Archives for category: health

Further Seems Forever

October 15, 2007 //

Being in vocational ministry can be lonely and isolating. I have really been feeling it these days — my struggle with depression has left me worn out, on edge and easily angered. This leaves me feeling like a failure as a husband and father which, in turn, leads to more depression and on and on. Ugh. I can recognize what’s happening inside of me — which is a pretty big step for me — but it is very difficult to actually break free from it.

Part of my sadness comes from feeling out of place. I don’t blame our church. In fact, I think they would be much better off with someone who understands the language and culture. Although I know it is commonplace in first generation immigrant churches, I find myself increasingly intolerant of “family ministry” meaning essentially “I want to get rid of my children for as long as possible while you supervise them.” Some of the things that are most important to me in life don’t really have a realistic place in the first generation immigrant church context, and that makes it extremely difficult to keep forging ahead in the same direction.

However, as much as I know there is no future for me in the first gen church, I have a hard time picturing myself in a second generation Asian American church context — or, at least, with many of these churches that I have encountered. Let me illustrate: we have a couple of close friends from Orange County who are part of an Asian American church. When the leadership team found out that his background was in the PC(USA) they joked that he was “just barely” a Christian. Sigh. I am weary of this kind of theological arrogance — what good does it do if I can quote Calvin and Piper verbatim, but still act like a gigantic jerk most of the time?

So, then, do we plant a church? Maybe one day, but for now the last thing I would want to do is try to build a new faith community out of frustration or hurt. There is holy discontent, and then there is just plain bitterness. I think I just want to be part of a community where we can be honest and open — maybe not constantly spilling our guts (that’s not really in my personality anyways), but at least one in which we don’t have to go through an elaborate charade every week (and in which “church” is more than once or twice a week in the first place).

Yes, I want to do everything I can to build the kind of community I believe in right where I am. But I would love to be a part of — and contribute to — a church that I am genuinely passionate about, where we have more than “vision statements” that sound great but have little bearing on our reality. I have to admit, though, that dream always seems just out of reach.

Categories community, faith, health, ministry, sigh

How We Can Be Changed

October 1, 2007 //

The publishing world has been swamped by “I deviated from the majority culture in a specific way for a year” books over the last several years. Books such as Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and My Secret Life on the McJob chronicle the downward mobility of its authors and they lessons they learned as part of the minimum-wage work force in America. Other recent year-long life experiment titles include A Year Without “Made in China” and Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally.

However, this recent release by AJ Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, stood out to me because of the implications it might have for those who follow Christ. You might recognize Jacobs as the author of 2004’s The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. As an aside, I love these extraordinarily long book titles. Credit (blame?) perhaps Dave Eggers and his book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. From a friend’s blog, I have determined that I will either release an art-damaged indie orchestral single or postmodern semi-biography titled FINAL NOTICE: The Earth will fall into Null space. Does publishing that to my blog copyright this phrase?

On his site, Jacobs gives a little bit of background on why he wrote his latest book:

Why? Well, I grew up in a very secular home (I’m officially Jewish but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant). I’d always assumed religion would just wither away and we’d live in a neo-Enlightenment world. I was, of course, spectacularly wrong. So was I missing something essential to being a human? Or was half the world deluded?

I might read this book based simply on the parenthetical aside, “I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.” Delightful! A couple of pages from the author’s website stood out to me: You too can live biblically and How to be good, in particular. Now, while I understand that there is more than a good measure of smirky, tongue in cheekiness going on here, I also believe there are some pretty significant insights as well.

The Bible? I Don’t Get It

Many people, followers of Christ included, find the Bible to be inscrutable, archaic or irrelevant — or some combination of these things. In his quest to follow all of the “rules” in the Bible, Jacobs stopped shaving his beard. Never mind that he ended up looking a bit like Sam Beam of Iron & Wine or endured an endless stream of ZZ Top jokes — this particular experiment in rule keeping reveals our confusion about following the Scriptures. If the Bible really is “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth” (ugh), then why don’t more Christians follow these obscure rules? A bit more on this at the end…

Sabbath Surprise

It surprised Jacobs, though, how beneficial some of this obedience ended up being..In his list of the “Most Unexpectedly Wise and Life-Enhancing Rules”, Jacobs writes the following about keeping the Sabbath:

As a workaholic (I check my emails in the middle of movies), I learned the beauty of an enforced pause in the week. No cell phones, no messages, no thinking about deadlines. It was a bizarre and glorious feeling. As one famous rabbi called it, the sabbath is a “sanctuary in time.”

