Young Old Reflections

So much change going on right now.......

My life is experiencing massive shifts on multiple levels. Academically, spiritually, and church settings.

These days, I don't fully know why... but I find myself reflecting a lot like an old man on life timeline flashbacks about my life from highschool to last year. All the chapters of my life. I also reflect on how short life is, and how life is going to end really soon (in the grand scheme of things). I'm only 28 (turning 29 really soon). I don't regret doing so, and I think it adds wisdom to one's life, but I find it kind of strange that I'm inclined to do this naturally more. This is not because I'm trying to develop a good habit or discipline. It just naturally comes these days...

I mean... it seems that seasons of life change so quickly. Even from a social standpoint, the "social wallpaper" of one's social life seems to keep shifting after every year or so, even if one stays in the same city.

And... if one pays attention to one's spiritual journey regularly... it's noticeable how each season is different from the previous one... sort of like seasons for TV shows....

I'm not complaining. I'm just observing. And silently astonished.

The Matrix of Seeking Honour, Status, and Prestige

Jesus very astutely observes that the Jewish religious leaders (the scribes), the Roman leaders, and the disciples (future leaders of Jesus’ ministry) all have the same underlying problem of secretly seeking honour even though they may belong to different social groups that have more surface level differences. Jesus sees beneath the surface of these humans from different groups and discerns that not only do the Romans chase after honour and status above others (Luke 22:25), but also the Scribes (Luke 11:43, 14:7-11) and his very own disciples (Luke 9:46-48). According to Joel Green “one of Jesus’ severest criticisms of the scribes and Pharisees is that they act too much like Romans in their claims to honor and desire for status as benefactors”. 

Jesus discerns that this is not merely a subcultural problem, but a human condition of the world under the kingdom of darkness where Satan has invisible chains on peoples’ hearts and minds that spiritually enslave them to desire the idols of honour, status, and prestige and find their fulfillment in them. If we do attain them, we grow accustomed to their pleasure and paranoid about losing them, which affects our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. If we don't successfully attain them, then we're miserable. Jesus fights against these worldly values that occupy the dark and sinful wallpaper of collective human consciousness and paints a new spiritual background of humility involving selfless leaders serving their followers without any desire for seeking honour, status, and prestige. 

Jesus demonstrates this by being one who serves his disciples (Luke 22:27) and tells two of his top fellow leaders, Peter and John, to serve the disciples by preparing a guest room to eat the Passover (Luke 22:7-13).  In the modern day context this involves not naively believing that certain sins central to the human heart which Jesus talks about (e.g. desire for status, lust, greed, lack of faith) primarily have subcultural roots although they may have some environmental influences. Deep under all these twisted desires lies a hidden system of dark values of the world controlled by the kingdom of Satan. 

Jesus has come to set the captives of this Satanically hidden system of values free by inviting enslaved people to be his disciple and experience a new system of values in the kingdom of God. He offers to free us from this Matrix which enslaves us without us even knowing that we're enslaved. This involves not only having the transformed desire to serve without attaining human honour but also the baptized desire for God-centered intimacy to treat people as subjects instead of objects for lust and the new desire for generosity instead of greed.

Jesus the Spiritual Ip Man

Satan is like the fighter with the shaved head in Ip Man. Before Jesus came, he overpowered any human being in temptation. Ever since the time of Genesis 3:1-7, humans have lost and kept losing against the Devil in "spiritual kung fu matches" (fighting against temptation) and could not successfully overcome Satan's moves fully. Any human, even Old Testament "hall-of-famers" like Abraham, Moses, and David, as devoted to God as they were, still failed and sinned. Satan, the "master" of evil-kung fu in tempting and seducing humans into sin, had 3000+ years of unstoppable victory overcoming every human and getting them to sin with his evil spiritual kung fu attacks. Likewise, the fighters of Fo Shan, Ip Man's town, were well trained in their martial arts. But this shaved head guy came to them and defeated them one by one. As good as they were, the shaved head guy fought and beat every one of them. It seemed like there was no one who could match him. There was no hope.

