I have been hesitant to weigh in here on Senator Barack Obama’s potential presidential candidacy because of the way we tend to talk at or past each other when it comes to dealing with race, among other reasons. However, given the historical nature of Obama’s campaign, the increasing rancor and racial divisiveness coming from the Clinton camp recently and Senator Obama’s speech about race and America today I felt compelled to share a few thoughts that I’ve been kicking around recently about race and politics in America today. By way of disclaimer, these opinions belong only to me and do not necessarily represent my church, family or Asian Americans in general.
Archives for category: justice
Registration for SDAALC 2008 is now up and running at sdaalc.org!
If you’re in the San Diego area, it will be well worth it to join us on the weekend of April 4th-5th. Thanks to the generous support of L2 Foundation and local churches, registration is extremely affordable.
I’ll be giving a seminar on Asian Americans and Postmodern Culture. I will be focusing on the unique intersection between postmodern culture and Asian American identity (so, Derrida and Foucault fans/foes please go easy on the philosophizing!). Hoping for an engaging and productive conversation…
To the left, you can find the postcard I designed to help advertise SDAALC (I tried linking a hi-res version, but it didn’t seem to work). All of the proceeds from the conference will go toward Love146, a group “working toward the abolition of child sex trafficking and exploitation through prevention and aftercare.”
I have experienced a refreshing lack of takeaways and best practices over the last couple of days here at NPC. Refreshing, because I would have to filter any of those take-homes through another lens or two anyways, and I find myself moving further and further away from an industrialized notion of church as structures, programs or practices. We are the Church, and I have experienced a strong narrative thread throughout NPC to redefine, refocus and reimagine who we are as the called out people of God.
In the morning session, John Ortberg drew heavily from the wisdom of Dallas Willard to share several principles, or “treasures,” that we all need to thrive in ministry. Ortberg quoted Willard as a sort of refrain throughout the session:
God’s aim in history is an inclusive community of loving persons with God as the primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.
As we think of moving forward in the journey ahead of us, we long to see God at the center. As Richard Twiss said during the afternoon panel session (with Tony Jones, Danielle Shroyer and Dan Kimball) on the missional church, it is the Missio Dei (the “mission of God”) that forms the basis for our understanding of community and mission as a church. God, Himself a perfect community of mutually submissive love in the Trinity, reveals what it means to be the people of God in community and what it means to be sent out as the people of God. Tall Skinny Kiwi has some more insight into the Missio Dei here.
Richard Twiss is a native American theologian, pastor and author. My wife and I went to speak with him briefly after the session — his vast life experience and gracious wisdom spoke deeply to us. His words about the inherent postmodernity of the Native American experience — in particular, the circular versus linear way of thinking — has a particular resonance with us as Asian Americans. We shared with him about the lack of people further along the Way in our Korean American communities and how his story gave us insight and guidance. He told us about a gathering at which he spoke in Toronto, hosted by a Korean Canadian congregation for First Nation believers, that it was the Korean people who were weeping at his words about discovering identity in Christ. Jesus doesn’t wipe out our ethnicity, but shows us a new way to be human — in Christ, I can become truly Korean American, truly human. It is difficult for me to express the freedom I found in today’s brief encounter, and I believe this has such powerful implications for the future of our little congregation and the greater Asian American church.
In the evening, NT Wright brought to the convention a massive Gospel that joins together a beautiful vision of heaven and earth. It will probably take me weeks to wrap my head around everything he shared, but I experienced a serendipitous convergence of ideas once again through his words — the idea of participating in the mission of God in the world He so loves. He reminded us that, as the people of God, we must re-embody the great story of God in the world, not retreat back into Enlightenment subjugation or be crushed under postmodern nihilism. We must live in a world where new things are possible.
Wright’s exposition of Ephesians was marvelous — we are God’s workmanship and we are His poem (as we read the Greek in this passage). Sometimes it is art that brings the message home more clearly — and we are called to do “good works” that will amaze the world and reveal to the world the coming together of heaven and earth, that show the principalities and powers of the world that Jesus is Lord and they are not.
I still haven’t gotten my mind wrapped around all of things God was doing at the Passion::Los Angeles regional event from this past weekend. Perhaps I will be able to unpack some of these things soon but the thought of how closely worship and justice are knit together absolutely gripped my heart.
Although I am doing one thing he specifically requested we not do after hearing him speak in saying this, Francis Chan is everything you’d want a speaker to be — dynamic, funny, engaging. I mentioned to our youth group students this morning at church that if God zaps certain people with lightning bolts of communication ability, Francis Chan is definitely one of them. While I certainly appreciate his giftedness, it is the heart of God that comes through so passionately when I have heard him speak.
During one of his messages, he shared about an artist he knows from Thailand who had been teaching children. As she spent time with them, she discovered that child after child had been forced into prostitution. So she did what she knew was right. This artist would enter these brothels, find these children — each beloved, made in the image of God — and literally steal them away from this life of degradation and exploitation. Quickly, she was receiving imminent, credible death threats, so she took all of her children to safety. Today, she awakes every morning to a houseful of rescue, 120 children.
Francis went on to say that he loves college students because they will do crazy things. For example, if he told this gathering of over 3000 college students that he had chartered six planes to go to Thailand so that we could run into these dark places and rescue as many kids as we could, he knew that they would be filled. If those hypothetical planes had been waiting on the tarmac at LAX, even though my college days are distant memory, I would have left that night to go.
Even as I sit here and type these words, my heart rages against the sin, decay and brokenness of our world. How do we live in a world in which evil men and women would abuse children in such unspeakable ways? When Francis brought his oldest daughter out on the stage as he was speaking on this, I could not help but hold my own daughter close to my heart. If it were our daughters out there, we wouldn’t be sitting comfortably in our churches, critiquing the songs — Well, David Crowder shouldn’t have used that Guitar Hero Flying V during Neverending. I would have used the Gibson SG, and on and on — we would move heaven and earth and until they were safe.
They’re all our daughters. Each one of these children upon whom the worst depravity of humanity has been unleashed bears the indelible imprint of our Creator and is unimaginably loved by Him. I love my daughter more and more each year. Becoming a dad is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I would do anything for her, and it is overwhelming to imagine what God’s heart must feel like when He sees what is happening to His children around the world.
My heart felt like it was being crushed in a vice grip when Francis spoke of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 — they’re all our daughters, they are all created and loved by God and, in some barely comprehensible way, they are all Jesus. Who else could be more aptly described as the least of these? It is unbearable to imagine Jesus — Jesus — hungry, naked, thirsty, imprisoned, voiceless, oppressed and yet, when we choose to bring light into dark places, to come against such horror with redemption and rescue, to allow our worship to overflow into righteousness and justice, we have done it for Him.
To learn more or to find ways to get involved, here some organizations committed to bringing about justice in our broken world:
Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! – Amos 5:23-24
headsparks* 