...to give more than I thought was possible.
...to give my life to a cause that most people think is beneath me.
...to care enough to let myself be hurt.
...to cry, to hunger, to be meek, to love peace, to be disliked enough that this applies to me.
...to believe that Love will not only always win, but has already won.
...to have hope that not only helps me live, but changes what I understand living to be.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Information, the Internet, and Education.
I'm sitting here at 2:20 AM, lazing about as I browse the Internet, realizing the seductive - perilous, even - nature of content.
That is to say: we find ourselves in an age where opinions, media, art - entertainment - is available in gross quantities (numerically and repulsively gross) never before imagined. I can easily lose myself in entire afternoons spent, one after the other, non-selectively feeding off the vast streams of information pouring out of the global system. Poring over entire ecosystems of wikipedia entries, examining the output of a single youtube figure, simply perched at twitter.com/#home continuously refreshing the figurative timestream of minutiae.
But what does this mean? I was raised to believe that education meant learning more about what is. As a youth, posted on the couch - legs crossed, neck bent - I perused the Worldbook Encyclopedia, egged on in my erudition by eager parents. I was told that knowing more about my world would render me better-equipped to engage with it.
But that was a different era; a time when information was scarce, valuable. I had entire classroom sessions about the Dewey Decimal System; we were inculcated with the view of library qua gateway to the world, where a handful of rooms - curated and organized by hand - served as world-by-proxy: the sum total of human knowledge and experience gathered, summed up, ordered and described. At such a time, it was quite possible to exhaust one's storehouse of information on any given topic: if I wanted to read about, say, the role of samurai in 19th-century Japan (and I did!), there were n books on said topic available to me. And n was often less than 15.
But were I a young lad in today's bazaar of inputs, I find a humanly inexhaustible resource. Simply googling "samurai" + "19th-century japan" returns over four hundred thousand page hits, from fanboyish (there's another word that didn't exist!) gushings to graduate-level research on primary sources. The new information generated and instantly available, on a daily basis, long outpaces my ability to take it in.
The ramifications of this are, to my mind, vast: acquiring more information is no longer a talent or skillset; anyone with a 5-year-old sidekick and a $50 data plan can do that. In this world of infinite content and global context, information is cheap: what is highly valuable is the skill of adjudicating between streams of content. What is pertinent - what is credible?
And, most importantly: how can this information be repurposed? Were I to simply become a living repository of, say, humanity's knowledge as pertains to a subgenre of early-2000s electronic music, or Civil War reenacting, or a certain type of cross-stitching technique, this is insufficient raison d'etre. Where does this information go? The $64,000 question is - to what end is this knowledge being directed?
Whether we do it through a twitter account, wordpress blog (sorry, blogspot...), youtube channel, indie music distribution, or other mode of expression, the word of the age is productivity. To use a business-centric buzzword: what is the value added to the end consumer by my step in the process? This is why we see old-world names like Virgin Megastores and Fat Beats rapidly disappearing: if animals roam free in the streets, then why go to a zoo? If information is widely and freely accessible in the internet, why go through a middleman?
The metaphor provides its own answer: Because a zoo tiger is a beautiful, serene creature, while a street tiger is a terrifying beast. Zoos provide stable, credible, curated environments for interacting with animals that would otherwise tear one's head off. This explains why blogs have evolved into the tastemakers of our time: whereas before the local snobby record store would provide an auteur's-eye-view of "the scene," now Nah Right, Pitchfork, and that cool girl from school's twitter feed do so.
(1) People need guidance.
but
(2) People don't like paying money.
And so we have replaced the MSRP mark-up of Virgin with the ease of an RSS feed coupled with the cost-free nature of a bittorrent client.
This is not without ramifications. And the most obvious, in my eyes, is that those of us who are "wired-in" (to a certain degree) are rapidly becoming information zombies - shambling through the streets groaning "information.... informationnnnn..."
With such vast quantities of input, and much of it even checking in at a high quality, it is far too easy for us to become consumers only. I could spend evenings, days, weeks even just arming myself with information, paralyzed by the sheer volume, carried away like a hapless duckling in the surge of a fire hose (just go with the metaphor for now), and never even think to begin production. Both for the reason that, with so much content already existing in the wild, my two cents have fallen victim to massive inflation, as well as for the reason of it being simply easier to continue my unabated consumption rather than shift gears into the mode of critical assessment, energetic production, and - and this is key in the modern age of information - self-promotion.
The latter, perhaps, is a fitting coda to this screed: promotion. Marketing. Getting it - whatever it may be - into the right hands.
In the old days (which I am, likely, glorifying), with information comparatively scarce, promotion was as simple as announcing existence to the world. If a niche was filled, if new (or, more likely, new to this audience) information was made available, its debut was as simple as providing access and letting a target demographic know about it. But now, with a surfeit of information, promotion has become far more complex: no matter what type of music, writing, video work, or other content one is creating, there are already people out there who have created something similar. Better. More well-liked. More established.
Promotion now is not just announcing existence; it must convey superiority. If the target audience's desire is already being fed by a media outlet, then advertising must convince that audience that this information, this version of what-I-already-have is better. More like what-I-want than what-I-already-have is.
Hm.
That is to say: we find ourselves in an age where opinions, media, art - entertainment - is available in gross quantities (numerically and repulsively gross) never before imagined. I can easily lose myself in entire afternoons spent, one after the other, non-selectively feeding off the vast streams of information pouring out of the global system. Poring over entire ecosystems of wikipedia entries, examining the output of a single youtube figure, simply perched at twitter.com/#home continuously refreshing the figurative timestream of minutiae.
But what does this mean? I was raised to believe that education meant learning more about what is. As a youth, posted on the couch - legs crossed, neck bent - I perused the Worldbook Encyclopedia, egged on in my erudition by eager parents. I was told that knowing more about my world would render me better-equipped to engage with it.
But that was a different era; a time when information was scarce, valuable. I had entire classroom sessions about the Dewey Decimal System; we were inculcated with the view of library qua gateway to the world, where a handful of rooms - curated and organized by hand - served as world-by-proxy: the sum total of human knowledge and experience gathered, summed up, ordered and described. At such a time, it was quite possible to exhaust one's storehouse of information on any given topic: if I wanted to read about, say, the role of samurai in 19th-century Japan (and I did!), there were n books on said topic available to me. And n was often less than 15.
But were I a young lad in today's bazaar of inputs, I find a humanly inexhaustible resource. Simply googling "samurai" + "19th-century japan" returns over four hundred thousand page hits, from fanboyish (there's another word that didn't exist!) gushings to graduate-level research on primary sources. The new information generated and instantly available, on a daily basis, long outpaces my ability to take it in.
The ramifications of this are, to my mind, vast: acquiring more information is no longer a talent or skillset; anyone with a 5-year-old sidekick and a $50 data plan can do that. In this world of infinite content and global context, information is cheap: what is highly valuable is the skill of adjudicating between streams of content. What is pertinent - what is credible?
And, most importantly: how can this information be repurposed? Were I to simply become a living repository of, say, humanity's knowledge as pertains to a subgenre of early-2000s electronic music, or Civil War reenacting, or a certain type of cross-stitching technique, this is insufficient raison d'etre. Where does this information go? The $64,000 question is - to what end is this knowledge being directed?
Whether we do it through a twitter account, wordpress blog (sorry, blogspot...), youtube channel, indie music distribution, or other mode of expression, the word of the age is productivity. To use a business-centric buzzword: what is the value added to the end consumer by my step in the process? This is why we see old-world names like Virgin Megastores and Fat Beats rapidly disappearing: if animals roam free in the streets, then why go to a zoo? If information is widely and freely accessible in the internet, why go through a middleman?
The metaphor provides its own answer: Because a zoo tiger is a beautiful, serene creature, while a street tiger is a terrifying beast. Zoos provide stable, credible, curated environments for interacting with animals that would otherwise tear one's head off. This explains why blogs have evolved into the tastemakers of our time: whereas before the local snobby record store would provide an auteur's-eye-view of "the scene," now Nah Right, Pitchfork, and that cool girl from school's twitter feed do so.
(1) People need guidance.
but
(2) People don't like paying money.
And so we have replaced the MSRP mark-up of Virgin with the ease of an RSS feed coupled with the cost-free nature of a bittorrent client.
This is not without ramifications. And the most obvious, in my eyes, is that those of us who are "wired-in" (to a certain degree) are rapidly becoming information zombies - shambling through the streets groaning "information.... informationnnnn..."
With such vast quantities of input, and much of it even checking in at a high quality, it is far too easy for us to become consumers only. I could spend evenings, days, weeks even just arming myself with information, paralyzed by the sheer volume, carried away like a hapless duckling in the surge of a fire hose (just go with the metaphor for now), and never even think to begin production. Both for the reason that, with so much content already existing in the wild, my two cents have fallen victim to massive inflation, as well as for the reason of it being simply easier to continue my unabated consumption rather than shift gears into the mode of critical assessment, energetic production, and - and this is key in the modern age of information - self-promotion.
The latter, perhaps, is a fitting coda to this screed: promotion. Marketing. Getting it - whatever it may be - into the right hands.
In the old days (which I am, likely, glorifying), with information comparatively scarce, promotion was as simple as announcing existence to the world. If a niche was filled, if new (or, more likely, new to this audience) information was made available, its debut was as simple as providing access and letting a target demographic know about it. But now, with a surfeit of information, promotion has become far more complex: no matter what type of music, writing, video work, or other content one is creating, there are already people out there who have created something similar. Better. More well-liked. More established.
Promotion now is not just announcing existence; it must convey superiority. If the target audience's desire is already being fed by a media outlet, then advertising must convince that audience that this information, this version of what-I-already-have is better. More like what-I-want than what-I-already-have is.
