Weekend

This weekend was nuts, road trip to North Carolina mountains, clear starry skies, trespassing in farm land, winding roads, almost getting arrested, no sleep, mute math & eisley @ the tabernacle, and Jesus and great football.

Welcome to Chicago (the concise version)

This fall break I had something inside me urging me to write, for the sole reason of getting my thoughts out. I almost didn’t end up writing anything, but after watching “in the wild” in the theaters with Alex I just told myself I not only wanted to write, but I wanted to write a book. Forgive me if this post is quite long.

The windy city, taught me about truth, music, brotherhood, and the pursuit of joy. It is amazing how school can bind you up in a clutter as to make you forget about how to put your thoughts down. I remember the day before taking my old testament interpretation test, I was up till 4 or 5 am studying for it and my attention deficiency order took over and I started look at all these modern art photographs. I was so intrigued and just kept flipping through pictures for over an hour and a half. I completely forgot about my test at 9am. As critical as I am about modern art I thought to myself isn’t life so great? That you can almost take a picture of anything and find something beautiful about it. You can take that analogy and expand it on so many different levels. Art, to me, is about finding beauty in anything. This definition makes me appreciate art all the more. I wished all weekend that I had a camera and I almost spontaneously bought one. I realized though that when I write it’s all about painting a picture, something I can look back at and smile. I’ll either wonder “what was I thinking?” and laugh, or relate to what I was thinking and laugh.

Before fall break I was so frustrated with all my busyness and assiduity. You know when you are in one of those moods where you want to have nothing to do, or where you want to drop the industrialized things that you have to do and take a road trip across the country (not that we ever satisfy this craving)? I just laid out on the grass, headphones blasting, and hands lifted high, and I just wanted to breathe life in, like a dude coming out of a burning house gasping for air. It’s that feeling you get when you look at something so much bigger than you and you are in awe, and you just can’t get enough of it (of God). I listened to David Crowder’s song “stars” with that line that goes “you should the see stars tonight, how they shimmer shine so bright, against the black they look so white, coming down from such a height, to reach me now.” I was just living vicariously through those stars, wishing to be as missional, wishing to reach the world with that kind of light.

I’ll start from the beginning of my fall break trip to Chicago. I got in a car with Jocelyn, Nick, and Kelsey and set out for Airtran standby-style, the way I love it. To summarize my fascination with Airtran standby it teaches me every time in a metaphorical way that when you leave things up to God, you end up in the place where He wants you to be, and this is the best place of all. The security line for the Atlanta airport was about an hour and half wait and I heard comments like “this is the worst line I’ve seen in 15 years of working at this airport.” You can imagine how many people missed their flight so the standby waiting line for my flight to Chicago was 26 people. This marked the closest time I came to giving up on getting on my flight. There happened to be only one person that did not show up and you can guess what happens next. “Mr. Chen… please board the plane.” I genuinely felt bad, sort of like I had sold them a bill of goods. I just looked back at some Emory students, snug business men, and other people that had been waiting hours longer than me. I got evil comedic thoughts like if this plane crashes they’ll be really happy and say, “I was so close to getting on that plane but there was only one seat open and a little Asian guy got on it.” I got to Chicago and we went to Chinatown to grab some of the best food I’ve had in a long time along with a honeydew grass jelly drink, and a banana smoothie with mini tapioca. In the morning, Alex and I sat down next to Michigan Lake and just talked about struggles, successes, frustrations, and anything funny we could think of.

In the afternoon we got on a train set for Wheaton College. I was sort of cautious about the whole thing. I was afraid I would love Wheaton so much that I would decide to transfer. The history behind this is that I wanted to go to Wheaton all throughout high school and at the last minute I decided to apply to Emory because I felt God calling me to a non-Christian school. I loved Wheaton more than I ever dreamed I would, but at the same time realized that my struggles at Emory were something that God in his sovereignty, wants me to go through. On the way back from Wheaton Alex and I were just like… man, that felt like coming back from a retreat. We were hosted by Stephen Huang, his 3 roommates Alex, Nate, and Andrew, and Janet Tong. We only stayed at Wheaton for about 2 days but the relationships spawned so fast that after the weekend I felt like I had known them forever. To give you a feel of what it was like, the first night after talking to them for about an hour about different things that I had been struggling with (such as women’s rights issues in the bible, the sovereignty of God, and inconsistencies in the bible) one of them just goes, you guys want to pray? I’m just thinking to myself I have never had anyone so open to prayer. I found out later that this guy wakes up at 7:30am every morning and prays.

