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

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.