Ramblings of a poor Seminarian

Done

2010-11-25T21:40:00.001-08:00

I am moving to wordpress purely for aesthetic reasons.

ok not purely, i want to make it a bit more polished rather than this blogsite. so without further ado. (ado)

http://godplaysnodice.wordpress.com/

For your pleasure and my practice

2010-11-22T09:36:00.001-08:00

I will be translating midrash from the Genesis Rabbah.

The NAME said to Abraham "Go!" - What is written above this excerpt? "Terah died in Haran." Rabbi Yitzhak said, "If this is a matter of calculation, until when did he request of him another 65 years?" But in the beginning you interpret, "The wicked are called dead while they are living." And accordingly, Abraham our father was afraid and said, "I will set out and they (name of heavens - angels?) will malign me, saying, "He was survived by his father and he left him in the season of his old age!" The Holy One Blessed Be He said, "to you", "I absolve you (Abraham) from filial piety to your father and mother, but I did not dismiss others from filial piety to their father or mother, not yet, but I will cause Terah's death to precede your leaving (from Ur)" - as it was said in the beginning, "Terah died " and afterward, "The NAME said to Abraham, Go!"

2010-11-21T22:37:00.000-08:00

the problem with apologetics is that you know where you're going to end up before you start.

therefore, you divest the dialogue of its purpose: to change how and what you think about.

when you engage in dialogue with someone, the fundamental rule, regardless if they hold it or not, is that you must put your faith in suspension - if faith is surety, then there is no need for dialogue.

2010-11-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

sometimes i suspect that im doing this whole life thing wrong.

Like a G6

2010-11-18T22:24:00.001-08:00

We should be more suspicious of things that are beautiful.

Things that are popular are inevitably attractive...

BUT, on the other hand, "Like a G6" is hell of an addictive song.

LIKE A G6

2010-11-18T19:44:00.000-08:00

Christianity itself drives us in two ideals, and calls us to be paradoxes, impossibilities. We condemn sin, but love those who commit it. We are called individually, but must exist in community. We are to reason, but have faith. We are to recognize the afflicted human, but treat them as God. We are to have nothing, yet everything. To abstain from the world, but live in it. We are to die, but be alive. To be human, yet commanded to be perfect. To ask of God, yet be mindful that he is not "our" God. To strive for things above, when our sight remains woefully horizontal. To be a Christian, is an impossibility. (Note, this is not the same as, it is impossible to be a Christian.)

2010-11-18T19:21:00.000-08:00

Is faith an epistemological system? (bla bla bla)

Just a question to my many readers, or none, what is your "furnace of doubt?" I'm not talking about the form of faith, but what particular issue makes you doubt the tenets of Christianity?

New Plan of Action

2010-11-14T17:40:00.000-08:00

Work Hard.

Apply to Prestigious Fellowships

if fail: cry -> continue to work hard -> start looking for JOBS

if success: continue to work hard

Apply to top PhD programs

if fail: cry, call it quits, find a "real job" -> badger friends for JOBS

if success: Work hard

If all else fails:

Move to India

2010-11-10T22:17:00.000-08:00

What does it matter that I'm Korean?

Show me both sides

so I can decide if

I will gladly call it the

Sea of Japan

2010-11-08T21:43:00.000-08:00

One Rabbinic Midrash depicts God uprooting Mt. Sinai to threaten the Israelites into accepting the Torah. There is little choice, nor do the Israelites accept on their own volition; it is between benign servitude or death; furthermore, they accept without first hearing the stipulations of the Torah -they chose to say Yes to God before they had heard what God would tell them to bear. What has it cost them? Persecution, Pogroms, and the Shoah. To be holy nation, to be set apart, only to suffer.

I think, though, at some level, there is resonance with this blindness found in Christianity. If one chooses (as if such as thing is possible) to become a Christian, it would be impossible if you actually knew what it entailed. Christianity entails a step further than complete surrender, even death, complete emptying of private ambition and will, all so that Christ might live. When people choose Christianity, they are choosing complete death for the hope of eternal life, which must fade with each tarrying year.

Too depressing? No?

