The precarious ledge of Relevance

I think I’ve been academically raised up to be afraid of that word.  Not because it’s anything bad, but because so much is often loss at the cost of trying to gain more of it.  Now of course I believe that the Scriptures, though deeply aged are never antiquated, and that the notion of relevance is in the message rather than the medium, so long as the medium is sufficient to carry the message.    However, relevance is something that I’ve been learning to engage because you must engage it if you are aiming to talk to kids and teens alike.

What do I mean by relevance? Certainly, I am not speaking of a watered down gospel, an entertainment centric approach to people, nor a flash bang altar call accompanied by cathartic ccm melodies for the hormonally melodramatic.  When I say relevance, I mean, how do I speak the deepest most core truths of the Scriptures and teach them in a way that even the youngest junior higher finds breathtaking?  If I am boring the kids, I am either failing at communicating the glory of God, or I am failing to communicate my own passion about it.  I need to speak with a relevant voice, with relevant words, and in a relevant attitude.

Now hold that thought.  This generation of youngsters relates to one thing: Passion (at least for the most part).  And what makes it difficult for the older generation teaching them, is that so many messages that stir up the kids are based on vague or hodgepodge Scriptural reference with a whole lot of creative bungling.  In other words, hip pastors delivering sermons with amazingly little substance packaged and / or illustrated in a very cool and creative way.   Throw in a story about rhinos charging and mushrooms sprouting, add a dash of testimonial from gangbangers turned Christian, and you get a big crowd of kids, frenzied up into a mindless christian-esque passion.

But what if you want to teach those very same kids the timeless truths of sanctified living, of God’s plan for Israel and the church? or even the core concept of imputed righteousness in Justification?  These are Biblical teachings that call for us to not be creative with the text, but rather to be faithful with it.  The pulpit is not High school English class after all.  And yet… this is the very point where relevance must be claimed.   Yes, Amen,  we must never forfeit the accuracy of doctrinal teachings for the gimmicks of teen-centric youth-speakers, but we must fight to gain the attention of youths too.  To put it more tersely we are searching for Relevance without Rhetoric.

I am still waiting for the day when the youth of today’s churches cry out to their pastors, “Do not bring us your Creative Writing paper! brings us a Sermon!”

The fault in Default

One of the things that I absolutely love to see in people is that precious desire to learn the lessons of life and godliness, day after day.

Generally speaking, It is my belief that most people (in this country) are passing through their lives on Default.  In other words, their existence become a constant and may I say boring, flow of stimulus and established reactions.  No real changes there.  It’s quite rare to find someone who considers daily how and where within their personal lives, they can grow towards becoming a better person (all nuances of “better” entailed).  And the tragedy of this is that there is a sort of unspoken finality to the Default mindset in people.  Once people pass through those precocious teenage years and step over the quarter life mark, something interesting happens.  People suddenly begin to see themselves as a set package of traits that have become fixed like a finished puzzle, its pieces rigidly locked in place.

But that is not how it should be.  People grow physically, until they die.  So I ask why can’t we aim and strive to grow spiritually and emotionally too?  We are not a set package of traits.  The puzzle continues beyond the horizon.  A reticent thirty year old can still become a gregarious forty year old.  And who is to say that the man who treats women poorly cannot turn his life around and learn to respect them?  But enough preaching. This is not a message to be told from one man to another, rather it is a principal to be repeated within the individual.  And with this, we all must recognize that we have not yet reached what we will become.  And thus what we should become is still within our reach.

(concerning the resurrected and thus perfected life) “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

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On a seperate and completely unrelated note.  I would also like to mention that I think Music is one of those few things that express the human soul and disposition far better than simple prose.  Is that obvious? There are times when I agonize over how to communicate my awe or internal trembling over some truth or epiphany, and only when I hear a song, or an appropriate melody do I feel those secret words and elusive phrases, which were so frustratingly pent up,  released as notes and cadences.  I don’t know if I’m alone on this, but sometimes I think I understand why JRR Tolkien wrote the creation account of Silmarillion as a majestic and holy Song.  Because of course the world would find its meaning and significance borne upon the shoulders of a melody. Who could imagine otherwise? Because even though Words can touch the depths, Music can carry us into them.

music genres

okay.  so clearly there is a problem with genre names.  They just don’t describe the genre at all. That said, I would like to relabel them for myself.  I provided an example of each:

