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There are certain physical manifestations of emotional occurrences that are common to all of humanity. Insomnia is characteristic of overwhelming anticipation; who can sleep the night before Christmas morning? Indigestion is often associated with stress, as well as high blood pressure especially if the stress is chronic. What are the physical manifestations of intense longing? Perhaps insomnia, diminished pleasure in other activities, the inability to focus on anything else, or anyone else. As the villain in the movie Hitch said, “Colors are dull, food has lost its taste…” When you want something (or someone) more badly than anything else in the world or out, your body reacts by suddenly losing its desire for other things, including things necessary for survival. You’re not hungry, you can’t sleep, and you can’t take your mind off of the object of your affection. David wrote Psalm 63 in the Judean Wilderness while he was running from King Saul. Inside the rain-shadow of Israel, the are...

The Jews have always had privileged access to the words and commands of God. Ever since they became a nation, the God has spoken to his chosen people through a number of different ways. He spoke to Moses as a burning bush and chose him to be Israel's leader and his spokesperson and through him, he gave them his written commands, which they were to bind on the tablets of their hearts. After Moses came his understudy, Joshua, followed by the Judges. There were, of course, numbers of prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel. He spoke through David with the Psalms; he used a draft-dodger by the name of Jonah. He used a talking donkey to speak some sense into Balaam; during the days of Moses he even manifested his divine presence as a pillar of fire or a spiraling cloud in order to provide protection for his people. Then one day, after the prophet Malachi spoke his last word, came silence. For four hundred years, God's people heard not a single peep from their Lord. Kingdoms rose...

Been thinking about momentum in the context of sports. Momentum is an illusion, even in physics. In physics, momentum is the product of an object's mass and velocity. An object's momentum is an arbitrary equation; it's a number constructed out of two other numbers that are real quantifiable measurements. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't want to go down this slippery slope because if I call momentum an illusion, then I have to call all other physical measurements such as velocity and vectors illusions. The only real measurements of any object is its mass, volume, and position in time. And even then, illusions though they're not, they are still arbitrary. Alright, that's a thought for another day. At any rate, momentum is certainly an unquantifiable element in a sporting competition. You often hear color commentators report about it based on highly unscientific factors, like "which team needs the win more" "which team scored more in a r...

Lately I’ve tried to stay away from saying anything too disagreeable when I get on my soapbox. I didn’t feel like getting into any debates online and I was too lazy to properly research my position, so for the most part I’ve been keeping my opinions to myself. However, I think I’m ready to subject some of my thoughts to peer review. The topic is “intonation as a measure of musical quality”. Go ahead and tear into it, you vicious, liberal... The progression of music through history, like any progression of art through history, can be charted by its stages of rule-breaking. Music establishes its boundaries, visionary artists transcend those boundaries, and then music establishes new boundaries. Throughout history, almost every element of music, from rhythm to dynamics, from melody to meter, has had rules broken by some class of music, ranging from high-brow classical to low-brow popular. While this is not an exact science, trends of music culture can be identified. Before Beethoven, few ...

Speaking of works-based righteousness : I think our congregation still struggles with this deeply. It’s part of our set Asian-American, bi-cultural neuroses. It’s packaged in with the things we’ve been taught at home, by our parents, by the performance-driven culture around us. My parents are the best parents in the world; they give me more than I ever deserved and support me more, so much more than the parents of a lot of my friends. They never pressure me except not to waste my potential. Yet I still feel it because I grew up saturated in it. That constant guilt during my waking hours, like the feeling of coldness during sleeping hours (if you’ve ever tried to sleep without adequate blankets, you know what I mean) is always there, pushing me onwards to perform. I’ve talked about the difference between chasing after something and going after something because you are being chased from behind. Works-based guilt is a cause for the latter. The thinking I am speaking of exists by the pres...

“I’m a war of head verses heart, it’s always this way My head is weak, my heart always speaks before I know what it will say” - Crooked Teeth, Death Cab for Cutie Talking about the distinction between soul and body is dangerous. It’s facetious. There is NO clear line between soul and body, mind and matter, reason and emotion. They are heuristic categories. We human beings love to multiply distinctions. We do it because it makes the world simpler, easier to understand, and more manageable. We love to categorize, to dissect, and to label. And it’s not wrong. We can’t have it any other way. But to do so is to risk losing sight of the fact that we are WHOLE. There is a human being. There is no digestive system, circulatory system. There isn’t a sex drive and an appetite. There is a human being. You were wrong, Clive Staples Lewis, when you said “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body”. What we are is a human being. What you are doing is creating all sort of religious, phil...