2010-11-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

Moving towards a theology of history

if history - both chronological and sociological - is really the medium of God's will, then we are freed from the tyranny of history; the point of origin of Christianity and Judaism no longer is absolute, but, the whole history of these respective religions are considered as equally valid - through thick and thin.

However, we must then give up an intellectual form of religious exceptionalism - or if we don't, to assert either quietly or loudly, that it is only faith.

Brief Thoughts on Ecclesiastes

2010-10-24T20:21:00.000-07:00

I am currently taking a course on the Book of Ecclesiastes, also called Qoheleth. This is a book that I appreciate because in it, I see the separation between reality and rationale in the starkest terms. It is, in my opinion, an elaboration on the proverb - Many are man's plans, but God's counsel will stand - to its most radical point, and, in a way, espouses a strong skepticism, perhaps even agnosticism, on the power of God.

Over and against traditional wisdom, as found in Proverbs, Qoheleth declares that all is "vanity" - hebel, which literally translates as breath or vapor. However, in this text, it carries the connotation of "absurd" (Fox), and also, I think, a sense of finality - not in the sense that we have reached the end of some journey, but that we have come to its premature termination; a permanent roadblock. An insurmountable wall on that path to comprehending reality without reduction. For me, I translate "hebel" as "ungroundable." It is not groundless, because Qoheleth believes in a metaphysical ground of sorts rooted in the all-encompassing and overriding works of God, but ungroundable, because grounding requires thought, but thought stops precisely when we reach reality. We try to make sense of the world, but the world in fact, cares nothing for our opinions. It goes on and on - around and around, from the north to the south, the sun rises and sets, panting on its course, never deviating, no new track, nothing is new, wearily wearily.

For Qoheleth, he is concerned with something call yithron - the gain, the additional, or the "what more" of things. Insodoing, he is profoundly concerned with the valuation of all things - such as the value of cars, goodness, and even relationships. In so doing, he builds himself mansions, gardens, and all these. Yet, he calls this his toil and his lot, and, ultimately, he dismisses them all as hebel because there is no yithron in these things. The things are only what they are, and nothing more; our evaluation of these things fades in step with the diluting effects of time, and though they may be renewed (Ben Kung) periodically, our orientation is towards apathy and not will. (What is important is this rhythm -the Sabbath, cf. Greenberg) They will pass and be inherited, even worse, come into the hands of another, perhaps even a fool.

And so he comes to the end of value - the value of life. He critiques the value of life, and finds only ambivalence - who knows if man is better than a beast? We do not know if our souls go up or down, since we all reach the same fate (phenomenologically speaking) Valuation exists only in our minds; there are no inherent values in these things, no matter how good. Qoheleth realizes this, and when he tries to broach this wall from rationale to reality, he finds the gap too wide to cross. The good die, the poor live, the wise starve, the strong lose, the quick are slowed; indeed, he comes face to face with the end of all living things, and he finds no gain in man.

Therefore, he is faced with a profound ambiguity. On the one hand, he believes that God has done all things, yet he has hidden all these things from man - wisdom is of no use, since eventually we come face to face with reality. It is good, but its value is only relative and not absolute (Seow). Foolishness, too, does not matter, since once again, in the spectrum of wisdom, the end is the same for both the wise and the fool. Pushing this further, in that he peers into the very contingency and fragility of life, and discovers behind it nothing - no powerful God who directs the good on their way towards eternal rewards. He is blind both to the thing itself and t the thing behind it.

And so he is faced with a choice, or more worrisome now, the predetermined condition - does he have faith or not? (This question is exacerbated by the reformed doctrine of faith, since it is essentially NOT one of choice. People tend to think that faith is a choice, just like you choose a box of cereal. No, it isn't. In fact, "choosing" a religion takes away from genuineness of the person and the religion. It is more genuine for you to be born a Muslim, Christian, Jew and to remain one, than it is to "choose" a different religion, as if your choice is a criteria for correctness. It's not. We are fallible, so our choices are fallible. However, the condition that is given onto us, granted to us - be it religion or culture - takes away that choice, and that is a beautiful thing. Some might say that it is imposed. I simply say that it is a privilege. Only a matter of diction and semantics.)

If you're wondering if this is simply a mapping of my thought and imposing it on Ecclesiastes... of course.