For those of us who want to follow Christ, there is something so powerful in these words. Although our words say, “Jesus loves you just as you are,” the unspoken addendum to this phrase is often, “…if you accomplish a bunch of stuff for Him.” The Sabbath not only refuels us, but reminds us that we are not in charge. A few Sabbath-related titles: Mudhouse Sabbath, Sacred Rhythms, and Keeping the Sabbath Wholly.

Everything Else Is Commentary

Now, back to the idea of picking and choosing which biblical commands we will or will not obey. In the end, this is an issue of hermeneutics — the lens through which we interpret and understand Scripture. Some well-intentioned folks will say things like, “I don’t interpret the Bible; I just read what it says.” Well, unless they are reading in the original Hebrew and Greek, they are interpreting it — actually, even if they were reading from the original manuscripts, the simple fact that the words are being processed in their minds means they are interpreting it. As Rob Bell writes in Velvet Elvis, “God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.” In other words, no one has a purely objective, agenda-free comprehension of the Bible. So, then, the issue becomes how we will interpret the Bible.

Regarding obscure Old Testament commands (the non-shaving of beards, no cheeseburgers, etc.), I have heard people try to brush them aside with, “Jesus died for us so we live under a new covenant. All that stuff is in the past — those rules no longer apply.” Unfortunately for them, the ten commandments are also in the Old Testament along with the commandment Jesus calls the greatest for His followers, so this approach would be a bit more than throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Inside-Out, Upside-Down

There is also the interesting question of how changing our outward behavior will change our inner attitudes (and vice versa). Sometimes, all we can do is obey even though our hearts are not in it — and, mysteriously, God changes our hearts through that. Because we cannot separate our bodies, hearts, minds and souls, it makes sense that the dynamics of transformation include all of these aspects of ourselves. Certainly, God cares about our hearts and wants us to be changed from the inside-out, but we cannot use that as an excuse for inaction — waiting and waiting for our hearts to be perfectly Christ-like before altering our lifestyles.

I can only commend that Christ Himself would be the lens through which we will understand and live out the Bible. Many theologians, authors and denominational perspectives are helpful and necessary. We should seek the wisdom and guidance of others. But all of that is meaningless without a genuine desire to follow Christ and to live as He wants.

Categories asian american, books, church, communication, emerging church, faith, health

Living Water

September 18, 2007 //

The LifeStraw is a portable water purifier in the form of an oversized straw that filters out most water-borne illnesses. At a cost of approximately three dollars, the LifeStraw will provide a person with safe drinking water for about a year. The LifeStraw was voted one of Time magazine’s Best Inventions of 2005.

According to the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 2006, 1.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to safe water and 2.6 billion people do not have access to sanitation. The report issues this sobering fact, “In a world of unprecedented wealth, almost 2 million children die each year for want of a glass of clean water and adequate sanitation.”

Many of us suffer from “compassion fatigue.” In the last couple of years, we have lived through terrorist attacks, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and floods. And, after each of these catastrophic events, our inboxes are filled with urgent pleas to donate and make a difference. Even late at night, when we’re trying to watch SportsCenter for the third time in a row, we are bombarded with images of hungry children and earnest spokespeople asking us to help. I worry when my heart grows hard to the fact that four thousand kids die every single day from drinking dirty water. It’s easy to rationalize: I give to the church (I mean, I work for the church), we already sponsor a child and his family every month, leave me alone already, etc.

Fortunately, there are groups like Living Water International, blood:water mission and WaterAid who are hard at work to create a world in which people — every single one of them made in the image of God — have access to safe water and sanitation.

I am so proud of our youth group here at church. On Saturday, September 29th, we will participate in walktheirwalk — a twelve mile walkathon to raise money to build a school in the community of Twachiyanda, Zambia and to help provide safe drinking water throughout rural Zambia through Zambia Fresh Water Project. The twelve mile route of walktheirwalk symbolizes the distance children from Twachiyanda walk every day in order to attend school. We are privileged to be a small part of building a better life for these children, their families and their community. If you are moved to partner with us, you can donate online at our youth group’s walktheirwalk donation page.

