Today is another of thousands of annual commemorations of the birth of Christ. God incarnate with us, for the redemption of a fallen created order. Why am I so focused on my own unhappiness? Where is my joy? Better yet, where is my joy rooted?

Thanksgiving and Christmas - these are strategic days, and the Evil One attacks me relentlessly on these days. Father, deliver me unto a peace of mind that results from being focused on You. Spirit, lift mine. Holy Son, I remember Your arrival into this world, and this day of remembrance cannot be more timely.

Bevo l'Alienazione Liquida

Coffee is my life, my heart in a cup. I clutch it in my hands, then drink down all of the rich bitterness. It's chock-full of ellipses, which summarize the distance between myself and others. Taste it well, take it all. Love is jumping from one dot to the next, hoping that the sentence, the conversation, the relationship, continues on the other side, not trailing off into nothingness.

What was the atomic bomb but an ontological statement? "We hold power over your existence." A wonderful end to the U.S. military's island-hopping campaign, no? They got sick of continually jumping from one dot to the next across the ocean made bitter as coffee by the never-ending nature of the chase, and decided to change the way that relationship was going to be.

But I'm not a violent person. This ends only when you decide to actually be on the other end of these ellipses, these islands in the gulf between us, so I can finally arrive to where you are. Or even decide to meet me in the middle. Or even decide, after all this time, that we can do without them.

Truth With Love

If you spit the truth in hate, it will hit them in the eye and blind them to the love of Christ. That is all.

On Listening to Secular Music

Responded to this post: http://www.revelife.com/717919608/the-popes-ipod-includes-tupac

How can you hope to change the world without encountering it? Some of Tupac's stuff is very insightful, and definitely engages the brokenness of the culture he lived in. We can't show love to our society by belittling its culture. I would argue that today's contemporary Christian music is no more biblical than most rap music; who are we to look down on others? I think that, even if the culture of our society is pagan, it can give us perspective on how to engage, challenge, and better it.

Instead of always looking in, and looking after our own, the Church needs to look out. Why is there a music industry geared toward an audience consisting of almost exclusively church-goers? We need to be ministering not only to our own, but also to our broken world, because we are as broken as "everybody else." By insulating ourselves in the Christian bubble, we are more than useless, deepening the divide between "them" and "us." We are salt and light. What use has salt that is no longer salty, or light that is hidden?

Christ himself went to the IRS agents, prostitutes, and terrorists. In a way, products of culture, in music, movies, books, etc. are expressions of the tortured soul of the world. Do you hear their cry?

Preliminary Reflections on John, Chapters 9 and 10 (Unfinished)

It's abundantly clear what I shouldn't be doing, but what is it that I should be doing? Looking back, I see that I was only ever motivated by passion. In high school, my devotion was to obtaining conventional success. College burned away the scholar-student in me. Rejecting old paradigms, I see clearly. But sometimes I wonder about this correction of vision. In the last year, it has seemed to me like those paradigms are what allow people to see what's not there, make something of nothing, create meaning in absurdity. All I saw was darkness.

But the saying goes that it gets worse before it gets better, doesn't it? It's like Jesus spitting and rubbing dirt in the eyes of the blind man. The guy has been blind since birth. It's just ridiculous that the person he wants to fix his defining problem spits in his eye. He has the biggest "WTF!?" moment of his life. And then he sees, upon obeying orders to wash, because he continues to go with it, despite whatever misgivings he may have.

John 9-10 is so good. I feel like it speaks to me. John 9:30-33, the response of the formerly blind man to the religious leaders:

The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."

John 9:34, the repose of the religious leaders:

To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out.

And then John 9:38, the response of the formerly blind man to Jesus, the giver of his sight:

Then the man said, "Lord, I believe," and he worshiped him.

It's a two-fold response. Worship and witness. Upon receiving knowledge of the identity of the Son of Man, he doesn't hesitate to worship, openly proclaiming his loyalty. Before he was healed, he was already lowly in Jewish society, being essentially useless as a blind man. He is rejected by the religious leaders, that society's elite, for disrupting the status quo, proclaiming merely that a miracle has been performed on him and that it could only have come from God. He seals his own fate by embracing his renewed pariah status, and enacts through his swearing of allegiance to Jesus. The now-sighted man sees clearly, accepts what he sees, and proclaims what he sees. The leaders see the same thing, but refuse to accept it, and loudly repudiate it. Sheep to the right, goats to the left.