Levenson, 24-25

2010-10-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

The failure of God is openly acknowledged; no smug faith here, no flight into an other-worldly ideal. But God is also reproached for his failure, told that it is neither inevitable nor excusable: no limited God here, no God stymied by invincible evil, no faithless resignation before the relentlessness of circumstance. It is between the Scylla of simplistic faith and Charybdis of stoic resignation that the lament runs its perilous course. (25, Creation and the Persistence of Evil)

Alaskan Memory #1

2010-09-26T17:18:00.001-07:00

Tonight, cooking alone, skinning the potatoes; an epiphany and my mind flashes (ברק השמים) to my father's hands. he bears on his hands a solitary scar - how appropriate.

he came home one night with a hand wrapped in gauze, blood seeping through; he winces through the pain, the half-smirk that all children know masks weakness. if she was alive, i imagine that she would have been hysterical, but all i do is look. it's difficult to look and wonder simultaneously, i realize, curiously detached from his performance.

my sister assumes the role. what happened? what happened? what happened? I look, my brother wonders.

he had slipped up from his other day job, working behind the fishheads buried in ice; behind the counter with the boss to whom he had lied to in order to secure this job.

I'm a professional - he said

show me - she said

he used to take us to the place, because we had no food left at home. though we never had anything to eat, we were never hungry. leftover pieces of sushi - made shoddily but with the deep pity-love from a father who lived for his children, gifts from well-wishing korean housewives with too much food and spoiled children, children who had never felt want. we didn't mind; cooking saps vitality, especially alone, and so did that fucking eternal winter - it's amazing what you can grow to love, though.

I don't remember eating together as a family even once in those years. Where was I? More importantly, where would we eat? I honestly don't remember. busy with dark matters, moments made opaque by winter.

He had cut himself with the knife used to cut the sashimi. he needed a change of gauze, so he slowly unwrapped the old one; I watched, a deep deep scar jotting between his thumb and index, bursting bright red blood atop of crumbling dull black crust.

He smiled again; he wouldn't be able to work again for a while. And I think, he had looked heavenward, and found no one there.

One on the hands, one of the side, one of the feet, one on the brow - how marvelously appropriate.

a critique of worldviewism

2010-09-19T13:46:00.001-07:00

Worldviews are things that never truly dies, but continue to evolve into increasingly complicated and developed modes of thinking. They certainly have roots, in this case, a religious one, but the building on top of the foundation is constantly in flux. Like a tree, it is adapted for the weather, the particular climate, the situation around it, and etc , so much so that there cannot be a "one size fits all" mentality. In fact, this is because worldviews are not categorical. They are not "epistemological systems" complete and whole in itself. They continue to evolve and are subject to other epistemological systems, in fashion or out, convincingly proved or traditionally reared, and to, probably, personal temperament as well. As we continue to learn more things about the World and God, we must subject our existing worldviews into rigorous and even harsh critique, lest we stop and block out the world behind our subjective veils.

However, I do have a bit of difficulty actually defining what a worldview is, and though I supply a definition, if my definition is correct, I need to seriously rethink what it means to have a Christian worldview. A worldview is based purely on intellectual assent and not emotional bent. It is based on an affirmation, a non-negotiable point of origin, upon which all other assents build upon. The fundamental point of origins for this worldview is strictly rational. It is an intellectual exercise entombed in a system, which must assimilate or reject (but even in its rejection, it is affected since it must form additional assents in order to reject other worldviews in the first place - perhaps a better word is a negative acceptance) other worldviews in which it comes into perpetual contact. As such, the system, and like a tree, we add or cull, chop off dying and dead branches, and graft others. If we see a worldview as born of intellectual assent, and carrying through with the same, we must reject the label of Christianity as worldview because the foundation of Christianity is not intellectual assent, but faith, and Christianity itself makes the claim as being transcendent truth, granted, alloyed by historical contingency, but still carrying the germ of that transcendental truth.