Until, one day, the shaved head fighter faced the Great Ipman. Likewise, one day, Satan "faced off" with master-Jesus when Jesus was led into the desert to be tempted by him (Matthew 4:1-10). Satan was probably cocky at the time. He had a winning streak of 3000+ years of successfully getting millions (perhaps billions?) of humans to sin. He was undefeated. Not even one could successfully defend himself/herself against all temptations and defeat his dark spiritual kung fu. Until one  day, Jesus was born. And he grew in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52) trained and learned obedience to God until he was "perfect"(Hebrews 5:8-9). Like Ip Man, when Jesus faced off with the great master-tempter Satan, he successfully defended himself against all powerful temptations of Satan and overcame his attacks. Satan had no hold on him (John 14:30), because he could never get him to sin. Jesus was so cool and awesome he overcame Satan. Finally humankind had a human who could defeat Satan's temptations, be perfect, and make Satan "lose face" and redeem the honour and image of God in humankind to God.

I suspect that each of the 3 temptations in those 40 days in the desert perhaps lasted anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. I used to browse the temptation of Jesus and think each lasted a couple seconds. But each temptation was probably an extended spiritual kung-fu match that took at least a few minutes, perhaps a few hours. It was epic. I can imagine "intense fighting background music". One on one baby. Before Satan made his move, I imagine Jesus in one corner, and Satan in the other, each making their own prepare-to-fight stances. Then Satan made his moves and Jesus defended himself against every one of them, embarassing the evil kung fu master Satan. Master Jesus is so cool and awesome because he defeated Satan. Since demons weren't used to seeing Satan lose, like how the shaved man's cronies weren't used to seeing their leader lose, perhaps a bystander demon had his mouth/jaw open like the guy in 3:10 of this clip.

So wicked.

Thank you Jesus, for being perfect in never sinning, always defeating Satan when he tried dark spiritual kung fu on you in tempting you, so that you could be the perfect sacrifice, redeem and save humankind, and teach us how to follow in your footsteps to increasingly overcome sinful temptations in our own lives!

Sobering Reflections For the Past While

Lately, I've started to see how transient things in my life really are. Especially in this day and age where we live in. Highschool friendship season. University friendship season. Seminary season. North American season. When I was in university, I thought that there would be a point in my life where I just would settle down in Toronto, get a pretty good and stable job, then stay here and get established. God has showed me more and more how that is how my life is not going to be, at least for the long-term.

I get the sense that I'm going to be a person who travels from place to place. Not for tourist purposes, but for the work of God, where I need to be. There's tradeoffs with each lifestyle. The amazing part of such an itinerant lifestyle is that one meets people from new cultures and gets to experience how broad, wide, and multi-faceted human existence really is, not to mention the Kingdom of God. I find that when I interact with Christians from different cultures, I experience a different aspect of God. The downside is that one begins to build deep relationships with treasured friends.... only to have to move on because God calls you to another geographical place.

I've learned not to suppress feelings that I get. It's really damaging in the long run, and the damage could be subtle. So when this sentiment of me being a somewhat itinerant person surfaces in me, I get a "Wow...." feeling. It's not exactly, unpleasant. It's not exactly pleasant either. But it feels very... thick with meaning. Much like being in the middle of a very rich movie.... like Lord of the Rings. When Frodo has to "move on", whether from the Shire, Rivendell, Gondor, or Mordor, there is a "Wow.... things are moving on" sort of feel as he continues his journey.

If I'm reading my path right, I feel that I'm going to arrive at the next subway stop of my life's trajectory pretty soon, and when I get off this stop, it'll completely shift everything in my life again, with a whole new set of relationships. 

Life is such a trilogy-like movie.

***

For the past 6 years, I've learned a TON about myself each year. I've learned university-amounts of insight about myself. And with each increasing year since 2008, I've learned even more about myself than the year before. I would have never expected this path of self-discovery spiraling into something bigger and bigger every year as the telescope of my self-awareness extends deeper and deeper into the galaxy my soul. The consciousness, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness of a person really is a whole inner universe, and before, I only had the self-awareness of one solar system in it. Now, the Lord's shown me that more and more solar systems exist inside the galaxy of the image of God that he's implanted in my being. If the image of God in a person is the image of a God who is infinite, I believe the image is, in a way, infinite as well.