Draper sent me this link: http://melindataub.com/god-twitters-creation/ and it reminded me of a lofty thought I had while I was taking a physics class over the summer. It is called: How to create the universe in infinity easy steps 1) Create light. 2) Back up a second, you have to invent the concept of creation. 3) You can't back up without first explaining the concept of progress and sequence 4) But you can't have sequence without first setting in place the skeleton of sequence, which is time! 5) Okay, okay, it's clear what we need to do first is invent time. 6) Wait, what do you mean by "first"? 7) First is like, what takes place all the way on one end of the timeline; the end marked "beginning" 8) Alright, seriously, we're getting nowhere with this. If we want to invent time, let's just start by inventing numbers. 9) One.... 10) Two... 11) Three... 12) Quick question, if we haven't got sequence yet, is this happening all at once? 13) Yes, ...

It's been a while since my last attempt to be true to the purpose of my blog. A couple of times, I've dabbled with topics that deal with reason and revelation and the doubts of my faith, but nothing I've written so far can really count as sincere wrestling; not the direct wrestling with divine issues that I had hoped to accomplish for this blog. I think my reasons for staying so shallow on this blog thus far are two parts laziness, two parts fear, and one part I honestly don't know where to start. Well I've decided to get over my laziness. I don't know what it is I truly fear about writing my thoughts. One part is, I am anxious about people knowing that I struggle with such deep-seated doubts concerning my faith. Another part is, some of the things I believe and some of the things that I claim will be considered far-fetched, theologically unsound, doctrinally dangerous, and even blasphemous, especially because I am associated with such an orthodox, reformed chur...

I've been thinking about absolutes a lot. The current album I'm obsessed with is "Absolutes" by Barcelona. I've been thinking about the need for absolutes as a defining part of my psycho-social constitution; as THE defining part of my formation that makes me what I am: A conservative, reformed-evangelical, Bible-believing, Chicago statement of inerrancy-signing Christian. But since I haven't worked out anything specific in that area, I'll just share one of my earlier thoughts regarding absolutes. "Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I will do what I must" : Obi-Wan Kenobi, in Star Wars Episode III, referring to the evil Anakin Skywalker. "Deals in absolutes --> Sith Lord" : Obi-Wan Kenobi, as rendered by the rules of Western formal logic. "All who deals in absolutes are Sith Lords" : Obi-Wan Kenobi, as rendered by the rules of Aristotelian formal logic. "All A are B" : One of the templates of a universal statement, or...

A repost of an excerpt from Chuck's blog . "It is an interesting observation on today's religious climate that many people now get every bit as steamed up about insisting that 'all religions are just the same' as older dogmaticians did about insisting on particular formulations and interpretations. The dogma that all dogmas are wrong, the monolithic insistence that all monolithic systems are to be rejected, has taken hold of the popular imagination at a level far beyond rational or logical discourse. The 'remote god' view encourages it: if god is, or the gods are, far away and largely unknowable, all human religions must be vague approximations, different paths up the same mountain (and all paths get lost in the mist quite soon anyway). Equally, the pantheism that sees 'god' as the divine or sacred aspect within the present world leads ultimately in the same direction: if all religions are responding the to 'the sacred' in this sense, they a...

I am fully convinced that there are people out there who can learn more about the world by going out and mowing the lawn than other people do after four years of college and four years of grad school. Perhaps the fresh, earthly smell of cut grass will cause this person to ponder the beauty of the natural world. Upon reflecting on nature, he'll be reminded of Psalm 19 and be led to ruminate on the theology of general revelation. One doctrine will remind him of another doctrine and before he stows his lawnmower away in his garage, he will have discovered new truths about the world around him and the God that created it. That's one way I imagine a person can go about doing household chores. Last week, I wrote about habits of reading and how poorly we Christians read our Bible. The truth is, there was nothing particularly spiritual in my criticism. I honestly think we as a culture are just horrendously inadequate when it comes to basic intellectual skills. Today, when I went to the...