This does not mean that there are no emotional effects because of this worldview. In fact, it seems to me that a strong worldview would naturally engender intense emotional intents. However, it is not its starting point - although it may actually chronologically precede the actual intellectual assent of a worldview. The rise and fall of a new believer - usually begins with an intense emotional response to the call, but this emotion needs direction. The faith that comes through hearing - and accepting with intellectual assent - and the emotion of accepting that germ of faith. The emotion is not born for itself, but it guided from its birth by the assent - John 3:16. It is furthered only by the intellectual grasping and construction of the worldview. In so doing, we must be extremely careful not to discard faith in place of worldview; this is simply because, a worldview can be discarded, faith on the other hand, is something that cannot be rejected by intellectual assent or dissent: it just is, as real as the books on my desk, the wall between my room and the kitchen.

But the Christian worldview cannot be nor can it start from an intellectual assent. It must be born from faith, a gift a reality that is absurd to deny. Faith does not exist rationally, but in reality. Christianity is not simply creedal acceptance - it is emotional struggling, falling, failing, rising, and most importantly - living. Therefore, why do we call it a worldview? The world-view is something that is still outside myself; it is my "lens" but it is not myself, it is a lens honed and sanded to my needs, to my personal temperament, and so I find great comfort in its fit. However, if the beauty of any worldview is its eloquence, grandeur and the ornamentations of the complete system - cross-referenced and tightly-bound, thank you very much - then we must reject it; its beauty draws our eyes so much so that we miss that it is existing only in mid-air, without any support outside of the self-generating system. To combat this, we must rally again to the first existential call - reality is not rational.

Let me illustrate more fully why Christianity cannot be considered a worldview. Let's consider three "worldviews": Christian, Buddhist, and Atheist, on only one point of contention: Creation. The Christian believes in the creation of a world, the Buddhist believes in its perpetual existence, and the Atheist believes in its accidental, non-teleological existence. As proof they all cross-reference different things in order to show their plausibility (Note: I am not making any judgment on what they reference, only the fact that they are referencing to different things; also, I'm not arguing for the truth of any of these, which is their content, but merely their form), the Christian the Bible, the Buddhist their specific holy books, and the atheist the latest scientific information. Now, imagine all the times that they cross-reference, not just in creation, but in everything: they criss-cross innumerable times in order to form a tight, airtight ball; that is why worldviews - in their most fundamental states - cannot assimilate or adequately address new data. They all clumsily go about trying their hardest to form increasingly complicated and super-coherent (though coherency is relative depending on which system you're currently in) understandings of their own little ball of knowledge, instead of simply assenting to the self-evident truth: that the other ball has quite an array of attractive and colorful twine.

Now that there are three different systems of thought. Why do you choose one over the other? Why are they even on the same plane, and, who has the right to say which one is correct and one is false? The inherent claim of the Christian, though, or of Christianity itself, is that it is a paradox - therefore blocked by reason, and that there is a transcendence above this paradox; the worldview is the reason that leads to the curtain; the paradox is the curtain, and behind it, the Holy of Holies, which is transcendental Christian truth. It is not on the same plane, but above it, and my only warrant for saying this is the reality of faith that I find not simply in myself, but in others. It is not something "unreal" but something that is most real, and therefore something I can't deny.

This is why, I view with the greatest suspicion, the general Christian academic landscape and why I must still parry questions by well-wishing GC seminarians. It seems to me, that instead of willing to discuss and develop, they're in a rut that they can't get out of, basically, because they can't admit they're wrong; this is a symptom of confusing faith for worldview. Worldviews are subject to critique, but only as someone who is genuinely interested in critiquing it, and not open to those who have already made up their minds (since this puts you already inside a worldview and not outside it) The critic must step outside of this worldview, then, in order to be as objective, dispassionate, in short, academic, as possible. Then after analysis, how ironic, the synthesis of worldviews can begin. But this synthesis is merely an intellectual exercise, it is not self, it is not reality, and it is not faith.

In other news: I miss the simple boyishness and mythical-cultural conservatism of Calvin and Hobbes.

2010-09-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

The Christian flirtation with power.

History is the only grounds of theology.

judaism and xnity are ideally, and only ideally, in a dialectic. in reality, its a different matter. because, hegel was wrong and the rational is not the real.

im intellectually drunk off coffee.

What I learned or reaffirmed in Hebrew School *aside from Hebrew

2010-08-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

To recognize the substance of people, to love it (which often hides under the person him or herself), and of this, I am increasingly assured by Paul: Christ in me is to live, to die is to gain.

