Rant of the Exiles

Photo by  Tim Mossholder  on  Unsplash Once your children are old enough to get involved in activities, you will spend a lot of time driving them around. Even though Judy and I restrict the number of activities our kids are involved in, with four kids, it’s still a lot of driving. I’ve been told car rides are a great place for parents to bond with kids. They’re a captive audience and you can ask them any kind of question. I agree but it’s not easy. Here are some specific tips to help make conversation with your kids during car rides: 1. Think of specific questions, conversation topics, and games for longer drives: Most of making conversation is observing people and seeing what they do; I’ve had two separate sex talks with my boys in the car. During college, I remember my dad driving me somewhere and without transition, asked me a deeply personal question. I think we were talking about the weather and then he said “So do you masturbate?” That was so memorably awk...

James Taylor, the great grandson of Hudson Taylor, the famed missionary to China who founded the China Inland Mission (now OMF) once said: “It is a tragedy so many foreign Chinese have left the evangelization of China up to the non-Chinese.” James spoke those words over twenty-five years ago during a Chinese church retreat when I was a senior in high school. His calling out of the Chinese diaspora vis-a-vis white missionaries challenged and haunted me. This challenge was the impetus behind my plans to join Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) staff to do a one-year mission trip to China. But I didn’t go. Rather, I accepted an invitation from my hometown pastor, Tom Chow, to return to San Jose and reach my American-born Chinese peers. After nine years of working as a project manager and volunteering with the youth group and young adult ministry, I joined the staff of my home church, Chinese Church in Christ - South Valley (South Valley) in 2006. In the summer of 2007, South Valley...

If atheism were a religion like Christianity, what would be its theological tenets?  My friend Eric suggested our poetry writing group and book club read How to Have Impossible Conversations by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay as a way to have meaningful conversations in a polarized and divided culture. Since Eric is an atheist, our group likes to be upfront about the religious content of a book recommendation. To my surprise before I started reading, Eric sent an email apologizing for the evangelistic nature of the book.  His email piqued my interest and I finished the book in a couple days. Reading Impossible Conversations through the lens of atheist evangelism was fascinating. This book offers helpful insights to anyone committed to promoting dialogue. And yet as I made my way through Impossible Conversations, I realized it was intended to help atheists convert believers, primarily Christians, to non-believers. Boghossian already wrote A Manual for Creating A...