To the rulers.

¹⁰ The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
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?

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.

Prostitutes and tax collectors.

[Adapted from correspondence]

At my church this morning, our associate pastor gave a really moving (well, it moved me) sermon about...

OK. To be honest, I was not paying attention during a massive portion of the sermon, because I got like 4 hours of sleep last night during a sleepover at Adam Y-V's house (4 Christian brothers = hallelujah, a Godly confraternity!). I did gather, in between desperate attempts to at least appear attentive, that, in general, the pastor was talking about the salvific power of Christ: how He can reach anybody, regardless of where they are coming from or located at in their lives. A good topic, one with which I'm sure we are all more or less generally familiar. Good stuff, good stuff... but not really one (at least when broadly approached) likely to be provoking a lot of introspection for me (this is a sad truth, and more likely just about my own foolishness than the weightiness of the topic).

But, towards the end of the sermon, the preacher started talking about how the depths of sin from which God had saved him. He is an ex-gangster/drug dealer/adulterer/etc. He's been jailed multiple times. But the point that he kept hammering home was that God had always walked there beside him and before him (that is why we call Him a God that is previous). When he was dealing drugs, God was there with him. When he was sleeping with whoever, God was with him. When he was putting a needle in his arm for drugs, God was there with him. Kanye West might say that Jesus walks... but the truth is, He does so in such thorough ways that we got no clue.

And then the pastor drew a parallel between Jesus' always being with us (even to the end of the age) and Jesus going to be in tax collectors' houses, down to be with them after - and while - they partied. Tax collectors, prostitutes, these were basically the two sides of the "immoral" coin: few men could be more despised than a tax collector, and few women regarded as more shameful or less worthy of respect in that culture. (And of course, we could talk on and on about gender roles in 1st-century Israel/Judea and what it means and signifies that a man would become a tax collector or a woman a prostitute.)

Now, as he started talking about these people with whom Jesus associated himself, my mind started wandering again... but, this time, I think it was a Godly wandering; less a loss of focus than a purposeful redirection of it.

I began recollecting how, so often, I have held a sanitized view of Jesus. About how I intellectually assent to the fact that Jesus hung out with "bad people", but I somehow disengage those "bad people" from their "bad acts" while Jesus was with them. As though He existed in a little bubble of goodness and moral rectitude that somehow charmed the corrupt moral fibre of those around Himself into marginal and temporary sanitation.

But the thing that I realized today was... nope. Basically: the parties to which Jesus went to were not saintly affairs. Jesus hung out with tax collectors. And prostitutes. Let's run over that again:
-Tax collectors (i.e. men who, by virtue of their corruption or/and low moral standards, had a lot of money).
-And prostitutes (i.e. women who, for whatever reason, did... things... in exchange for money).

And ummm... I'm sure that those tax collectors and prostitutes were not just getting together to chill and read the news. While I'm sure that they might have felt ashamed by His presence there - or, more likely, odd and a little weirded out (all ay yo who is that dude hanging out outside talking to everybody but not coming into the party? why isnt he gettin down with the ladies; he shy or gay or somethin?) - but I'm also fairly sure that His presence didn't change all that much of their behavior, and certainly all their behaviors (Isaiah 53:3 - "He was despised, and we esteemed him not").

So this is our God. Going back to a devotional I wrote a little while back, this is our real Hosea: our Christ. He loved each and every one of those people in those parties more than anyone we have ever loved, and he was there to watch them forsake Him for cheap, quick, objectifying lustiness. And He was, so much, Loving Grace, that, instead of fleeing from the scene, unable to handle it, He remained with those people, utterly in love with them.

Can we do this?? I can still remember the dread heartache I felt this one time in high school, when I was dating some girl and she basically started falling for this other guy. I could see it coming, I could hear it on the phone; and she probably could, too. I can still recall so vividly well the sinking emptiness of love taken and rejected; or worse, a love accepted but left without reciprocation.

To use a gross term: love abused.

It's the same feeling you get (well, I do anyhow) when you see that girl (or guy, though I wouldn't know about that.... im guessing it's the same) you have a crush on, or even just sort of fancy, talking a little too closely with some other person, or coming to the party with them, or (ha ha here do I give too much away?) going back and forth avidly from facebook wall to wall with a few too many ;)'s and =)'s for comfort (yeah that was a little of a stalker-ish example. I don't actually do that, promise).

You know that feeling? That hollowness which shakes you in your very heart and to the pit of your stomach? Your very essence of being?

Now imagine Christ - Lover and Husband and Knower of every individual person - not only not avoiding that feeling (magnified by an infinity of comprehension, I'm sure), but seeking it out.

