Rant of the Exiles

I’m not sure if I’m on the #YangGang bandwagon yet but I’m certainly intrigued. Yang is funny and self-deprecating. His humor is evident throughout his book “The War on Normal People” with lines like “This was back when people dated in college” and his mom’s endorsement of universal basic income (UBI). My favorite chapter is the first, titled “My Journey”. I love how he tells his growing up story in a couple pages and I resonated with his stories of being bullied with ethnic slurs. I couldn’t relate to his entrepreneurial success but admired how he “had gone from being an underdog to one of the guys with the answers, from finding the most marginalized or excluded person in the room to finding the richest person and making him or her feel special” (pg. 9). I love how he visited various cities - Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh among many - and personally witnessed the hollowing out of the middle class. These rapidly increasing negative effects on America’s cities, Yang calls the G...

A Yale Law graduate gives his first-hand perspective of growing up amidst the white working class. Hillbilly Elegy is a great book -  a well-written and poignant memoir of J.D. Vance’s childhood in small town Ohio and how his Appalachian-raised grandparents became the intact family that his biological parents never were. His dad abandoned him as a baby and his mom was a substance addict with a conga line of boyfriends and the accompanying rotation of homes. Vance’s memoir is every bit about being an exile in America as Russell Jeung’s book. I recognize white privilege is a real thing. Being white confers advantages that ethnic minorities do not benefit from. And yet it's difficult to typify Vance’s experience as benefiting from white privilege due the tremendous disadvantages of his upbringing. J.D. Vance’s memoir offers a contrasting data point on how members of the...

I watch movies to relax and be entertained but every now and then a movie comes along that grabs my attention and feels so compelling that I can't help but watch. Short Term 12 (now on Netflix) does that for me. It is a breakout performance for Brie Larson and she is fantastic. She plays supervisor at a foster-care home for at-risk youth. She is incredibly competent but she carries painful baggage that become exposed after a new girl joins the center. That's pretty much it as far as story arc. There is drama and tension built up but in the end, it's about a woman changing lives while working out her own personal life change. That pretty much summarizes what being a pastor is about. I work on other people's issues as I wrestle with my own. Here's why I loved the film: 1) Trying new things = laughter The humor in the movie is provided by Nate, the new staff person at the group home. He tells the teens he is taking a year off from college because he ...

A couple friends asked me how to live out their Christian faith in the workplace. They work in high-tech and they're under lots of pressure to perform. I spent nine years at IBM/Hitachi working as a business analyst and project manager. I did well because for the most part, I acted like a jerk. Thus, I am well-qualified to know how one should NOT live out his faith in a corporate environment. But one thing I did notice is workplace communication is often dishonest. Take for example, a basic element of social interaction, the greeting: How are you? Depending on your role and job environment, you will ask or be asked this question anywhere from a couple times to a couple dozen times a day. When you greet someone in the hall, get a drink from the water cooler, warm up your food in the break room, or call a coworker on the phone, you open with this phrase.  You lie when you ask the question. You lie when you respond to the question.  You...

Does the Bible teach every believer is a member of a holy priesthood? In his book, Center Church (and sermons like this one ), Tim Keller explains how every believer is a prophet, priest, and king. Ephesians 2 describes how each believer reigns in heaven with Christ. In Acts 2:16-19, Peter declares Joel's prediction fulfilled concerning the Holy Spirit's enabling of all of God's sons and daughters to prophesy. And the verse below explicitly states every believer in Christ is a member of a royal priesthood - granted the privilege of announcing God's majesty to a broken world. 1 Peter 2:9   But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Thus, the question isn't whether the Bible teaches all believers are priests, it's whether we actually believe it. And the truth of our belief is indicated by our behavio...