My-Father, aka the live-Potter, has a thing for moldin' shy-toddlers into Skywalkers, who slice vibes-offered from demonic lie-talkers

The "Interestingness" of God

If there is a very interesting person present, but we don't understand his/her language, we'll become disinterested after he/she talks for a while. Even bored.

The same goes with God.

If there is a very interesting God present, but we don't understand his language, we'll become disinterested after he talks for a while. Even bored.

Perhaps that is why many people secretly find prayer boring without telling anyone. 9 times out of 10, people who find prayer boring do 100% of the talking while God's microphone is unknowingly muted.




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Star Wars episode 7 just came out. Well, at least the prescreening reviews before the official day of release tomorrow.

Initial consensus of the critics on rottentomatoes.com was 95%. I'll probably go see it after the craze dies down a little, and the fire department calms down about the fire hazard levels of the theaters overflowing with cramped sardines.

The mystical side of me can't help but to think... what if.... just what if... the story of God was so exciting that it made Star Wars seem like it only had 2 stars? What if the "universe" of the kingdom of God was much more vast than the Star Wars one in a galaxy far away? What if the stakes were higher than the empire versus the resistance of the rebels? What if the plot lines were as energizing as the Jedis versus the Darth villains? What if, everyday, we had a spiritual soundtrack of a symphony capturing the pulse of our universe and the dramatic unfolding of an epic story?

What if?

I think people would be lining up to enter the Church to meet Jesus the way crazed fans are lining up to watch Episode 7.

The Kingdom of God is Like a Freestyle Rap Battle

In terms of personal spiritual reflections, God has been speaking to me through the nature of hip-hop to illustrate how the kingdom of God battles the kingdom of Satan. In Luke 11:14-22, we see that the reign of God battling the reign of Satan involves fighting over the inner lives of individuals, namely, inside the "home" of their hearts. Spiritual battles involve power struggles over worship/glory inside a person's heart. An Old Testament macrocosm of this inner heart battle takes place in 1 Kings 18 where Elijah engaged in a glory battle against the prophets of Baal. In a New Testament understanding of these battles, God wins when he gets the glory and Satan wins when someone or something else does (whether it's something of the sinful flesh, the world, or explicitly demonic stuff). In non-religious language (which is sometimes more helpful to the mind in understanding), someone having "glory" involves causing others to have jaw-dropping, awe-filled wonder that magnetizes a person's attention with stunning, astounding amazement.

How does this relate to hip-hop? An emcee freestyling rap battle totally illustrates this concept. In a freestyle battle, two rappers spontaneously produce rhymes to creatively and artistically attack the other person in the dimension of linguistical aesthetics. What is of paramount importance is how aesthetically beautiful, "slick", "sick", "ill", "hot", "legit" each rapper's rhymes are. This relates to glory in how the rapper who wins (usually) ends up capturing the crowd's attention with jaw-dropping, awe-filled wonder and stunning, astounding amazement (albeit on a "finite" level). In this context, they do so by rapping with a soulful rhythmic flow of fresh lyrics that are saturated with seemingly life-giving, energetic punch-lines. This apparent "life-giving energy" of the exquisite phonetic synchrony of rhyming words is in sync with and propelled by the lively pulse of an awesome sounding hip-hop beat. This beat, if it is "legit", has a dynamic bass that vibrates the air molecules of the room's atmosphere with a soulful rhythm, which synergizes with the energy of the spontaneous poetic lyrics of the rappers that are intended to take down one's opponent. This is a glory battle, where the crowd, hungering to thrillingly praise a rapper's "dope stuff", ascribes glory to who they think is worthy of it.

(This is the cleanest example I could find of Emcee Jin freestyle battling before his conversion.)

The spiritual parallels are what follows: the instrumental hip-hop beat is the spiritual realm, one emcee represents the voice of God, the other emcee represents Satan's voice, and the crowd represents the human heart's hunger to worship something that worthily captures its attention. (As an incidental parallel, in Genesis 3:14, God "curses" Satan with "his voice".) The human heart desires to "enthusiastically cheer" for something from its depths, that is, to have its attention astoundingly magnetized by an independent life-giving, soul-pumping energy that comes from an awe-saturated source it feels deserves deep admiration, devotion, and even obsession with. This is glory. This can either come from God's voice wooing us to himself, or Satan's voice wooing us to the world, the flesh, or even his demonic kingdom explicitly. At any given moment, this "spiritual rap battle of the heart" is always taking place. For each moment, the heart is left with a choice to give glory to God or to something else. And Satan's voice likes to tell the human heart to secretly (or sometimes not so secretly) have admiration, devotion to, and obsession with the idols of the world ("a stable career", "a high-income salary", "a prestigious position", "a relationship", "romantic interests", "human honour", "safety", "pleasure", "a respectful reputation", "laziness", "looking righteous", "being special in the world") by astoundingly magnetizing its attention by deceiving it into thinking that these idols have independent life-giving, soul-pumping energy that comes from an awe-saturated source it feels deserves deep admiration, devotion, and even obsession with. Of course, a student of Jesus knows that this can only come from God. Although one's head knows it, a lot of the time, our heart does not "functionally know it" and during these moments this heart-knowledge of God's glory, for all intents and purposes, is non-operational, inactive, and stripped of its functional power. This is when we start losing the battle of glory on the "spiritual stage" of our hearts. It is a choice each moment as to which voice my heart will functionally follow and worship. The flow of God's voice, or Satan's. Each one becomes louder, more dynamic, energetic and "hype" the more I focus on it and tune out the other.

