God and Humour Revisited

Imagine you’ve never, ever experienced humour before. Ever. Pretend that not a single neuron in your brain has wired and fired to this foreign thing called “funniness” and “laughter”. For your whole life. Now imagine reading and hearing about humour and laughter. Picture yourself observing others “laugh” at this peculiar content called “humour” that you can't taste, smell, or touch. Your ability to “pick up” humour would be as good as that of a CCTV camera. You’d be confused because you’d try to use logic to understand the nonlogical (not illogical). You’d be at the mercy of non-humour categories to try to understand humour.

The same thing goes with God and experiencing him through Jesus. Millions of people in 2020 experience him everyday, regardless of age, ethnicity, culture, or political leanings. If you’ve never experienced him before, you’ll try to use logic to understand the nonlogical (not illogical). You’ll try to use non-God categories to try to understand God. The good news is that God sees the depths of each human heart. If he sees that we ultimately want him, he will reveal his living personality to us. But we must want him more than anything else.

Oh, and he happens to be a funny God too. I’m serious. Not joking.

The connection between overcoming idols and “repenting and believing in Jesus/the Gospel for salvation” with everyday language and no “Christianese”

(This originally was a response I wrote to a question in my small group)

Salvation in the Gospel = the quality of Jesus’ life in the Gospels (including his supernatural mental health) being available to us starting in this lifetime before we die.

Idol = A vision of what we think will give us “thick/vividly bright colours of satisfaction” (e.g. hedonism, being perfect, being right, being liked, being popular, being successful, being smart, being safe, being strong)

Idea of following Jesus = A vision of Jesus’ alternative

“believing in the Gospel” = not just cognitively believing the “theological multiplication table” but trusting Jesus with our heart and gut (which leads to action, otherwise there is no trust) that his vision for our life is more satisfying than the idol’s vision of our life.

Our flesh, the world, and the devil conspire to give us an “attractive car commercial” in our imagination of these idols. Bluntly speaking, at first, they seem more bright and sunny with splendour than Jesus’ alternative which may seem dim and cloudy with grimness. So when this happens, we need to “trust Jesus with our heart and gut (which leads to action)” that his quality of life/lifestyle leads to true and deep satisfaction. Even though that goes against our very persuasive imagination at the moment. After action (and some time, though the duration may vary) our heart, mind, and body will end up feeling the effects of Jesus’ alternative truly being more bright and sunny with splendour than the idol (which is actually the one that is dim and cloudy with grimness).

A concrete example is allowing the raw/authentic “unlovable” parts of us to be loved by God and his community. Even after we “say the sinner’s prayer”, it’s hard to show the emotionally naked/rawly vulnerable parts of us to other humans (and God too). We cognitively know that God unconditionally loves us and (some of) God’s community unconditionally love us, but our imagination is scared out of its wits with shame. Here, the idol is what the flesh/world/devil have conspired to embellish in our imagination – we cannot authentically and vulnerably show the “shamefully unlovable” parts of us. Because if we do, we will not be loved. So the idol of hiding these parts of us seems more bright and sunny in our imaginations (“show the acceptable and lovable parts of you to stay accepted and loved, your social life will be soooo good!”). The Jesus alternative seems more dim and grim of showing our “unacceptable”/”unlovable” parts of us so that those “unacceptable”/”unlovable” parts of us can viscerally feel unconditional acceptance/love from God and his community. So, even though our embellished imagination makes it extremely hard, we trust that Jesus knows his stuff, and that his alternative is better than our idol. So we act on it in “belief”/”trust” in Jesus. The duration of time varies, but sooner or later we realize that Jesus knew his stuff, and it turns out that his alternative was the actually the one with true splendour and thick/vivid brightness of freedom while the idol was actually the one that was dim, grim, enslaving, and heavy. This visceral realization can’t happen before trust-filled action. After we act and share who we truly are in our depths – our raw, authentic, vulnerable personality pimples with no social cosmetics on, we feel that it was actually the social cosmetics lifestyle that was truly suffocating, restricting, and heavy. Carrying that shame around constantly was like carrying a deadlift squat barbell with Olympian weights on wherever we went. And with Jesus, we release the deadlift and truly feel alive to soar in his freedom.

As "Luke Cage's" character in the new Primetime TV show "Evil" said, science is useful for studying repeatable things, but inadequate for the non-repeatable things in life. The latter includes certain areas of human relationships. No science can predict (other than in vague, non-specific generalities) how the uniqueness of two souls will have their individualities uniquely mix in 5, 10, or 20 years. How their quirks will affect each other. How their humour styles will integrate. How their creativity and originality will affect the creativity and originality of the other. How their free wills will respond to disappointment in the relationship. How their deepest passions will alchemically mix with each other (or fail to). You will never find a scientist who could comprehensively predict how their marriage with their partner would unfold in these areas (as well as some others) after a year. The soul transcends the "closed system of cause-and-effect in time and space". It receives influence, and influences, the spiritual realm in ways that transcend the ticking of time and the sensing of space. You take the originality of two souls and unify them together, and you'll get a drama full of unpredictable, non-repeatable transformations in relationships.