Hm.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
wisdom
"[Martin] Buber admired how the Hasidic communities actualized their religion in daily life and culture. In stark contrast to the busy Zionist organizations, which were always mulling political concerns, the Hasidim were focused on the values which Buber had long advocated for Zionism to adopt."
I think the parallels are evident.
I think the parallels are evident.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The ease of radicalism.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. - The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 11-12.
What an abused pair of sentences!
I've been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the odd - and oddly common - evangelical delight in the label of "fanatic". I can still remember grade school - 4th grade, was it? - when DC Talk came out with their CCM single Jesus Freak, and every cool Christian kid (alliteration!), it seemed, had the CD playing in their parents' minivan, Walkman, tape deck, etc. While the band, I'm guessing, had a higher purpose for their lyrics - talking about social alienation for the sake of Jesus, a thoroughly Scriptural topic - I experienced the preteen culture immediately around me using the song as the evangelical Smells Like Teen Spirit, essentially co-opting early-90s grunge culture with a Christian twist: using the purported fringe outsiderness of Christianity "under-attack" (via the apparently [?] incisive epithet of "Jesus Freak") as excuse to latch onto the coolness of Seattle circa 1993.
Now, Jesus Freak the song - and this general embrace of evangelical radicalism, at least in one sense of the word - has a point. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not to be muted or watered-down; and it is a theological, historical, sociological fact that truly living a life that imitates and follows the life of Jesus Christ is going to lead to ostracism, persecution, objectification, and more. The way of the Cross is the way of self-sacrifice; of truly considering others as better than oneself and choosing to serve rather than to be served. To follow Jesus Christ is to receive Grace - infinite, unrepayable, impossible Grace - and to respond by giving others that same Grace. To be answer the call of God the Father through the Holy Spirit is to reject the things that used to bring cheap pleasure, and instead to assert the incredible value of life lived in the will of God. This is all immensely counter to the values and loves of this world and our societies; and so it is not wrong to label the Christian life as radical.
But the point grows murky when two subtly distinct - but wholly different - versions of radicalism get pushed together and confused. On the one hand, there is the Way of the Cross: of humble service and sacrifice, desiring that the life of Christ might be shared with others because it is normal. Normal, as defined by Chinese theologian Watchman Nee in his The Normal Christian Life, is the life that should be lived. Yes, this life is radical, but it is not glorious because it is radical; it is glorious because it is right and worthy.
To repeat the point, I mean: being radical is not what makes the Christian life worth living. Being fitting is what makes the Christian life (by which I mean, the life wholly surrendered to God and His love and loving will) worth living - and living to its utmost, most radical, most thorough form.
On the other hand, there is a form of radical Christianity that seems to take radicalism as its goal. In this form of Christianity, the "Christ" is de-emphasized, and the "radical" takes center stage: it seems less important that the one whom we are following is Jesus Christ, and more important that we are following to the extreme, or radically. This impulse towards radicalization seems an inborn trait: and it makes sense, given that we are born to live wholly given over to the will of God.
But we are also born to take great joy in sex, in food, in exercise. And all these can be taken overboard: the sex addict, the glutton, the steroid abuser. They go too far when a part of normal human functioning is mistaken for its end. And similarly, the human drive to radicalization can be taken too far: and the radical surrender that is a proper part of our worship of God becomes the goal of worship. It is enjoyable to be radical; it is easy to be radical.
After all, if we believe we are justified in our radicalization, that means that we never have to listen to anyone who says otherwise! You - I - we have all engaged, at one time or another, with someone who revels in their fanatacism: the aggressive atheist for whom every form of spirituality is a mindless crutch; the socialist who sneers at callous decentralized government; the Linux user who simply will not admit that a Windows computer can be useful. And, I suspect, such arguments (errr... discussions) find their conclusion when you threw up your hands, saying "fine! if all my reasoning and thoughtfully-constructed arguments have absolutely no purchase in your mind - just believe whatever you want to!" And we walk away, shaking our heads, while the other thinks to herself, "well, i just showed him!"
Of course, no such thing is true. But to the self-justified radical of this sort, that doesn't matter! What matters is that his radicalism continues to be self-sustaining, enjoyable, distinguishing him from you or me.
Some of you may have heard of - or even seen - a film called Jesus Camp (if you haven't... don't? Do? It will likely be disturbing.), where a documentary crew goes to various evangelical Christian children's summer camps and films the activities and talks there. Whether through tricks of editing, or the simple truth of the material, it's an absolute image nightmare for the Gospel. Children are given toy swords (representing the Word of God?), lectured on fighting the "culture wars," and the whole thing is generally presented by the (very partisan, I'm sure) filmmakers as a Western equivalent of a Middle Eastern terrorist training camp: indoctrination, self-justification, and radicalization.
Yes, most Christians aren't going to be strapping up with C4 and blowing a hole in the local supermarket. Thank God, middle America isn't the Gaza Strip.
But, lest we forget, men claiming to be acting in the name of Jesus Christ have committed terrorist violence on American soil. And the case isn't helped by, for example, the unfortunate lyric in DC Talk's Jesus Freak that goes "Kamikaze, my death is gain". Yes, DC Talk is probably referencing the point where Paul says: for me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But to have the absolute ignorance to go ahead and connect Paul's words with Japanese suicide bombers from World War II is ludicrous. To die is gain - but we don't go to that death with a self-satisfied smirk on our faces; and the harvest we reap is not the bodies of enemies, but a bounty of grace, peace, and mercy.
This is not the sort of radicalism that Jesus Christ preached, either in the testimony of His words or in His life. The sort of radical God that we follow looked at the people slandering, persecuting, and murdering Him with tears running down His face and salvation in His heart: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Wow!
This is the kind of radicalization that we are supposed to undergo, as Christians: a transformation from the ways of the world to the way of radical love (as [a] Francis Chan and [b] Beyonce would say, Crazy Love). It is a radicalization that can never become self-satisfied, because being pushed to the fringes is not cause for celebration (oh look! I'm so misunderstood!), but grief - grief that the love we have will not be returned by its desired object, those who are pushing us out.
We the Church exist in this world not to condemn it, but to love it. Yes, we will be blessed when people insult, persecute, and slander us - but that blessing is not ours to seize by force of will, but rather to be received in gentleness and thanksgiving from the hand of God. Judgment is neither our privilege nor prerogative; mercy, love, and service are.
Amen?
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
His children's wounds
The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.
-The Book of Isaiah, chapter 30, verse 26
A couple of days ago, I was catching up with a friend over lunch, who brought up a point upon which he had been recently dwelling: that salvation, for the Christian, is not only, directly, or even primarily deliverance from earthly poverty, injustice, wickedness, and the other evils that immediately assail us when we consider the world around us. Rather, salvation is, at least in major part, a work wherein God removes us from His wrath and delivers us into His favor. We have sinned ourselves into becoming the objects of divine justice; a situation from which we cannot extricate ourselves, but from which God's grace brings us forth.
With this fresh in my consideration, I found it intriguing that Isaiah points out that the wounds of Israel which cried out for healing have been inflicted by God - and were, in turn, divinely healed. It brought to mind Proverbs 27:6: "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." Yes, we can be wounded - even deeply so - by our loved ones. And sometimes such wounds come out of ignorance, or failure on their part: speaking rashly, unthinkingly, in haste or anger.
But often such wounds sting: not because of their intent, but because of our brokenness. A thoughtful bit of feedback clubs our overweening pride, or concern for our actions is taken as an affront to our carefully cultivated self-worth. And so we are hurt; not because our friends have spoken carelessly, in bad faith, but because our rose-tinted reproduction of ourselves is exposed as a poor Photoshop job, juxtaposed with the sharpness of reality.
And it's cause for thanks (mixed with a bit of chagrin) that our God is not a God who is interested in spinning a PR campaign to us; if we ask Him to speak Truth to us, He will show us the Truth.
So, yes: as we become His beloved children, the ones chosen to wrestle with Him, struggle with the truth, and run the long race to the end, we will find ourselves inflicted with divine wounds, wounds that cut through the surface of our lies and penetrate to the ugly (but redeemable!) reality underneath.
And the wonder of grace is that, having inflicted these wounds upon us, God immediately proceeds to turn and bandage them up, healing us at cost to Himself.
Incredible!
-The Book of Isaiah, chapter 30, verse 26
A couple of days ago, I was catching up with a friend over lunch, who brought up a point upon which he had been recently dwelling: that salvation, for the Christian, is not only, directly, or even primarily deliverance from earthly poverty, injustice, wickedness, and the other evils that immediately assail us when we consider the world around us. Rather, salvation is, at least in major part, a work wherein God removes us from His wrath and delivers us into His favor. We have sinned ourselves into becoming the objects of divine justice; a situation from which we cannot extricate ourselves, but from which God's grace brings us forth.
With this fresh in my consideration, I found it intriguing that Isaiah points out that the wounds of Israel which cried out for healing have been inflicted by God - and were, in turn, divinely healed. It brought to mind Proverbs 27:6: "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." Yes, we can be wounded - even deeply so - by our loved ones. And sometimes such wounds come out of ignorance, or failure on their part: speaking rashly, unthinkingly, in haste or anger.
But often such wounds sting: not because of their intent, but because of our brokenness. A thoughtful bit of feedback clubs our overweening pride, or concern for our actions is taken as an affront to our carefully cultivated self-worth. And so we are hurt; not because our friends have spoken carelessly, in bad faith, but because our rose-tinted reproduction of ourselves is exposed as a poor Photoshop job, juxtaposed with the sharpness of reality.
And it's cause for thanks (mixed with a bit of chagrin) that our God is not a God who is interested in spinning a PR campaign to us; if we ask Him to speak Truth to us, He will show us the Truth.
