Noel's blog
Here I irregularly inflict my thoughts upon the world.
Legalism in Prayer
· ☕ 5 min read · ✍️ noel
As I am writing this after a long time, I don’t know where to start. But I think this is important enough to be out there. Somewhere. I don’t know if anyone else has written something like this but if not it needs to be written. It needs to be said. I should also mention that this piece is only for mature Christians. What I want to talk about is an aspect of Christian life.
Are we tough enough for Ordinary Love?
· ☕ 6 min read · ✍️ noel
Sometimes, you come across a song that has so simple and yet profound meaning that they make you pause. Let’s talk about one such song today. The song is called ordinary love. & it’s from U2, the greatest rock band of this (and previous) generation (you can debate me later.). Anyways, the song is written in honor of Nelson Mandela. It starts with, The sea wants to kiss the golden shore The sunlight warms your skin All the beauty that's been lost before Wants to find us again What beautiful imagery.
Acts of Small Rebellions
· ☕ 5 min read · ✍️ noel
You might have heard the name of Martin Luther King and even heard his famous “I have a dream” speech. But did you know how the civil rights movement started? It started like this: Montgomery, Alabama. December 1, 1955. Early evening. A public bus pulls to a stop and a sensibly dressed woman in her forties gets on. She carries herself erectly, despite having spent the day bent over an ironing board in a dingy basement tailor shop at the Montgomery Fair department store.
Mercies New
· ☕ 4 min read · ✍️ noel
Regrets are the tollbooths of human life. Just like tollbooths, regrets stop us from whatever we are doing and exacts a price from our time & emotional energy. To me, living without regrets seems almost impossible. It seems to me that if we went in search for a man who had no regrets, we would never end our search. And if we do find one, I can safely say that we have found the most ignorant fool on earth.
This is how the world died
· ☕ 5 min read · ✍️ noel
Have you ever wondered, what would happen if suddenly the gentle pull of the earth was no more? What would happen if the weakest force of the universe ceased to exist? What if gravity was no more? Let’s imagine for a moment. First, all the vehicles will start flying in the air! Directed not by the friction between the road and the tyre but by the friction of air. All the people walking have just propelled themselves into the sky!
A Secret Chord
· ☕ 5 min read · ✍️ noel
It’s been long time since I wrote a blog. And there’s so much going on around the world and in my life that I don’t get time to write. I’ve been trying to focus my writing on current affairs but to my horror no affair seems to be current for more than a week. I’m like, “Hold on! Think about this for a moment.” But nobody’s listening. Everybody has moved on to the next big controversy.
Reflections on Nationalism in India
· ☕ 8 min read · ✍️ noel
It was in the month of February last year that anti-national slogans were chanted in the JNU campus and a students union president was arrested on the charges of sedition. Watching Kanhaiya’s videos on youtube, I couldn’t understand why there was such an uproar. We were supposed to be living in a democracy with freedom of speech as a fundamental constitutional right. I also had a very hard time (and still do) understanding the logic behind the involvement of our home minister in the matter of a student speaking his mind.
Scriptures of the secular age
· ☕ 5 min read · ✍️ noel
Scriptures has always held an important role in human culture and society. Scriptures, sacred texts of various religions, promoted a set of non-negotiable principles on which to construct a worldview. Our collective history shows us that we are peculiarly dogmatic creatures. So much so that G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.
Caste based reservations in India | A Christian Perspective
· ☕ 16 min read · ✍️ noel
This post is an compilation of 3 articles. The articles came about as a result of a Ahmedabad Reflection Forum meeting that I had the privilege to attend back in october. The goal of the forum is to discuss current issues with a Christian perspective and form Scripture based opinions. We had very heated discussion on caste based reservations in India with very strong arguments coming from both side of the fence.
The fallacy of Situationalism and Cultural Relativism
· ☕ 6 min read · ✍️ noel
Situationalism says that morality is determined by situations, and situations are relative; therefore, morality is relative. It says, even killing cannot be called wrong if done in self defense. Even stealing can be good if you are stealing a weapon from a terrorist. And since situations are so diverse and complex, it is unreasonable to hold universal moral absolutes. And thus, the situationalist concludes against moral absolutes because he finds all morality related to situations.
In Defense of Naivety
· ☕ 9 min read · ✍️ noel
“Naive” is generally a description we do not hold proudly. It is either used for children or for people who we see as immature or gullible. People who are not seasoned in the the ways of the world. Who are unsophisticated. Simpletons. It is not a word that majority of people would want to make to the shortlist of their character traits. It is perceived as a flaw. As something that needs to be corrected.
Journey Towards the Perfect Desktop Environment
· ☕ 7 min read · ✍️ noel
Many moons ago, I wrote about how discovered Archlinux. It’s nearly 6 years and Arch hasn’t let me down. Some people say that they use it at home but not on their main production system. Well I do. And even on my main production system it hasn’t let me down. I can’t remember when was the last time that Arch actually broke for me. It’s always been there. As a solid foundation on which to build my work environment.
Should a Christian eat ice cream? (and other important questions.)
· ☕ 10 min read · ✍️ noel
There it is. The question might sound absurd but it’s a very important question that you should consider. I just had a discussion about it with my friend Jack. I’m reproducing it from memory for your benefit. I was sitting on a bench, eating ice cream when all of a sudden I heard a voice behind me, Jack: Noel? (Me, looking back…) Me: Jack! Hello! How are you? Jack: I’m fine.

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