The Mysterious Plot of God

There is a difference between seeing God's mysterious ways as illogical versus nonlinear. Illogical implies incoherence due to a fundamental contradiction. Nonlinear gives room for the possibility of coherence being revealed in a nonsequential manner.

Story lovers rightly complain at a narrative that is finished but illogical in its fundamentally incoherent storyline. On the other hand, they experience narrative excitement in being delightfully outsmarted by the author when a story is finished with a plot twist that restores coherence in a satisfying nonlinear sequence.

Mirages that maintain their deceptive power over society are not dispelled by yelling at them. They are dispelled by verbalized wisdom that is perceptive and discerning.

An effective cultural critic takes her mental bow and arrow, perceptively takes aim, and fires her sharp observations at the Achilles Heel of social frameworks that project shared hallucinations onto society.

The spiritual scientists continue to do spiritual experiments to transmit God's loving energy, showing the reliability of that other world that has extraordinary effects on this one. The best discovery is that although the most Joyous Being in the universe is invisible, he exists and has an infinite amount of fierce selfless affection for each one of us.

Lessons about Spirituality from Humour

Humour can teach us about spirituality.

In the world of humour, like the spiritual world, an alternative type of logic runs through things that is fundamentally different from the logic of rational analysis. Each world spins with a different structure, nature, and set of laws in terms of what will "fly" and "not fly".

In order to be funny and thrive in Humour Land, similar to being spiritual and thriving in Spiritual Land, one needs to grow in intuitively grasping how to run cooperatively with that world's laws, nature, and nuanced intuition which are different from those in Logical Analysis Land. What works in grasping one plane of reality will not, in and of itself, help in grasping the other.

Even if pure motives are present, one cannot use rationality and scientific logic to grasp spiritual logic, let alone humour-logic (or vice versa). In fact, trying to intellectually dissect a joke to understand it is like dissecting a frog. It will kill it in the process. Simiarly, trying to use one's mental hands to tightly grasp something spiritual, like a paradox (e.g. one needs to give up one's life in order to save it), can end up suffocating a first-hand experience of it.

Supernaturally Empowered Street Smarts

My Master on earth was well versed in the drama of out-maneuvering all kinds of devious social traps designed to ruin him. His supernaturally assisted ability to navigate our deceit saturated world was unparalleled. With an upgraded version of Solomon's street smarts (1 Kings 3:16-28), he had the greatest street smarts the human world has ever seen.

His discernment could pierce through the manipulated layers of verbals and nonverbals designed to camouflage the hidden motives of those secretly against him. When he sensed a red light from God, he would submit even though he was fully aware of the totality of manipulative scheming in front of him (John 6:64). When he sensed a green light from God, however, he would execute one of his many social-jiujitsu responses to not only escape a trap laid against him, but end up inverting the original trap to immobilize the trap setter. Observers would be astonished as they repeatedly saw him about to get checkmated, only to reverse-shift the leverage and embarrassingly checkmate his opponents who thought they had the upper hand (Luke 20:19-26). He would do so without having an air of superiority, egotism, or cynicism, but just with an intention to carry out his part in God's redemptive purposes in human history.

If something occurs multiple times in a person's biography, it can be seen as an important part of their life. Although learning from Jesus is more than just learning from his street smarts, it is certainly nothing less than it. His early followers picked up on this (Romans 16:17-19, 2 Timothy 3:13).

Wound Rap Poem

Last fall for one of my counselling courses, we had an assignment where we had to write out a "wound poem" expressing our life-long emotional wounds and their healing. I decided to make a rap song out of it.

Later on, my friend produced a video for it. Big thanks to Huntley Lue for taking the time and effort to visually animate the lyrics!

(There's some psychotherapy references that some may be unfamiliar with. But Google can be of help =o)

*note: I truly love my parents. I'm fully convinced that they loved me the best way they knew how. They're just not perfect, like all parents, and hence couldn't have protected their child from the inevitable wounds in this lifetime*

Having One's Nose in God's Business

Lord, may my mind not be married to whimsical ideologies that come and go but may it always remain engaged with the Ring of Truth.

A Deeper Level of Safety

It is actually unsafe to secretly assume that anyone who disagrees with anything in anyone's lifestyle is automatically unsafe and will make others feel unsafe. Such an unsafe attitude towards safety actually leads anyone who disagrees to feel unsafe and ends up creating an unsafe environment for those who are completely safe but disagree.

On the other hand, the truly safe disagreer always offers unconditional safety even to conditionally safe people who secretly and unfairly judge the truly safe disagreer to be an unsafe person.

The Creator of the Universe Became a Small Little Baby

Oh Lord, the biggest planets in the universe that overload and fry out our imaginations are like microscopic atoms to you.

As Dallas Willard has said, the universe is hardly the beginning of God. Lord, the whole universe is hardly a trailer clip to the actual feature presentation of your breathtaking immensity.

In the beginning you created the universe. In your creation party of Genesis 1:1 you sprinkled the galaxies in space like cosmic confetti. You decorated the intergalactic wallpaper with a whole constellation of ornaments. Clusters of planets, stars, asteroids, and galaxies.

All the planets you've created keep rotating like children twirling out of non-stop joy to the glory of your limitless genius and creative power. Shooting stars can't contain themselves when they encounter you and sprint with worshipful adrenaline across the sky you gave them.

Yet you, the Creator of the entire universe, decided to become a small little baby. Oh my Lord, you became human. Oh my Word, you became flesh. You chose to become like one of us. You chose to humble yourself and become like the size of a subatomic particle yourself so that your subatomic creation, which became lonely and sinfully separated from you, would not remain alone and without you forever.

Our God, although you always hold the human race in your hands, you allowed yourself to be held by the hands of the human race in that Bethlehem manger.

Ever since we sinfully separated ourselves from you in the Garden of Eden, your heart has always cried tears over us for our salvation, redemption, and restoration with you. By giftwrapping yourself in human form, we could finally see your divine tears physically stream down the literal face of God as you wept. The face of God was no longer just a metaphor for your Jewish people when they saw it take physical form. Your divine heart finally had a set of facial muscles to express itself with. Those divine facial muscles thrillingly smiled at us pitiful, broken sinners with furious selfless affection during your 30 years on Earth.

The truth is that the only physical gift that can ever satisfy the supernatural void in the human heart is the physical body of Christ, given and broken for us 2000 years ago. Your Christmas presence never expired, costed no money, and can satisfy the human heart everyday from now until eternity.