So, yes: as we become His beloved children, the ones chosen to wrestle with Him, struggle with the truth, and run the long race to the end, we will find ourselves inflicted with divine wounds, wounds that cut through the surface of our lies and penetrate to the ugly (but redeemable!) reality underneath.
And the wonder of grace is that, having inflicted these wounds upon us, God immediately proceeds to turn and bandage them up, healing us at cost to Himself.
Incredible!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Proverbs 20:13
"Do not love sleep or you will grow poor;
"stay awake and you will have food to spare."
"stay awake and you will have food to spare."
Thursday, June 3, 2010
a favorite
"For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became Christ's snow-white seal."
- Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became Christ's snow-white seal."
- Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
for a dear brother
We have walked and wandered
thru field and forest.
We have waded in pools in Brooklyn.
We have lived and lingered;
given and gotten,
we have glimpsed the face of God.
You are my brother
til breath is bitter
and still we push to the fore.
Run and stand
and sit in silence
and the journey is the reward.
thru field and forest.
We have waded in pools in Brooklyn.
We have lived and lingered;
given and gotten,
we have glimpsed the face of God.
You are my brother
til breath is bitter
and still we push to the fore.
Run and stand
and sit in silence
and the journey is the reward.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
movement
"The entire body of my earlier work reflects a movement towards Jesus Christ. In 2002, I consecrated my work to Jesus Christ. This did not involve a denunciation of works that reflected the journey. It was rather a statement that from then on I would write directly for Jesus Christ. I would write works about salvation, as opposed to alienation.
- Anne Rice, author of Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned, and others.
- Anne Rice, author of Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned, and others.
Monday, April 12, 2010
what if
what if the Gospel is so big that even the people who get it wrong, still get it?
addendum (due to general confusion):
To anyone confused and wondering idly if I'm falling into heresy - some clarifications on this thought that came to me.
in brief, the setting was such: I was reading an LDS ("Mormon") friend's blog (what up, K, if you're reading this!), and she mentioned that her greatest passion was "for the Gospel".
It struck me how, as a Protestant Christian, I - and, I'm guessing, you guys - would say the exact same thing is our passion: the Gospel, the good news that God loves and saves a broken world. But yet we do mean, I think, fairly theologically different things when we say "I love the Gospel".
Then I flipped it - what if I approach the question, not from the angle of "what does it mean when I say - I love God", but from the angle of "what does it mean when God says - I love you"? To whom does He say this? Who can read John 1:12 ("Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God") and rejoice?
This extends to other communities. What about, for example, the Roman Catholic communion? I believe firmly that I fellowship with several Roman Catholic brothers and sisters; I love them, I trust that they love me, and, more importantly, I trust their love for God. I don't know if their doctrine is 100% correct - but I do believe that they are, underlying and interacting with their doctrinal belief, simply in love with Jesus Christ.
It makes me wonder what kind of thing the Gospel is. Is it something that we have to "know about" in order to obtain? I don't think many of us would want to say you have to understand philosophy about Jesus in order to receive love from Jesus - one reason being that this is actually impossible.
Now, when we ask questions about the Gospel, we're still talking about a pretty specific statement. Jeff points out to me that "the Gospel" is objectively defined, shaped by a specific and unique historical context.
My point isn't to be a universalist - saying, everyone, everywhere, is loving God. That's too broad, and it just rings untrue. That's not what I mean when I say, "getting it wrong."
What I do mean when I think about us "getting it wrong" is that I wonder what role knowledge and doctrine play in our love of God. God not as an abstract, nonspecific, vague concept, but God as a real, all-loving, all-powerful, incredibly present being whose presence and direct intervention is found throughout the world and human history. I think good teaching is vastly important - but even good teaching gets some details wrong sometimes. Does Jesus still love us when we make mistakes when talking about him?
...
This is meant to be a rhetorical question. The answer, I believe, is Yes.
But this begs a further question: "how many mistakes can we make, and still be talking about Jesus?"
And this is a very real question.
It's a big question: Which details matter? If you and I are both talking about our favorite cars, and I mention mine - the Mazda RX-7 FC3S - I might be picturing a white car, while you picture a red car. No big deal - we're still talking about the same thing.
But if I talk about an RX-7, and you picture a VW bug, or a horse, or a birthday cake, we're on pretty different pages. That's become a conversation whose details are so disconnected that it's not even a conversation "about" RX-7's any more.
And that's a question whose answer comes into focus when we humbly examine Scripture, seek God in prayer, listen to our mentors/disciplers, and so on.
addendum (due to general confusion):
To anyone confused and wondering idly if I'm falling into heresy - some clarifications on this thought that came to me.
in brief, the setting was such: I was reading an LDS ("Mormon") friend's blog (what up, K, if you're reading this!), and she mentioned that her greatest passion was "for the Gospel".
It struck me how, as a Protestant Christian, I - and, I'm guessing, you guys - would say the exact same thing is our passion: the Gospel, the good news that God loves and saves a broken world. But yet we do mean, I think, fairly theologically different things when we say "I love the Gospel".
Then I flipped it - what if I approach the question, not from the angle of "what does it mean when I say - I love God", but from the angle of "what does it mean when God says - I love you"? To whom does He say this? Who can read John 1:12 ("Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God") and rejoice?
This extends to other communities. What about, for example, the Roman Catholic communion? I believe firmly that I fellowship with several Roman Catholic brothers and sisters; I love them, I trust that they love me, and, more importantly, I trust their love for God. I don't know if their doctrine is 100% correct - but I do believe that they are, underlying and interacting with their doctrinal belief, simply in love with Jesus Christ.
It makes me wonder what kind of thing the Gospel is. Is it something that we have to "know about" in order to obtain? I don't think many of us would want to say you have to understand philosophy about Jesus in order to receive love from Jesus - one reason being that this is actually impossible.
Now, when we ask questions about the Gospel, we're still talking about a pretty specific statement. Jeff points out to me that "the Gospel" is objectively defined, shaped by a specific and unique historical context.
My point isn't to be a universalist - saying, everyone, everywhere, is loving God. That's too broad, and it just rings untrue. That's not what I mean when I say, "getting it wrong."
What I do mean when I think about us "getting it wrong" is that I wonder what role knowledge and doctrine play in our love of God. God not as an abstract, nonspecific, vague concept, but God as a real, all-loving, all-powerful, incredibly present being whose presence and direct intervention is found throughout the world and human history. I think good teaching is vastly important - but even good teaching gets some details wrong sometimes. Does Jesus still love us when we make mistakes when talking about him?
...
This is meant to be a rhetorical question. The answer, I believe, is Yes.
But this begs a further question: "how many mistakes can we make, and still be talking about Jesus?"
And this is a very real question.
It's a big question: Which details matter? If you and I are both talking about our favorite cars, and I mention mine - the Mazda RX-7 FC3S - I might be picturing a white car, while you picture a red car. No big deal - we're still talking about the same thing.
But if I talk about an RX-7, and you picture a VW bug, or a horse, or a birthday cake, we're on pretty different pages. That's become a conversation whose details are so disconnected that it's not even a conversation "about" RX-7's any more.
And that's a question whose answer comes into focus when we humbly examine Scripture, seek God in prayer, listen to our mentors/disciplers, and so on.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Grace. (3 of 3)
[The last in a series of posts on Grace, excerpted from personal correspondence.]
"can you struggle for grace? is it something to fight for?"
-I think you can struggle to give grace. But you can never struggle to receive it (because that would be earning it, making someone give you grace).
-But you can struggle with giving grace: because, like I said above, we're sinful. And because we're sinful, whatever we are supposed to do, we dislike doing; and whatever we're not supposed to do, we like doing. So, in the same way we were made to be like God, we were made to give grace; and, in the same way that we fail, daily, to be like God, we fail to give grace.
"if you have to fight for it is it somehow no longer grace?"
-I think it is still grace; the struggle, in the case of struggling to give grace, comes not because what you are giving is not truly grace; it comes because we, as flawed individuals, are unaccustomed to doing what is supposed to come naturally to us (in one of the analogies above: our lungs, filled with water, choke as we try to force in air).
"does it then equate to something akin to charity?"
-I think so. I think, really, that it all comes down to charity: our existence comes down to charity, to receiving something that is not ours to demand, but was, in God's abundance, God's to give.
"is that a totally irrelevant question if all of people's actions are a component of a god-given world?"
-I don't think it is. Yes, all of people's actions are a component of a God-given world; but just because we work within God's given framework doesn't mean that each individual action that we perform is directly licensed by and caused by God (if so, that's an incredibly messed-up version of a deity that I really don't want anything to do with). God created us with free will (if you want to talk about why, there's a whole separate discussion there), and I do think that us having free will is for the greater good. And I do think that God will, at the end of everything, make everything Right, for forever. But, in-between, there is a lot of us messing up, and God cleaning up after us, and us messing up again, etc.
Much love;
-jglc
"you can accept something with grace - like, without jealousy or anger or pride or vanity or whatnot."
-Right; I think that's true. This is a case of you extending grace to someone else, right: like taking someone's apology, when they have no way to force you to do it. "can you struggle for grace? is it something to fight for?"
-But you can struggle with giving grace: because, like I said above, we're sinful. And because we're sinful, whatever we are supposed to do, we dislike doing; and whatever we're not supposed to do, we like doing. So, in the same way we were made to be like God, we were made to give grace; and, in the same way that we fail, daily, to be like God, we fail to give grace.
"if you have to fight for it is it somehow no longer grace?"
"does it then equate to something akin to charity?"
"is that a totally irrelevant question if all of people's actions are a component of a god-given world?"
Much love;
-jglc
Friday, March 19, 2010
Grace. (2 of 3)
[The second in a series of reflections on Grace, excerpted from personal correspondence.]
Who Gets It?
