"And the child grew up and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel."
-Luke 1:80
There is a season for distinguished underground training that is hidden from the world. A season that consists of extended strenuous conditioning that is worth every purpose-saturated bead of sweat that is meaningfully secreted. Days and weeks of engaging in such intentional stretching of one's supernaturally elastic potential goes unnoticed and undetected from the public eye. In this season, persevering in being barely able to shoulder a weight that is on the brink of unendurability for one's limits allows for the hidden but enormous cultivation and maturation of one's divinely bestowed heavenly capabilities.
The result of finishing such underground training is the God-given capacity to deeply tattoo one's impact on the body of human history with reverberations that will echo down through the bottomless well of eternity.
Whatever I do, eat or drink, may I do it all for you Lord. May heaven's thundering lightning bolts of worship stab my heart with holy energy coursing through my veins. May worship enter into my bloodstream and electrify the vessels in me that carry life. May the platelets in my
veins splash with joy as they flow to worship You, oh Lord. May the holy blood pressure of
worship zestfully squeeze the hemoglobin in my system with a kind of pressure that makes me more carefree in Your presence. As for me, my heart was made to
worship You. That is who I am. That is who I was created to be. When I feel this pressure
in my blood to be who I really am, I end up being lighthearted with joy.
Capturing the soul's vapour-like ponderings through the gift of introspective eloquence results in painting the soul's graffiti on the platform of self-awareness.
*spiritually downloading via the Holy Spirit on how to interpretively
overcome the initially undetectable yet powerfully imprisoning assumptions of the
Matrix of secular Mass Media. The Matrix propagates worldly values that secure
and sustain a hidden oppressive system of interpretation that secretly enslaves
human minds collectively with an illusory framework of reality*
NEO: “I know existentially interpretive Kung Fu.”
MORPHEUS (a seasoned and learned Jesus mentor who is
existentially unplugged from the Matrix): “Show me.”
*Imaginative spiritual exercise of training via simulation
through imaginative role play in the field experience of worldly everyday
reality*
MORPHEUS: “This is an existentially interpretive sparring
program. Similar to the programmed reality of the Matrix of the Mass Media (1
John 2:15-17). It has the same basic functional assumptions. Assumptions like
secular humanism. What you must learn is that these assumptions are no
different than the assumptions of any interpretive worldview system. Some of
them can be bent (e.g. “the 5 physical senses are a reliable guide to objective
truth”). Others can be broken (e.g. “if you get what you carnally desire,
you’ll be deeply content, and you’ll have a finality of satisfaction because
carnal desires can be fully satisfied if you satisfy them right now”).
Understand?”
NEO: *Nods*
MORPHEUS: “Then interpretively uppercut the assumption I
represent (“if your carnal desires sincerely feel that what they genuinely hunger
for is a credible guide to what is good for you, then they are”). If you can.”
1:18
MORPHEUS: “Good spiritual mind renewal (Romans 12:2).
Adaptation. Improvisation. But your weakness, is not your cognitive technique.”
2:05
*temporary blunder/setback that inevitably comes in the
course of training (Luke 22:32)*
2:09-2:13
*Gets back up after embarrassingly falling flat on one’s
face in the training. One can see the hunger, determination, and teachability
in those eyes of an eager Jesus student to master existentially interpretive Kung
Fu that can interpretively overpower seemingly indomitable secular interpretive
assumptions that are functionally overhwelming*
2:40
Another temporary blunder/setback.
2:46
MORPHEUS: “How did the secular assumption I represent beat
you?”
NEO: “Your functional affect on the cognition of my human
brain is too fast.”
MORPHEUS: “Do you believe that a human’s cognitive IQ being
stronger or faster has anything to do with exercising the existentially
interpretive muscles of deep soul-awakened conviction-level realizations, in
this secular environment?”
NEO: *shakes head*
MORPHEUS: “You think that this secular atmosphere’s
psychological oxygen is completely neutral and free of any hidden but distorted
spiritual values?”
3:36
(Galatians 2:20)
3:46
MORPHEUS: “What are you waiting for? Your spiritual mind’s
operations have a supernatural elasticity in your consciousness to produce
superhuman effects that make it faster and stronger than if you merely used
normal human cognition (1 Corinthians 2:14-16). Don’t cognitively think you
are. Soulfully know you are.”
4:17
*The soul existentially conquers the interpretive warfare by
realizing “Are these carnal desires, felt live with an intention of 100%
sincerity on their part, a good guide for what is good for me? No. I deeply
realize that although they’re sincere, they’re unknowingly under a deceptive
spell and I realize this on the level of soul-conviction and soul-awakening. I
existentially realize that the Wisdom of God is a good guide for what is good
for me.”*
It's easy to despise the subculture one was raised in. Like one's biological family, the warts, ugliness, and "unlovable" parts of it are so blatantly positioned in your sight that no decently reflective person can miss it.
After graduating university, I went through a phase where I was sick and tired of the Toronto Chinese Christian Community (TCCC). Growing in it for around a couple decades made its seemingly despicable protrusions bulge to grotesque proportions in front of my eyes. A lack of depth in terms of touching upon matters of the soul. A lack of modeling of being appropriately assertiveness when necessary (especially for males). A lack of healthy conflict resolution and loving relational confrontation to heal the social fabric when conflict inevitably occurs. A lack of serious engagement with the arts. A lack of taking the Christian mind super seriously with sharp intellectual training to engage the secular narrative in dialogue at the worldview level. And much more. All these things, I had to learn by exploring outside the very small perimeters of the TCCC bubble.
