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Facebook has documented most of my religious journey from a pudgy little Matthew Ha, strutting around church like I own the place because everyone in church knows either myself or my parents, to where I am now. When I first got facebook before my first year of college, I think I was just " Christian ". Two years later, I had changed my religious views to say, " Creation-Sin-Redemption ", reflective of my frustration and weariness of wandering around lost in Gordon College, a veritable intellectual agora of competing Christian beliefs, and betraying my desperate longing to belong to a transcendent meta-narrative that explained my life, no matter how insignificant I was made out to be. A year later, my religious status once again changed to say, " Reluctant reformed evangelical Christian ". God had my hand and was finally leading me out of the crowds. I was starting to realize what I truly believed but the realization was lined with an edge of wariness and ...

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ" - Mahatma Ghandi A few months ago a young couple invited me to their house for dinner. I showed up and we had a wonderful time dining together. Shortly after dessert, the wife cleared the table and went into the kitchen to wash up. The husband was a friend of mine and so I said to him, "Thanks for having me over. It was truly kind of you. The meal was was delicious and I am thoroughly satisfied. You're a great guy. But your wife! I can't stand her! She's completely unlike you! I don't like her and I can't enjoy your company when she's around!" "Look, don't get me wrong, man. I've got nothing against you. I think you're awesome. But I really dislike your wife. " Okay, that never happened. Let me be very clear about that. I should hope that I have more tact than that. But seriously though, WHO WOULD DO THAT?? That story is so un...

Above is the subject of my current existential crisis. It's not something I haven't wrestled with before. It's something I tried and failed to get into the conversation of the Boon boys last year when I organized our first ever "Boon Church ExtravaMANza". It's something that Mark Driscoll originally got me interested in when someone sent me a near-viral youtube clip of him lambasting the boys in his church. And nearly three years ago, on my xanga page, I wrote that my lesson for the year of 2008 was: Passion without temperament is immaturity Anyway, as life cycles, I find myself revisiting this issue and experiencing a deep discomfort with where I am right now, prompting this following brain dump. Last December, right before I left for my MAP internship in Australia, Stanley asked me how I saw myself in terms of maturity. My reply was, "severely conflicted". When I look around at those my age, I see many ways in which I am clearly ahead of my peers....

Thinkers run the world. Thinkers call the shots. It’s always been that way throughout history. It’s meant to be that way. It can’t be any other way. But knowing this fact and dealing with it means coming to grips with the inherent weaknesses of human leadership. It will always be that those who make the decisions struggle to understand the ones they make decisions FOR. Has it really taken me 22 years and a college degree to learn this one fact, that humans aren’t robots? Feelings aren’t weaknesses. They aren’t diseased outgrowths of human evolution that need to be transcended, as some later, post-Wittgenstein Analytics would have it. A warning to all foolish thinkers out there; future decision-makers and scientists alike. You have been born with a terrible deficit in your humanity. You have been born with the inability to speak a language that the rest of the world are fluent in. You have been born with the inability to speak the language of emotions, and until you come to terms with t...

Something I've seriously been struggling with is trying to understand why it is that certain churches so alienate people who are different. If the gospel transcends all boundaries and is really meant to destroy the dividing wall of hostility, then why do the churches of Jesus make it so hard for a Christian who is different to live and thrive and give glory to God? In my life, there have been three churches that I consider my church. In one of them, if you don't like softball, you're an outsider. In another one, if you're not studying at a prestigious Boston educational institution or able to converse about jazz or indie music, you will feel left out. In another, if you don't like meeting up to drink coffee and talk about life, you're not growing in Christ. In all three, if you're not committed to dropping 50 bucks a week eating out, then you're not fellowshipping with Christians . Call these observations unfair caricatures if you will, but caricatures ...

Dear friends, This past Sunday, Eugene from GracePoint church reminded us from the Scriptures the following : "The world's economy tells us to work so that we may gain, but God's economy tells us to work so that we may give." Isn't it a beautiful reflection of the gospel when our lives are not oriented around personal gain, but in giving? Well here's a chance to put the gospel's transforming work into practice: My birthday is coming up on July 17th! Instead of giving me a present, please consider donating to this charity in order to help people in the world get clean water. http://mycharitywater.org/ p/campaign?campaign_id=525 1 1 billion people in the world don't have access clean water. ONE BILLION! That totally blew me away when I found that out. But we can help change that. Since it is my 23rd birthday, I am asking for a donation of $23USD. If 50 people give that much, we can raise enough water for 57 people. But please feel free to give more if yo...