I said that Grace is offered to all, and I think that is true. From the sickest pedophile, to the cleanest-living Mormon, to the most hypocritical Protestant, to the loneliest homeless kid. I do think that is true. And Grace is unconditionally offered: God does not discriminate based on past, present, or future sins; God is not interested in striking a bargain of good behavior with us. Grace is ours, free for the taking, and we can have total surety in the assurance that this grace is effective and aesthetically ideal.
But, as I mentioned above: "faith without works is dead." I do not think that this means that faith can be alive but then, due to a paucity of good works, sort of sputter off and die. But I think it does mean that there is real, living, Grace-giving faith; and a kind of faith that is faith in name only, faith that calls itself faith, that says outwardly "I have received Grace", but, on the inside, never really understands what Grace means. And a present, even if freely and repeatedly offered, if it is rejected, or left unopened, languishes in neglect.
Then there are the tricky cases: people who never hear about Christianity? People who were abused by religion, who now hate the word "God"? All the good people, who lead beautiful lives of selflessness and yet never assent to the truths of my particular form of theology. What about them?
I could go into great length on each case, but I think two broad strokes might suffice to give you the general picture: (1) Everyone, from the best of us, to the worst of us, has broken the relationship we were supposed to maintain with God. And, again, no matter how well we live - no matter how hard we try to undo our brokenness, or to earn it back - Grace cannot be earned. BUT: (2) I don't know what it means to accept Grace, either. I know it has something to do with loving God, with realizing our inability to do it on our own. But I do not know exactly what the minimum standard of "wanting to find God" is, to qualify one as having accepted the gift of Grace. But I'm not interested in the minimum: sure, maybe I'd be OK if I weren't actively working on my relationship with God. But, believing that this relationship is precisely the point of my existence, I would be silly to abandon it; and kind of a jerk to my friends, if I were to give up on them finding and cultivating the same relationship that brings me such total fulfillment.
What About Human Grace?
So, if we're talking about grace, it would be silly or dismissive to avoid talking about the grace that we, as humans, give one another. But, in order to get to the point where I can address this mundane human grace, I think we need to understand what I believe the greatest Grace to be: because the two are, in my mind, intrinsically the same.
There's this idea, in most religions, that God made Man in God's own image, right? Adam and Eve and all that stuff. And that doesn't mean (though maybe it does also mean this) that we look physically like God. That means that, whatever we do, is a reflection of something that God does or can do. So our love, our care, anything in our relationships with others is an imitation of God's Love, Care, and so on, in the same way that anything a man or woman does can be traced to their parents, mentors, friends, media inspirations, etc. (even if they have placed some innovative twist or spin on it).
[Last, to close: addressing questions raised.]
Who Gets It?
I said that Grace is offered to all, and I think that is true. From the sickest pedophile, to the cleanest-living Mormon, to the most hypocritical Protestant, to the loneliest homeless kid. I do think that is true. And Grace is unconditionally offered: God does not discriminate based on past, present, or future sins; God is not interested in striking a bargain of good behavior with us. Grace is ours, free for the taking, and we can have total surety in the assurance that this grace is effective and aesthetically ideal.
But, as I mentioned above: "faith without works is dead." I do not think that this means that faith can be alive but then, due to a paucity of good works, sort of sputter off and die. But I think it does mean that there is real, living, Grace-giving faith; and a kind of faith that is faith in name only, faith that calls itself faith, that says outwardly "I have received Grace", but, on the inside, never really understands what Grace means. And a present, even if freely and repeatedly offered, if it is rejected, or left unopened, languishes in neglect.
Then there are the tricky cases: people who never hear about Christianity? People who were abused by religion, who now hate the word "God"? All the good people, who lead beautiful lives of selflessness and yet never assent to the truths of my particular form of theology. What about them?
I could go into great length on each case, but I think two broad strokes might suffice to give you the general picture: (1) Everyone, from the best of us, to the worst of us, has broken the relationship we were supposed to maintain with God. And, again, no matter how well we live - no matter how hard we try to undo our brokenness, or to earn it back - Grace cannot be earned. BUT: (2) I don't know what it means to accept Grace, either. I know it has something to do with loving God, with realizing our inability to do it on our own. But I do not know exactly what the minimum standard of "wanting to find God" is, to qualify one as having accepted the gift of Grace. But I'm not interested in the minimum: sure, maybe I'd be OK if I weren't actively working on my relationship with God. But, believing that this relationship is precisely the point of my existence, I would be silly to abandon it; and kind of a jerk to my friends, if I were to give up on them finding and cultivating the same relationship that brings me such total fulfillment.
What About Human Grace?
So, if we're talking about grace, it would be silly or dismissive to avoid talking about the grace that we, as humans, give one another. But, in order to get to the point where I can address this mundane human grace, I think we need to understand what I believe the greatest Grace to be: because the two are, in my mind, intrinsically the same.
There's this idea, in most religions, that God made Man in God's own image, right? Adam and Eve and all that stuff. And that doesn't mean (though maybe it does also mean this) that we look physically like God. That means that, whatever we do, is a reflection of something that God does or can do. So our love, our care, anything in our relationships with others is an imitation of God's Love, Care, and so on, in the same way that anything a man or woman does can be traced to their parents, mentors, friends, media inspirations, etc. (even if they have placed some innovative twist or spin on it).
[Last, to close: addressing questions raised.]
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Grace. (1 of 3)
[Some thoughts on grace, excerpted from personal correspondence.]
All right.
You ready? Sit down for this one, it's gonna be long. Feel free to read thru in a few sittings.
I have been wanting to get back to this question, for quite some time.
Grace is such a difficult thing to talk about, primarily because it is so mystical (mystical in the purest, least "religiousy" way possible... mystical in the sense of transcending what we are used to thinking about), so personal, and so rarely seen. That said, I think that the core of Christian faith and belief must be Grace: so it is also an incredibly important thing to talk about. So I'll try.
Let me see... OK. First things first: I am gonna say what I think Grace is, including what it's not, where it comes from (both in a mundane and divine way, though [as you could probably guess] I think the two are actually the same), and then, based on those beliefs/definitions, address some questions commonly raised.
What Is Grace?
I think the simplest and most impactful definition I've heard is simply this: Grace is receiving what we don't deserve. But packed into that definition (really more of a description, actually), is a lot of mind-twisting thought.
For one: by definition, we cannot deserve grace. And thus, grace is something that cannot be worked for; nor can it be pursued, strived for (one of my favorite Bible verses says that "equality with God is not something to be grasped"), or earned in any way. This is one of the biggest, worst, most fundamental mistakes that people (even many of the Christian faithful) make: they confuse the grace of and from God with something that we work to get. And so you get people "doing the right things" to "stay out of hell".
Nahhhhh.
[Side note: there is a point to doing "good" things, even after receiving grace: doing good things is a response to receiving Grace. It serves as a sort of sign that receiving Grace has changed us, and that it has really impacted our lives in a meaningful and life-altering fashion (another favorite verse says, "faith without works is dead").]
So, grace is something that we don't deserve, but that we receive. More than that: Grace is something that we don't deserve, but we need. It is literally vital to us: without grace, not only will we die, but we are dead. Grace is like the air in CPR, being breathed into unresponsive lungs. The lungs are made for that air, will quickly die and atrophy without it, but cannot, on their own, pull that needed air into themselves.
Why is this? It seems stupid for something to be made (humans) that intrinsically need something that they cannot grab hold of (grace), right? What kind of designer (ahh shades of "intelligent design" rhetoric... sorry.) would do something as stupid and broken as that?
Why Do We Need Grace?
Well, it comes back to a pretty oft-repeated topic: sin. What we humans nowadays consider to be our "natural" state is not the state of our nature as intended at creation (and I don't mean some dogmatic anti-scientific Creationist creation, either, I mean, at the metaphysical point where God designed the human). We were created to love God and to be loved by God; to know our Creator and be known by the Creator. But at some point in the history of our race - a point that is repeated in each of our individual lives - we broke ourselves. We were greedy, or fearful, or weak in some other way, and we heeded our own understanding of our purpose instead of the understanding of our Creator. And so we removed ourselves from that love, care, and nurture that was supposed to be the air in our spiritual lungs, replacing it with some noxious fluid of our own creation. And so now we lie, on the beach of this earth, gasping for nourishment. It is my fault, not the Creator's.
But, thank God (literally), the Creator still has a purpose for us; God still holds onto God's perfect love for us, despite our having abandoned it. So God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves: the Creator seizes the Creation and provides for us. It is my absolute and convicted belief that the way in which God provided that Grace (which is, really, a sub-heading of the greater umbrella of Love) is by a living act of sacrifice, the act and person of Jesus Christ.
Because, you see, Grace is free and offered to all (we'll get to it), but it is not cheap: to breath air into a victim's lungs, the person administering CPR must sacrifice her own air, right? It takes work to resuscitate the near-dead.
So this great illness that besets us - this fragmented person, this broken identity, this thing that is not as it ought to be - has to be made right, at some great cost; and, in the Christian faith, that cost was Jesus Christ, a perfect God and a sinless (and hence unbroken) Man, condescending to our level and taking our sins on himself. Dirtying himself, to clean us off. Which we in no way deserved, but which God wanted to give us. No child deserves a present - have they ever truly earned it? - but yet good parents love to give good things to their capricious children :)
[Next: Who gets Grace? And then - closing questions.]
All right.
You ready? Sit down for this one, it's gonna be long. Feel free to read thru in a few sittings.
I have been wanting to get back to this question, for quite some time.
Grace is such a difficult thing to talk about, primarily because it is so mystical (mystical in the purest, least "religiousy" way possible... mystical in the sense of transcending what we are used to thinking about), so personal, and so rarely seen. That said, I think that the core of Christian faith and belief must be Grace: so it is also an incredibly important thing to talk about. So I'll try.
