"Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings."

1 Peter 8-9

the theological depth of forgetting norway

for those of you who don't know, me and my waterloo housemates live on mcdougall rd in waterloo, and we've been known as mcdougall ever since. living with 4 other guys in the same house for almost 5 months now, there's been many experiences that we've had on our own, and we've grown to be like each other in different ways.

one of such ways is that we've began to pick up each other's mannerisms. i know that for a fact because i've heard many of my own catch phrases being used by my roommates. my fickle sarcasm has also been brushed off to some of them. let me explain to you one of mcdougall's most common phrases: "forget norway".

it all started in our very first term, when our rez friend jon lau showed us a video about lions and tigers. here is the link to the video:

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/kenya/

as you can see, this video is absolutely mesmerizing, and once this was shown again to mcdougall, all of us have fell in love with it, and our house has even been nicknamed "kenya", and unspoken meanings were created for lions and tigers. phrases like "holy crap!" was immediately replaced by "holy crap lions!"

but of course, i would say the most influential statement of the kenya video is the phrase "forget norway!". as seen in the video, the phrase was used to emphasize the importance of kenya, while at the same time demeaning the value of norway. of course, norway is nowhere related to what the video was portraying, and most people would consider the comment as "random" or "it doesn't make any sense" or any derivative of such comments. but mcdougall has understood this phrase much more fully.

we understood that this phrase can clearly emphasize the importance of one thing, while decreasing the importance of another. therefore, whenever in such situations, the phrase can easily depict such an impression to our fellow housemates. because of its flexibility, the phrase soon became part of our normal lingo. and as i thought more and more of it, and the different situations where it's been used, i believe that there's been a theological lesson embedded in these two simple words.

forgetting norway reminds us of the things that we place too much importance on, and elevates what we do need to place importance on. many times i find myself dwelling on thoughts and ideas that are not good for me. instead, my focus should be on God alone. we should all be lifting our concerns, burdens and energies to Christ, because he should be our source. many times we find ourselves overburdening ourselves. maybe it's with school, or maybe it's with relatoinships with particular people, or maybe it's with just work in general. if we spent all our time and energy doing all of this for our own good, is that the right way? maybe at these moments, it's time to tell yourself to forget norway, and give it up to God.

therefore, i encourage you to give thought to think about what have you been spending all your time doing, and what of such things have been too self-focused. if you want to talk about this subject, feel free to msn me and we can talk. and you can also tell me what you think about the video, and if you see any more lessons that God may be teaching you through such a rich demonstration of multimedia.

and for those that think this blog is stupid and pointless.. forget norway man.



(today after church, i was conversing with some friends from church, and they've given me positive feedback about the interest of the content of this blog. to the point that i've often been referred to as the name of this blog, victro. thank you to all supporters of victro's blog!)