Birthday Thoughts

I celebrated my birthday a couple of weeks back.

I usually don't, because I don't feel comfortable with people making a fuss over me. Most of the time my birthday is forgotten, because Jessiah's (my firstborn) birthday is less than a week before mine, so he gets all the attention. And I'm cool with it.

(He was supposed to be born on my birthday; I guess he was too impatient to wait another week!)

So how did I spend my birthday? I started off with worship, of course.

1. Thy Loving Kindness (D-E major)
2. My Life is in You, Lord (G major)
3. Through it all (G-A Major)
4. How Great is Our God (A major).

Then I continued with an ordinary day at work. It's a blessing to be happy and satisfied stuffing envelopes and pasting stamps on my birthday (that's NOT my usual routine, but it just had to be done by that day). Finally the day ended off with meeting the wife for a movie (17 Again). Yup, that was pretty much it.

In my university days I had a forbid fascination with cults. And my favorite cult in those days was the Jehovah's Witnesses. They were a textbook study of standard cult psychology and got me interested in studying Christian doctrine in detail. What fascinated me was how carefully they used their differences with standard Christian doctrine both for branding and for making their members feel superior to rank-and-file Christians, that they had some secret insider knowledge. Very Nicolaitan, right?

And one of their pet 'doctrines' was that birthdays were pagan celebrations, that the two times birthdays were described in the Bible bad things happened, and so genuine servants of Jehovah (what they CLAIM to be) should have nothing to do with birthday celebrations, whether their own or someone else's.

I was exposed to all these ideas in my undergrad days, so later on, when some Christians I knew suddenly started telling me that Christmas was a pagan festival and that Christians should ONLY observe Jewish feasts, I just smiled and left the matter at that. I already saw how similar ideas (in fact, for the JW exactly the same idea, Christmas) were used, and saw the fruits firsthand. I'll pass, thanks!

Birthdays can, in fact they ought, to be used for remembering God. In Psalm 139:13-14, we read "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." But in the course of day to day life it's easy to forget to thank God for creating us in the first place. Birthdays provide an excellent platform for remembering and celebrating that.

The JW do have a point though (you never thought I'd ever say that, right?). They assert that birthdays take glory away from God and put it on the individual. And I have seen people who behave as if birthdays were their day of glory, that they should be allowed to do whatever they like on their respective birthdays. Such people who act in the spirit of Pharaoh (who executed a prisoner on that day, Gen 40:22) and Herod, who on his birthday had John the Baptist executed. Some people act as if their birthday celebrations gave them the right to treat other people badly or to demand that their whims and fancies be met, regardless of how much trouble they cause the people around them.

I personally believe that birthdays give us the opportunity to express who is the most important person in our lives. If we are self-centered, how we celebrate our birthdays will reveal that. If we live for Christ, how we celebrate our birthdays will reflect that too. I still remember the birthday party of one of my good friends. A few years ago he said "It's MY birthday, I want to spend it worshiping Jesus, so you all HAVE to join me!"

Please don't get me wrong. I am not saying that how I celebrated my birthday is the best way or the correct way. I am just sharing some thoughts and memories triggered by my own birthday, OK?

So in closing I'd say I am quite OK with how my birthday went this year. Of course there are still some items on my birthday wish list that I'd like to have, such as :

1) A working computer, my previous one zonked out (a laptop would be nice)

2) A video cam, I have still have lots more vids I'd like to record and put up

3) Training DVDs, both music and Budo

But in spite of not having all those things I am still content. I enjoyed myself on my birthday this year and for that I thank God. Many information marketing people on the Internet use their birthdays as an excuse for some special sale or promotion of their products. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, but I did not do that this year. Why? Because I have only ONE product at this point of time, I think it's weird to hold a birthday celebration sale just for that!

Yup, so that's it for this email. No special offer, no special promotion, just a simple sharing of my thoughts and musings. Be blessed!