Rant of the Exiles

I often hear complaints from Asian American that roughly go like this: “I’m a victim of low self-esteem because of how my Asian immigrant parents shamed me during my childhood. The way forward is to resent my parents and their shaming tactics and to avoid shaming experiences in the future.” According to American's society’s leading shame popularizer, Brene Brown, shame is the "intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” It’s not that this definition is 100% incorrect rather that it’s incomplete, vague, and subjective. It focuses only on the individual’s emotional experience of shame. Before shame became public emotional enemy #1, there were Asians. Eastern cultures have been centered around honor and shame for thousands of years. While it's likely that most Westerners have a different understanding of shame, the consequences for this knowledge gap are more severe for those who are bicult...

Romans 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under  law  but under grace. In Christian circles, one of the worst labels you can be tagged with is “legalist” or have a behavior you advocate called “legalistic”. It means you emphasize externals rather than the heart. It means you’re Pharisee - keeping the outside clean but enabling corruption on the inside. Christian doctrine explains we are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Works are opposed to faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Therefore, you cannot be made righteous on the basis of your good deeds, performance, or behavior.  And yet the Bible is full of injunctions regarding outward behavior - good deeds and religious works. In fact, the list of biblical imperatives drastically outnumber the faith-identity passages. Imagine you took a cursory glance at both the Old and New Testament and segregated scripture passages in two categories: imperatives governing behavior vs. faith-identi...

Students at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino Age group competitive soccer in the San Francisco bay area is essentially comprised of two social classes: the affluent, predominantly white families that at away tournaments eat at nice restaurants and stay at expensive hotels and the non-white predominantly Latino immigrant families that bring their own food and extended family to games. At a recent tournament, I made small talk with one of the dads as we attempted to fit into the first group. He's a middle-aged Russian immigrant and I asked him what he did for work. It turned out he's a data scientist who works for a large insurance company. He creates data models that predict things like bay area housing price trends. He in turn asked if I was a programmer. I told him I was a pastor but it was a good guess. He agreed. After all his algorithm had calculated the probability was high. I love immigrant candor. This question encapsulates why I live in the bay area. Wh...

I've been loving Malcolm Gladwell's new podcast, Revisionist History. A recent episode is called Generous Orthodoxy ; it tells the story of a 98-year old Mennonite pastor named Chester Wenger who loses his pastoral credentials for performing the wedding ceremony of his gay son. This podcast attempts to reconcile the tension between relationship (generosity) and moral principles (orthodoxy). Without a doubt, he falls on the generosity side of the question. His appeal to orthodoxy consists of personal sacrifice and respect for the institution.  There's a lot to disagree with: 1) Gladwell does not espouse conservative Christian beliefs: One of my friends couldn't finish the podcast because of Gladwell's "smarmy and superior tone". It's also immediately apparent, especially if you've listened to his previous podcasts, that Gladwell is politically progressive. In one of that three-part series, he attacks Stanford, Bowdoin, and other elite colleg...

The full text of what she says: Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be. Many times you look in the mirror and you don't even recognize your own self, because you got lost - buried - in the weight that you carry. Nothing you've ever been through is wasted. So every time I tried and failed, every time I tried again, and every time I tried again, has brought me to this most powerful moment - to say:   "If not now, when?" I feel that way and I know millions of other people feel that way. Are you ready? Let's do this together. Let me first acknowledge that Oprah does not proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's the sina qua non of preaching the gospel. And yet there are more gospel redemptive elements of Oprah's ad than most thirty-forty minute sermons. In addition, Oprah is able to move our hearts in a way most sermons won't - and the fact she can do that in sixty seconds is incredible.   Note...

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...

 The question matters to Lady Gaga  There’s only one person in the world with the dubious distinction of betraying the Son of God so that he would be condemned to die on a wooden stake. Judas Iscariot. Judas was one of Jesus’ twelve chosen disciples. He likely spent close to three years with Jesus, wandering the countryside, preaching and teaching in cities, and witnessing Jesus’ miracles. At some point in Jesus’ public ministry, Judas contacted the chief priests and temple guard to discuss how he might secretly hand Jesus over to them. They were delighted and agreed to pay him thirty pieces of silver. Judas completed his act of treachery on the evening of the last supper. A crowd approached their group and Judas kissed Jesus as a sign to indicate that he was the one. Later, after Jesus was sentenced to death, Judas, with deep regret over what he did, returned the silver, and hanged himself. Was Judas forgiven? The question matters because we want to belie...