Happy New Year!

I was reading Philip Yancey's The Jesus I never Knew just as we approach 2010. He looks at how Jesus was tempted and how Satan proposed an enticing improvement, that is Satan tempted Jesus toward the good parts of being human without the bad: - to savor the taste of bread without being subject to the fixed rules of hunger and of agriculture, to confront risk with no real danger, to enjoy fame and power without the prospect of painful rejection. In short, to wear a crown but no cross.

I am naturally drawn to compare it with our political situation here in Malaysia. Malaysians are tempted also in many ways to keep the status quo. We are tempted to savor the taste of bread in the forms of subsidy, allocation, bribery and all sorts of monetary rewards so that we will not go hungry in the short term but once hook up, we will never willing to forgo it because it's easy and effort free.

Decades of social re-engineering through NEP, a vast majority of Malaysians are made to believe that risk in economy activity can be overcome with Government's help. They are told to involve in the business but at the same time they are told they will be protected from failure. As a result, many of them growing up know only survive on Government's bailout. They know very little that in business, failure is actually a mother of all successes. But here they want success without the danger of failure and avoid all suffering and effort.

2010 is here now, so Happy New Year.