Categories church, environment, faith, health, hope, outreach, stewardship, youth ministry

If This Is The Cure…

July 23, 2007 //

For years now, pharmaceutical companies have been marketing direct to consumers with ads urging them to ask their doctor about a specific company’s pill. Sexual dysfunction, high cholesterol, sleepless nights — nothing, according to these ads, cannot be solved without the help of their products. Big Pharma, with the help of Madison Avenue, has perfected the art of naming their pills. These strange words sound vaguely scientific, often tweaking an existing word or combining words to create an interesting hybrid. Some examples: Nexium, Exubera, Rozerem… Even student loan companies have gotten into the act — doesn’t “Astrive” sound like a pill?

Of course, there’s the small matter of the pages upon pages of warning and side effects associated with most of these medications. I recently saw an ad for a restless leg syndrome medication (which was strange enough in the first place to me) and was puzzled by the warnings:

This product may cause you to fall asleep without any warning, even while doing normal daily activities such as driving. When taking this product hallucinations may occur and sometimes you may feel dizzy, sweaty or nauseated upon standing up. The most common side effects in clinical trials for RLS were nausea, headache, and tiredness. You should talk with your doctor if you experience these problems

I’m pretty sure you will already have spoken to several ER doctors and a couple of surgeons if taking this medication caused you to fall asleep on the road. And, if I’m a restless leg syndrome sufferer, I’m not real happy about the hallucinations: “My leg stopped shaking, but I can’t get rid of this dragon that keeps following me around.” What was that about the cure being worse than the disease? Reminds me of a Steve Martin piece from awhile back about side effects.

Categories advertising, health

A Very Happy Father’s Day

June 21, 2007 //

I have no hard data on this, but I would imagine that many people whose vocation is found in church ministry are pulling for more Tuesday holidays. Sundays are no Sabbath at all for most church workers, and many of us have Mondays off anyways :)

We didn’t really have a chance to celebrate Father’s Day this Sunday, what with running around like crazy people for the better part of the morning & afternoon at church, and then driving up to OC to my father-in-law’s place in the evening. So we decided to have our celebration on Monday instead.

After my interesting Mexican adventure, we decided to go to SeaWorld. We are season pass holders there. This is one of the benefits of living in SD: for most of the year, if you purchase a regular ticket at SeaWorld, you automatically become a season pass holder.

My daughter really wanted to take me to the tide pool there, which she recently discovered. There, children of all ages can pick up various starfish, conch and sea urchin. My daughter described the starfish as feeling “orange.” I wonder if that is anything like feeling Minnesota. We also took a fun Sky Ride around Mission Bay. Our daughter is quite a thrill seeker — our gondola lurched forward upon take off and immediately both her arms went straight in the air and she let out a heartfelt, “Woooo!” We pointed out the jet skiiers in the bay to her and told her one day we would ride together. She responded right away by shaking her head and saying, “No, I want to ride by myself!”

We took in the new Shamu show, “Believe.” It is quite a fantastic production, although I think they’re trying a little too hard to push the audience’s emotional buttons. For me, the best part was the four-piece moving video screen. As a wannabe tech nerd, it had me oohing and ahhing throughout the entire show. Sometimes the four images would be independent; sometimes they would move together to form one larger image. They could also rotate to show images from a landscape or portrait perspective as well. Like I said, I was nerding out over them.

We were also able to feed the dolphins. For some strange reason, one of my great dreams is to hug a dolphin. And a panda bear. We were able to go right up to the water’s edge and toss some little fish to the dolphins. They came right up to us and we were able to touch their foreheads. They feel, as many children have described during the big dolphin show there, kind of like hot dogs. What a joy!

We also went to play a couple of the carnival games there. The one game at which I consistently win (unless I get too cocky about it) is the tilted basket toss. I was able to win a small SpongeBob doll for my daughter there. But on Monday, I was able to toss a softball into a milk jug for the first time. My daughter had the choice of a huge dog, penguin or bear. She chose the large green care bear type creature.

Is there any greater feeling for a dad than seeing his daughter reeling under weight of the massive toy he has just won for her? Here she is, on the verge of collapsing under the weight of her victorious bounty. She also won a large dolphin on her own (kind of) by winning a water shooting contest against her dad. It was definitely a very happy Father’s Day!

Categories family, health, hooray!, just grinning