A Return to the World of Rhyming

After a series of inspirational events within the past few months, I have intentionally been trying to pick up rhyming again.

Being somewhat intentional about writing rap from my highschool days to the first half of university, I subsequently sort of let this art recede into the background of my interests, especially as I got more into the world of critical thinking, academic learning, and scholarly research. Through this decade of time, I did write the occasional birthday rap or humourous rap for friends for random things. However, I wasn't really intentional about it.... until a few months ago.

It's interesting how things end up. I never knew I'd be picking this thing up again. Honestly, I thought it was kind of a "juvenile" hobby of mine from another era of my life that I "outgrew".

An unexpected surprise was waiting for me around the corner though. For the past couple years, I have been exploring psychoanalysis, and through that, I have learned how to use the right side of my brain more and more. The right brain is the side of the brain that is more associative, intuitive, emotive, imaginative, creative as opposed to the left side of the brain that's very logical, rational, factual, scientific etc. Through psychoanalysis, I have learned how to use the right brain in specific ways, like dream interpretation, counselling exercises involving ones imagination, and getting in touch with the wisdom of my physical body on issues that I'm dealing with. I've also tried to approach life with more of my right brain in general.

The interesting thing though, is that I've learned to freestyle rap with my right brain! I realize only now that 10+ years ago, I tried to go about freestyling mainly with my left brain. And it simply doesn't work. Even if it works for a few lines, it feels very mechanical, the way one feels when one is reading/doing scientific lab reports. It has a different qualitative feel to it compared to the other side of the brain. One has to tune into the right brain for organic "flow" that's "cool". It's been really interesting. I never knew before that one had to freestyle with the part of the brain one dreamed with.

I am far from mastering the art of freestlying, but the unexpected psychotechnology of psychoanalysis has taken me really far. It's a big exaggeration, but it feels like the help of psychoanalysis in freestyle rapping has been like Neo "downloading" Kung fu into his mind and then just "knowing how to do it".

I also realize that it's so much easier to rhyme vulgar than rhyme clean. A lot of the time, when I tap into my right brain flow, my inhibitions/restrictions/limits of the cleanliness of the words that come into my mind are lowered along with the rational logic that I try to lower because it helps me to be more creative. However, when this happens sometimes, I can sense vulgar words coming into my mouth, where I have to override my mouth from rhyming with my left brain right before the filthy content almost rolls off of my tongue! This is a concrete lesson for me in how Jesus said that out of the overflow of the heart (in my view, a lot of the "heart" of a person is associated with the right brain) the mouth speaks.

I also realize that it's easier to flow when I deeply put my body into it (i.e. my head bobbing, my rhythmic arm flailing, and even my leg doing some mini-springing). When my whole body is immersing itself in the "sick flow" of a beat, I feel like I've "entered the beat" as opposed to just "listening outside of it" and the result is that I can freestyle a lot better. This is opposed to me rapping while standing as still as a statue. It's so interesting how the body and rightbrain creativity are interconnected, another lesson I learned thanks to psychoanalysis.

Picking this up again, I have picked up more than just a hobby. I have the opportunity to "spiritually scrutinize" the nature of flow through its hip-hop form. Freestlying by its very nature taps into one's "spirit" that involves an autonomous and spontaneous flow that, to a certain degree, has a life of its own. Just like how the content of one's dreams seems to have a life of its own. And putting this part of the human person under the microscope of introspection can reap rewards on uncovering more about the "spirit" of human nature. I know this, because I have learned that there is a dimension to interaction with God that involves "passive reception" on the part of human consciousness, such as "being filled with the Spirit" (which is a passive imperative that involves allowing oneself to be influenced by something, or in this case someone). Also, Ephesians 5 also associates spiritual phenomena, such as being filled with the Spirit, with music, suggesting another strong connection between musical flow and spiritual flow. I am learning more and more that the very nature of "spirit" is something that is constantly flowing in a spontaneous manner to a certain degree. The fruits of this spiritual research can have massive implications for one's spiritual formation in Christ!

Exciting!

