most recent American Religious Identification Survey shows the percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians has dropped more than 11% since 1990. However, Islam, Wicca and eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism showed large gains in the survey. And how about Christianity in Malaysia? Christians make up less than 10% of Malaysian population and most of them are concentrated in the states of Sabah and Sarawak. In Selangor, only about 4% are adherents of Christianity and in Perak about 3%.
The biggest threat to Islam is not Christianity but the Muslims themselves. When we become intolerant or when we fear JAIS more than God, then Islam has a problem.
As for the solar-powered Bible, the evangelist group whom produced it must be damn stupid. They could get better results by giving away iPod or iPhones. And why would you need solar power to read a Bible is beyond comprehension. Unless and until the day they show me what a solar-powered Bible look like, I am skeptical about the whole thing. Instead of complaining about solar-powered Bible, I suggest Islamic bodies in the country copy what Gideons International has been doing. Flood the world with readable Holy Quran and maybe Islam in the not too distant future will overtake Christianity as the world's biggest religion.