1. Smooth Grit: John Mclaughlin – Amelia’s Missing
2. Soft Funk:  Dave Barnes – Someday Sarah
3. Dance Funk: Chromeo – Bonafied Lovin’
4. Carefree / Nonchalance: Chairlift – Bruises
5. Somehow Significant : Sara Bareilles – One Sweet Love
6. Black Depressing Music: Brian Mcknight – 6,8,12
7. White Depressing Music: John Mayer – Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
8. White operatic singers with glamorous hair: The Darkness – I believe in a thing called Love
9. Epic Teen anthems: 3eb – god of wine
10. Kids Bop: The Click Five – Angel to you devil to me
11. Male Hippie: Glen Hansard – Say it to me now
12. Female Hippie: Regina Spektor – Samson
13. Talented Christian: Future of Forestry – Twilight
14. Non-talented Christian: Rebecca St. James  – every single song
15. British Builds and hooks: Coldplay – Politik
16. British Non-Builds and hooks: Travis – Side
17. Black people saying stuff in a cool way: Lupe Fiasco – Hip Hop saved my life
18. Black people trying to sing: Kanye West – Love Lock down
19. Jay Chou: Jay Chou – Black Humor
20. Jay Chou Imitators – Yida – How Long
21. Non Jay Chou imitators: Khalil Fong – Love
22. Broadway: Wicked – Defying Gravity
23. Jazzy instrumental – Bill Evans: Waltz for Debby

Just bored I guess…anyways, on to the rest of the day!

A tribute to Honor

It’s hard to describe, but we all know it, and deep inside of us, we all appreciate it.  But despite its many portrayals in movies and novels alike, Honor is rarely if ever displayed in our personal lives.  That’s a real tragedy.  I  believe that Honor  is something that men and women of every race and creed long to know.  And when they lose sight of it, due to various circumstances, they lose a piece of themselves in the process.

Life is mundane. But Life spent for things beyond ourselves, kindness, charity, integrity, humility, selflessness, loyalty, generosity,  chivalry, brotherhood… things that we cannot quantify, and yet things that add so much meaning to our lives, transform the mundane into the meaningful.

New things New things

yes yes, there are a great many new things in my life.  new job, new transitions, new places, new people, new ministry.

But the most important out of all of these is…

I am now a fan of Taylor Swift.

Yes, this 24 year old asian male loves to listen to adolescent country girl music.

More seriously: Life is hard, but in pain and brokeness, there is grace to be experienced.  Even through adversity, God’s grace teaches, and makes Christ more and more the strength of my heart.  In a world full of opinions and voices, thank God, for the unchanging, uncompromising, Scriptures.  Year after year, He remains the same.   Faithful and True.  Whew.

More than Nothing

I want to believe in humanity.  I want to believe that within us, there is a measure of goodness, of truth, and nobility.  And I want even more badly to believe that there is a God of wisdom and Love who values us enough to guide us in the way of life and joy.  But I must admit that my beliefs and desires to believe are severely tested by the truth of what I know of this world.

Rarely do I take the time to consider the griefs our people bestow upon one another as nations, the conditions we pass over, the intense poverty, the injustice, and mass hopelessness, the wailing of countless bereaved children thrown into chaos wrought by the selfishness of other men and the apathy of our governments.  Indeed, for me, to know the truth is to hate myself, my people and at times my God.  Where is our innocence? We tremble and weep and do nothing, and our inheritance is passed on.  This is the problem of our evil.  And it is too great to stand under.  When people ask, I cannot preach it away, I cannot climb atop books and hope to escape the smoke of guilt and accusation.  War, rape, brutality, and base exploitation are what are flesh and blood have brought about.  Though it is right, it is also wrong to say that God’s love is wonderful and mysterious, and His plans of expressing it complex, for to know the truth of things in this world, chokes this bold declaration into a desperate gasp for what is an increasingly elusive answer.

There is a God.  But if He is here, He must be a weeping God, for what He has declared as necessity through the events of history, has shown him to be a God who is accustomed to the deepest of pains, for His hands are not idle in our horrors.

And so we bow and God speaks, and He says:  “all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’”

And some of us whisper, “Surely I could never stay Your hand, but what do you expect me to say? Shall I stay silent when all the inhabitants of the world cry out from darkness? Are we truly nothing? And is our pain nothing to You?”

Somewhere inside of me, there is a word, that says, “We are not nothing.”