I admit that the past few weeks I have not been a "good" Christian. I drank more in these few weeks than I have probably in the past 2 years or so, danced in a not so kosher manner (in Christian terms, let's just say that there was no room for the Holy Spirit). But increasingly I am moving away from the language of strength - which includes the "good" and "bad" - into the language of weakness. I am not quite sure yet what this means, but that it defies categories simply by refusing to accept them as worthy of strength. however, insodoing, it does not mean that it refuses to acknowledge the religion of strength, but rather, chooses another, the faith of weakness, and only the weak faith is genuine.

The journey of faith begins in weakness and continues in it. The great reformed claim: faith is not a choice, nor is it something given to those who want it, but, it is by God's good pleasure to deem to whom he will gift. weil said that God must have been absolutely separated from this world, in order for the world to exist; in this sense, the atheist is right in saying, there is no God. All scientific evaluations of the world - and this includes the history as a scientific subject - are to be given free reign over scientific truth. but, as I plagiarize from weil once more, I know whom I love, and I tell you that this love is genuine - in this sense, God is real. I know my faith is real, and that my love for God is real. But God is hidden, and we blind ones and spiritless ones still live in the moment of dereliction: eli eli lamah sabachtani?

I wonder what it means to be weak. I feel that weakness is the only way that God can be manifest in this world; and though we sing, "My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do," we know that he operates in weakness. Therefore, we must reject the strength of the church, because strength is artificial, and the love that it provides is not genuine; the love of strength and the love that proceeds from it is paved with cultural subversion, religious imperialism, and political domination, as history - our record of strength - shows. But the faith of weakness, the quiet vehicle of grace, is unnoticed, away from loud rallies, from passionate rededications to pentecostal piety, or even our own will, which is the seed of our strength. The weak faith is strong in its silence, and though it is invisible, it animates the impulse to love. to exist in this weakness is best. To be strong is to be deaf and blind, and to be hard and dogmatic.

_______________

Just realized after I wrote this, that this is all Kierkegaard. He says it much better than I can.

2010-08-10T19:58:00.001-07:00

tired of being strong all the time

Another Post on Home

2010-06-12T23:16:00.001-07:00

I am gradually becoming more accustomed to calling California home. I think it is partly because of my growing awareness the history in this state - my history. Although I still tend to think of life in categorical stages, I know now that life bleeds from one stage to another, and only rarely is there ever an absolute cut in between. Inevitably, wherever we go, I am drawn back to some history in an attempt to begin what I left off years ago - entering again into that running autobiography is both my river and my anchor. For me, California is the land of my conscious childhood, its inception and its death.

Already, when I think of Princeton now, though it has only been a few weeks, it seems as if it was an eon past. My sister commented that over the years I had become more pretentious - apparently I have inherited the blue-blooded pretentiousness without my knowing. I think what she meant to say, or at least this is the way I feel about myself, is that I have become more secure in my intellectual capabilities... and its shows. Unfortunately for me, I have not yet mastered the art of trying to sound smart and being (not acting) humble at the same time. On top of that, Isaac said that after graduating from Princeton, elitism is too ingrained to overcome simply by sheer force of will. He also noted, quite correctly I think, a deep misanthropic timbre to my actions and thinking. How ironic! - the speck in your eye, and the plank in mine.

I admit it's true, though, although in my defense, I hardly conceal it. When attending my sister' department gathering, I was struck at how "human" everyone seemed to be. Definitely not everyone, but the progression of this more-or-less formal gathering still revealed a very human, low-key, unpretentiousness that I found at once heartening but also intellectually stale (they recycled the same platitudious lies that often show up in "gung-ho" speeches given by yuppie valedictorians and school administrators who want to cover their ass on their own failings, that is, the students under their care). Regardless, the very fact that it was ill timed or not perfectly coordinated made it that much more endearing - and instead of trying to cover up the mistakes with an embarrassed but witty comment (like Princeton?), this group was much more insistent in just living in that mistake. Although the administrators had to those requisite things (We are so proud of you, you should be proud too. gag!), as a whole, this group seemed much more capable of living life in a deep way rather that skating on that thin veneer of success that so drives us. I hope I'm not giving the wrong impression, though. I love Princeton and am deeply grateful that God let me attend it, but in all things, sin is through and through.