Let me see... OK. First things first: I am gonna say what I think Grace is, including what it's not, where it comes from (both in a mundane and divine way, though [as you could probably guess] I think the two are actually the same), and then, based on those beliefs/definitions, address some questions commonly raised.
What Is Grace?
I think the simplest and most impactful definition I've heard is simply this: Grace is receiving what we don't deserve. But packed into that definition (really more of a description, actually), is a lot of mind-twisting thought.
For one: by definition, we cannot deserve grace. And thus, grace is something that cannot be worked for; nor can it be pursued, strived for (one of my favorite Bible verses says that "equality with God is not something to be grasped"), or earned in any way. This is one of the biggest, worst, most fundamental mistakes that people (even many of the Christian faithful) make: they confuse the grace of and from God with something that we work to get. And so you get people "doing the right things" to "stay out of hell".
Nahhhhh.
[Side note: there is a point to doing "good" things, even after receiving grace: doing good things is a response to receiving Grace. It serves as a sort of sign that receiving Grace has changed us, and that it has really impacted our lives in a meaningful and life-altering fashion (another favorite verse says, "faith without works is dead").]
So, grace is something that we don't deserve, but that we receive. More than that: Grace is something that we don't deserve, but we need. It is literally vital to us: without grace, not only will we die, but we are dead. Grace is like the air in CPR, being breathed into unresponsive lungs. The lungs are made for that air, will quickly die and atrophy without it, but cannot, on their own, pull that needed air into themselves.
Why is this? It seems stupid for something to be made (humans) that intrinsically need something that they cannot grab hold of (grace), right? What kind of designer (ahh shades of "intelligent design" rhetoric... sorry.) would do something as stupid and broken as that?
Why Do We Need Grace?
Well, it comes back to a pretty oft-repeated topic: sin. What we humans nowadays consider to be our "natural" state is not the state of our nature as intended at creation (and I don't mean some dogmatic anti-scientific Creationist creation, either, I mean, at the metaphysical point where God designed the human). We were created to love God and to be loved by God; to know our Creator and be known by the Creator. But at some point in the history of our race - a point that is repeated in each of our individual lives - we broke ourselves. We were greedy, or fearful, or weak in some other way, and we heeded our own understanding of our purpose instead of the understanding of our Creator. And so we removed ourselves from that love, care, and nurture that was supposed to be the air in our spiritual lungs, replacing it with some noxious fluid of our own creation. And so now we lie, on the beach of this earth, gasping for nourishment. It is my fault, not the Creator's.
But, thank God (literally), the Creator still has a purpose for us; God still holds onto God's perfect love for us, despite our having abandoned it. So God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves: the Creator seizes the Creation and provides for us. It is my absolute and convicted belief that the way in which God provided that Grace (which is, really, a sub-heading of the greater umbrella of Love) is by a living act of sacrifice, the act and person of Jesus Christ.
Because, you see, Grace is free and offered to all (we'll get to it), but it is not cheap: to breath air into a victim's lungs, the person administering CPR must sacrifice her own air, right? It takes work to resuscitate the near-dead.
So this great illness that besets us - this fragmented person, this broken identity, this thing that is not as it ought to be - has to be made right, at some great cost; and, in the Christian faith, that cost was Jesus Christ, a perfect God and a sinless (and hence unbroken) Man, condescending to our level and taking our sins on himself. Dirtying himself, to clean us off. Which we in no way deserved, but which God wanted to give us. No child deserves a present - have they ever truly earned it? - but yet good parents love to give good things to their capricious children :)
[Next: Who gets Grace? And then - closing questions.]
Saturday, March 13, 2010
wise words
Pastoral advice from MC Naledge of Kidz in the Hall:
"...I don’t have to make the whole “this is the socially-conscious record” with a bunch of opinions, metaphors, big words and similes. I can just tell you a story and sometimes that’s what people need. They wanna feel like the music is genuine. I’m just saying shit from my heart and what’s going on in my life. It makes the music easier to perform and easier for me to rest my case. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. This is me." (The Smoking Section, March 2010)
"...I don’t have to make the whole “this is the socially-conscious record” with a bunch of opinions, metaphors, big words and similes. I can just tell you a story and sometimes that’s what people need. They wanna feel like the music is genuine. I’m just saying shit from my heart and what’s going on in my life. It makes the music easier to perform and easier for me to rest my case. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. This is me." (The Smoking Section, March 2010)
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Mourning
My friend Landon is one of the more inspirational presences in which I've ever been. A lanky transplant from Vermont, I described him the other day as "something of an urban Tom Bombadil", JRR Tolkien's cheery mystical nature-presence. Landon stoops on a dingy subway platform to scoop up trash; when we meet in Manhattan, en route to his house uptown, he inevitably winds up at Harlem House with palms stretched out over fast food bags, paper trash, and plastic bottles, depositing them in his trash can or recycling bin. Landon talks to strangers when it is incredibly inappropriate, and Landon smiles at people in a city where glances shouldn't - don't - linger too long.
Landon is either incredibly deluded, in extremely specific ways, or an unprecedented blessing to this city around him.
I trailed behind Landon yesterday, as he wound his joy-bearing way through the city, wondering where my own sense of childlike glee and sharing went. After all, isn't this world meant to be a community? And community relies upon openness.
Yes, this is an idealistic thought - but I am OK with being an idealist. They don't crucify men for being realistic: a realist is accepted, even if disagreed-with. An idealist is scorned, even when agreed-with.
This is mourning, I think. I'm discovering that to mourn cannot be equated with merely being sad. Mourning is harder, and better, than sadness. To be sad is to feel sadness. Mourning is not an emotion - mourning is a process. You know, I am sure - we all know, I believe - that feeling of an utter and unbelievable frustration, when all that is within you cries out that this should be but then all that is without you shouts back but it will not. When there is something you truly, really hope for - not just want, but need - and yet everything tells you, you cannot have it!
This is the definition of mourning I'm coming to have: the state of disengagement between what should be and what is.
The loss of innocence. I look into my life, and I see my innocence dying. Harsh language - towards myself, towards other people, towards the world - comes faster to my lips. I'm a little faster to be cynical; my laughter sounds mocking, sarcastic. I no longer just laugh; I have to laugh at things. All of us express it in different ways:
-We drink a little more.
-We go farther or faster when we hook up.
-We value money more, and our dreams less.
Loss of innocence. I think this is what happens when we mourn at length, without hope. We lose our innocence - our dreams of what should be. What is an "innocent thought"?
-That love means not getting divorced?
-That innocent people won't get hurt?
-That a community can be a real reflection of love, acceptance, and forgiveness?
-That our purpose in this world is to make a change, not only to make a living?
-That people can care for a stranger?
-That it will be better to do what is right than what is easy?
These are all hopes that I know I've had - that I'm sure some of you have had - that my experience of this world tries daily to shut down. To tell me is my own idiocy, ridiculousness.
But WHATEVER! WHAT. EVER. I am OK with being ridiculous! This is something that the world did not expect. I am OK with being a fool, being an idiot. No, I want to be more of a fool. If that means being more like Landon - being more like Lucas - being more like Jesus of Nazareth, the ridiculous son of a carpenter who said that he was God - then YOU LOSE, WORLD. You are powerless over me, because I don't care about being made a fool.
Well. I do. But I don't want to. I'm going to pray to continue to find the strength to keep on mourning.
Landon is either incredibly deluded, in extremely specific ways, or an unprecedented blessing to this city around him.
I trailed behind Landon yesterday, as he wound his joy-bearing way through the city, wondering where my own sense of childlike glee and sharing went. After all, isn't this world meant to be a community? And community relies upon openness.
Yes, this is an idealistic thought - but I am OK with being an idealist. They don't crucify men for being realistic: a realist is accepted, even if disagreed-with. An idealist is scorned, even when agreed-with.
This is mourning, I think. I'm discovering that to mourn cannot be equated with merely being sad. Mourning is harder, and better, than sadness. To be sad is to feel sadness. Mourning is not an emotion - mourning is a process. You know, I am sure - we all know, I believe - that feeling of an utter and unbelievable frustration, when all that is within you cries out that this should be but then all that is without you shouts back but it will not. When there is something you truly, really hope for - not just want, but need - and yet everything tells you, you cannot have it!
This is the definition of mourning I'm coming to have: the state of disengagement between what should be and what is.
The loss of innocence. I look into my life, and I see my innocence dying. Harsh language - towards myself, towards other people, towards the world - comes faster to my lips. I'm a little faster to be cynical; my laughter sounds mocking, sarcastic. I no longer just laugh; I have to laugh at things. All of us express it in different ways:
-We drink a little more.
-We go farther or faster when we hook up.
-We value money more, and our dreams less.
Loss of innocence. I think this is what happens when we mourn at length, without hope. We lose our innocence - our dreams of what should be. What is an "innocent thought"?
-That love means not getting divorced?
-That innocent people won't get hurt?
-That a community can be a real reflection of love, acceptance, and forgiveness?
-That our purpose in this world is to make a change, not only to make a living?
-That people can care for a stranger?
-That it will be better to do what is right than what is easy?
These are all hopes that I know I've had - that I'm sure some of you have had - that my experience of this world tries daily to shut down. To tell me is my own idiocy, ridiculousness.
But WHATEVER! WHAT. EVER. I am OK with being ridiculous! This is something that the world did not expect. I am OK with being a fool, being an idiot. No, I want to be more of a fool. If that means being more like Landon - being more like Lucas - being more like Jesus of Nazareth, the ridiculous son of a carpenter who said that he was God - then YOU LOSE, WORLD. You are powerless over me, because I don't care about being made a fool.
Well. I do. But I don't want to. I'm going to pray to continue to find the strength to keep on mourning.