Last night, Pastor Scott, some members of the Boon Church servants team, and I had the wonderful opportunity of having dinner with Reverend Wayland Wong at Pastor Don’s house. A seasoned minister, Wayland is one of the most respected Chinese-American pastors in the country. Based out of Orange County, CA, he has been working with Chinese churches and is incredibly knowledgeable in the area of Chinese ministry and the unique cultural challenges with running a one in America. He has more decades of ministry experience than I have years (even including my years in HS as a youth leader). I was really excited to meet him and drill him with questions because Chinese-American ministry happens to be my passion. I had been reading articles from a newsletter called FACE (Fellowship of American Chinese Evangelicals) that he started in the 70s. In addition, I had spent the last summer interning with ISAAC (Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity) and was all ready to pick his brain ...

Last week, my brother Andrew shared that he has been trying to read through the gospels and is having a hard time focusing. While I don't doubt for many of us, a big reason we have difficulty reading the Bible consistently is a mixture of heart and discipline issues, I think for people who have been Christians for a long time, reading the gospels pose a different problem. I've gone to church since the second grade, and between that time and now I've probably heard, read, or encountered in some way every story in every gospel at least a dozen times. I suspect this is true of many people reading this note. So when we decide to read Matthew or Mark or Luke again, we get bored. What am I supposed to get out of this? I know these stories backwards and forwards! The truth is, familiarity breeds negligence. As soon as our eyes graze the heading, "The Calling of the First Disciples", "Jesus Calms a Storm", "The Parable of the Lost Son", we recall all w...

Greek mythology used to be called Greek religion. We forget oftentimes, but the characters of lore that we love so much, mighty Zeus, evil Hera, regal Apollo, beautiful Aphrodite, at one point they were gods. These gods were anthropomorphic, which means that they were modeled after humans. They ate and drank heavenly nectar, they slept, they fought each other, they bled when they were cut, they felt fear and jealousy, they exercised deceit. In short, they did all things humans did. And yet the humans, the real humans venerated them, prayed to them for prosperity, and offered sacrifices to them in fear. The Greek gods were not all-powerful. They were not all-knowing. They were certainly not ever-present. They did not create the world. They all had weaknesses, they all suffered just like the people who invented their image. They lied to each other, kept secrets from each other, forgot things about the world and themselves. They left Mt. Olympus to visit earth. They utilized the absen...

feel the rain on your skin no one else can feel it for you no one else, no one else can speak the words on your lips drench yourself with words unspoken live your life with arms wide open today is, today is where your book begins the rest is still unwritten People who are familiar with my random, short-lived obsessions for certain artists or songs might recall that around the time that I discovered the name of the song in that Pantene Pro-V commercial a while back, I developed an infatuation with Natasha Bedingfield. I've since cooled down a little, but another reason why I loved her hit single "Unwritten" was because the lyrics were philosophically enticing. There's a surface similarity between the free-spirit, "carpe diem" lifestyle that the song espouses and one of the foundational tenets of Existentialist philosophy. Existentialism is a branch of thinking that arose in the mid-19th century as a reaction against Modernism, the Spirit of the Age. Existenti...

Today I completed a bike tour from Bear Mountain, NY to 103rd St. Manhattan. Forty miles of pedaling in silence offered me lots of time to reflect deeply. Here are a few of my thoughts: There are some people whose greatest fear imaginable is to try their hardest at something and still fail. So they don't try. And there are some people who relish the opportunity to meet their limits and create new ones. They aren't satisfied with not failing; they must hit the wall and then push the wall farther back. Which kind of person am I? After five and a half hours of biking I still don't really know. I just know there are uncomfortable hints in my life that point more towards one than the other. For one thing, my greatest fear isn't that I try my hardest and still fail; it's that I didn't try my hardest and that's why I fail. There was never a defeat in my life that I didn't attribute to my laziness or apathy or lack of discipline. Everywhere I am, intellectually,...

