Rant of the Exiles

I write a lot about marriage because I think it's important. But I often neglect the greater subset of which marriage is contained, that of friendship. I am fortunate to have married my best friend but she cannot be my only friend nor does she even remotely understand significant aspects of who I am (and the same is true of me to her). In Jack Donovan's words, I need a squad that will hold down the perimeter with me. I need a group of brothers who can walk with me and I them as we roll through the bumps of life. I need male friends.  I've never been good at being friends. It's difficult for me to keep in touch with others. I'm a here and now person and when I don't see a buddy regularly, it's easy for me to either forget about him or be unwilling to expend the effort to hang out. Even worse, when I do see people regularly, I tend to get bored of them. Judy was concerned when we first got married that I would get bored of her (after seventeen years...

You know the type. This large slice of yellow humanity gorges itself on all kinds of cuisine and never seems to gain any weight. The demographic is characterized by slender forearms, chicken legs, and a delicate bone structure. You see them at the supermarket and Starbucks. You won't, however, find them at the gym. How to tell for sure? If it's a female, squeeze her upper arm. If it's a male, poke him in the belly. If either of these areas give like silken tofu, you know what you're dealing with - A skinny fat Asian. My first exposure to skinny fat Asians came from an extreme example - a middle-aged Asian American man. On a missions trip, a man, who had absolutely no discernible body fat on any of his limbs, face, or chest, took off his shirt. He looked like a fit male for his age but right there in his midsection angrily protruded a kangaroo pouch. It looked like a four-month baby bump. The bump was normally disguised by baggy clothes and bad posture but the...

One of the most common complaints I hear from people about Christians is why are we so judgmental when the Bible teaches us not to judge? The reality is Christians, and all people for that matter, make judgments all the time. We speculate on the validity of Obama's Christian faith. We give our opinions on whether so-and-so is saved. Asian Americans judge people who use the term "Oriental" to describe Asians. We definitely judge non-Asians who ask us: "Where are you REALLY from?" We judge people who listen to country music, don't recycle, or compulsively Instagram pictures of their food. The idea of Christians making judgments about others highlights an area where teachings of the Bible feel contradictory. In certain passages, God tells us to judge. In other places, He tells us not to.  In almost all of these cases, the scripture passage is being quoted out of context. The Bible does not teach whether we are supposed to judge. That is a given becau...

Update: the charts ARE working correctly. Imagine the United States is the shape of a rectangle. And all the dots from the article are smeared together by a person who is left-handed and cannot color. How there can be simultaneously more single men than women and more single women than men in the SAME city San Jose long ago earned the moniker "Man Jose" because of the imbalanced gender ratio. This is likely due to the prevalence of men in tech-dominated Silicon Valley. Anecdotally, it's always been a running joke there are more single men here than women.  The news gets worse for the West Coast and now there's data to back this up. According to this article , it should also be "Man Francisco" and "Man Diego". There are roughly 50,000 more single men than single women in San Diego (due to the military presence?) and 20,000 more single men than women in San Francisco (likely a similar tech-effect with San Jose). Note: the unmarried populati...

Here's the  link  to the best Christian response I've found to the Supreme Court's 5-4 vote to legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states.   The Background:  I first heard about about the decision through Facebook. A number of my friends and youth in our church celebrated the ruling through social media posting, with the most popular expression being rainbow-filtered profile pics.   The conservative Christian response could not provide a starker contrast. There's a sense of loss and tragedy. There's a sense of hiding out and starting a commune. There's a sense of panic and consternation. There's a lot of fear, especially for our children. A friend of mine half-jokingly said we should move our families run off to a European country where laws follow traditional Christian sexual ethics. Like many in this camp, I too was initially saddened when I heard about the court decision. But here's my conundrum: I have ...