Rant of the Exiles

Recently I talked with my parents about my character issues.  In the past year I decided my main flaws are pride and anger. I have a massive ego that follows me everywhere I go. And since I'm motivated by aggression and dominance, I also have a rage complex that seethes beneath the surface and sometimes explodes. So I told them my hypothesis: You guys helped screw me up by neglecting to discipline me for my negative attitude. You punished me for outward behavior but never called me out for being disrespectful to you and to others. Focusing on the outward kept me from experiencing the full consequences of how my temper and critical spirit would, in the future, alienate me from others and make me miserable. My parents agreed. My dad said that wasn't all they did to screw me up. My dad explained that they had no idea how to raise me so they focused on outward behavior without understanding the heart. He said their biggest mistake was not letting me have a chan...

People say authenticity is important until they are called to be authentic themselves. Donald Nwankwo  writes about barriers to authenticity but I think he really means vulnerability -  the courage to share weakness . Below are his reasons on why we don't want to be fully authentic with others about who we are and our struggles and weakness: 1) A misplaced sense of identity: Sometimes one might feel that their Christian identity is directly tied to their Christian reputation. So for this one, to risk authenticity when it does not portray a positive status is to risk their reputation, which in turn threatens that identity. In other words, unless they appear as authentic to model, they fear they won’t belong. Therefore, they will work hard to protect this identity. The remedy for this category is a renewed sense of identity that derives from Jesus Christ, His work, redemption and continuing grace and sustenance. One is in God’s family because of what Christ has done, of cou...

Asian Americans pretend to hate white supremacy but watch what they do not what they say. According to Christian Lander , liberal white people like camping, graduate school, marathons, sushi, diversity, facebook, and posting Yelp reviews. If you wrote a book about stuff Asians like, 99.9% would be exactly the same. The only unique entries might be pearl milk tea, stinky tofu, and animé. Outside of those things, Westernized Asians like precisely the same stuff white people do. This makes it difficult to determine exactly what Asian American culture is. African Americans, by contrast, have black culture. Their names are different. Their clothing is different. Their music is different. Black people have historically black colleges. Black people have black role models. Asians have Jeremy Lin and no colleges they would want to attend. Because in most areas of life, Asians imitate what white people do. Westernized Asians follow white standards of beauty. Asian guys want...

Family. That's it. The Chinese immigrant church attempts to replicate the extended nuclear family of one's ancestry. It is the most redeeming aspect of the Chinese church in a nutshell.  It is best because of the unity, harmony, devotion, and respect inherent to the family unit. Nothing I have observed in mainstream evangelical culture rivals the Chinese church's ability to cultivate a family atmosphere. Chinese churches place tremendous value on unity, harmony, and conflict avoidance. There are five aspects to how a Chinese church builds a family: food, communal worship, caring, size, and resistance to change. As one woman put it, coming into a Chinese church/fellowship group has a "homey" feel - it's like returning home. The family that eats together stays together:  Like many immigrant churches, Chinese churches host lunch immediately after worship service and everyone dines together as a family. Food is pivotal in Chinese culture and a spec...

Dedicated to all the men who have shaped and formed me over the years Only steel forges steel in the smithy's store               Where bellows blow and fan                     The hammer strikes where iron burns bright give          Glory when man makes man               Father's bond with son is fire-forged not By blood but force and heat Discipline fans flame and wisdom's thunder Pounds sound in measured beat A boy may declare himself fully grown Thinks he's great, thinks he can Yet boy needs furnace to mold his heart since Only man can brand man  Shall a tender flower wield the hammer That batters steel to form? Can a willow withstand the withering heat Of the forge's scorching storm? A woman's birth pain ends but a man's true Labor is forging soul The contours, the ...

This  article  highlights some of the tension in reading too much Jesus into the bible. It's a struggle that every preacher and teacher should wrestle with.  In our preaching fellowship, we've been discussing how to discover Christ in the Old Testament while honoring the authorial intent of the human writer. How definitively can one say that any particular Old Testament passage points to Jesus? What kind of criteria can we use? On one hand, I can't overestimate the centrality of Christ as the overriding message of the scriptures. Though the bible is 80% law, the show piece of scripture is the grace of God revealed in Christ Jesus. On the road to Emmaus, the post-resurrection Jesus told his companions, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." In light of this statement and others, I view the Old Testament through the lens of the New...

Marc from the UK responds to my last post: I have to be honest, the "friend zone" concept that seems to be prevalent in today's culture (particularly American culture) is a little strange to me. Perhaps it's just a cultural thing.. But I don't find it useful to look at things in that way, this is why: I agree that believing you can win a girls' affection by being a good girlfriend is a myth, and I've often witnessed a "nice guy" who's chasing a girl that isn't into him, the more he does for her the more she loses respect for him. However, I believe that developing a friendship with someone you're interested in is a good thing. It seems that in US culture (I've never lived in the US but I went to an American school in Germany for a year) when a guy is interested, he'll often make his intention known straight away and ask the girl out on a "date". The issue I see with this is that often an individual will form ro...