"Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task." - 1 Timothy 3:1
The nobleness of taking on the trying challenges of spiritual leadership. The honour of its weighty responsibility.
Not noble in the eyes of the world. Oh no. Not honourable in the carnal dimensions of reality. Oh no. But noble and honourable in that other reality next door to this one. Noble and honourable in the dimension that lies behind the curtain of this one.
Words cannot fully capture this nobleness and honour. But music can aid in capturing its nonverbal, inuitively grasped realities that are sometimes mystically sensed. From time to time, a divinely accessed sixth sense is given by the King whom one is serving that is opened to capture the melody of Kingdom Honour.
"It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honourable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God"
-1 Thessalonians 4:3-5
About a year ago, I started to read this book called Embracing the Body by Tara Owens. There are a couple reasons why. The first was that my spiritual direction supervisor recommended it to me. The second was that the author was actually a graduate of Tyndale Seminary, the seminary I graduated from. I'm really thankful that I read it. It's one of those books that has a very original outlook on age-old Christian topics with very unique wisdom.
Through the book, as well as studying Christian psychology for a while, I am now convinced that with respect to the journey of sanctification, us Christians really need to "embrace" our body. We need to befriend it. Be kind to it. Listen to it. Care for it (Ephesians 5:29). "Get to know it". Basically, treat it courteously as if it's an autonomous person (although technically speaking, it's a part of us).
Years ago, before I came across this perspective, I was just exposed to the well-intentioned Christian advice (whether consciously or subconsciously given) to just suppress your body's desires if they cause spiritual trouble for you. Bluntly speaking, it doesn't work in the long-run. I'm starting to think it doesn't even really work that much in the mid-run. Sometimes, not even in the short-run.
However, with this alternative view of "relationally training" one's body, things get much more messy. The body's composition is not totally systematic and structured in its "raw desires". They're not "logical" the way things are in one's prefrontal cortex. Training the body's desires is a totally different realm compared to training one's cognitive thoughts. People who aren't open to mystery and the unknown may have a lot of trouble befriending their body. But I'm convinced it has to be done to overcome blockages in one's sanctification journey.
A big example is the issue of the human body's natural sex drive. God has designed our bodies, of both genders, to have sex drives. Simply speaking, we have biological sex organs, hence our body naturally produces biological drives for sex. Our bodies had sex drives even before the fall in the Garden of Eden. That means that our body's sex drives are inherently holy, not unholy. It is just cultivated lust that is sinful. Now, it can get really messy to concretely extricate one's God-given holy and sacred sex drive from one's cultivated lust. But philosophically, there should be a very clear distinction for the Christian. It takes existential discernment, listening to one's body, phenomenological observation, and a patient process of befriending it (like interacting with people from a foreign race who speak a different language) to concretely sense the difference between the two. And over time, one begins to sense what is different instinctually.
During the process of befriending one's God-given sexual desires, one can then "train" and "tame" them in a relational context. This is different from just putting a straight-jacket from a psychiatric ward on it. Just like a "naturally bubbly" friend who has been corrupted with dopamine-addicted substance abuse in one's system, one is to love and help train one's friend in weaning off oneself from unnatural dopamine-filled drugs by relationally being there with him/her in the process. Get rid of the drugs, but keep the friend and his/her natural "bubblyness". This is similar to getting rid of the cultivated lust, but keeping the natural God-given sex drive. The God-given sex drive simply desires intimate connection with another human being. I don't have the time to get into all the details of what this does or does not entail, but it can be done for singles too. Embracing the Body by Tara Owens explains how this can be done pretty well.
This whole topic reminds me of the movie How to Train Your Dragon. I loved this movie. In this movie, Hiccup, the main character, is in a world where all the humans are afraid of the dragons, and just want to simply kill them without really knowing who or what they are because they seem to pose a threat. This similar to "conservative" Evangelical circles that have good intentions in "suppressing" and "killing" one's "raw-like" sex drive (particularly if one is single). It doesn't work on a deep level, and it's actually harmful from a perspective of holistic health. In this movie, Hiccup goes against the grain of his culture's attitude and begins to "get to know" the dragon (which can represent the God-given bodily drives, such as hunger, fight or flight, and sex). The dragon, "toothless", is damaged in his tail, so he can't fly properly. In a touching way, Hiccup and Toothless become friends after being initially distant and cautious of one another.
Afterwards, Hiccup helps heal Toothless' damaged tail with a human design of his. Literally, they each provide their own flap of the flying tail wings which are both needed in order for both of them to fly together.
Then, they "train" to fly together. It was actually really beautiful to watch. Hiccup needed Toothless, and Toothless needed Hiccup to fly. Both could not do it alone. This process of "training" and "taming" is really relevant to our topic here, where our human spirit needs to "befriend", "train", and "tame" our bodily drives in order to holistically take off with flying colours.
Yes, it gets messy to love, train, and tame one's raw bodily desires. There are bumps, bruises, and blunders on the way. But the Holy Spirit watches and assists over this whole process from the beginning all the way until those previously "raw" desires no longer have spiritual rabies. When the sinful rabies are gone, our body can actually become a friend who can be loved. Not loved in a worldly way of love, but loved in the same way that a married Christian would love one's spouse with the love of God (Ephesians 5:28-29).
In the true biblical view, sexual purity with one's body involves being friends with it.
I'm coming to realize that good, rich, and deep conversations are what life is really about.
Yet, few people know how to have a really good one. I think part of the reason may be that people have different definitions of "good conversations" whether consciously or subconsciously. For some people, they want conversations that are funny. Others want something excitatory. Others want to just talk about fluff. Others simply just want to fill in the silence which they feel is unbearable.
I don't think good, rich, and deep conversations can be exhaustively defined. However, I think one way to discern whether one has just experienced one is by intuitively sensing how deep the satisfaction was. I'm learning that deep soul satisfaction comes from a resonance and "deep aliveness" that one feels in one's depths where one can say "Yes. This is what I was made for, for reasons I do not fully understand yet just know by my soul's conviction."
"There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes. Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it. There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal."
-Henri Nouwen
Man, oh man. The Abyss. This black hole of the soul. Meant for heaven. Yet felt on earth. It awaits for fulfilment in the next life. Yet its hungers so palpable in this lifetime. It points to eternity, but its dissatisfaction in being incomplete is sensed in our dimensions of time and space. It is easily smothered by distractions, by dopamine, by worldly things. Even by some things in the Church. But at the end of the day, it's there. To not acknowledge it results in not coming to terms with the deepest part of one's being. To acknowledge it results in recognizing the profound dissatisfaction of being incomplete in the depths of the Self, waiting to meet one's Creator in heaven face to face.
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.
***
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