Matthew 5:4 - Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Responsibility of Christians in Art.
[A talk originally presented during Café a Dieu, at The Golden Center
The first personal encounter with art that I can recall comes from the age of ten, when my sister and I attended a class taught by a professional artist from our church. Once a week, we would pick up our sketchbooks and shoeboxes full of art supplies, be packed up in the back of our minivan, and dropped off at a church classroom. There, Mrs. Barrett would teach us about perspective, colors, or shading, then turn us loose, pencils and oil paints in hand. Our parents, as they arrived to pick us up, were be greeted by arms filled with paintings and sketches, the fruits of our labors and their monthly tuition checks.
Even now, returning home, I still occasionally come across sketchbooks filled with my youthful handiwork. Browsing through the artwork, I often wonder what my mother must have thought, every week, as her son returned bearing page after page of lovingly, painstakingly, and poorly drawn STAR WARS spaceships.
My mother has preserved sketchbooks that are literally filled, cover to cover, with illustrations of X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and the occasional attempt to illustrate the
By high school, I had begun to regard these drawings with a hint of embarrassment. It wasn’t that I had grown artistically; but I had grown ashamed of my youthful enthusiasm for Luke Skywalker. Recalling my younger artistic streak, I would wonder what could possibly have motivated my parents to store such pitiful things away so carefully.
Reflecting back now, I think I’ve begun to understand why my parents saved those drawings. It’s not that my art - in either content or execution - was of any aesthetic value. But they are still dear to them because of what they represent: memories of me running up to my mom after class, bearing my latest work, filled with the childish joy and simple pride of spending my youthful reserves of skill and energy to produce something just for her. And, while my mother has never been a STAR WARS fanatic, her love for me transformed my interests and delight into her own. For this reason, I think, my mother finds twofold pleasure in that artwork: first, as a symbol of her importance to me; and, second, as a genuine representation of me as I was at the time; my childhood interests and passions.
I suspect that the work of a Christian Artist is best performed when it stems from similar desires, turned towards God: beyond displays of ability, or the production of aesthetically stunning works, the Christian who finds herself engaged in Art is engaged in the same pursuit as that child painting, singing, or dancing for his loving parents: we are conveying, to God, His unequalled significance to us; and we are producing work that brings its audience into an honest encounter with the truth of our love and passions.
I. To convey to God our unequalled enjoyment of Him.
These may sound vague: what does it mean to tell God that He is of unequalled importance to us?
The first answer that springs to mind comes from the Protestant and Catholic catechisms, which open by addressing the goals of human existence: in the Reformed Church’s Westminster Shorter Catechism, the first question is asked, What is the chief end of man?, and this answer provided: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. Similarly, the Second Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church begins with a prologue that trumpets that “The Life of Man” has as its purpose “To Know and Love God”.
To Know God; to Glorify Him; to enjoy Him; to Love Him. If these are the primary ends for which we, as Christians, believe we have been created, how do we pursue them? How do we, limited, weak, fragile human beings, bring Glory to an almighty God?
In 1st Peter Chapter 2, Verse 9, the apostle writes that “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, so that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Receiving the love and care of a vast and intimate God uniquely enables us to bring Him glory by proclaiming in His presence our joy at having seen ourselves “called out of darkness, into His wonderful light”. We were once guilty of an infinitely terrible crime, and faced with an infinite punishment, the only escape from which comes by an infinite grace, which, having been received, evokes in us infinite gratitude and joy.
And, in just the same way that my youthful dedication to my parents led me to hand them the fruits of my artistic labor – poorly executed, but faithfully offered – our infinite gratitude to God finds its expression in faithfully handing Him the poor fruits of our lives: our paintings and poems, songs and dances. In every facet of our selves, including the artistic, it is right to find ourselves desiring, first and foremost, to bring God praise, by demonstrating the quality and abundance of our lives in Him. As we begin to understand what it really means to be saved by grace, this desire to respond in joyful gratitude begins to push out all the other competing desires and patrons clamoring for our attention and service.
But, there is an objection that can be raised to all this; after all, it may sound troubling to limit the scope of our artistic expression simply to those things which bring God glory. After all, why can’t we let art be free of such external constraints, let it simply be “art for art’s sake”?
Well, for one thing, love, even as it brings freedom, also necessitates limits. Any mutual love imposes on the lives of those whom it touches; but it is a joyful imposition! Yes, Love limits us; it limits us in our impatience, when we desire to withhold forgiveness; It restrains us in our jealousy, in our boasting, in our pride, and in our anger. Love, when truly tasted, makes us long to stare into its depths and lose sight of everything else as we contemplate and adore the object of our love.
II. To provide audiences an honest encounter with the truth we find surrounding us.
And also, by saying that our art should bring God glory, I don’t simply mean that the truths we convey have to be uniformly pleasant.
A natural part of becoming a Christian is that a man gradually finds himself peering into two worlds at once: the world that is “real-at-the-moment”, and the world of “actual reality.” The world of the moment is the world of suffering, of distance, of sin; but, being brought more and more sharply into focus as we grow more familiar with God, is the world as it actually was intended to be: a world of peace, of intimacy, of healing and loving unity.
This is what I mean by saying that it the second goal of the Christian Artist to provide the audience with an honest encounter of truth: God’s revelation of Himself – at once intimately personal and immensely large-scale – provides the Christian with two points of view, both of which serve the artist as inspiration. To limit the scope of artistic revelation to one or another of these viewpoints rings false: while our hope is sure and our faith secure, to claim that we can distill our experience of Christ into feel-good, pastel-colored images of serenity and passivity is a dramatic oversimplification. If we do so, we create kitsch, a shallow sentimentality that is the opposite of Good Art, because it has no connection to the complex experiences and dreams of the audiences we invite to partake in the artistic experience with us.
The opposite oversimplification – presenting the dire state of sin, while withholding a sense of overpowering hope – is equally poor art, for it is also untrue. As Christians, for whom “in all things, we are more than conquerors, because of Christ who loved us” (Rom. 8:37), it is disingenuous to pretend that our eternal well-being can be jeopardized by the passing and momentary ills of this world.
We Christians have space to discuss both despair and hope precisely because our hope can be counted on to endure. In the Christian life, there is room for both the sad truth of the fallen world as well as the glad tidings of the redemption that is beginning to shine through its cracks. After all, without death, resurrection is meaningless; but, without resurrection, death is simply a cold, inevitable end-of-story. So it is necessary to present, in our every creative work, the full trajectory of the Gospel, never shrinking from honestly portraying the total story of fallenness and redemption; but always hinting at glimpses of the Hope to overcome the despair, and the Comforter who seeks us out in our loneliness.
Art expresses the truth, hope, and passion that we have found, or want to find, in the world around us. At age 10, I found my passion in STAR WARS; and my art reflected that. But now, for today, and tomorrow, and increasingly as the days pass, that passion is focused on the being and character of God. And I hope that the work of my hands can come to daily reflect that focused passion more and more.
Once, I drew pictures of spaceships, and happily presented the results of my work to my parents. Today, right now, we are all creating, not just as artists, but as humans going about our daily lives. I pray that we can, one day, happily present the results to our Heavenly Father.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
To the rulers.
10 The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.
when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked.
11 Then men will say,
"Surely the righteous still are rewarded;
surely there is a God who judges the earth."
(Psalm 58:10-11)
Finding myself the sole attendant at our nightly prayer meeting on Monday, I scrolled through my Bible and found myself face-to-face with Psalm 58. Ever since, I've been reflecting, mulling over these verses.
Even a preliminary read-through reveals the stark and gory tone of Verse 10, contrasting even with the angry and intense need seeping throughout David's repeated cries for divine retribution against his persecutors. The image - a man rejoicing in his enemy's maiming and thorough slaughter, dabbling his feet in the carnage - is shocking. Horrific. This isn't your grandmomma's Bible (actually, it probably is - I've discover that grandmommas can be shocking and wonderfully incisive individuals).
Being honest, part of me recoils to read these verses. Even as I worked my way through them again, my mind squirmed - wriggling left and right to find a way to excuse, to write off these words, anything to distance myself from their utter gore, the naked anger and vengeful bloodthirst that roars from the lines.
But there simply isn't a convenient answer. To write them off as uninspired, merely human, ungodly, calls into question what I hold most dearly, most truly Good: that the Bible is, in its entirety, precisely the fantastical sort of artifact or relic of which dreams and stories boast, around which epics are constructed and over which kingdoms were wagered. It is such, precisely because at its core it is the inspiration and mind of God brought into language, in the very same way that Jesus Messiah is the person of God brought into human flesh.
But then what? If the Bible is inspired - for every reader, in every context - then there must be something in these words for me: "The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked." Should I, then, look forward to divine vengeance being called down upon my enemies - to the slaughter of all who have wronged and slighted me?
I don't think so.
1 Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge uprightly among men?
Do you judge uprightly among men?
2 No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth.
(Psalm 58:1-2)
The word translated above (in the NIV) rulers is only found twice in the entire Bible, and once - here - in its content (the other is the title of Psalm 56).
Variously translated gods, congregation, or judges, this word implies a silent host - the root is a word, silenced or made dumb - of distant and careless men passing judgment arbitrarily, with no thought in mind to the well-being of either accuser or accused. By referencing these judges with this term, the question answers itself:
do they speak justly? Do they judge uprightly? No!
They are, in fact, not judges at all: for, as verse 2 continues speaking, these men "devise injustice... mete out violence on the earth." These men are, in fact, anti-judges: rather than prescribing all that is Good and Just, they pronounce hatred, evil, violence - wickedness.