Desiring to give us grace so much that, instead of fleeing when we adulterers approach Him, instead of simply standing still and waiting for us to come to Him, loving these sinners - we prostitutes and we tax collectors - so much that He actually sought them (us!) out, even in the midst of their (our!!) very moment of consummated adultery?

That's a God I can cry out to. That the God whose grace can (and did) bring me to my knees during worship after the sermon, literally crying out for His Cross to be mine. And I hope - I think - that my tears might be the same as those of Mary Magdalene (also a woman with a sordid past... as are we all [not women. Having sordid pasts.]), which watered His sore feet.

This is the God who is seeking me out, to embrace me, as I go to Internet sites that I shouldn't go to, or talk to girls that I don't really need to be talking to, in ways that I don't really need to be talking, about things that don't really deserve discussion.
This is the God who is desiring me, when I'm obsessing over clothes, or money, or sneakers, or any of a thousand other things which could be good but are too-often idols.
This is the God who loves me when I commit adultery with the manifold succubi of my own creation;
and one day, one day soon, one day already, this is the God whose love will be so greatly and obviously revealed to me that I will finally turn back and fall in love with that God once and for all.

Reflections on the Seoul morning.

(Adapted from correspondence)

A thought at 6:40 AM.

Just a quick thought, not really a devotional.

I was just walking along the street this morning alternately praying and singing quietly. The 6 AM street in my corner of Seoul is bright - a touch hazy - quiet and cool. Older men and women wander the streets, but I live in a low-traffic suburb so, by and large, I was alone with my thoughts and my God.

Walking along, I was struck by the way that God has constantly been using ongoing relationships between myself and non-Christian friends to continually draw me closer to Him.

It can be incredibly frustrating to see close friends go through recurring struggles with sin. But I can't help but be awed and astonished at how uniquely God reveals Himself through seeing my friends' struggles with themselves and their compulsive needs to rely on inadequate sources of succor. I see truth occasionally breaking through in moments of honesty and reflection, and this must be exactly the same way that God sees me struggling with myself and my foolish, contemptible pride.

The life of the Old Testament prophet Hosea is one of my favorite stories in the Bible, hands down. Dude was a prophet and God had him marry a mad um loose woman. Why? "The people in this land have acted like prostitutes and abandoned the Lord." Burned.

God had Hosea go out and marry an unfaithful woman precisely so that he would have a personal experience of sin, from the other side. So often we sin and see the grievous marks it leaves on our own souls and lives; sometimes, even, we get a glimpse of what it means to grieve God or the Spirit, and we get a jolt of repentance and humility from that. But to understand Sin, even if only briefly and vaguely, from the point of the person pursuing the lost, rather than being pursued as the lost, is also a great (and terrible) gift.

I'm not advocating going out and trying to fall in love with/marry/invest in the most tragic person you can, simply to have an experience of what it's like to be God. That sounds vaguely blasphemous, if not explicitly foolish.

But I think God does sometimes put us in situations where He desires to teach us some specific lesson about what it means to Trust Him and, yes, even to Be Him (this is the same reason that the "Dark Night of the Soul" and the stigmata are considered gifts in various Christian traditions: they are experiences that allow us to partake in Christ's suffering and share a deeper understanding of His spirit).

I've heard multiple sermons about how difficult it can be to raise children without the assurance that they will follow after the Lord.

In the same way, it can be incredibly difficult to be so deeply invested in a person, without any assurance that they will be able to bring themselves to care about their own future. There is a lot that I have seen friends do, see them continue to do, and know that they will do that grieves me personally and spiritually; and I can only imagine how deeply it grieves our Maker.

But if I myself have sinned as much as I have, and yet God loves me; and yet He loves me; and yet again He loves me; then who am I to not extend that same forgiveness? And, in extending it, I feel some of the joy - and deep tragedy - of what it means to love an as-yet unregenerate soul; I can only imagine what it is to be really in love with every one of those souls. I know I couldn't bear it.

So, it's a good thing that I don't have to; not alone, anyways.

A thousand times I've failed;
still, your mercy remains;
Should I stumble again,
still, I'm caught in your grace.

Everlasting, your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending, your glory goes beyond all fame

This is LOVE!

(adapted from correspondence)

There is one thing that has weighed heavy on my mind over the last day or two, even though it's actually fairly silly: having arriving in Korea, surveying my schedule and financial situation, and weighing the costs and benefits, I am looking into going to Beijing/北京 for the week after I finish my job, to catch up with my rap crew and also several other close friends.

However, for several reasons (needing to move my initial flight from Seoul to the States back one week, needing to get a Chinese tourist visa, the costs of international flight, the stupid OLYMPICS [ugh], etc. ad infinitum), this is an incredibly painstaking endeavor. But God has been really using this intensity to teach me something. And this is it.


