And God Ran: A Redemption Story

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”
-    Isaiah 43:19

It was a balmy summer night in 1998 when God found me.

He had tried once before, sending me proverbial flowers and chocolates by way of introduction. A few years before, as I listened to a somewhat formulaic version of Graham Kendrick’s well-worn 1970’s Christian pop standard, “Shine, Jesus, Shine,” the thought entered my mind that the idea of God was real and perhaps there was something to this Christianity thing that I had been immersed in for all my life. But it could also have been the electric guitar, which was to me at the time quite possibly the coolest thing ever.

But I was a naïve, misguided junior high youth back then. Tonight was different. Now I was a ninth grader attending my first high school church retreat, with some more experience under my belt and a more mature, nuanced understanding of the mysteries of this world and the next.

Beauty in the broken: where theological concepts grow legs.

Within a few minutes into the speaker’s opening talk, I could hear audible sobs and sniffles.

He didn’t use crash language or make salacious emotional appeals. He just read a few cartoons. Like this one:

Cartoons that seemed all at once simplistic stereotypes and way-too-close-too-home-for-comfort. Cartoons that depicted familial pressure to maintain a certain body image, grades, career etc. In other words, family brokenness that just about everyone in the room could relate to.

It was our fall retreat and the topic was “Beauty in the Broken.” The speaker, Jon Warden, was a licensed counselor who specializes in working with Asian Americans. Our fall retreats in the past were always a wonderful and fun experience. After the whirlwind that is the first two months of the school year (what we call New Student Outreach or NSO), Fall Retreat represented the exclamation point to NSO and was a time of fun, fellowship and a chance for freshmen to meet upperclassmen in a relaxed weekend excursion.

This year would be different.

Finding hope in the midst of Deadly Vipers

*Update: Deadly Vipers has been pulled from shelves by Zondervon and the Deadly Vipers Web site is down. I need some more time to process my thoughts, but I’m thankful what seems like progress. Yet I know it will be a long road ahead towards deeper reconciliation.

When the whole saga about Deadly Vipers hit the fan I felt a cornucopia of emotions — agony, frustration, anger, sadness, tiredness mourning, indignation.

But after two weeks, things seem to have cooled down somewhat and I’m left feeling mostly a sense of excitement and hope at where this all might be going. Not that everything has worked out perfectly (it hasn’t) or that the pain that came through this wasn’t real (it was). But as a follower of Christ who loves the Church and desperately longs for it to be “a house of prayer for all nations” — I think there is a lot to look forward to in the weeks, months and years to come.

I want to focus on looking forward, so I won’t rehash some of the key issues surrounding the Deadly Vipers saga except share some of the posts that I think best summarize the issues and were the most helpful for me in understanding and responding:

• Soong-Chan Rah’s open letter to Zondervon, the publisher of DV, and authors Mike Foster and Jud Wilhite. Rah defines some specific offenses in the material and suggests practical response that both the authors and Zondervon could take.
• Eugene Cho offers helpful reflection on the key issues and begins to address those who wonder if he is “over-reacting.”
• Helen Lee, guest blogging at Next Generasian Church, challenges those who responded to the criticism of DV with, “Get over it. Stop being so insensitive. This isn’t a real big deal.” The seemingly benign caricatures can have powerful associations, especially for those who have experienced abuse and ridicule using some of those same images. For Lee one example was being called the “dorm geisha” or “Heren Ree” as a student whenever she baked cookies for her classmates.
• A joint statement by Foster, Wilhite, Kathy Khang and Rah suggesting that there is real and significant dialogue taking place and there is an increasing amount of common ground and mutual understanding on the issues.

What I’m really excited about on the other hand is how the DV saga has catalyzed the Asian American evangelical community and how in many ways this could impact the future of American evangelicalism. I see two things happening:

• 1.) A robust, larger-scale discussion within the Asian American evangelical community

When you get a chance, read through the comment threads on Soong Chan’s open letter or on the deadly viper’s blog site (find Soong Chan’s comment about 8 down) or on other blogs like reconcilliationblog or eugenecho or charleslee. There is incredible dialogue (with the requisite share of vulgarity, trolling and unnecessary snarkiness of course) but good points are raised, dialogue and discussion is happening.

This was happening for days on the blogosphere, but also on facebook and twitter in smaller, less well-known circles. Not among pastors of mega churches or social media fiends, but among friends, small group members, students, people with out seminary degrees or PHDs. I was dialoguing with friends and acquaintances I haven’t spoken to in years, but who wanted to chime in on my facebook thread and tell me I was being too sensitive or to echo my horror at the material or something in between.

Poetry, sometimes life’s best monument

I wrote this a little over 5 years ago, when life for me was very different. As I’m revisiting some of this material from my past for another project I’m working on, I was thankful that God in his abundant creativity gave us the gift of poetry to capture the stuff of infinity at least for a brief moment.

This definitely isn’t Shakespeare (or even Seuss for that matter). Its just me. And I confess, I love it. So I thought I’d share it here again.

Scents of Mokottam

Wednesday, August 4, 2004

 

The smell, the poignant smell,
The kind that smacks you over the head like a rusty frying pan,
From the mounds of decaying compost and fertilizer,
That makes you wish you hadn’t eaten whatever you had just eaten for lunch,
It hurts sometimes.