Is it the fate of all things "intellectual" to come off as pretentious? Of course, there is a difference between moral and intellectual: Jesus was never the intellectual (nor was he moral exemplar either: the uniqueness of Christ does not lie in the categories devised by man. Everything about him was human... that is, except his divinity which was both absent and present). Probably not.

Tomorrow also happens to be Sunday, and I begin again the struggle of finding and going to Church. I am very privileged to have been able to talk to Isaac before returning to California. There were many things that I wanted to talk about - as he defined it philosophically - particularly the great epistemic virtue of Tradition in the high Church to separate the theological wheat from the chaff, and, more importantly, that great virtue now being more of a myth than a reality. (Man, I just realized how pretentious that last sentence sounded. Sorry.) Basically, in many churches, tradition dictates what is to be believed or not based on interpretation. Other churches, like many Protestant churches, believe in Sola Scriptura that Scripture operates only with the Spirit. Embedded here, I think, is the evangelical Protestants mindset opposed to intellectual faith: Sola Scriptura divests the power of tradition in favor of a more individualistic interpretation. However, I follow Weil in saying that all truth - both intellectual and "faith" truth - must be reflections of the one who called himself Truth. We cannot privilege our own subjective, though Spirit-led, hunches over rigorous, intellectual grasping of the Scripture, which itself is often a catalyst for a passionate struggle between what is known and what is believed.

I have been thinking also of faith. Is it a substance? I am moving away from "I have faith", as if I hold it in my hands and can toy around with it. Perhaps this is the error of our thinking and the source of many questions, such as, "Am I saved or not?", "What are the marks of being saved?" and so on. It is not our faith which saves us, let us be reminded, but the faithfulness of God. Not our faith, but His.

As I begin this leg of my journey, I wonder and realize that pride is still very deep in my heart. It is, I fear and know, the one thing that God has put in me as, perhaps ironically, a way to keep me humble. (the dialectic resolves!) My pride reminds me of my inadequacy, bringing me to humility. In different stages of my life, it tends to veer to one or another.

In the words of Janet, "Ah... life."

Currently Reading:
Count of Monte Cristo (for the third time!) - Dumas
Waiting for God - Weil
From Hegel to Existentialism - Solomon
The Portable Nietzsche - organized by Kaufmann
Shofetim (The book of Judges)

On Flying

2010-06-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

I'm always a bit nervous when I get on a plane. It's not that I don't know that the danger of dying in a crash is really small, or that the plane can withstand even lightning, but it's always the what-ifs that get me. As much as I want to trust in the statistics, I can't, because I'm not a statistic and I cannot be a statistic because a statistic is something large and general, not small and unique. It only masquerades as reality when it is really the exceptions-to-the-rule that dominate the world.

I already know one person who has been in a plane crash. Granted, it was my ninth grade English teacher and that the plane was a small Cessna, but still, knowing one person already demolishes that statistic which likes to assure me of my immortality.

This time, flying home, I tried to think why I was so fearful every time the plane hit turbulence.

Like a Freudian, I thought maybe it had to do with some traumatic experience now buried deep in my subconscious. I do remember, with particular vividness when I was much younger, being scared to death because of extreme turbulence. We must have dropped at least 30 feet, enough to make the entire cabin go "whooooaa". I had looked to my father to my left with full fear, but he dismissed it confident as he was in a metallic machine climbing precariously into the air on nothing but the physical laws (which have no tangible reality and so are rarely comforting).

or perhaps, once on a ride to Alaska in very bad weather, I remember a large African-American lady with her daughter behind me who was perspiring and crossing herself madly, her halting "Our Fathers" dotted with "Oh Lord, Oh Lord!" Her daughter was remarkably unsympathetic; I held her hand until we finally landed.

I noticed I was much calmer, however, when I got a clear view of the ground. When I saw the ground, I was on the ground. The gusts that swelled against the plane seemed less likely to overturn the ship when I saw the ground far below, reminding me that though I might die on the plane, I might also live as the exception to the rule.

When I looked at something else though, the fear returned. The wing, or the distortion of the plane frame during turbulence, or a turn too steep, or a sudden quiet from the engine, or even faulty seats, static-y screene, or just plain bad company.