These are some of the lessons I remember learning at Wheaton. I talked to them a lot about church planting because that’s what I want to do in the future and I was telling them how careful I was of mega churches even though some of my favorite speakers are part of them and Nate just tells me the problem with all these Buckhead screen churches and mega churches is that church becomes more about the personality of the pastor than the personality of God and it just pinpointed my feelings of discretion. Discipleship and being a Sheppard seems to me the most biblical and truthful way to be a pastor.

I got to juxtapose Matthew 13:17 (For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it), and John 5:39-40 (You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life). This just showed me that you can be righteous and memorize the entire bible (as the Pharisees did) and still not get what the heck God is talking about or pointing to. To sum that up knowledge and righteousness surely does not lead to understanding.

I got to apply that to my frustrations with understanding 1 Corinthians 15:19 (If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men). I always wondered why I could not relate to Paul when he found his hope in heaven. But then I read 2 Corinthians 11:24-28:

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches!!!!!!!!!!!

How can we as Christians in America (or Disneyland) relate to this? Of course Paul finds his hope in heaven! I can’t relate to desiring heaven which tells me that there will one day be no hunger, sickness or death, when I’m never hungry, sick, and nobody I really care about is dead on earth. We must learn to live a life that can understand the bible. When Paul says “pray at all times,” I can find no relevance in that, but it is because I do not live a life that can understand that. I’m going to blog later on about the difference between humanism and God glorifying Christianity but I wanted to mention my growing frustrations with human rights, good works, and utilitarian religion overshadowing the glory and kingdom of God. This had gotten me so upset that I could barely talk at one point. Just because we can not understand something doesn’t make it not true.

Finally, Alex and I got to experience the movie “Into the Wild” Monday night which spurred me to write all of this. If you haven’t watched this movie, watch it. While looking at the yearnings of a human soul that was so realistically presented in the movie “into the wild,” with its flaws and successes, I was able to really see God. In the movie it said sometimes it’s not important to be strong but to feel strong. That’s sort of how I feel about joy. Sometimes it’s more important to feel joyful that to be joyful (even to the point of rejoicing in sufferings). The whole movie was awesome but I had this constant frustration with the main character because I knew he had gotten it all wrong. He had tried to find love and God alone. I was so happy when he finally got it at the end. He wrote “happiness is only real when shared.” This trip was only beautiful because it was shared with one of my best friends Alex. May you find someone to share your love with.

I came to Chicago lost, confused, and filled with sin and I came out with a better wrist, new hope, and still weak as ever but with Jesus. Welcome to typing with TWO hands, welcome to a new perspective, and welcome to Atlanta (where the playas play).

Struggling through: Everything (Honesty)

The toughest part about writing is actually sitting down and doing it. I guess that’s how most things are in life that are important like maybe taking some time to listen to an orchestra, or taking time to practice scales, or reading a book that is sort of boring (aka The Brothers Karamazov), or almost anything your parents told you to do but you didn’t feel like doing. If I don’t write for long enough period I feel like I’m losing my life because I’m really forgetful and if I don’t get it on paper, I’ll sort of just forget it and it’ll just disappear into thin air. Its kind of like how girls treat pictures.

Anyways, the topic that I’ve set out to write about has to do with the foundation of my belief. I have recently been turned upside down and the stage I’m at right now is pretty lost and confused. I grew up a neo-Christian kid. This meant for me that I didn’t really believe in the bible, but I sort of believed in Jesus and I knew there was a God. When I became a real Christian in high school I moved in the opposite direction becoming more and more conservative theologically (relatively for a young person) because I felt this was the only way that I could come to terms with many of the verses of the bible, and inerrancy of the bible was the only way I could come to terms with who God was, and knowing who God was through the bible was the only way I could come to terms with Calvinism, and the only reason I came up with the sense that God was an all knowing, all purposing, all loving, perfect, indestructible, all glorifying, never failing God and human as incapable, sinful, evil, and completely and utterly selfish was because this was the only God I ever knew, and because this was the only me I ever knew. As all of these are connected when one became shaky, they all became shaky and as you can see many of beliefs are completely indefensible and unexplainable.

So I’ve always been so afraid to take theology classes at Emory because we are known to be a relatively liberal seminary, and I never wanted to lose my sense that I was the greatest sinner, and God was in all ways everything, but I ventured out this semester and decided to take New Testament Greek, and Old Testament interpretation. With one week of school under my belt, my entire foundation has been shaken and the only question that I could think of was to what end? Why all this theological struggling? The 2^nd day of my Greek class my professor puts up this quote, “He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Moral and Religious Aphorisms).

