So what now?

In case you're wondering what I'm up to now, I've graduated and am looking for a job. I've told many of you that I want to be a missionary or do some kind of church ministry, and that I went to Kenya last sumer on missions and LOVED it. Work isn't my first choice (I doubt it is for most people), even though I know that supporting myself (and others) to do God's kingdom work is exactly what Paul and the early church did. Probably because in so many ways, being a missionary is easier, more exciting, and more rewarding than living a "normal" life.

I was praying about it perhaps a 2 or 3 months ago. God, you know I love the mission field, but my parents want me to work! Didn't Jesus say to that man, "let the dead bury their own dead?" Isn't it a good thing to leave home or father or mother for your sake? Lord, am I still supposed to honor my parents? How can I, when they reject you and want me to live according to the world's ways, which you hate? I've struggled with this so much, for so long. Whether that command still applied when the parents are not believers. Where do you draw the line? But as I was praying, God reminded me of the greater command. Lord, you know how my mom tell family friends and all sorts of people about me. She asks them if it's normal for someone religious to be so involved in the church and its activities. She says that no one thinks it's normal. "You don't have to be so involved", as if I was only doing it because others expected it of me. God...... they must all think the church has robbed me of the familial affection and responsibilities expected of me. Asian culture is very family-oriented. What must they think of me? Of you Lord, if they believed in you? They can't think well of the church either. O God! Because of me, your name is dishonored before so many! The realization hit me like a cement truck. And I cried.

When I first read Ezekiel 36:19-23 a long time ago, I was amazed. I don't know how so much can be conveyed through so few words. I can't forget it. And those words came to me now. I was convicted that I should work to be financially independent and no longer be a burden or worry to my parents... or a conversation topic that leaves a poor taste. And that means finding a job. In a few years, when I am able to support myself and others as well, perhaps God will call me away to the mission field.

I still don't know what the difference is between this and the guy who said, "let me first bury my father" (Matthew 8, Luke 9). It was probably a cultural expectation at the time too, right? But I am sure that God's name should not be dishonored because of what I do or fail to do. Let no one have anything bad to say about the Lord (Titus 2). If I am wrong about finding a job, then may God make it clear to me.

Death can be a good thing

This is a post about something that happened last Sunday, June 7th.

Pastor James had preached about sin - the nature of sin and what we should do when we are struggling. I remember one thing he said that really stood out to me, because it's so significant and I had even realized it before, only to have completely forgotten it until now. He said that when we struggle with sin, it is because of the reality of the pleasure of that sin; it is more real to us than God. The comfort, pleasure and excitement promised by these seem more real than the distant promises, truths and even warnings of God. I hope I don't forget again.

At the end of the service, PJ came back up, saying that he didn't usually do this but wanted everyone who sought freedom from sin in their lives to stand up, even kneel at the front, to be prayed for. I'm always a little scared when it comes to these things, but I wanted to be free more than anything else, so I went and so did many others. PJ and many others prayed over us and I cried, knowing I had let the greatest reality of all slip into insignificance. Please God, be more real to me than anything else...

For almost 2 and a half years now, I've been struggling with a past relationship. God's sovereign will had drawn him and his new girlfriend together, both unwilling at first, but nevertheless sure of the direction they were being led in. I had never dated him, but I lost the only person whom I had ever loved or been close to. It forced me to draw closer to God and in doing so, discover such richness and beauty that I had never known, and which would have been impossible for me to see otherwise. So truly, I was thankful for God for that... but more than 2 years later, I was still struggling.

That Sunday night, I was casually browsing around on Facebook (I know, I know), and for the first time in months, visited his profile. What I saw and read hurt like it always did, but this time it struck a new chord in me too. I realized, I do not know this person anymore. He is someone different now. As I thought about this silently, my thoughts reached a natural conclusion: the person I had known, had loved, had been close friends with -- that person was dead, he didn't exist anymore. At first I panicked and instinctively tried to block out those thoughts, because truth be told you couldn't count the number of days I've cried/gotten angry at some point over this with a 12-month calendar, and I'm not the kind of person who exaggerates. When that happens though, you start arranging some mental blocks to prevent it from messing with you (I guess it doesn't work that well).