We also see how Jesus must have foresaw all of this. That his one act of healing would have forced the man to choose between him and society. His acts in our lives don't just exist in and of themselves; each demands our response. Does any formerly blind person wish to become blind again? Does he reject the reality before his eyes because it will cost him his comfort? How much do we love Jesus, really?

Matthew 16:23

Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

Intrinsic Worth

I think that's what I want to write about. Somehow, through a story, I want to convey this. Every human being has intrinsic worth, regardless of his or her position in society, regardless of what he or she has done or not done. People in this nation like to approach everything in a meritocratic fashion, when it is so much more the case that punishment for the sins of fathers is visited upon sons.
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I heard that Faulkner approached "As I Lay Dying" with the last line the only definite thing, and the rest of the novel was written to accommodate that. I have a line like that, now. I wrote it in a previous post. "Through pain and misery, I become Everyman." Maybe I need a first line too. "Punishment for the sins of fathers is visited upon their sons." What makes writing and reading interesting is not that you find out "what" B is, but rather the "how" in getting from A to B.


I have now ceased punishing myself for not making haste to B. I am now endeavoring to enjoy my journey to C.
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Have a happy Thanksgiving.

To Be a Son of Abraham

I've been undergoing a time of trial, and I struggle to get and keep my priorities straight. Having grown up inundated in the culture of an Asian-American church in the well-to-do suburbs, it is an existential crisis in the making when your life doesn't go as planned. By planned, I mean doing well in school, getting into a relatively good career, settling down. In the previous academic year I experienced a mental breakdown due to ongoing clinical depression and flunked out of college after two successive poor semesters.

I've just had to realize that those items are just idols for me. My small group recently studied the oft-read passage where Abraham received his calling. Abraham was called to give up his place in society. He had to leave what was then one of the centers of culture and civilization, to leave his nation, go out into what was the boonies (Canaan). His family didn't make it even halfway before they settled, and it wasn't until his father died that Abraham was called even out of his father's household. This family was the source of his standing in society.

God's call of an individual is radical. In our society, our places in society are much more a function of economics than family, especially in this culture of individualism, and to some extent, family is affected by economics. For some of us, the call may be to relinquish our expectations of good income and high standard of living. That may even be part of a call similar to Abraham's, to leave our precious nation. I've had to realize that I will probably never drive the car I want, live in the house I want in the neighborhood of my choosing, or experience the admiration of the peers I've known all my life. It hurts to kill my expectations and dreams. It hurts to not measure up in the eyes of people even within the church, because that's how far the corruption of our society spreads. It's difficult to reject such paradigms.

I have been the rich young ruler who shook his head sadly when told to give up his wealth. The clinical depression I mentioned in the opening paragraph was a result of doing poorly at a more prestigious university and essentially failing this exact same test I am facing now. I now believe that I was meant to fail, so that I could truly see, and live. In the Bible, that young man walked away, but Christ has not let me do the same. I must have the faith of Abraham who left all that he knew and understood to follow a God he could only have faith would do what He promised. God's promise to Abraham has come true, as we Christ-followers are his children. Christ's Kingdom is the great nation. We are the blessed, because of his faith.

I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." - Genesis 12:2-3

Superficiality

So I was talking to Ariel last night, which made me think. I now accept my superficiality. Unashamedly. In an era and culture in which I will pretty much be castrated and strangled for saying I look for certain physical traits in potential life-partners, I now step up to proclaim that I have standards. My superficiality knows no bounds, however. It has turned on me and held up a mirror. I need to put on some muscle.

Morality and Law

I cannot for the life of me understand why conservative Christians keep trying to push for our morality to be codified in law. We act as if we can make people believe what we do by making our values law. The opposite is true. Our morals are rooted in the very person of Christ, and our fruit is what will allow unbelievers to see the truth. By forcing values into the law, we tell society two things. 1) We are bullies. 2) We are followers of a legalistic religion, obsessed with following rules. Our goal is not to make people behave. Our goal is to introduce people to the person of Jesus Christ, the only person who can truly change people.

It really is no surprise that Christianity is identified with hate. It is also very tragic.

Disillisionment

Our quest for the world
leads ten thousand leagues beneath
the surface of its seas of good feelings,
leaving us marinating,
desiring a chill to thaw the warmth.

We sour as hours pass, as
(pickles in a jar)
waiting for these seas to drain,
releasing and beaching us
to dry and finally die to ourselves.