To get some sense of what I feel I began writing this song:

I’m scared to ask these questions, I’m afraid of new confessions, graft my soul upon the rock, I’ll fall on faith in all my walks. I’m scared because I left you, for all I chose before you, I put my feet on top of fools, And lost my belief because of all these rules. Take me in circles, unlatch my foundation, leave me without a platform to stand on, so I’ll fall back onto you.

When I was watching Shawshank Redemption tonight with a bunch of my Residence Life staff there were two parts that were really similar that confused me at first. When Brook (the old guy) and Morgan Freedman got out of jail they both talked about how they didn’t want to be afraid anymore. This led Brook to kill himself and Morgan Freedman to find his joy. The question that came up in my head was what were they so afraid of? I still don’t really know but for my own convenience and because it is what has gotten me so afraid and what I think makes everyone afraid. Here are two quotes: "Unbelief is not the only way of suppressing the truth about God... It is only the most honest" (Merold Westphal, Taking St. Paul Seriously.), and “love must be sincere” (Romans 12:9). I think honesty is what freaks everyone out. It is what caused Brook to hang himself. No matter if you believe in God or you don’t believe in God honesty freaks you out. If there is no God then we are all blindly running around until we die and we become part of the circle of life. Volitare the French philosopher said, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Why would you want to invent God? Because the truth of there being no God would be too insurmountable for mortal humans.

Now if you are a Christian like me, you have to climb some pretty big honesty mountains too. What the heck do I even believe and what is the foundation of my belief? Or as Laurence Peter puts it, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.” Both Christians and non-Christians alike like to get around these tough, and important questions and they’ll both use different excuses that sound pretty good to the ears. Christians can use the F bomb! Faith. As a Christian you can pretty much answer any question with faith, something like Ephesians 3:12, “in him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” I’m not saying you shouldn’t approach issues with faith, because that will come in my conclusion, but most of the time I use faith it’s because I’m too afraid to believe anything else. Non-Christians always have the handiness of alcohol and drugs to go into alter-reality and reasoning to make them think they have things together.

I’m still in this confused state now so I have no easy answers now but all I can see is where you end up is all based off your response. Brook could have lived a good life if he had only been more willing to take on truth head on. Judas (the one who betrayed Jesus) could have served God even after he betrayed Jesus if he had only asked for forgiveness just like Peter did after he denied Jesus three times. I want to be really honest, and no doubt honesty freaks me out because look where I am now, I want to go in circles and find God more precious then he ever was in my life and I hope you will seek and find as well. “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and the heart of man is restless until it finds rest in Thee” (St. Augustine, Confessions).

There you go I killed two birds with one stone, writing something down and listening to music. I will warn myself again and again that after all my exegesis and pedagogical studies, that my foundation is grafted on Jesus Christ and that my faith is always in Him even if frogs start falling from the skies. Take that reason!

Struggling through: Do We Love Heaven or God?

I’m starting a blog series called “struggling through…” I plan to address Christian hedonism, all 5 points of Calvinism (especially the juicy ones predestination, and limited atonement), homosexuality, lust, pride, and other stuff like that. I want to mention that since I am a student, I’m not trying to teach (if you learn something that is great) but I’m just trying to struggle through stuff, learn, and be honest. If you disagree with something I would be blessed if you would tell me so that I can further struggle through it.

I have been struggling recently with combining these two ideas.

The first says that God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in him, or Jonathon Edwards puts it the chief end of man is to glorify God BY rejoicing in him (I may be writing something on my struggles through this later)

The bible would put it,

“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. . . . Your steadfast love is better than life” (Ps. 63:1, 3).

“Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4)

C.S. Lewis would put it,

Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility. . . . But aren’t there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them “bad pleasures” I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean “pleasures snatched by unlawful acts.” It is the stealing of the apples that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory. . . . I have tried since . . . to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different . . . Gratitude exclaims, very properly, “How good of God to give me this.” Adoration says, “What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!” One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun. . . . If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour.

I think that I have been convinced of this, mainly through reading Dr. Piper.

Here is my problem though, I was listening to a sermon a while back called “the revival sermon” that I tried to advocate, but evidently was too weird for most people. The main sermon in it was given by a Pastor/missionary named Paris Reidhead in the mid 1900’s. He said a quote in it that was something like, “even if I go to hell, I will follow God because he is worthy.”