I'm taking my blog in a new direction and pledging regular updates. From now on, instead of ambitiously large posts that no one cares about, I will use this space for short little theological, philosophical, or homiletic reflections. They'll be easier to read and less time consuming to prepare. Proverbs 10.16 "The wages of the righteous bring them life, but the income of the wicked brings them punishment." Pastor Don preached on Pr. 10 this past Sunday. In light of this chapter, I've been wrestling a lot with coming to terms with the American economy and Capitalism. The American economy (very broadly speaking) is run on the assumption that if you are rich, it's because you worked hard for your money and if you are poor, it's because you didn't try enough and you deserved your poverty. In short, "everyone gets a fair chance". But today no one can look at the folly of our economic system and turn a blind eye to the people that fall through...

It's been a while. Today I'd like to kick off a four-part series on my reflections on Theodicy . I'd like to start with a short story I thought of earlier this morning in the shower. The finale will be an explanation of why I think God is first and foremost, before everything else he is, a story-teller. Once upon a time there was a man named Sarkar. Sarkar's life sucked. His wife died. His kids hate him. His dog accidentally got into some chocolate and died. He lost his job and his house fell over right after he made his last payment. But that's okay because his whole family's dead anyway. One day he was trying to cross the street when a truck hit him. Due to internal injuries, they had to remove his left leg and 2/3rds of his liver, which doubly sucked because by this time he had turned to alcoholism as a solution to his problems. (Did I mention he was a Mets fan?) Finally, Sarkar got fed up with his life and decided to do what all people do when they hit rock-...

But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: while we were sinners, Christ died for us. -Rom 5.8 Four out of the last seven times I've prayed publicly (that is, with other people), I somehow found myself saying this or something similar to this line: "...and we thank you that you love us because-" And then I'll awkwardly stumble around with my words before getting back into stride. I can't believe I've never thought about this, but there's really no easy way to answer that question. asking "why does God love us?" gets at the heart of unconditional love. There's no reason or rhyme to it. It's absurd. The only explanation I can think of is Ephesians 1.11-12 "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory." So ultimately God's lo...

I don't read many Christian dating books; I've read through Joshua Harris and dabbled with Dobson, but most of my knowledge of romance has been gained from life's most brutal teacher. That and mentor's. But I've always found it odd when Christians I trust, MARRIED Christians I trust, ask me if I have God's "gift of singleness". Anyone else find it weird that what would have been an aberration in idyllic, prelapsarian existence is now considered... a gift? In Eden, if you were single, you were lonely, and you weren't single for long. Why is it that now we're on the other side of the cherubim, the ONLY THING in Genesis 1-2 that wasn't considered good by God...is now a gift? And then those well-meaning, but married men and women will say, "You don't understand what it's like to be married. Sure it's wonderful (they whisper that part shamefully), but there are so many things that you can't do once you have to take care of s...

it's a bittersweet symphony, this life. you get a diploma, you try to get married, you die. I’ve been thinking about death a lot recently. The thoughts creep up on me and catch me unawares, when I'm eating alone, doing my devotions, playing Madden NFL. Once or twice they emerge in the middle of a dream and balloon into an anxiety great enough to rouse me from slumber. But, most of the time, I’d say they catch me right before I lay down to rest and right after I rise to wake. They don't command my attention for too long; just long enough to remind me that I still need to deal with it. I think this all started after my dog Lucky died just over a month ago. I forced myself not to grieve because I was still away at school and finals was just about to begin. When I got back, I never really did give myself enough time to think about it and get over it. So perhaps now these thoughts and emotions are finally leaking through the barriers I erected to protect my conscious awareness. ...

[Read this only if you like philosophy] The great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton had this idea that of all the central Christian doctrines, sin is the only one that is empirically evident. That means that, of all of our core beliefs (God's sovereignty, human sin and error, the Incarnation, the atonement of the cross), the idea that there is evil is the most provable based on observations of the world around us. I think there are some hard-headed Nietzscheans and the like who would reject the notions of good and evil, but these are philosophical idealists. I also think that, for the most part, all the upper echelons of philosophical academia have abandoned this notion of "absolute moral relativism". Heck, I'd even make the argument that moral relativism in its purest form was never even an idea entertained by any respectable thinker. "Everything is relative; there is no absolute moral law" is not embraced by anyone but misled and misinformed Stuyvesant stud...