About
Zetian Lin (Sebastian Zack Tin Lahm; Zãaktîn Läm; Sebastian René Higgins)
Email: zahktin.lahm [at] outlook [dot] com (please at least refer me by my name in the email
pgp key signature: B693 CF03 6019 3DA2 EB54 D44A 593E EBE8 15DA B9D9 (new key!)
Observer of indiecomputing. Write programs & enjoy modern art.
Spends most of his free time thinking about stuff.
Somewhat of a Christian (although some people might disagree. See the "My current belief" section below.)
Cantonian activist, anarcho-reactionary.
Sometimes also as "Zack Lahm".
"Sebastian (René) Higgins" is a pseudonym I use for online activities (2020~now). I used to use different pseudonyms for different activities to retain a certain degree of anonymity, but that's no longer suitable for my current plan. It may still spring up from time to time due to outdated config.
"Zãaktîn Läm" is my real name in my first language (Cantonese), written in the latest draft of FCAC Cantonese Romanization.
My current belief
I call myself a Christian based on the following two facts: (1) I believe that God exists and it do be the God depicted in the Bible; (2) I believe that Jesus do be the Son of God and did infact die for my sin. While I'm neither baptized nor a formal member of any specific Church, I do try to go to my local Quakers' weekly meeting regularly and would like to be a member of such.
I tried to summarize what I truly believe at this point before, and I shall list them here.
- I indeed do be someone who sinned, and thus innately have a need to be saved.
- You can't expect God to hand you your salvation directly; you have to work towards it.
- You work towards God, not a specific Church.
- People sin. Most, if not all of them do.
- Unlike what other people might have believed, Christianity is a religion of sinners. The faith of you only starts when you are going through the utmost failure of your life and realize that only God can truly save you from your failure. Not the Church - not any Church.
- I don't believe in "converting non-Christian". I believe that true faith comes and can only come from learning and (especially) deep self-reflection. All deliberate preaching (the ones done by LDS, Jehovah's Witness and evangelical protestant churches, for example) are inherently (at least partially) not true faith.
- I don't really believe anyone could "born Christian" in the sense that I don't believe anyone could born as a believer of Christianity. You can born to be a member of a group but not a holder of a faith. Infant baptism doesn't count in my opinion. (Let's say there's one child that's born in a Christian family and his family goes to the Church together every Sunday; when he still goes to the Church because it's what they've been doing all his life and not because it's what he himself has decided that he needs to do, who is to say that his act of going to the Church is definitely anything truly of faith and not merely continuing a family tradition which is, in a fundamental way, not really that far from other trivial things like us Cantonese having hot pots on winter solstice?)
- Most Church serves as a community more than it serves as a place to bring faith into one's mind. One must take this fact into account when evaluating any Church as a whole entity.
- God's Plan, or as I like to call it, "Mandate of Heaven", exists. It's just that it's very massive and its timeline is very stretched out that it seems like there's no plan at all at personal level; and of course each individual are just miniscule details at that level, and this is when it feels unjust. To be honest, this disparity is sometimes way too annoying even for me, but I suppose sinners like me don't get to be choosers.
- At least a major part of God manifests as the rule of causality, i.e. the fact that things lead to consequences; this is what "God is always just" truly means.
- Hell exists, but it's not the one some may illustrate. Hell is the reality we're in.
- What use is it to join a random Church and claim to be a Christian just so that you can get whatever you can from the fact that you're a member of the Church? Do you really think that God would only base His decision on whether you're in "one of 'His'" Church and wouldn't care if you are not faithful? God knows everything, including your intentions.