The men being addressed by David are thugs, plain and simple. And evil, whether through physical might or instead the subtleties of political, economic, or social power, is not content in merely wallowing in its own depravity. Hatred is no more than a cheap perversion of love: and, as love desires another beside itself to serve, sacrifice for, and rejoice in, hatred finds its depressive slyness most low and darkly attractive when there is someone whom it can oppress. In addressing these wicked rulers, David implicitly notes the presence of a third party in the equation: the oppressed.
So, from the very first verse of this Psalm, there are two parties: the evil men, silently and wantonly immoral, to whom David addresses himself; and their oppressed.
In which group do we find the righteous?
It's not an enormous leap of logic to see that David is identifying the righteous with the oppressed. Having been oppressed, these righteous men do and will cry out to a Heavenly Judge - and find Him, in the end (Verse 11), not silent on the subject of the farce of justice that has been contrived by the wicked judges. As the True Judge comes forth, the wicked judges will be crushed, dismantled, maimed - and the righteous will rejoice, their sufferings not forgotten, but transformed into victory over their oppressors.
Who am I?
Having this revelation, you would think that my curiosity over these verses would have been satisfied. But rather to the contrary, I instead found myself rather discomforted. The source of the discomfort being, I found, this uncomfortable inquiry: to which of these parties do I belong?
After all, while I would love to identify myself with the righteous (who wouldn't?), I don't know if I can honestly do so. If, as I suspect, David is equating the righteous with the oppressed - and the wicked, conversely, with the oppressors - I don't know if I can in any clear conscience label myself as the former. While I have been slighted - hurt - even, perhaps, abused - I cannot say that I find myself the victim of some grand scheme of social, political, or religious neglect. I have no impotent rage, no tears of frustration and soul-shaking indignation at the wrongness of the world around me. My parents are not slave labor, living in a heap of waste; my sister has not been kidnapped to be raped; I am not being forced to kill, to labor, to die. Unlike the majority of the world's population, I - at least, at the moment - am not being conned, manipulated, coerced, or exploited to a gross degree.
But if I am not being oppressed.... then is it possible (is it?) that I am the oppressor?
Am I the one whose money is being funnelled - whether through taxes, discretionary spending, or the corporations providing my daily needs - into entities and companies whose actions are destroying the lives, bodies, and dignity of the oppressed? Am I - in my Nike shoes and Levi's belt, using my Toshiba computer and eating my McDonald's burgers - telling men and women that I'm OK, they can go ahead and use that underage labor, destroy small businesses, and corrupt entire countries' water tables, clean air, and forests?
I don't know if I am. I pray that I am not - but I fear that I am. And thinking this, reading through Psalm 58 again, I shudder. Because the True Judge is coming, and His coming is certain; and when He comes, He will judge the earth - He will bring Justice to the oppressed and oppressor alike.
Do I find myself on the side of the oppressed, the hurt, the poor - the victorious, the saved, the redeemed?
Or am I, too, yet another one of those who abuse, exploit, commodify - the wicked, the oppressors, the ones at whose downfall their enemies will rejoice and heaven will say, now all is made well
I shudder, and I pray.
In the Beginning.
Even the humblest of things can spring from a humble beginning; and this is, I fear, the humblest of beginnings. A free registration, a quick import - and done!
For a long time, I have been using various personal blogs (first my now-long-obsolete Xanga; and then my current blogspot, American Dream, Chinese Hero) to publicly muse and comment on this journey of faith within which I find myself; and all the topics thusly pertinent.
And so, one might have found within a week, posts on a new hot verse from Joe Budden, pictures of my new sneakers; photographs from a church event, commentary on race relations in Korea, and reflections on Scripture.
This multiple-personality digital beast had, somewhat sadly, to go: and now I find myself with a hydra of sorts, with this present blog being the head speaking most, I think, confusedly and blasphemously (I pray not).
For formal and informal reflections on Evangelicalism, ministry, the global Church, Scripture, and faith, seeking my name will henceforth be my venue of expression.
Names, in short, have power: when they are forced onto us (as by a schoolyard bully), they are repugnant, hateful, instruments of spite and derision. When snatched from the lips of a lover, they are glorious, shimmering, eternal things.
As a Christian, one of the things to which I cling dearly - desperately - is the thought that my name - given to me not only by my earthly parents, but my eternal Father - is written "in the Book of Life", a book within which no hand could ever dare raise the power to blot or inscribe a single character.
The Biblical conception of naming is an interesting thing: not only does a name describe who we are, a well-chosen name - a true name, as it were - prophecies (tells the truth) about who we will be. Names are not only references, but serve as stories - signifiers - prescriptions.
As a young, immature man seeking - seeking Christ, God, Grace, and Love - I think, ultimately, I and all others who are on a journey of faith are simply seeking our names. Our true, eternal, right names.
In short
For a long time, I have been using various personal blogs (first my now-long-obsolete Xanga; and then my current blogspot, American Dream, Chinese Hero) to publicly muse and comment on this journey of faith within which I find myself; and all the topics thusly pertinent.
And so, one might have found within a week, posts on a new hot verse from Joe Budden, pictures of my new sneakers; photographs from a church event, commentary on race relations in Korea, and reflections on Scripture.
This multiple-personality digital beast had, somewhat sadly, to go: and now I find myself with a hydra of sorts, with this present blog being the head speaking most, I think, confusedly and blasphemously (I pray not).
For formal and informal reflections on Evangelicalism, ministry, the global Church, Scripture, and faith, seeking my name will henceforth be my venue of expression.
Names, in short, have power: when they are forced onto us (as by a schoolyard bully), they are repugnant, hateful, instruments of spite and derision. When snatched from the lips of a lover, they are glorious, shimmering, eternal things.
As a Christian, one of the things to which I cling dearly - desperately - is the thought that my name - given to me not only by my earthly parents, but my eternal Father - is written "in the Book of Life", a book within which no hand could ever dare raise the power to blot or inscribe a single character.
The Biblical conception of naming is an interesting thing: not only does a name describe who we are, a well-chosen name - a true name, as it were - prophecies (tells the truth) about who we will be. Names are not only references, but serve as stories - signifiers - prescriptions.
As a young, immature man seeking - seeking Christ, God, Grace, and Love - I think, ultimately, I and all others who are on a journey of faith are simply seeking our names. Our true, eternal, right names.
In short
- American Dream, Chinese Hero will continue on as my informal personal blog, for dissemination of photographs, personal updates, and my music.
- Iason De Silentio - a formal ethnic studies blog, particularly touching on current events, Asian and Asian-American studies, hip-hop culture, and philosophy (primarily ethics) blog.
- and finally, as you have no doubt discovered, seeking my name - A reflective and contemplative faith and ministry blog, discussing Christian living, Evangelicalism, Scripture, and theology.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
An exercise
"Jesus’ College is the only one in which God’s truth can be really learned; other schools may teach us what is to be believed, but Christ’s alone can show us how to believe it."
- Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Evening Jan. 19.
Recently, a friend lent me God in the Dock, a collected edition of C.S. Lewis' minor writings and shorter presentations. Among them is Meditation in a Toolshed, a brief piece in which Lewis speaks about the distinction between looking at and looking along. Reading tonight's Morning and Evening - a twice-daily devotional to which I have often turned in my quiet times of contemplation - I was struck by the parallel thrust of Spurgeon's rumination.
In Toolshed, Lewis distinguishes looking at from looking along along an experiential axis, similar to the research method distinction between, respectively, grounded theory and participant-observer strategies of data collection and interpretation. In short, the metaphor Lewis constructs is based on the familiar analogy of revelation as a source of light: envisioning a beam of light cast onto an object, looking at the ray grants information about the light itself, while looking along the light reveals knowledge about the source and target of the emission.
Lewis' privileging the latter over the former seems a priori, but I think that there are fair arguments to be made in support of looking along versus looking at. Both positions bear reasonable and seemingly non-trivial epistemic value. But what may grant us liberty to preference looking along over looking at is the existence of convincing order in the revelation.
That is to say, revelation, and specifically the Christian revelation, is itself ordered in an intuitively convincing manner: a beam of light hitting the blank wall of the toolshed may be dismissed as a random structural failure, while a beam of light illuminating a carving on the ground is not so easily dismissed. The question then is whether the information revealed by participating in the Christian process - looking along - is of the former or latter quality.
Adding to the difficulty of processing this information is the hypothesis that the results are biased through human intervention. After all, alternative beams of light exist, striking seemingly intentional points on the ground, and it seems a fairly foundational part of participating in looking along that looking along one source of revelation is mutually exclusive with others. So, one of the common claims of those looking along a particular light is that the other lights are false constructs, illuminating points (metaphysical/theological points, that is) that may seem appealing but are, in fact, only so because they are intended by human effort to be so rather than divine effort.
Spurgeon's quote is situated in similarly hairy territory. All the issues raised with Lewis' beliefs - and more - can apply here. It is interesting that both predicate "real learning" with participation: learning is distinguished from learning about. There is something about active, personal, engagement that is valuable to both authors - and it is very attractive to me, too. But it seems as though much post-Enlightenment/Rationalist thought has found itself striking an antagonistic position, claiming that personal investment in a situation has quite the opposite effect: rather than granting knowledge in a particularly valuable way, it taints what data is gathered. Is this an intractable disagreement? One wonders.
There are far more issues in this exploration than I can adequately here address. I like both the ideas expressed by Lewis and Spurgeon. In both cases, there is great intuitive appeal, but it is difficult to articulate the basis - defending the premises - of the appeal. Perhaps one either "feels it" or doesn't.
Merely an exercise in rigour.
- Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Evening Jan. 19.
Recently, a friend lent me God in the Dock, a collected edition of C.S. Lewis' minor writings and shorter presentations. Among them is Meditation in a Toolshed, a brief piece in which Lewis speaks about the distinction between looking at and looking along. Reading tonight's Morning and Evening - a twice-daily devotional to which I have often turned in my quiet times of contemplation - I was struck by the parallel thrust of Spurgeon's rumination.