The smell, the musty smell,
The kind that gently floats into your nose like a thousand sharp daggers,
The smell of a dank basement and food that has spoiled for months,
Like a thin layer of green mold festering under your nostrils,
It never seems to let go.

The smell, the smell of despair,
The unemployed father shamefully showing his oldest son’s identification card,
He is handicapped.
The unemployed father wondering what to do with his “stupid” twenty-year old son,
As he feeds his other children my leftovers,
I wish I didn’t eat all that sweet-smelling chicken.

I smell barbeque, the smell of pork kabob,
I eat. I eat. I eat.
The smell of hunger?
Faint now.
Until I look into the window and see young Mina,
When did he eat last?
There’s only one left.

The smell of home,
The scent of a loving family sipping Egyptian tea together in unison,
Sweat rolling down their faces,
Laughter shaking the foundations of the weak building,
Don’t they know they are living in a garbage village?

The smell, the putrid smell of injustice,
The rotten odor that emanates from all things evil,
The heinous stench stuffed in the nose of a holy God,
The yellow fumes that rise when workers are not paid,
When children sleep beside crushed rat carcasses,
When tourists come to worship merciful God at the monastery
And drive through the garbage village
With bright red handkerchiefs covering their noses,
When the government pawns thousands of garbage collectors’ livelihoods
To multinational corporations
To bury them in the ground in huge landfills,
To bury them in the ground in huge landfills,
It hurts sometimes.

The smell, the smell of Jesus,
A sweet scent of hope to those who have no hope,
We are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved
And those who are perishing,
A fragrant breath of fresh air to those whose lives are
Stuffed with the stench of oppression, suffering and hopelessness,
The fragrant offering of our lives poured out like a drink
At the feet of Jesus,
And the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

Water into Wine, AAIV retreat style

Fall Retreat 2004 was a significant time in my spiritual growth. You could say it was "foundational."

It is late on Monday evening. We have just spent an our of our exec team meeting hashing out details for the upcoming weekend’s fall retreat. We’ve talked about food, the speaker, shopping, small groups, games and just about every little logistical detail you could imagine. But looming in all our minds over everything else is one huge dilemma: transportation.

Ah, the seemingly mundane detail of getting people to and from the event.

The Art of Eating Costco Samples

A rear approach allows for longer response time and less polite banter.

I have perfected the art of taking Costo freebies, especially if its your 4th or 5th round. Here are the 6 easy steps of having a Costco-subsidized meal of free samples:

Step 1, the approach: Pretend that you are aimlessly meandering toward the stand. Look around casually as if you are not utterly fixated on those warm bagel bites.

Step 2: Act very surprised upon making eye contact with the stand. Potential exclamation: “Wow! What have we here today?”

Step 3: If they give a shpeel, pretend to listen intently. Do not lick lips or groan in hunger.

Step 4: After they are done, slowly grab a morsel. IMPORTANT: no matter how tasty the frozen enchilada is, do not display visible pleasure. That will free you up to take another one as if you wanted to “assess the product a second time.”

Step 5: Ask how much it is. Responded with furrowed brow as if you are considering buying it. Asking them where one could find the product will steal their gaze so that you can quickly steal another sample.

Step 6, the exit: Thank them and quickly be on your way. Make sure to leave as soon as possible. You want to be as forgettable as possible so that when you return in 10 minutes, they will not recognize you.

Late-Night Truth from Brother Lewis

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose that you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? … Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.

“A Grief Observed”

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

“The Problem of Pain”

What makes a good blog?

If I were a better blogger, maybe I'd look like the notoriously snarky Angie Tempura

http://www.43folders.com/2008/08/19/good-blogs

9 components of a good blog, according to blogger 43 folders. I tend to agree with him and am not ashamed to say that my blog gets probably a generous 3 of 9. Nowhere to go but up I say!

Like I’ve said in this space before, this blog is probably better for me than for you. But thanks for reading, anyways. =)

lots to ponder… the result of pondering

the retreat was good. thanks for praying.

i guess it only makes sense that i left the weekend with more questions than answers like,

• what do i want?
• who shall i be? who am i becoming?
• what do i want my life to look like?
• how does God fit into all of this? does he? do i want him to?

or maybe that’s irony.

either way, these questions seem so melodramatically existential. like some adolescent cliche. maybe dashboard confessional should write a song about me or something. that would be pretty cool. but i think as i wrote these questions down throughout the course of the weekend, i realize i never thought through those… and they seem like questions worth wrestling over.

retreating

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

-Mark 1:35

By all means use sometimes to be alone.  Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear. ~George Herbert

I’ll be spending the next 36 hours alone. I won’t talk to anybody but myself and God. Sure there are some big things in my life that I’m sorting out, but I also know I need this just to be healthy.

You see, I wish I could regularly and in an ongoing fashing process through the myriad of emotions (frustration, happiness, regret, anger, lonliness) that are part and parcel of a normal human existence.

I want to revel in the postitives of life– the joy, the surprises, the pure, the noble, the fun, the silly, the beautiful. I want tolearn from and move on from the negatives — the mistakes, the conflict, the disappointments, the unmet expectations, the painful relationships.

As a healthy human being I want to swim through life like a minnow dashes and darts through the water. Like a torpedo gracefully slicing through the ripples of life.

Yet I am so not like that.