Blog 9. The Crash of Ego

    On Sunday, my friend invited me to attend an activity of a Chinese church.  Though I am a determined free thinker, I was attracted by the preach by a paster during that activity.  The content of the preach is about the crash of ego (translated from Chinese by me), which is quite meaningful.
    What is the crash of ego?  Why the ego should crash?
    First, this paster told us a story that Jesus saved a servant of a certain centurion.  There were three interesting sentences.  First one is that "he is worthy for you to do this for him,
for he loves our nation, and he built our synagogue for us."  which said by the messenger who was sent for Jesus.  The point of this sentence is that the messenger took the Jesus's grace for granted which is the ego.  However, according to the Bible, what all people have including their body, foods and even the ceils are all provided by the God.  People do not deserve them.  Second interesting sentence is  that "lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I am not worthy for you to come under my roof.
Therefore I didn’t even think myself worthy to come to you;
but say the word, and my servant will be healed.
For I also am a man placed under authority, having under myself soldiers.
I tell this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes;
and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it."  These were the words of the centurion which shows that though the centurion was well off, he did not take what he owned for granted and he even did not think he deserved them.  Then the Jesus said "I tell you, I have not found such great faith, no, not in Israel."   After it, the centurion's servant was recovered.  The paster said because the centurion crashed himself, the God rewarded him.  And he gave an example, when Moses, the King of Hebrew, was the prince of Ergypt, he could not achieve anything, but after he lived through 40 years as a sheepherder, he got the help of the God and release Hebrew. 
    Personally, it is very tough for me to accept the fact that there is a powerful God in the world, but I am glad to admit the moral parts of Christian which are not contradictory to our Chinese traditional morality.  For instance, the crash of ego is quite similar to a famous saying that when heaven is about to palce a great achievement on a person, it always tests resolution first, exhausts him, makes him suffer and frustrated his efforts.  Also, I am proud that this saying is hundreds of years earlier than the Bible.  Are you?