Lord, this sinner's kneeling with a lingered feeling of whimpered reeling during the inward peeling of inner healing for his splintered dealing

Eminem, even though your lyrics are vulgar, and you use your talent for purposes not of God, your undeniable rhyming skill sure sets the bar high and inspires others to follow in how beautifully complex one's rhyming can potentially be.

Thank you.

My Soul Thanks the Lord

I think one of the ways to thank the Lord with one's soul is to just look at treasured pictures of the past. When I do that, my soul is just stirred. And it gives thanks to God spontaneously in non-verbal form. It results in me giving thanks to God with my "right-brain" and not my "left-brain". I prefer right-brain prayer to God anyways.

Tonight, I kept replaying this "Thank You" song by Jin while looking at my East Asia missionary photos from 2008-2010.

Wow. Looking at myself in those pictures with my friends on the mission field at the time. On the one hand, I feel that my consciousness was so narrow and underdeveloped back then. On the other hand, I see how God was shaping me. I'm also so deeply stirred on the rich times I had with my friends there. The disciples I was privileged to work with. My fellow missionary friends.

Those years will forever be so deeply etched in my soul. When I get to heaven and reflect on this past life, I know I will spend a lot of time just reflecting on the goodness of God in those 2 years. I can't fully describe it. I didn't physically cry when I got nostalgic looking at the pics just now. But it felt like I was re-holding something really precious again, like a newborn baby. Those times were sacred. Fun. Deep. Hard. Special. Life-changing. Crazy. Dramatic. The only thing they weren't was boring.

From 2010-today, my life has been dramatic. But most of the drama here has been "internal". By that, I mean it has been epic in my ever-expanding awareness of the milky-way-like expanse of my inner unconscious/soul that God is helping me explore now. And it is rich. Dark too sometimes. But rich. Wonder-full. It feels like a movie exploring that stuff with Christ. It can be dangerous to explore it without Jesus, but with him, I think it's healthy to explore the nature of the human heart deeply. Both for myself and others. But, this "drama" is really different from the "external" drama that happened during 2008-2010 in East Asia missions drama. Oh my gosh. I've never experienced that much meaningful external drama in my life. Purposeful drama that is. Drama that involves the ups and downs of meaningful existence in pursuit of the Great Commission over obstacles. So many obstacles came up in those years. The school administration. The threat of disunity in the various churches in the city. Inner team conflict. The government. Spiritual warfare. Explicit demonic attacks. Personal issues. It felt like the shift in leverage between good vs evil kept energetically shifting almost every week. And it was full of spiritual adrenaline and live electricifying tug-of-war-like shifts. My teammates (especially in the second year) can fully attest to this. I felt I didn't need to watch primetime TV dramas at that time really, because life was already so saturated with drama. It felt like a movie. An RPG. A page-turning thriller. And my heart was bonded with these people (as the heart normally does in live drama).

My heart for these people still remains. They have a portion of my heart.

I also was helping out with a Church community event for Easter at Parkway Forest Community Church today. These Muslim ladies who came with Hijabs were speaking Arabic. I love the sound of live Arabic spoken to me in person. I asked them what country they were from. They said Libya. I am also reminded of my heart for the Muslims.

I don't fully know what God has for me in store for the future. He's given me a heart for the East Asians in 2008-2010. He's also given me a heart for the Muslims in the past few years. I think God's been showing me that he wants me to have an international heart.

Thank you Lord. My soul says thank you.

The Cyphering Continues

Let's get deep, much deeper than only the physical
It's pivotal, Imagine with your occipital
Look deep within yourself, not just a little-bro
Deeper than subliminal, go get mystical
If you really delve deep into your heart it'll-go
Into dark places, unholy and not Levitical
But no worries, you will not be leaving there crippled-though
If you get healed by the One with the Davidic-role
The Holy Ghost will shed light but not be critical
You'll be loved but convicted just like a criminal
If it's really God man, then at the minimal
You'll feel something peaceful but invisible
But it's typical that you'll be in state that's liminal
Though the world may ridicule, and find you pitiful
When God goes and opens the Holy Spirit's gift-it'll
connect you with the God that many find mythical

Back With the Cyphering Cap On

God electrifies the way you see a tazor-taze
And energizes you just like that gatorade
Seek God's glory and seek to display-its-rays
Enter the battle, don't try to escape-the-fray

Seek the Lord's wisdom at all times, day-to-day
He gives discernment that's as sharp as a razor-blade
Discipline yourself and train to make-a-way
To be clutch like a Kobe Bryant fade-away

Each moment we choose is either make-or-break
Follow God or get burned like a steak-that's-baked
Through God, you can really go and save-the-day
If we really keep the filthy sin away-at-bay

I'm tellin' you sisters, you better stay-away
From the clubs where you see all them players-play
Instead, you should explore fifty ways-to-pray
And not explore watchin' trash like Fifty Shades-of-Grey