This is God's mercy and grace: if I lose all I possibly could, I would still have more than I could ever discover.


And this is why I've been thinking about this.

Making travel plans sucks, especially for me. I am a pretty frugal guy - some might say stingy, and they wouldn't be wrong - and when I get into the details of visa fees, airport taxes, scheduling flights, application paperwork, comparative shopping, et cetera., et cetera., et cetera., I am able to grow thoroughly obsessed with saving $10 here or $30 there. I hate spending money that I don’t need to: sometimes it seems that my absolute greatest nightmare would be to find out that, for instance, I booked a flight too late, and wasted $200 that didn’t need to be spent. So, for all of my free time today*, I was calling, researching, and emailing travel agents to find out who could get me the absolute lowest price on an air ticket. (*I used my phone so much that I ran out of prepaid minutes… adding another stress: wasting $18)

And it was thoroughly unhealthy. Why was I doing this? Not because I wanted to save money for God's kingdom: because I was, in a very real way, making an idol of money. The thought of spending $20 that I didn't need to began to seem like blasphemy to me.

For those who haven't seen me when I get really anxious or concerned about something, I grow amazingly obsessive about that matter, until it is either resolved or has passed (side note: these issues ALWAYS resolve, and always in my favor. God's track record in my life is something on the order of 13241451:0).

In such cases, I am a perfect antithesis of Matthew 6:25:

"Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food?"

OK. I'm usually not particularly obsessed about food. But this is the nature of anxiety: when you are anxious about something, that one thing becomes the single most important focus of your life.

Imagine a man starving in the wilderness. His life, his survival, his continued existence, is reduced to one factor: food. If he finds food, even one morsel, he will continue to live; if he fails to do so, he will surely cease to be.

The psychology of anxiety, at least speaking for me, is such that, if I am anxious about something, it consumes my mind in this very same way (and I suspect it is so for many of us). I focus on it to the exclusion of all else: success or failure in this one arena becomes the be-all and end-all of who I am. It becomes, in a real way, my identity: have I beaten this problem, or have I been vanquished by it?

Isn't that idolatry? Yes, and I'm sure there are whole books to be written on that, indicting us for our blasphemy of God. But this is not what I am concerned with here; this is what I find so urgent in this situation:


If I truly love God, this anxiety is foundless! It has no basis.


I grow anxious over things - money, friends, a job, travel plans, etc. - because I begin to think, without this, I cannot proceed with my life. Why does someone worry when they might get kicked out of a house? Because life requires a place to live! Why worry when you feel that you don't have a single friend? Because life without friends is not worth living!


But this is the miracle of God's love: If I have it, and it alone, I still have more than I could ever know.


And neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor things in heaven, nor things on earth, not ANYTHING can take God's love from me! (paraphrasing Romans 8:38)

Ms. Joshu I Sky AKA elee AKA esta! posted a quote on her blog (sorry to blow up ya spot est) a while ago, from German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "The darkest of dark cannot extinguish the light of a single flame."

-So what if I don't get a ticket to China?

-So what if, for whatever reason, I get ripped off and lose all the money I worked all summer to earn?

-So what, actually, if I die, and never return to the States?

If my love for Christ is like a "single flame," then these darknesses will pass over it and never disturb the one thing that matters, matters more than I can understand!


This is God's love: was I to lose all I ever could, I would still have more than I could ever know.


Is that not great?

I wandered home from work today with a head full of neurotic wonderings: If I move my Saturday lunch appointment from 11 AM to 10 AM, I can be in Hongik by 1 PM, talk to the travel agent… If I work 3 extra 40-minute shifts for each remaining week, I will earn 3 shifts * 30 dollars/shift * 7 weeks more, which will subsidize X amount of travel… If I… and if I… and if I….

But then God nudged me: Who are you, to accomplish anything?

Yes, I hope to go to Beijing, and this hope requires me to be diligent in researching and understanding my options. But this endless speculation, this iterated mulling over of financial matters, this is not diligence: this is self-absorbed “chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:17).

Ultimately, I will probably wind up finding a flight to Beijing for a fair price (also, a fare price.... get it? a ha ha.), going, having a good time, traveling smoothly back to Seoul, and returning to the States in time for the first week at Yale.

But what if every one of those steps goes wrong?


My life would still be fuller and better than I deserve, than I know, that my human hopes could encompass.


.


I love you all. Surrender to God. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and your journeys will be impossibly beautiful.

Your brother,
-jglc

On Melodies

me (11:24:32 PM): one of the things about breaking the harmony...
me (11:24:35 PM): the more and more you do it
me (11:24:40 PM): the less dischordant the noise sounds.