Why do you run? Because you want to be first, or because you don't want to be last?

Respect is recognition of worth . I would rather have someone hate me and respect me than someone contempt me and find me likable. An enemy that I respect is an adversary. A friend that I don't respect is a utility. Respect can be given or acknowledged. To the degree that I esteem someone who doesn't deserve it, I lose my own esteem.

What I fear vastly more than failure in trying is failure to try . To me the greatest buffoon isn't the one on the dance floor. It is the one coolly sipping his drink at the bar wanting to dance but paralyzed by uncertainty. I contempt those who've thrown in the towel before even stepping into the ring.

"His whole life was a million-to-one shot" Why wasn't Ivan Drago a hero? It's not because he lost. It was because he wasn't human. He was a caricature of adversity. At the end of the day, I can only believe in a hero who bleeds.

(As of 26th May: "It's been a long time since I've written a lengthy post. For the last few weeks, all my most profound revelations have come in brevity. Therefore, until further notice, I will be posting in the manner of aphorisms, perhaps with occasional commentary.") It is a fallacy to believe that we can “want to want”. If desire is measured by action, then what you want ALWAYS prevails. You can want what you don't choose, but ultimately what you choose is what you want the most. _____________________ Exposition When I say, "I want to get in shape" but I stay indoors and eat an extra bag of chips, I make myself a liar. I do want to get in shape, but I want the immediate pleasure of food more. When I say, "I want to forgive you" but my actions show otherwise, then I make myself a liar. When you say, "I want to live for God" but you can't rock up for a weekly Bible study, then you make yourself a liar. I will take your statement...

On Discipline : The thing about discipline is that it is cross-disciplinary. If you lack discipline in one area of life, you do so in others. Discipline is the skill of doing unpleasant things for the sake of growth. You want to know a man's diligence in Bible reading? Look at his diligence in physical fitness.

It's been a long time since I've written a lengthy post. For the last few weeks, all my most profound revelations have come in brevity. Therefore, until further notice, I will be posting in the manner of aphorisms, perhaps with occasional commentary. Starting with this one: "I will die before I let life curl me up into the fetal position."

Today was a completely normal day. And my life was forever changed.

Three years ago, a world-renowned violinist named Joshua Bell dressed himself in nondescript clothing, took his 3.5 million dollar violin to a crowded Washington D.C. subway, and started playing as if he were a talented panhandler. After forty-five minutes he had performed 6 classical pieces in front of just over 1000 morning commuters and collected 32 dollars for his work. You can read the entire article here . Some of the points in the article really grated me because here in one place are so many things that I completely disagree with in the topics of beauty, art, and music. I've seen this article mentioned on occasion in my internet wanderings since the social experiment, and it is often cited to criticize common people for not recognizing beauty in the world. And then depending on what part of the human condition is your hobby horse, you're going to want to mention something about how we move along too quickly in life or how we're not attentive enough to our surroundin...

Sam Harris and the End to Religion Dennis sent me this link to this short CNN article concerning atheist author Sam Harris. Titled, “Why we should ditch religion”, the article also includes a recent interview with him and outlines some of his basic beliefs. I wikipedia'd the guy and found out that Harris believes in discourse that he calls “conversational intolerance”. He doesn't believe tolerance and letting people believe whatever they want to believe is the solution to coexisting in a pluralistic world. Though I am a Bible-believing Christian and I have little to agree with him, I do agree on this point. I believe that blind tolerance is not sustainable in a society of such diverse beliefs; it is neither sustainable nor logically possible. So I credit him in his boldness in claiming that all religious people are wrong in their beliefs Harris' basic claim in the interview is that religion is not only obsolete, but its continuing to linger on in the new secular society is...

Introduction I'm starting a new series exploring Western philosophical and socio-cultural issues centered around self-identity. I will be drawing together personal observations from contemporary culture and philosophy. I will be asking questions such as, "Why is individualism and uniqueness of such high value in our culture?" "What is with the obsession with being different?" "What are the historical and philosophical roots that contributed to the radical contemporary vacuum of corporate meaning and identity?" What is the relationship between individualism and identity? Why are our young people today so obsessed with being different and unique? What does this have to do with the presence of a pervasive loneliness in the hearts of Western individuals? This is a monumental project for someone so young, inexperienced, ill-equipped, and relatively ignorant as myself, but it is a subject I find myself thinking endlessly about nowadays. I hope to receive enc...