And supernatural life-giving miracles are relational acts from a relational God. They are not impersonal mechanisms.

(By the way, the show Evil is sooo good.)

Re: Post for March 21, 2016 "The Lost Art of Conversation"

One ingredient of a rich story is rich dialogue. If we want our own life story and its dialogues with other characters to be rich, we must do our part in cultivating the art of rich conversation, instead of poor conversation.

Rich conversation colours the sky. Its rainbow includes many strands of vibrancy. An awareness of the chemistry between two characters. An adaptation to the unfolding dynamic. An intuition of the organic flow with an openness to move with it. A ridding of self-consciousness that disrupts the flow. An accurate feel of when not to hijack by saying too much or wallflower by saying too little. A mutuality that helps each person feel that their points are understood. The verbalization of freshly emerging impressions with an articulatory horsepower that allows the rubber of new ideas to furiously hit the road of expression. All while capturing the spontaneous individuality for both characters.

If we do not care about cultivating the art of rich conversation, we may very well end up with dialogue as poor as the characters of an impoverished story.

The Older You Get, The More It Takes To Fill Your Heart With Wonder, And Only God Is Big Enough To Do That

The title is a quote of Ravi Zacharias paraphrasing thoughts of G.K. Chesterton.

I'm feeling this quote just as the Toronto Raptors won their first ever NBA championship last night.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy they won. I do feel pride for my Toronto roots. For my hometown team.

But surprisingly, the moment wasn't what I was anticipating.

I think the anticipation of victory was more exciting than the victory itself.

I don't think basketball, the NBA, or being riveted on the NBA finals is sinful. But.... it just seems over hyped to me.

Was it just me, or did others feel that at the buzzer, it felt a little anticlimactic? Was it just me, or did people feel the destination seemed like it would be so fulfilling with high definition colours shining in thick rays? Was it just me, or did others feel that arriving at the destination seemed somewhat empty?

It felt like during this whole playoff run for the Raptors, competing for the NBA finals trophy was like fighting for an Avengers infinite stone. Only, when you got finally got it, it was, metaphorically, just a hollow, plastic trophy.

Ravi says something along the lines of "One of the loneliest times in life is when you just experienced what you thought would give you the ultimate satisfaction and it has let you down."

Mortal trophies. They rust.

I choose to train myself for an eternal championship with an eternal trophy that will keep shining in the age to come.

Using Story to Interpret the Bible, the Greatest Story Ever Told

"No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." - 1 John 4:12

No Lord of the Rings character has ever seen J.R.R. Tolkien; but if Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn, Boromir, and Gandalf interact with each other in the unique way they were designed to, Tolkien, their creator, lives in them, and his designs for them are made complete in them.

To feel how cool this verse is in a personalized way, just mentally fill in the blanks with a story of your choice:
"No characters from [the story of your choice] have ever seen [the story's author]; but if [those characters] interact with each other in the unique way they were designed to, [their author], their creator, lives in them, and his/her designs for them are made complete in them."

When you insert a narrative key into the interpretive keyhole of this Bible verse and give it a surprising twist to unlock its philosophically perplexing mysteries, a whole treasure trove of understanding becomes available, and, along with it, a whole lot of drama available in the lived answer.

The Nature of Good Conversation

I've been thinking more lately about the nature of good conversation. Aside from interesting and stimulating content in an engaging talk, I am curious about what makes the process of a good conversation rich. It was somewhat elusive to me before, but now, I think I've noticed a few things about it.

First, I think good conversation consists of each person truly "getting" the other person comprehensively and repeatedly. This happens less frequently than people think. A lot of people think they understand others when they really don't. The test of whether or not one is understood is not feedback from the understander, but from the one being understood. And the way us human beings are made is that when we are repeatedly not understood, it can be very draining. It is not merely a matter of cognitively apprehending the other person's mental contents, but having the other person feel understood. Being misunderstood for a few moments in a conversation is bearable, but when we are misunderstood (or not greatly understood) for a whole extended conversation, it can be very draining. But good conversationalists make it their priority to understand the other person, and ask for clarification when needed. Understanding the other person's thoughts and feelings and feeding it back in a personalized way is like a tennis partner hitting the ball back in a stimulating rally. If your partner repeatedly does not, it is dry.