I'm an adventurer at heart. By my very nature, I like discovering new spiritual continents that have new eye opening awakenings in the things of God. Through almost a decade of a journey post-university, I've learned how to practically listen to and discern the Holy Spirit's voice and leading. I've learned how the landscape of the soul works, how it heals, and to take it very seriously. I've learned how to discern deep hidden spiritual strongholds in the wounds of one's heart, uproot them, surgically remove the lies embedded in those wounds, and bring them to God to be healed. I've learned how to be appropriately assertive when the situation calls for it. I've learned how to engage in loving relational confrontation when necessary. I've learned how to bridge Christian theology with a serious engagement with the arts. I've trained my mind with some rigour in serious Christian thinking. After spending a decade travelling and immersing myself in different Christian subcultures on different countries and continents as well as spiritually journeying through exploring different spiritualities from differing denominations across the Christian spectrum, I've been exposed to quite a bit in terms of the extended worldwide family of God's kingdom outside the narrow parameters of the Toronto bubble I was confined to before I reached my 20s.
It's easy to bash one's family. It's a lot harder to appreciate the things taken for granted, things that have been moved to the background noise of one's environment that one should be continually thankful for.
Something's been happening recently in my life though. Without me consciously making an effort to discipline myself to do so, I've naturally developed more of a deep appreciation for my original spiritual roots in the TCCC. I helped out at a TCCC conference for teens lately where I was reminded of how I was when I was a teen in this upbringing. It's priceless. You can't put a price tag on it, like your family roots. During the conference there were moments where I was just taken back in awe with my soul's pin-drop-silence of attention in gratitude. This was the spiritual subculture that raised me. The unspoken habits of the subculture. The lingo of the subculture. The bodily conditional responses embedded in the social context of this subculture. The unspoken assumptions of the subculture. The emphases of the subculture. The theological slants of the subculture. The mental framework people have towards understanding God in this subculture. The lifestyle of spirituality promoted in this subculture. It grounded me and helped me stand on my 2 feet and gave me the base to explore from. Without it, I may have not had a spiritual journey to start off with at all. I may have had no springboard to launch me on my journey. This is my heritage. It's in my faith's blood. It has precious yearbook moments in my soul. And though I don't always agree with it, I don't always like it, and there are major flaws in it, at the end of the day, I truly, genuinely love it, just like my biological family.
Wow.
These are my roots. I can't despise them. I can't have bitterness towards them. I'm realizing that it would be unthinkable to be thankless towards them. I can't secretly look down on them, even if no one ever found out.
I enjoy unknowns, don't let the scary-prohibit-me
I'm a mystic, I view scenarios-mystically
With a odd mind, I don't think stereotypically
My mind's on different planes doing aerials-physically
Lord, I need you to perform CPR on my spiritual imagination. Lord, I need a heart that throbs to your purposes like a bass drum. Lord, I need you to pump some purpose-saturated soul rhythm in me. Lord, I need you to hit that bass drum of my heart. And pound it. One pound at a time. To make each divinely inspired pound have repercussions that reverberate all the way up to my mind and fire it up with life-rejuvenating purpose.
"Art doesn't beat you on the head with truth. It invites you to taste the truth before you know exactly what it is."
-Jan Johnson
I would add that, because art opens us up to new experiences we've never had before, it can enable our minds to detect new conceptual categories that have been philosophically camouflaged beforehand by inexperience.
"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in him."
-1 John 4:16b
If someone is really immersed in the love of God on a deep and life-changing level, it will cause that person to sincerely want others to experience and enjoy the love of God even more than oneself does. But one must first be deeply immersed in the love of God, or this will not take place.
Now, since this can be somewhat abstract, perhaps an everyday illustration can humour our finite understanding of such a phenomenon.
If someone enjoys a hilariously funny story on a deep level of laughter, after the initial enjoyment, one sincerely wants others to enjoy the really funny story, and to even enjoy it and laugh harder in reaction to it than oneself originally did when first hearing it. But one must first deeply enjoy the really funny story oneself, or this will not take place.
What if we realized that meditating on the Word of God was not merely a cerebral activity of just cognitively recollecting heady theology to oneself? What if we realized that it involved stepping out of the narrow, restrictive, and suffocating perimeters of our own mundane storyline and stepping into a world with a pulsing and absorbing plotline of God's drama-saturated blockbuster, while being accompanied by a gripping soundtrack that beautifully reverberated and amplified the deep, wordless satisfaction of being immersed in the Greatest Story ever written?
"Words have a life. The Word of God is a living and powerful thing. Powerful. Living. Something living has a movement to it."
-Dallas Willard
(1:06 - 1:20)
If we realized this dimension of alive-and-moving scriptural meditation, where the Word of God has a live and pulsing movement in its interactive dynamic due to it truly having a life of its own, we'd be on the cutting edge of the Lord's greatest weapon against a mundane and miserable existence.
