Rant of the Exiles

What is the Christian alpha way to handle a relationship inequity? Let's say the vast majority of the times you eat out with your girlfriend, she ends up deciding the restaurant. At first, you feel comfortable letting her make the call but later you feel a little resentful because you really felt like Gombei Bento but she was pining for Falafel's Drive-In . Being a Christian alpha male means embracing paradox. On one hand, we're called as Christians to lay down our rights and preferences in surrender. We submit. It is completely counter-cultural and it means winning by losing . On the other hand, as an alpha male, you're dominant. You're a rock. You initiate. You don't ask permission, you do and don't apologize. You don't win by losing. You win by winning. Ultimately, being a Christian alpha male is about surrender but its not just surrender of our preferences, its surrender of the outcome. There are two issues to sort through in order to negoti...

Racial privilege is a first culture phenomenon. DJ Chuang recently   transcribed   some of Tim Keller's thoughts on racial privilege. Keller nor Chuang use the term "first culture" but that's what racial privilege is.  Keller highlights a feature of raising financial support that I've thought about but never unraveled as deeply as Keller does. Keller says it is much easier for white people than for minorities to raise financial support for Christian work. A young college graduate who joins the staff of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship will solicit contributions to fund his salary. If he is white, he will have an easier time doing this than if he was part of a minority group. White people have more extensive networks than minority groups. White people know more rich people than minority groups. And perhaps most importantly, white culture is more receptive to volunteerism than minority cultures. White people enjoy giving to causes.  This is rings true ...

On Monday of last week, I had my nose moved. After introducing himself, the ear-nose-throat surgeon asked if I had a picture of myself prior to the injury. He wanted to know if I always looked like I did. It was a good question. My mom was asking herself the same thing when she saw me the week prior. I had to check pictures myself to confirm that indeed, my nose was straight before. He confirmed based on my driver's license picture that I had indeed been better (or worse) looking than before. He said there was no obstruction in my nose and it would heal fine so any further procedure would be considered "purely cosmetic". That made me feel like a shallow person. To defend against this implication, I told him my glasses no longer sat centered on my nose and it made me dizzy to have one lens close to my face and the other farther away. He didn't sound very convinced. He told me I had two options - have my nose moved while under a local anesthetic or have it...

The parent-child is a relationship paradigm not a metaphor. The parent-child dynamic is the most frequently used metaphor to describe the relationship in immigrant churches between the first and second generation. The immigrant generation is the parent and the next generation is the child. However the parent-child dynamic is not a metaphor. A metaphor compares two distinct entities whereas the parent-child dynamic describes a fundamental reality of immigrant churches. The children of the first generation make up the English-speaking congregation. Paternalism begins when the children of the immigrant congregation are born. As the kids grow, the paternalism hopefully fades. After a number of years, the Americanized congregation becomes less marginalized and matures into adult status. The husband-wife relationship is both a paradigm and metaphor. But there is a real metaphor present. It is of husband and wife. The husband-wife relationship describes both the fallen and ideal...

I broke my nose on Monday. I got hit in the face playing basketball but didn't know it was broken until I glanced in the mirror after the game. It didn't look the way I did before. My nose had a dent in it and the bridge was off center. Here are some reflections on the past week. Obsessing about my personal appearance: The funny thing is nobody noticed my nose was dented and crooked unless I mentioned it. I went to a church meeting on the same night of the injury and my parents were there. At one point, my dad looked straight at me for a couple seconds. I thought he could tell but when I asked him about it couple days later, he said he had no idea until I told him. Another lady I told said she noticed earlier but didn't want to say anything. She probably figured my nose had always been crooked. Either people don't play close attention to me or I'm uglier than I thought. Or both. Update: I found out that from the Monday meeting, my mom did notice m...

Having spent most of my life in Silicon Valley, I'm always somewhat surprised when I leave here to find that most Chinese people don't work in the high-tech industry. It testifies to how much of a bubble I live in. In our Chinese church, 95% of the working people (including the Chinese-speaking congregation) are engineers. We have one remodeling contractor and no doctors, nurses, or lawyers. Last week I was in Bournemouth, a city on the south coast of England, to speak at a discipleship training camp. We had an amazing speaker-participant ratio - there were four teachers (including myself) and twenty students. Even though the conference was conducted in English, half of the participants were overseas Chinese. As far as I can tell, there is no Chinese church in Bournemouth so Chinese students attend local international churches/fellowships. There is a significant foreign student population in the city due to its abundance of language schools. The Chinese people I met in Bourn...

Child-like faith is imagination. And imagination is the door into the spiritual realm. In this sense, all faith is child-like. Faith is the willingness to see what is unseen. Child-like faith is the courage to ride your imagination as far as it will take you. It is the refusal to place any bounds on one's journey into the imagined. It is indulging whimsy. It is being utterly un-self-conscious. It is doing stupid things, making a fool of yourself, all while taking in the world with breathless wonder. When I watch my boys play battle with their LEGO creations or my daughter dress up her dolls, I don't need to remind them that it is all pretend. Because it is real. The truth is their fantasy world. They delight in their toys because they perceive an unseen reality beyond the plastic pieces they manipulate. When my kids have nightmares, it is not helpful to tell them their dreams aren't real. Because they are real. The fear is real. The monsters are real. We don...