When I heard that I was like amen, because if we would not follow God if we went to hell then it would seem that we were worshipping the idea of heaven and hell more than the idea of God (of course this is only a hypothetical question as heaven would come along with the belief of God). This idea seems to go hand and hand with the idea of finding joy in God, on earth, and that was what I think was preached to me as a child, that finding joy on earth was plausible not just hoping for heaven. As I became Christian I found that this was true, at least most of the time I found joy in God on earth, and found that I was more joyful than people who did not have God in their lives. Then I stumbled across these verses which is the second idea which I will attempt to integrate with the above thoughts.

The second idea says that if heaven does not exist than our joy is in vain, “if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men (1 Corinthians 5:19)

“ Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:13-14).

Or as C.S. Lewis put it, “It was when I was happiest that I longed most. . . . The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing . . . to find the place where all the beauty came from.”

My problem has been integrating the joy and satisfaction of God right now, with the idea that without an after-life we are to be pitied the most. These questions arose in my mind: if we have so much joy and satisfaction in God on earth (God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him), why would we be most pitied if it was only in this life? Is our faith a result of the idea of heaven or a result of God’s love for us? Is there a way that our hope in heaven and our joy in God right now can coexist?

The way that Piper explained this was that our joy on earth is in the hope of a heaven. When I began to think about this more and more I found that this idea did not match my idea of how God would win us. Assume that somehow it was proven that God exists to all people, and heaven and hell were real. Any rational person would ask Jesus for forgiveness because they wouldn’t want to go to hell. Since I believe in God it seems that rationally I should choose to live a life for God. My problem is not that Christianity could be rational because the bible says, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). The problem for me is in the focal point behind this rationality. I am choosing God here rationally because I get to go to heaven, not because of God. Because choosing heaven is a rational choice (since it is better than hell) Christianity seemed conditional to me, and I never saw Christianity as conditional before. You can picture yourself as a parent and you are trying to teach a kid to love you and you say, if you don’t follow me then I’m going to send you to your room. This is conditional… the kid will love the parents because he doesn’t want to be sent to a bad place.

After meditating through the conditionality of Christianity though, I began to realize that the idea of heaven and hell is not only biblical, it is love. As a child I hated street preachers with bull-horns that would yell, “you are going to hell!” Naturally, after I became a Christian I still hated these people, so it confused me a lot when Dr. Piper (my favorite teacher now) shadowed himself after Jonathon Edwards, whose most famous sermon was called, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.” Although it is still uncomfortable to me, preaching hell and heaven precisely shows us how much God loves us, and precisely shows us how unconditional Christianity is. If you know you are guilty, and you know you deserve hell, grace becomes that much sweeter. No matter what religion you are a part of, humans seek to absolve themselves from their guilt. You’ve all heard the scene before, you are in a court room and you just murdered someone, and the judge comes in and says you are free to go I will go to jail for you. That is what Jesus did for us, and so the lack of conditionality is what we call unconditional love. Piper made me realize that biggest problem there ever was, and the problem that needs to be preached is not “how can God convince ME to believe in him?” it is “how can God justify such a horrible sinner and still be considered just?”

Finally I think we need to fix our view of heaven. Heaven is like the word Christian in that its meaning has been changed so much from its original meaning. A Christian was simply a Christ follower and would bring images of martyrs, love, grace, the cross, etc. Christians now have a shameful history, and I guess we’ll leave it at that. Heaven, just like the word Christian has been changed. Heaven is a place where God is present in every corner and everyone is worshiping God at all times. There is no way we can desire heaven without desiring God. Our desire for heaven should be our desire to finally know God! “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”(1^st Corinthians 13:12) As children, we are told that everything that is not God is bad because all we need is Jesus. Since many of us have disassociated heaven from God we think that “getting into heaven” is a bad motivation when in reality our hope is spending eternity with Jesus. Instead of thinking about spending eternity with Jesus we’ve replaced it with just a word. It is obvious that many Christians become Christians because of heaven, and many people still bow down to heaven (the word) and not God, but this is because we have skewed the definition of heaven to our own liking. I conclude that Paris Reidhead’s quote (“I will worship God even if I go to hell because he is worthy”), as hip and good as it sounds, is not only unbiblical, but misses out on the message of Christianity. We ought to love God AND desire heaven.

If you want to listen to Paris Reidhead’s sermon “Ten Shekels and A Shirt” (which I highly recommend and think is brilliant) it can be found here: http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=282