But as I sat at my desk, Facebook now closed, side by side was a feeling of incredible relief and freedom. He doesn't exist anymore, I thought, that person is dead. That's when I realized that I had never let go of the intimacy, the fact we had enjoyed each other's company, his character, the little quirks and idiosyncrasies - the person and the relationship. I treasured those, and knew there would never, could never, be anyone the same. That in itself was not wrong, but the fact I hadn't let go meant that 2 years later, I still wanted and expected certain things and was having the most terrible time dealing with reality. After all, people change, I change, he changed too of course. A season of life has passed, and that's that.

As I watched the peace fill my heart with that one, simple truth, I realized that I would never cry about it again. What an answer to prayer. It was a truth that no one could have explained to me in a way that I would have accepted.

Praise be to the God of our salvation, who hears us... So many thanks to PJ and Living Water, I love you guys. <3

After pouring out my thanks to God for such amazing grace in setting me free, I did have this question though -- why the heck couldn't it have happened sooner?

Over the last few days as I've been thinking about this whole situation, I've realized a couple important things. One is that the only way to really recover from a breakup is to accept that the person you were in love with and who loved you is dead... otherwise, there is actually no logical reason to move on, so you don't. Yes, your mind is working logically even when it's doing so subconsciously!

Second, I think this applies to relationships and change in general. Have you guys ever felt constrained by the people who've known you for some time? It's hard to change, even when you want to, when everyone already has certain expectations of you or the lack thereof. I think sometimes we need to let the past die so the present can have a chance. And how much more should this apply to brothers and sisters in Christ! Since we know that we have not yet attained perfection, but are continuously being sanctified and made holy by God, we should have great hope in His mighty and unfathomable power to transform each other in big ways, daily. Let's not become stumbling blocks for each other.

12We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. 13If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.

~ 2 Cor 5:12-19

Most of us are keenly aware that whatever this new creation is that Paul talks about, it's not quite dead to sin and still has a plenty of problems. Then this idea that we're supposed to be a new creation becomes a burden and a source of guilt. We ought to be convicted to turn our backs on the worldly way of thinking and living, so that we may follow Christ, but I don't think Paul meant those words to be a burden when he wrote them. The NASB translation of verse 16 is

"Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer."

This is Paul's answer to those who take "pride in what is seen" (v. 12): that now, no one is recognized according to their flesh (humanity, I think), but rather according to Christ's death and resurrection through which we have all become new creations who live for Him. He adds that "All of this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ... not counting men's sins against them" (v. 18-19) -- the knowledge of the new creation is not meant to be a burden, because God has done it Himself and it has already happened.

I'm not really sure why I wrote the above. I was actually just trying to quote verse 17, after writing about how we should actively, continuously hope in God's transforming power for ourselves and for each other.

I hope you guys were blessed by some part of this! And I really am serious about trying to blog/write more. I didn't go into Arts because I hate writing essays, but I still really like to write in general, oddly enough.

Stormy weather, and the complexity of the human mind

If my first semester at Berkeley was one of the best seasons of my life, then this past semester was one of the worst. The 5 months from December 2008 to April 2009 were full of addictions, emotional turmoil, anxiety, fear, questions, doubt, and ultimately, I think I almost lost my faith. I mean this, of course, from a human perspective.

It's scary to write such a thing because of the kind of reaction it inevitably draws from many people, even if now the storm is past and I can see the sky through the clouds. Good intentions are one thing, but misunderstanding is another. I realized I've probably done this numerous, countless times -- approaching someone with the best of intentions, but also with a tendency to jump to conclusions and an over-eagerness to solve problems, that must have been more of a burden than a relief. No doubt, it's a hard thing to open up to another person, knowing that you might be misunderstood, knowing you could be judged, knowing you may be talking to someone like me.