In Toolshed, Lewis distinguishes looking at from looking along along an experiential axis, similar to the research method distinction between, respectively, grounded theory and participant-observer strategies of data collection and interpretation. In short, the metaphor Lewis constructs is based on the familiar analogy of revelation as a source of light: envisioning a beam of light cast onto an object, looking at the ray grants information about the light itself, while looking along the light reveals knowledge about the source and target of the emission.
Lewis' privileging the latter over the former seems a priori, but I think that there are fair arguments to be made in support of looking along versus looking at. Both positions bear reasonable and seemingly non-trivial epistemic value. But what may grant us liberty to preference looking along over looking at is the existence of convincing order in the revelation.
That is to say, revelation, and specifically the Christian revelation, is itself ordered in an intuitively convincing manner: a beam of light hitting the blank wall of the toolshed may be dismissed as a random structural failure, while a beam of light illuminating a carving on the ground is not so easily dismissed. The question then is whether the information revealed by participating in the Christian process - looking along - is of the former or latter quality.
Adding to the difficulty of processing this information is the hypothesis that the results are biased through human intervention. After all, alternative beams of light exist, striking seemingly intentional points on the ground, and it seems a fairly foundational part of participating in looking along that looking along one source of revelation is mutually exclusive with others. So, one of the common claims of those looking along a particular light is that the other lights are false constructs, illuminating points (metaphysical/theological points, that is) that may seem appealing but are, in fact, only so because they are intended by human effort to be so rather than divine effort.
Spurgeon's quote is situated in similarly hairy territory. All the issues raised with Lewis' beliefs - and more - can apply here. It is interesting that both predicate "real learning" with participation: learning is distinguished from learning about. There is something about active, personal, engagement that is valuable to both authors - and it is very attractive to me, too. But it seems as though much post-Enlightenment/Rationalist thought has found itself striking an antagonistic position, claiming that personal investment in a situation has quite the opposite effect: rather than granting knowledge in a particularly valuable way, it taints what data is gathered. Is this an intractable disagreement? One wonders.
There are far more issues in this exploration than I can adequately here address. I like both the ideas expressed by Lewis and Spurgeon. In both cases, there is great intuitive appeal, but it is difficult to articulate the basis - defending the premises - of the appeal. Perhaps one either "feels it" or doesn't.
Merely an exercise in rigour.
When Your Heart Stops Beating
[reposted from an email originally dated 1/7/10]
Hey, friends;
The title of this email comes from a song by (+44), a little-known (I guess?) band, better known as a side project started by two of Blink-182's members while the latter was on hiatus.
Now, I haven't actually listened to this song in a while; but as I reflected on what God's been working on in my life over last couple of days, (+44)'s lyrics just leapt up from my subconscious:
I'll be there when your heart stops beating
I'll be there when your last breath's taken away
In the dark when there's no one listening...
Take a look at what that chorus is saying - and then take a look at these verses:
"Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel
"without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God." (Phil 1:27-28)
This isn't really a secret: in high school, I was a pretty emo kid. There may even be (there are) a few composition books back at my parents' house filled with scribbled, angsty poems and lyrics. OK, actually I was a super emo kid - pretty out of control. To the point where my emotional baggage actually got me rejected from MIT (ask if you want to hear the story some time).
Thankfully, God has since changed me radically, into a very different person - in my attitude, hopes, dreams, and thoughts. But, when it all comes down to it, I still find the same desires that fueled my pubescent angst comprising a large part of my motivations.
What are those desires? Pretty simple, really: I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be a failure. I want my life to have meaning, shape, direction.
I thought, when I began seeking God at the end of high school, that I'd put all that in the past: I truly listened to the Gospel for the first time, accepted Jesus as the Creator, Sustainer, and Savior of my life, and found Him to be The Answer:
Lonely? "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."
A failure? "By grace you have been saved, through faith; not coming from your own works, so you cannot boast about it."
Directionless? "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
So, Jesus is The Answer - right?
...
For the past few days, I have found myself repeatedly agonizing over some things that have been laying heavy on my mind. Last night, chatting with Steve Yu '07 for commiseration and advice, he encouraged me to place myself again in front of God, in His hands. OK, I thought to myself - haven't I been doing that? And still, the worrying, the anxiety, the background angst, continue.
Still, knowing that it was the right thing to do - and having thought it over til my brain whirled - I laid down, prayed, and picked up a daily devotional by Charles Spurgeon, which referenced Philippians 1. And so I read the verses above:
"Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.
Whatever happens?
"This is a sign ... that you will be saved—and that by God."
Hmm... I will be saved... by God.
And I had a moment of clarity. In which I realized:
God is my life.
Joy and hope in my life don't come from my job; my girlfriend; my health, finances, or any other measure of success.
Over the past few days, I had been inadvertently narrowing down my focus, closing my eyes against everything else except a few, specific, areas of my life.
But, last night, God forced my eyes open again, and reminded me where my future is actually centered. He is the one who redeems my life; He is, as I've heard - and even said - so many times, the Creator and Sustainer of my soul. So, whatever may happen - personally or professionally; physically, emotionally, or spiritually - it is to God that I will look for salvation.
It's funny: for the past few days, as I felt myself wrestled down by worry and anxiety, I tried everything (well, not everything) to comfort myself. And most of that just came down to me thinking around in repetitive circles, listening to my own internal counsel repeat endlessly. And not a single bit of that brought me any relief.
But as soon as God reminded me that my life is not, ultimately, about my self but rather about Him, all the anxiety, the concern, the worry came crashing down. And I could even laugh, knowing that, in the end, all of these concerns are truly miniscule compared to the very good, very beautiful, utterly satisfying and hope-fulfilling end of a life lived in the presence and glory of God.
I'm sad and glad, friends.
Sad that I have so easily let my vision narrow down into a tiny sliver of what vistas it could be perceiving.
Glad that I remembered the one thing of value that I have: the God who is always there.
I'll be there when your heart stops beating
I'll be there when your last breath's taken away
In the dark when there's no one listening...
Thank God.
Hey, friends;
The title of this email comes from a song by (+44), a little-known (I guess?) band, better known as a side project started by two of Blink-182's members while the latter was on hiatus.
Now, I haven't actually listened to this song in a while; but as I reflected on what God's been working on in my life over last couple of days, (+44)'s lyrics just leapt up from my subconscious:
I'll be there when your heart stops beating
I'll be there when your last breath's taken away
In the dark when there's no one listening...
Take a look at what that chorus is saying - and then take a look at these verses:
"Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel
"without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God." (Phil 1:27-28)
This isn't really a secret: in high school, I was a pretty emo kid. There may even be (there are) a few composition books back at my parents' house filled with scribbled, angsty poems and lyrics. OK, actually I was a super emo kid - pretty out of control. To the point where my emotional baggage actually got me rejected from MIT (ask if you want to hear the story some time).
Thankfully, God has since changed me radically, into a very different person - in my attitude, hopes, dreams, and thoughts. But, when it all comes down to it, I still find the same desires that fueled my pubescent angst comprising a large part of my motivations.
What are those desires? Pretty simple, really: I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be a failure. I want my life to have meaning, shape, direction.
I thought, when I began seeking God at the end of high school, that I'd put all that in the past: I truly listened to the Gospel for the first time, accepted Jesus as the Creator, Sustainer, and Savior of my life, and found Him to be The Answer:
Lonely? "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."
A failure? "By grace you have been saved, through faith; not coming from your own works, so you cannot boast about it."
Directionless? "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
So, Jesus is The Answer - right?
...
For the past few days, I have found myself repeatedly agonizing over some things that have been laying heavy on my mind. Last night, chatting with Steve Yu '07 for commiseration and advice, he encouraged me to place myself again in front of God, in His hands. OK, I thought to myself - haven't I been doing that? And still, the worrying, the anxiety, the background angst, continue.
Still, knowing that it was the right thing to do - and having thought it over til my brain whirled - I laid down, prayed, and picked up a daily devotional by Charles Spurgeon, which referenced Philippians 1. And so I read the verses above:
"Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.
Whatever happens?
"This is a sign ... that you will be saved—and that by God."
Hmm... I will be saved... by God.
And I had a moment of clarity. In which I realized:
God is my life.
Joy and hope in my life don't come from my job; my girlfriend; my health, finances, or any other measure of success.
Over the past few days, I had been inadvertently narrowing down my focus, closing my eyes against everything else except a few, specific, areas of my life.
But, last night, God forced my eyes open again, and reminded me where my future is actually centered. He is the one who redeems my life; He is, as I've heard - and even said - so many times, the Creator and Sustainer of my soul. So, whatever may happen - personally or professionally; physically, emotionally, or spiritually - it is to God that I will look for salvation.
It's funny: for the past few days, as I felt myself wrestled down by worry and anxiety, I tried everything (well, not everything) to comfort myself. And most of that just came down to me thinking around in repetitive circles, listening to my own internal counsel repeat endlessly. And not a single bit of that brought me any relief.
But as soon as God reminded me that my life is not, ultimately, about my self but rather about Him, all the anxiety, the concern, the worry came crashing down. And I could even laugh, knowing that, in the end, all of these concerns are truly miniscule compared to the very good, very beautiful, utterly satisfying and hope-fulfilling end of a life lived in the presence and glory of God.
I'm sad and glad, friends.
Sad that I have so easily let my vision narrow down into a tiny sliver of what vistas it could be perceiving.
Glad that I remembered the one thing of value that I have: the God who is always there.
I'll be there when your heart stops beating
I'll be there when your last breath's taken away
In the dark when there's no one listening...
Thank God.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
truer words
"Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you."
I love these words.
I love these words.
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