Rant of the Exiles

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...

In the Chinese church I grew up in and later pastored, I remember mentioning to a group of high school students that going to college is not the highest priority. One of them snickered, "Some kind of pastor you are - telling us not to go to college!" In another instance, a couple of parents complained that preaching in the English ministry was decidedly anti-college. Now that I no longer pastor there, I can fully flesh out my thoughts without recrimination. The value of a college education is one of the unassailable tenets of affluent Asian American culture. Having one's child obtain a bachelor's degree is a given for Asian immigrant families arriving in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly those coming to Silicon Valley. Outside of family, there is hardly a more a sacred cow than getting a university education. It's like a fish learning how to swim. You are not fully alive if you don't have a bachelor's degree. I grew up never questioning these as...

I've always imagined starting a company with friends. I can't think of a product we would make. I'm not sure it even matters. I just want to work with people that inspire me. I want to work with a team where we have similar values, close friendships, and are working to accomplish something big together.  When Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and Andre Igoudala came together on the US national team in 2010, they were inseparable . Not only did they share a preternatural work ethic - they would get shots up in the evening after practice - they also shared a common devotion to their faith as the guys went to chapel together before every game. From what I understand, USA basketball and the NBA do not require chapel attendance. It's for guys who are both serious about their faith and not ashamed to be public about it. There's something significant about being devout believers on a professional sports team. I can't imagine the NBA being an easy place to live out you...

Reflecting on my twenties from the vantage point of forty Meg Jay's book, The Defining Decade , for and about twentysomethings is excellent. She has street cred as a psychotherapist who has worked with dozens of twentysomethings in the San Francisco bay area and on the East Coast. Her book is filled with real-life twentysomething case studies I've heard many times before as a pastor who works with young adults. My first exposure to Jay came her through her excellent  TED talk and then a friend loaned me her book. The gist of it goes something like this:  Stop putting off your most important decisions in your twenties. The life you envision will not happen overnight so start planning and working on it today.  It probably takes at least ten years of distance to determine whether a major decision you made turned out well. So as a forty-year old, I decided to look back on my twenties and evaluate the life choices that gave me the greatest joys and those t...

This is not an easy book to read. It takes awhile to get going. The first half alternates from tedious to infuriating. But the payoff in the second half is more than worth it. If you allow God to speak through Paul Zahl, it's a thrilling, life-changing ride. He defines grace as one-way love. Zahl is rigorously insistent and comprehensive on this definition and its application throughout the course of the book. I highly respect that because I find that I'm inconsistent about grace. I preach the importance of unconditional love but there are vast swaths of heart landscape that lay untouched by grace. Zahl's style is unique. The dude is old and he constantly makes movie references from the 1960s and earlier. He acts as if you should know what he's talking about. That's the infuriating part. At certain points, I had no idea what he was talking about. If that happens to you, give him the benefit of the doubt and keep going. The book is organized like the b...

You know the drill. The worship leader opens his set with a catalog of petty sins he's committed in the past week. He talks about how we're all sinners, how we're unworthy of God's grace, but now we're forgiven. After that brief but necessary bath in self-pity and self-flagellation, we have the appropriate sense of guilt to begin singing songs. I frequently hear Christians describe themselves as sinners. It's being humble and authentic and I respect that. After all, everyone is broken and messed up in some significant way. When a follower of Jesus says he is a sinner, he is coming to terms with his fallibility. He is aware of his weakness and he has the courage and humility to acknowledge that. That's a good thing. I don't want to detract from that. And yet I wonder if sin is the core identity of a follower of Jesus. Some might argue we're both sinners and saints and we must get used to the tension. Thus the fundamental question is this: O...