We all make these kinds of evaluations constantly, consciously or unconsciously. For example, in choosing who to confide in, I am really making a decision based on what past interactions have told us about the person and our relationship. One aspect might be whether that person cares, after all, confiding in someone who is indifferent means boredom for him/her, and hurt for myself. And we all know that it takes more than the words "I care about you"; the actions must speak for themselves or at least back up the words. We all know the well-known saying. But I prefer the alternate phrasing, "your actions speak so loudly that I can't hear a word you're saying".

If the actions don't follow the words, then I'd say the situation (regarding whether to confide) is even worse off than if the words were never spoken. Why? Because then conflict must be resolved by concluding that either (a) the person is a liar, or (b) the person said it in the heat of the moment. Either of these might make someone less willing to confide deeply, right?

Edit: Other conclusions are also possible actually, and not limited to (c) miscommunication and different ideas of what something means. In this case, it's necessary to clearly define everything that is said order to avoid misunderstanding as much as possible.

Of course there are other factors in the decision as well, such as the person's wisdom and experience. And we use each piece of information available to us, some weighted more heavily than others depending on how much we believe an event reflects a person's character as opposed to a particular situation. Past interactions, group interactions, what they say about themselves, what other people say about them, what they do, what they do when no one's watching, and so on.

All to decide whether or not to confide in someone. Such an immeasurably complex process, and yet it can happen in the blink of an eye, without a conscious thought. Somehow or another, we just "feel" or "know". The human mind is truly an amazing thing. We are doing this all the time.

"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell gets into this kind of thing, but not limiting it to interactions between people. I felt like he could go further though, such as when he talks about marriage. In summary, the most significant predictors of future divorce are when, in a serious discussion of a topic relevant to the marriage, the husband or wife shows contempt for the other. That is, if one knows to watch out for this, it is possible to predict which couples will divorce and which will stay together.

I thought about this when I read it, asking myself, why? Now, contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling were all reported to be predictors of divorce, but contempt was the most important. We all know what it's like to be criticized -- for someone to express their displeasure with something we did, or said, or even an aspect of our character. The typical response is defensiveness -- we defend our actions, our words, and justify ourselves. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. Long-standing criticisms communicate to us that we don't measure up, we're not who we should be, we're just not good enough, so separation and distance (i.e. divorce) is a rather natural result I think. But contempt is worse because, as I think of it, it de-humanizes the person held in contempt, conferring inferiority. When we feel contempt for someone, we either don't bother verbalizing it at all ("pointless, waste of time") or verbalize it without allowing the other person's input (no expectations of the other person, just venting anger). Naturally, this results in stonewalling (silence, uncooperativeness) because subconsciously we can tell when "it doesn't matter what I say" so "why waste my breath?"

I wish Gladwell had gone more in depth. I really believe that there is a reason we think or know or feel everything that we do. I'm sure it's more complex than I can ever imagine, because we evaluate things within the context of everything else we know and think and believe to be true.

Ok, so you can see that I have a tendency to go off on tangents. But I feel like it's a relevant tangent. This also makes it hard to blog, because it's nearly impossible to write about something if you also want to include multiple tangents. If you remember, I started this post talking about the past semester. I'll write more about it and what exactly happened over the next few posts.

So nearly a year after my last post, I'm going to try again

What I can't understand is why it's so hard for me to blog consistently when I really really want to blog.

Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that I often think of too many things I want to say, become overwhelmed at the prospect, and give up before I ever start. But if I could just start blogging consistently, I wouldn't find my self overwhelmed with too many things to say, right?

Now, yesterday I just got my new PINK Samsung NC10 netbook (sooo cute! ^^) and hopefully this new level of portability means I'll be writing down more of my thoughts as they occur.

I also need to learn not to expect perfection in this arena, because otherwise I'll quickly give up writing simply because I can't write everything, or can't express myself perfectly. And in that spirit, I now conclude this post, not having said anything of importance.