I feel that this year has been especially thrilling in its discoveries because God has used the insights of contemporary psychology to help me discover more about the image of God in me, how I "tick", and what are the secret inner drives that unknowingly dictate how I live my life. I read a marvelous analogy in a book lately, where the unconscious desires and energies in one person that unknowingly drive one's behaviour are compared to a magnet underneath a sheet of paper driving where the iron fillings on top of the paper go without the iron fillings knowing it. Let's just say this year I discovered a TON of "unconscious magnets" that have been destructively steering my conscious behaviour all my life. And it has been humbling and sobering to discover these things. At the same time, I'm extremely thankful to God that he has shown me this stuff, namely so that he can heal it. I've become convinced that the most dangerous things in a person are the shadow drives in a person that one isn't even aware of. They cause conflicts in oneself. Conflicts between oneself and others. Disruptions in one's relationship with God. And they also give a foothold (Ephesians 4:27) to demons in one's life.

I am forever indebted to certain insights from modern day psychology that God has really used to sanctify me more and more. Carl Jung is so wicked.

Mothers in Christ

"Treat ... older women as mothers..." - Timothy 5:1-2

Although there is a fairly "masculine" side of me that enjoys working out, playing sports, having a quest to conquer, being a "gentleman", and gets inspired by male comic heroes like the Christian Bale Dark Knight, there is another side to me. This other side is not "feminine" per se, but really enjoys interaction with certain older wise Christian women who are a generation or more older than me. God has used many of these "mothers in Christ" to build into me and shape me into a "son of God" that I am today. Over the past few years, these spiritual mothers in my life have been wise, caring, encouraging to me in my spiritual journey and I am just so thankful beyond words that I know them and am privileged to grow under their spiritual motherhood.

Theologically speaking, I believe this is very healthy actually. I learned a lot about theological anthropology in my class with Victor Shepherd this past year at school. One of the points he repeated really stuck with me and influences my conscious and subconscious thinking to this day.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." - Genesis 1:27

Being a male, I know that the full representation of the image of God is not contained in my manhood. Since God created both male and female in his image, I understand that females have the other portion of God's image. I choose not to interpret this in a quantifiable manner where 50% of the image of God is in man and 50% of the image of God is in woman. I'm not against anyone who does, but I just don't see it that way. The way how I see it is that the full representational image of God is achieved when both parts are experientially linked through relational interaction with each other. This includes but is not restricted to romantic interaction. In my view, it definitely includes platonic relational interaction. The same goes with sisters in Christ, where if they never interact with their brothers in Christ deeply, something will be missing in their experience of image bearers of God and as a result, their experience of God himself will be severely limited. Only when members of both genders have existential communion with each other can the image of God be fully represented and experienced in humanity. And it is only when the image of God is fully manifested in an incarnational reality that can people experience a full (yet finite) representational experience of who God is.

There is something marvelous and mysterious about this. It is marvelous because I know that when I interact with sisters in the faith, there is a "female dynamic" that brings extra colour to the social and spiritual interaction that defies exhaustive description. I know that things are different when it is just me and the boys. My mind can attempt to understand this to some degree. Generally speaking, there is a greater graciousness to female being. There is a more caring aspect to them. They know how to empathize in a "female" way. Their texture of thinking is somehow linked to their physiology of having a female body. But I don't reduce the "magic" to such named traits. I think ultimately it defies description yet it is undeniably understood on an intuitive level.

I know that there have to be boundaries, even when I meet with these women who are about a generation older than me. Some things, I think, should only be shared with other males. But I think there's a lot more stuff that can be shared in an intergender context than we think. I think that treating the opposite gender with purity does not mean treating them with emotional distance or Nazi-like relational boundaries. I know such friendships are not for everyone. But I believe they are for me. I not only think that they're healthy, I think they're a necessity for my spiritual well-being. I am a better Christian man because I am I know these women of Christ.

Here are some of the spiritual mother-son relationships that God has blessed me with in the past year or two (in no particular order):

1) My Mentor. Yes, I have a female mentor who is 12 years my senior. I met her in seminary when I first started. I saw her because I wanted some counsel and I heard that she had "the gift of discernment". I didn't really know what to think. Some people may say that certain people are "discerning" when in fact, in my honest opinion, their level of discernment skills is just okay. Nothing spectacular. Not this lady. Holy crap she's discerning. I'd say it's a mix of natural sharp observation skills coupled with supernatural/prophetic discernment, the latter meaning that she has the ability to discerns things accurately which cannot be done with mere human abilities. She knows things (supernaturally) about me that I don't even know about myself which I only discover a few months after she tells me. By far, out of all the people I personally know in my life, she is the wisest and most discerning person I know. And she doesn't brag about it. She's responsible with her powers like Peter Parker.