The second thing about good conversation is that there is a somewhat mysterious back and forth flow to it that both people can smoothly catch on and "vibe" to. There is an unspoken sense of rhythm that both people need to intuit and "dance" to. When a conversation flows, things are smooth, natural, effortless, and almost silk-like. This is something that cannot be taught, at least fully, from textbooks. It is similar to how one cannot teach good spontaneous hip-hop dancing fully from textbooks. It has to be caught. One of the practical things I've learned about the nature of flow is that self-consciousness just suffocates it. If a person repeatedly harasses themselves with the thought "Am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong?" it completely extinguishes the life of organic flow that flourishes in spontaneity. I've observed that even if people are well-intentioned but their conversational rhythm is abrupt, forced, awkward, and "off-step", it can be sustainable for a while out of courtesy, but draining if carried out in an extended duration.

The third thing that makes a conversation really good is simply authenticity. One does not need to engage in extreme all-or-nothing thinking here in the sense that one is either completely deceitful and fake or completely an open book divulging one's most vulnerable secrets. One can just be intentional about not being deceptive. For example, if something is too personal, one can be up front about not feeling comfortable talking about details but not be fake about one's thoughts or feelings on the matter. Informed concealment is not deception. Tricking the other person about what is behind the curtain, though, is fake. The world is full of deception, and at the end of the day, our souls are just attracted to authentic things in life. So when we finally come across someone who is authentic, it is a breath of fresh air to the soul.

Oh, how we hunger for good conversation!

Inimitable Imitation

10 years after its release, people still cannot stop talking about Heath Ledger's Joker in the Dark Knight. One reason we will never forget this version of the archetypal Joker is because it was portrayed in a very uncategorizable and idiosyncratic way. The unique particularity of Heath Ledger's soul deeply internalized, organically expressed, and possessed (or was possessed by) the Joker archetype with Heath's signatured individuality.

And what is deeply internalized in an individual's soul that is organically expressed is not easily forgettable. Like the Heath Ledger Joker, it transcends all conceptual boxes that human minds try to put it in.

Inversely, individuals who are fully possessed to take on the role of the Son of Man in their own idiosyncratic and uncategorizable way leave an unforgettable mark. They allow the unique particularity of their soul to deeply internalize the Son of Man in a version that is unique to them. The substance of the Son of Man is then organically expressed with a signatured individuality of the person that is utterly original and extraordinarily unforgettable.

Like the Son of Man himself, these individuals, such as Dallas Willard the Great, transcend all conceptual boxes that human minds try to put him in.

(This is the most memorable eulogy I've ever heard)

Verbal Bullet Analysis

Much can be learned from a spontaneously fired verbal bullet in a moment of extreme stress

The oral ammunition that was fired in a Freudian-slip like manner at the psychological crime scene of an interpersonal conflict can be studied. It can uncover the psychological fingerprint of what hidden/nonintegrated/shadow part of the person's psyche shot the bullet. Preliminary analysis compares the overall felt sense of the person at the moment of extreme stress compared to the normal unstressed baseline. The disparity is then assessed in light of the person's psychosocial maturation levels to discern what is of the person's maturational developmental process and what is of their unique personality type. The person's style of cognitive processing is then assessed to distinguish how the person's conscious view of the world influences how they unconsciously view themself and others. Finally, the depth personality structure that that contains the person's unconscious focus of attention that unknowingly motivates them is discerned. The appropriate category of deep structured personality is then selected after cross referencing all the data with alternative categories of personality that end up having less coherence and explanatory power for how the verbal bullet got fired. The person's ultimate core fear at the bedrock of their unconscious is then finally discovered when the verbal bullet is psychoanalytically reconstructed.

Then, it's time to suit up to counter that core fear.

Just another day at the therapy office for the psychoanalytic detective.

It all starts in those moments when my heart begins to feel the ripples of the cosmic drum of the universe. As it beats, my body can't help but to start dancing for an infinite Being who vibrates my soul through his celestial soundtrack that powerfully reverberates through the universe around me. As the fibers of my being flex and thrust with rhythm and sweat, my spirit knows that I'm actually dancing in sync with a hundred billion other created beings who are also invigorated by joyfully trying to exert their finite energy to keep up with these cosmic notes that electrify the universe. I'm caught in the divine adrenaline of conforming my dance moves to the heavenly musical energy that bursts through and beyond time and space with an infinite density of creativity, vitality, and life that animates the galaxies.

My spirit loses its breath after a while. Not because of a lack of energy, but because after a moment, it realizes the inexhaustible colour combinations that keep vibrantly painting themselves across the wallpaper of the universe.

If this is what society chooses to label as being "religious", I'll gladly take whatever label they throw on me. As long as I don't miss out on this.