cell membrane

As an engineer I am used to study for engineering courses. Most of these courses have to be studied with learning how to solve problems (assignment questions). So understanding the theory might not as important (though, it helps and it makes you a better engineer). Somehow, I got a bit tired of engineering courses and decided to take a "free" course on human physiology (BIOL 273). It was fun, I have to learn to memorize text (and not numbers), and it was very interesting to know how the body works. It was also very fun that some CCFers from engineering and science were also taking that course at the same time. So, we engineers aimed to beat the science kids, but we couldn't beat the cookie eater.

I think high school science teaches about cell membrane in a very high level, and in BIOL 273 we went a bit deeper. These are some of the cell membrane's functions:

• Traffic control: semipermeable membrane that allows certain particle to pass and blocks others
• Protects the cell from outer environment
• Reads and process information: contains binding channels that reads information from an agent (hormone, protein, etc) and elicits a response

I might be a bit off so bear with me in my limited scientific knowledge.

I want to share a bit about the purpose of the ministry I am co-leading with Jon Lin, which is called  Breaking-down Brick Walls (BBW) (yes, we stole the name from a friend's blog name). The vision of our ministry is to help equip Christians into the service of God by imparting knowledge and teaching skills of various Christian topics (apologetics, bible studies, serving, etc) through workshop and discussions. We started as a ministry solely focused on apologetics, but later we expanded our scope across various Christian topics.

The more I think, ponder and talk (back and forth) with Jon about this ministry, I realize that our focus should not be so much about teaching people knowledge because people can just easily absorb a truth and believe it without thinking and questioning it. Besides, information is so easily accessible nowadays. Instead, our focus is   about helping people build a "biblical mental framework" that can teach them to filter knowledge. That people will not just blindly believe in one side of the argument without understanding where both sides of the arguments are coming from. Our aim is that through discussions we can incite people to think and question about the truths of our faith. 

Because it is so easy to just believe about what is taught in the church without looking in the bible. There is a lot of gain in "wrestling" with a passage of the bible (because a lot of verses are very hard to interpret). The more we wrestle, the more we gain from the riches of the Word of God  (instead of just believing everything a pastor say). Also, this is important especially since there are many false teachers in this age.

Since many Christians who grew up in church might think that Christianity is another part of their routine, that most of them might not be able to put in words the basic truths of our faith. It is important that we understand and think thoroughly and even question about our faith. We have to take ownership of our faith, meaning that I am not a Christian because I go to church or because my parents bring me to church, but that I decided to believe in Jesus Christ, who died for me on the cross for my sins. That I made that step of commitment knowing its implications (cost of discipleship).

Also, there are times when we are emotionally down, and the knowledge of our faith (assurance that God is faithful, the promises of God) is what we can cling on to persevere in our faith.

Moreover, there are many topics in which there is no black/white distinction of what is right or wrong (maybe because the bible is not clear about all topics) so a believer has to think critically and discern what biblical truths can be applied.

Similar to a cell membrane, a "biblical mental framework" has these benefits:

• Information control: discern between biblical and "sketchy" teachings
• Protects us from false teaching
• Process information: think critically about biblical truths and know how to apply them

There are two caveats:

1. This is more geared towards seasoned Christians. For new Christians, it is understandable that the focus is more on just learning biblical truths (and not so much questioning it). But as your grow in maturity in Christ Jesus, we are called to correctly handle the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15)
2. We believers have the Holy Spirit, and we acknowledge that He works in us and teaches us. So it's not just human thinking and knowledge, but it is taught by the Spirit and spiritually discerned (1 Cor 2:13)

Also, I talked in my past post about the importance of knowledge.