I call her a Holy Spirit empowered Jean Grey (cuz the Holy Spirit literally enables her to read your mind at times, and you know it's not because she's reading your body language). She laughed when I called her that once. She knows my weaknesses so well. And she can describe them in a texture and tone as if she's "inside" of me describing the subjective experiences of those weaknesses in a way that intuitively resonates with my day to day experience. And her prayers are so powerful.

2) My Spiritual Director Supervisor. Being a Spiritual Director Practicum Student this year, God has really blessed me to provide spiritual direction to different kinds of people and help them respond to God's unique promptings in their lives. It has been a unique journey. Really. But it also comes with its own sets of trials and tests. In such a practicum, my own weaknesses have surfaced to a whole new level, and I'm discovering new blindspots and underdeveloped parts of me that are somewhat embarrassing to be aware of. However, my Spiritual Director Supervisor has been such a blessing to me. She actually really, really cares about me. Being a spiritual director herself, she really knows how to really enter into your inner world with lots of compassion and grace when you share your weaknesses. Her "spiritual direction" flavour of encouragement is really uplifting for me. She never condemns me.She never is impatient with me. She understands. She doesn't "tell me what to do" with my problems, but she encourages me to take them to God and work them out with God. I know she's guiding me through stuff that she's had to deal with on her own in offering spiritual direction to others. She's really good at allowing me to "figure things out on my own" with the Holy Spirit and to dig deeper inside to see what's really going on with things while she asks reflective questions and perspectives that are very beneficial. She's great.

3) My Psychology Professor. Although I only had 1 class with her, she's been such a big blessing to me. Honestly speaking, a year ago I had very little respect for Christian psychology. The Christian psychology that I was exposed to seemed like the substance of secular psychology superficially clothed with Christian terminology. However, taking a course with her and talking to her really changed my view on this. I never knew that legit Christian psychology could be soooo insightful and helpful in helping one deal with spiritual strongholds in one's life! Instead of merely "trying harder in spiritual disciplines" and then failing in one's signature sins again, her and other Christian psychology resources have helped me understand the psychological root of a lot of my behaviour, feeling, and thinking that I was previously oblivious to. I am forever indebted to this stuff! I never knew that a set of questions that were razor sharp with insight could help one uncover the secret/hidden source of one's sin! I am now convinced that if we don't deal with the secret/hidden sources of our sin, although we can still be forgiven by God, we won't be able to stop these sins recycling themselves destructively in our lives. Talking with this prof has really helped me understand a lot of underdeveloped parts of me from a psychology standpoint and I am beginning to experience freedom through this. And the cool part is that these sets of insightful questions has helped me begin to set others free too!!

I met up with her several times last semester in her office to not even talk about course related stuff, but to just explore what the heck is going on inside of me from a psychology point of view. The rewards were rich beyond ocean treasure.

4) My Spiritual Director. I enjoy meeting with female spiritual directors. This is partly due to the theological reasons stated above. 4 out of the 5 spiritual directors I met with in the past few years have been female. I've informally talked to the one I'm meeting with now for a couple years on and off, and I started seeing her recently on a regular schedule. She's really good at offering different perspectives for me on my journey in becoming more like Christ. She's good at not projecting her experiences on to my experiences in order to try to understand where I'm coming from. She made me realize that it's helpful to view the attempt to balance different tensions in the Bible (sovereignty of God, free will) in my experiential journey with God as something that is very healthy. She encourages me that my holiness is not a matter of suppressing my humanness, but embracing it. I'm thankful for being able to journey with her. Her companionship is really appreciated on the "Lord of the Rings journey of spiritual formation".

I'm thankful beyond words for these Mothers of Christ that God has provided for me in this chapter of my journey. They've changed me so much. It's scary to imagine how I'd be if I never met them. Thank God I did.