Some churched folk may say, Indeed we are significant! we are worthwhile, because the infinite worth of Jesus was the ransom for us.  Very well, but you are not thinking this through. This ransom, it was not paid because of our worth, it was paid because of God’s glory.  Let me affirm this truth again, may there be no talk of our worth being the reason for Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice.  For that would be wrong.  Truly it is not because of anything in us that God should choose us, but because God’s choosing of us is reason alone for the action (Deut 7:7-8).  Further, the sacrifice of the cross, was not to display the worth man of but rather to uplift the worth of God, by displaying Him as a God of true and measureless grace.  Hence Paul’s repetitive affirmation in the first chapter of Ephesians.  So again, consider with me, the worth of man is lost in all this.

I hope the reader understands, I am not seeking glory for man, I am only seeking an explanation for the significance of our existence, and the affirmation of our worth in light the world’s brokeness. Not because of what we have done, but because of what we are. Human.

All I want to hear is “You are of value to Me.” and maybe then I will be able to keep my chin up, when the world is falling apart around me.

bap bap baaap

true, i have not blogged in awhile.  This is due to some unforseeable events: 1. I am busy 2. work is busy 3. responsibilities pounce on me like a jungle cat.

I just started a new job doing graphics for an iphone gaming company.  This while also straddling consulting work through my design agency.

I also am making new friends and remembering old ones.

To my one or two readers, I promise I’ll post soon.

China

My parents just came back from China where they were overseeing a medical aid effort to provide heart surgery for impoverished children with congenital heart disease. The children live in the barren wasteland of Qin’an County, Gansu, China where food is a luxury. They live in literal shacks with no running water. There are no farm animals, just dust and crabgrass. The daily diet is composed potatoes which may or may not grow throughout the year. Recently a number of children were sponsored by my family’s foundation to receive heart surgery to fix their congenital heart defects. In one case, a young girl was chosen and due to her failing condition, her mother had to carry her 3 hours to the bus station on her back. Then the two of them then took a series of trains and buses to reach the hospital. After the operation was over, the only thing the mother had to give the child to eat was some poorly kneaded mantou (buns) which she had dried ahead of time for the journey. Before feeding it to her recovering child she first had to dip the buns in water to make them soft enough for her daughter to eat. If anyone of you have had a mantou you know it’s void of nutrition, dry, and relatively tasteless, but it’s the best they had. After the operation these families usually have spent all of their life’s savings on the journey, and no longer have the money to pay their way home. It’s a heartbreaking situation. I wanted to share this with you guys, because it’s such a reality check for us. Listening to my dad tell the story of these impoverished families reminds me that 95% of my life is luxury.

A brief series of Thoughts concerning Sin and Sacrifice

Thought 1. Sin is a tremendous problem.  Its effect upon our souls is infinitely severe.

Thought 2. For a problem of infinite severity you must either have infinitely numerous solutions each with limited effect OR a single solution with infinite effect.

Thought 3. In the Old Testament, under the Mosaic Law, Israel sought to propitiate their sins by means of numerous sacrifices of limited effect, year after year.  But even after many thousands of years, the vast number of sacrifices could no less touch infinity than when they first began.  So even though the sacrifices were of valid effect, they could never fill the boundless void of Sin’s cost.

Thought 4. The boundless cost of Sin, is satisfied by the boundless worth of God. Christ was this boundless worth clothed with humanity.  For there contained in one Man, was the infinity that all men could never attain.  With a single sacrifice of unlimited effect, The God Man paid the infinite price for our Sin.

EDIT: And that explains how sacrifices can be effectual while also being insufficient.

A diet of music

This will not be a long post.  But I was thinking about this in the car today as I drove home from work.  I was listening to a great song by Phil Wickham called “You’re Beautiful.”  I enjoyed it much.  Not merely because of the musical sensibilities that were so similar to my own, but also because of the substantial content and the theologically charged images it provoked.  Listening to that song was good for me.  Good for my soul and for my mind. Which started me thinking, if my ipod could be likened to a refridgerator filled with eats, what kind of food was mine filled with?  And I concluded that my music diet was composed of 60% candy (cool sounding stuff, ie ear candy),  10% alcohol (emotional sap music that makes you unstable after too much) , 15% water (marginally beneficial ccm and secular but christian sounding mainstream alternative/pop)  and  15% real food (theologically substantial and emotionally healthy music or classical compositions).  Now just as what is found in your fridge doesn’t always equate to your actual diet, neither does the distribution of music in my ipod.  If I was to equate the actual amount of time I listened to music with what I ate the most in this wonderful illustration, I would basically be eating candy all day, with the occasional shot of veggies and meat.

I thought that was interesting.  No conclusions. just a note.