City Harvest Church scandal is Singaporean greed, not “Western”.

City Harvest Church is a very wealthy Christian church in Singapore. It requires its members to donate 10% of their income to the church. It has 24,000 members, so it takes little calculation to realize that City Harvest Church's income from this largely young professional congregation, is vast. Recently there has been a scandal at City Harvest Church. The Star carried an article by Seah Chiang Nee about it that was most odd in its assertions. In response, I wrote the letter below, to the Star, hoping it would be published. Four days have now passed and it has not. Normally the Star publishes letters before then, so I am assuming that they are not going to publish this one, though I am prepared to be surprised. Given my assumption, I have pasted the text of my letter below. Thank you.

"I object, strongly, to Seah Chiang Nee’s bizarre assertion, in his article “The rise of the mega-churches”, that the alleged crime of Kong Hee and his fellow pastors, in misusing 23 million Sing. Dollars, was somehow the fault of the “West”. It was not. It was the simple and direct product of Singaporean greed.

I have lived in many countries, both Western and Asian. I have visited around 20 countries in my life. Of all those countries, Singapore is by far the most obsessed by money. It does not surprise me in the least, that a Singaporean pastor, of a very wealthy church, should be accused of using tax-free charity funds for inappropriate purposes – in this case, funding his wife, Sun Ho’s, pop music career to win more converts.

Seah Chiang Nee argues that City Harvest Church is just copying the fundraising zeal of TV evangelists, in the US. This is nonsense. Had the Americans not pioneered this kind of prosperity theology, it is certain that the Singaporeans would have stumbled on it, themselves. Singapore is highly inventive in all the ways to make money. They don’t need to be instructed in finding money-making schemes, by the Americans.

Furthermore, it is very self-serving, of Seah Chiang Nee, to explicitly defend a fellow Chinese man, by suggesting that his crime was somehow America’s fault. Kong Hee did not allegedly misuse that money because of America – if he did it, it was because of his implicit own character flaws, around the issue of money. The responsibility for this crime does not lie far away, but very nearby. Singaporeans need not  look for others to blame, in a rather paranoid fashion, but need to own up to their own crimes and their own criminals, should these be so proven to be. Only then will there be the possibility of addressing the underlying problems. As long as Asians blame the West for their own problems, those problems will remain unfixed. Asians should take responsibility for their own flaws – then try to overcome them.

Finally, it must be said, most clearly, that greed is not a "Western norm", as implied by Mr Seah's article...nor is the misuse of monies. It is deeply offensive to all Westerners that he should suggest so. Furthermore, the "West" is not defined by America, or what transpires there - there are many Western countries, each with somewhat different cultures. Mr. Seah should find out more about the West before making such allegations. In particular, he should note that a typical Western country is far less obsessed by money, than is Singapore."

Perhaps my letter to the editor about City Harvest Church was a little too strong to be published. Never mind, please comment below if you have anything to contribute. Thank you.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

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I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

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Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.) 

Being ordinary or extraordinary.

What is the difference between being ordinary or being extraordinary? Sometimes they are one and the same.

I once wrote about the gifted child’s viewpoint of others, in a post, “Gifted or Impaired?”. My basic contention in that post was that a gifted child may not conceive of themselves as gifted, but of everyone else as “impaired”. I had an interesting conversation with Ainan a couple of days ago, which called to mind that post.

I had come to understand that Ainan had a strange view of his gifts. So, I tried to make him see that what he could do was extraordinary.

“It is all ordinary.”, he retorted. “Everything is ordinary.”

There was an expansiveness in his “everything” that led me to understand something. For Ainan, there are NO extraordinary achievements, in this world – everything is lumped under the “ordinary” title he was bestowing on it.

I tried to counter him, but it was no use. He left the conversation with the same view he had held at the beginning: that everything he had been able to do in his life was “ordinary” – and that, perhaps, everything everyone else had proven able to do was “ordinary” too. Ainan’s inner standard for what would amount to “extraordinary” was so high that nothing and no-one – except perhaps comic book fictional superheroes – could possibly qualify as “extraordinary”.

In a way, I see Ainan’s viewpoint on the matter of what constitutes a special gift, as a defence mechanism. By conceiving all that he has done and can do as “ordinary”, he does not separate himself from others – he can be one among all. I suppose that there is some psychological security in that. He can feel that he belongs, in a way that, perhaps, to an objective outsider, he might not seem to belong at all.

I didn’t press the point. I am comfortable with Ainan’s conception of himself, if it makes him feel more comfortable being who he is, as it seems to. Indeed, his view of himself does rather agree with my understanding that gifted children might not necessarily be able to see their own gifts. Should they try to understand them, they might, instead, come to view others as “less than ordinary” or “impaired”. Ainan has, indeed, come to a version of this understanding. Ainan has come to the view that there is no such thing as extraordinary accomplishment – because he is, of course, benchmarking all such accomplishments against what he can do himself. Given the level of what he can do and does quite casually, nothing, by comparison, seems extraordinary anymore. Hence, he conceives of a very ordinary world, in which there is nothing special in a child being the youngest in the world to have passed O level, or being in College – as he was – at 8 years old. To Ainan, that is all very ordinary.

At this time, therefore, I have a truer understanding of Ainan than he does himself. He does not see the wider world just yet. He has seen only a small sliver of that world – a small, very academic sliver. So, he cannot yet see his place in the fullness of the world. I wonder, now, how he will feel when he comes to the realization  - which is pretty certain to come, one day – that he is very far from ordinary. Will he be able to adjust to such an understanding? Will he live in denial and try to hold onto his view that “everything is ordinary”. We shall see. In the meantime, I won’t raise the matter, again, but will watch, instead, for signs of how his world view is developing.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)