The Coexistence of Paradoxical Qualities Simultaneously Exhibited

If we study the life of Jesus in the Gospels we see the seemingly opposite characteristics of immensely powerful authority and extremely meek humility simultaneously radiating from the aura of his presence in a curiously attractive way. If one carefully observes and meditates on the collective reactions of the people who had live interactions with Jesus in the New Testament, one can begin to taste this mysterious coherence of paradoxical qualities in cool Jesus. One time, without threats or weapons, he told the law enforcement officials of his day, who were sent by their superiors to cuff him in, not to arrest him because it wasn't the right time to do so. They ACTUALLY went away and didn't arrest him because they felt that "no one ever spoke the way he did" (John 7:32, 45, 46) when they heard and felt the immense weight in the spiritual authority of his words humbly and gently spoken to them. When he was falsely accused or unjustly mocked, he lovingly turned the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), stayed silent, and immediately love and forgave his enemies in extremely meek humility (Mark 14:60-61, 15:16-20, Luke 23:33-34).

It is impossible to simultaneously embody these paradoxical qualities if one simply "finds a balance" between 2 extremes of contrasting traits on the continuum of personality traits that are merely human. You have to stand and operate from another supernatural continuum that has extraordinary effects on the "normal human" one in order to do so. You have to have divine empowerment. It is simply unattainable and hopelessly futile to attempt to incarnate this mysterious coherence of these paradoxical qualities with mere human effort or capacity. You can only do this if you are God.

Now, here's the daring conclusion that ought to rock one's socks. If Jesus' life incarnated the coexistence of paradoxical qualities simultaneously exhibited, and if his followers are expected to be like him (1 John 2:6) through the enablement of the Holy Spirit, then his followers should also be able to grow increasingly in the coexistence of paradoxical qualities simultaneously exhibited as well. Not because they're special. But because Jesus gives his eager followers a promise that they can actually, in this lifetime, begin to "participate in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4) and, through supernatural assistance, incarnate this mysterious coherence of immensely powerful authority and extremely meek humility just like Jesus.

Translating the Personality of Jesus

Let's say someone doesn't speak English and is foreign to hip-hop music. In order for that person to understand the English lyrics of a hip-hop song deeply, more needs to be done on top of merely translating the propositional content of those foreign English lyrics into his native tongue. More crucially, he needs to hear those hip-hop lyrics rapped through a living and breathing human being in front of him who organically incarnates the hip-hop culture in a thoroughly native manner and capacity. Merely translating the content of the hip-hop lyrics into the target culture's native language will not suffice. It needs to be rapped by a living personality that has a mind that has spent years being squeezed the mold of thinking with "hip-hop"py psychological structures, emotional programming that has a hip-hop type of texture of emotional reactions to life's events, a physical body that is thoroughly conditioned to engage with one's physical environment the way a native hip-hopper would (e.g. one's literal "walk"/gesticulations), and social relational habits that conform to an unspoken order of social norms in the hip-hop culture. In other words, the rapper who embodies the hip-hop culture in his very own living personality is the very context for the hip-hop lyrics that he bilingually raps to the foreigner. An example is MC Jin successfully transporting the hip-hop culture to Hong Kong not merely by translating his English rap lyrics into Chinese, but rapping them with his living personality that is thoroughly native with hip-hop consciousness.

In our day, in addition to the need for accurate textual translation of the "lyrics" aka teachings of Jesus in the Gospels to a secular culture that is foreign to it, there is the more pressing need for the translation of the actual living personality of Jesus (1 John 2:6) in order for people spiritually foreign to Jesus to "really get his spiritual lyrics". These personalities have the mold of their mental furniture squeezed into supernatural psychological structures and subconscious thinking patterns that Jesus himself has (1 Cor 2:16), emotional programming that has Jesus' supernatural texture of emotional reactions to life's events (Philippians 4:6-9), a physical body that is thoroughly conditioned to engage in one's physical environment the supernatural way Jesus would (Romans 6:12-13), and social relational habits that conform to the hidden supernatural order of norms that Jesus wired his relational habits to follow (Philippians 2:5-11). In other words, mere translation of the propositional content of Jesus' teachings from Greek to English, while good in and of itself, will not suffice. It needs a context of a living personality that, through the Holy Spirit's supernatural assistance, organically embodies a supernatural texture of Christ-consciousness that teaches or "raps" it to the world.