I’m really glad being able to come to TRAIN today, I was a contemplating a bit on Sunday, thinking that I’d probably can use an extra day off since the last few weeks has been occupied with work deadlines, uni assignments and other commitments.

But then I realized after having Jet, I haven’t been able to attend many training events (Focus team, SUS Indo, PTC are all out of questions for me at least for this year 🙁 ) nor being able to spend time with the guys. So I decided to go and I purposedly declined a generous over to travel by car to TRAIN so that I might be able to talk to people who were going with bus.

I am not attempting to cover every talks and these points below are a bit disjointed as:

1. I am not really good at summarizing maybe someone would do a better job 
2. 11 chapters in one day, there bound to be lots to digest (was thinking of listening to MP3 recording once they are made available for download).

These are the points that I got out from the talks:

• In studying Genesis, we must think of what questions does Genesis ask us rather than imposing our questions on it. An example of this is, whether or not we should support a theistic evolution view (God created the world using evolution). Phillip cleverly avoided giving us his opinion on this, instead he pointed out that this isn’t a question that Genesis to trying to address. Genesis isn’t interested about the mechanism of the creation but more on its meaningfulness. Some of the questions that Genesis is addressing are: who are human, what’s the purpose of human, who’s controlling the world?

• Humanity is created in male and female. It is not 2 humanity but one. Humanity as a whole is the image of God, not so much of individuals. I would like Phillip to explore about singleness issue a bit as it’s easy to get the impression that marriage is the only proper expression of humanity (being created male and female) or maybe this isn’t the question that Genesis is addressing? Hm, I don’t know, anyone got a different conclusion?

• Genesis 1:26-31: Our divine appointment by God to rule over the creation under Him is what define humanity. It’s not our ability to think that differentiate us from other created beings (although I used to think this way), if monkey can be trained to talk and think, it is still not human. Also I was thinking if someone has some sort of mental disability he is no less human than Einstein for instance, as both have the same appoinment from God. This I think, has the implications on where Christians should stand in issues like euthanasia, abortion, stem cell research and cloning. Phillip didn’t delve in any of these issues as understandably the time was short. Phillip reminded us to be aware of clever men who say cleverness is the essence of humanity.

• Genealogy in Genesis 5 has a purpose (and indeed genealogies in the bible are purposeful), it shows the search of the promised serpent crusher (which of course will be found in Jesus hundreds of years down the track).

• Being reminded of the consquences of atheism belief. I always thought that atheism is quite harmless, I mean frankly if one does not believe in God, it is his own business, but being reminded from history how such a belief can cause terrible things, Hitler was example of what an atheististic mindset is capable of doing.