(A reflection on the use of contemporary rock-based music in corporate worship. I welcome peer-review) John Piper and D.A. Carson, two of the most respected figures in the evangelical church, recently did a joint series of lectures titled, “The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor”. Piper lectured on the former title and Carson did the latter. In the last portion of the night there was a Q&A session with the two theologians and one of the questions asked was: “What are some of the biggest issues that you think the church and evangelical scholars will need to deal with in the next 20 years?” A lot of prominent things were brought up, including Islam and the exclusivity of Christ, the doctrine of Scripture, a cluster of contemporary issues relating to family life (e.g. homosexuality, spanking, submission of wives to husbands), epistemology, justification and substitutionary atonement in biblical thought, and redefining 'tolerance'. But one of the last things that was b...

(Dear Stanley, this is not the response I promised) "The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights." - Mohammad Ali I've been thinking about this quote since I saw it on a poster in Jack Wang's frat house this past January. It strikes me that there is a string of wisdom that this motivational aphorism displays that cuts through many different areas of life. If you replace the word "fight" with "Christian life" and "dance under those lights" with "face trials", you get the following: "The Christian life is won or lost far away from the witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I face trials of many kinds" Isn't that so true? James says that the testing of our faith completes it, making it mature by the addition of perseverance. But too often we overlook the nature of our trials:...

[ and we know, new jack city gotta keep my brother but to be number one, i'ma beat my brother -Kanye, Big Brother I've redacted my last post "On Pain" and the one on "Diligence" and have decided to work them into a 5-part series of posts inspired largely by the thoughts of my dear friend and mentor. ] when it feels like livin's harder than dyin for me givin up is way harder than tryin -Kanye, Champion A few weeks ago I wrote an entry in which I quoted Stan; "The euangelion for me is that anyone can be better with nothing more than diligence". I have since added to my understanding. I was in Sydney city today meeting up with a couple of Gracepoint guys. As I walked down the street, I could have scanned over the street signs and ignored the cars driving on the wrong side and imagine myself back at home walking down Wall Street. "Power suit, power tie, power steering." The well-dressed men and women that passed me all exuded determi...

"Pain is weakness leaving the body" - Gatorade ad campaign "Discipline is the self coming to terms with the truth that pain is often good for you" - My 59th St. Bridge Revelation There were moments during my wilderness period where I was so keen to avoid pain that I would avoid my mentors and anyone who I knew would kick my ass about my mind's thoughts and my heart's desires. Then I realized that there's no growth without pain and if I let this become a pattern in my life, I will get nowhere. If spiritual growth, nay, if growth as a human being wasn't a priority to me, I could spend my whole life not facing the music. I am firmly convicted by the belief that every decision you make in life does two things: It takes you either farther along the road or backwards along that same road. On one end of the road is the likeness of Christ and on the other end is hell. Everything you do will cause you to move either up or down; there are no side-steps. It...

So I just finished reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. It took a little over a week, and reading it caused in me a similar sensation to eating crackers with vegemite spread; I felt disgust and nausea, but I just couldn't stop. Dan Brown is a good writer; there's no getting around it. He exploits the cheapest tricks in mystery writing to keep you hooked, and I still stand by my belief that there's nothing wrong with enjoying his anti-Christian, anti-organized religion fiction as long as you keep in mind that it is fiction. At first, I didn't really understand what was causing my upset intellectual stomach. I couldn't pinpoint what it was that he was doing that just made me feel so much outrage. It wasn't just how he mixes truth and fiction so well that even the blatantly unhistorical portions are mistaken as facts. It wasn't just his oversimplification of very complicated historical and philosophical ideas and trends. It wasn't the way in which he por...

It took me a really long time to realize that if something is desirable, even pleasurable, it doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad thing. How tragic is our state of fallenness, that we consider good things to be evil in a world that God created and called "good" on the first day? “Before the Lord God made man upon the earth He first prepared for him by creating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are called simply `things.' They were made for man's uses, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.” - A. W. Tozer, The Blessedness of Possessing Idolatry had from the beginning been humanity's sin. The heart of idolatry is mistaking gift for Giver. When we take the treasures around us and ele...