You might think that it's pretty juvenile, this fear of flying. I think so too, but if there is one thing that it is good, it constantly reminds me that I am indeed living and not simply taking up space. It's funny too, because I have traveled often already, and I should be used to it.

One humorous thing about flying is that whenever the captain turns on the seatbelt warning, the turbulence stops, and whenever he turns it off, it begins again.

2010-05-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but, Reunions depresses the hell out of me.

_______________

I take it back. I actually know why, haha.

Jae Han

2010-05-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

It is a dangerous thing to confuse choice with faith.

How can one really choose to be a Christian?

Also, when one has faith,

How can one really affirm that faith was a choice?

Can you really choose to believe in something? If not, then what are our inherent criteria of what we deem to be acceptable or not?

Danger #2

2010-05-13T22:25:00.000-07:00

Uh, some corrections.

Paul didn't write Hebrews. Also, there are not 66 books in the OT, haha. *embarassed.

Okay, so we have shown that the Bible is a product of its time period, and because the nature of History is that it isolates meaning in the moment of the birth of the text, we cannot read it very well in our own period. Subsequent interpretations of that text are all re-contextualizations of the text according to our contemporary culture, and also, these interpretations are relative to one another; not one has supreme authority over one another. Jon Levenson says its better,

"There is no communication that is altogether outside culture (even if it mediates universal truth), and no culture that is outside history (even if it mediates a timeless reality)." (111, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism)

This is an immediate problem. How does our recontextualization of thie Bible make it any more true than the various interpretations that preceded us? Isn't our own contextualization relative then? (It is)

To elaborate, also now, on the figure of Jesus. How limited was Jesus? Was he limited in his knowledge while he was on earth? Exactly what of his nature was "emptied out?" (Philippians 2)

I suggest that Jesus had emptied himself out fully of his divinity.

1) Theologically, he did not know the future outside the scope of his human ministry. (Mark 13:32) Only the Father knows. Therefore, he does not know the eschaton. Also, Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher. He believed in the urgency of his call, and believed that the kingdom of God would come very soon. He did not know it would take more than 2000 years (and growing) for the coming of the Kingdom in consummate power. The book of Revelation also confirms this, since the author(s) believed that the kingdom would come very soon since the Beast (666) was referring to Nero, and the Kingdom would come very soon (Rev 22:20). Also, he clearly states that he could do nothing without the Father; he does only what the father is doing (John 5:19), and not what he himself is doing. He emptied himself fully. Every miraculous deed that he did, he did it by his father's power, not his own, because, he had emptied himself of his divinity when he incarnated, and with it, historical knowledge.

2) Historically, he is limited, by his very nature of being man, not "transcendent man" because there is no such thing and a transcendent man is not a man at all, but "fully man" as dogma accords, and therefore restricted by the time and culture that he had lived. He was a second-temple itinerant miracle-working rabbi, perhaps in the Pharisaic tradition (despite the bad press in the NT). He was not the first and not the last (of figures like himself). Indeed, he fits the character of many other "messiahs" or miracle workers at the time - Honi the circle drawer, Simon the magician, the "Egyptian", Simon Bar Kochba, and more - they were all said to be able to do miraculous deeds, or magical, or Messiahs. Late second temple period was in ferment, not "theologically" or spiritually dead. If you deny that he was a situated-man, or only half-way situated, you are denying the full humanity of Jesus.

So, what did this time period dictate? Jews knew of course that the events in the OT "actually" happened, in the literal sense of the word. Mosaic authorship was not doubted, and if it was, it was grounds for excommunication from the synagogue. Of course Jesus would have believed that the OT was historically true because the culture at that time believed in it. He spoke with authority about it, and that attested to his power, but whether the historical question of "did it actually happen" probably never flitted through his mind, because these are the questions posed by the modern age of historical criticism and not of Second Temple Judaism. Jesus, because he was a Second-Temple Jew, did not have access to higher-criticism and also, because he had to become a man situated in a certain time and culture in order to be fully man, he did not know or care about historical problems, and historiography. Simply, those categories of thinking had not even been invented yet.

Did he have other avenues of knowledge? Yes; he knows what is "in man" their thoughts and he knows the impending crucifixion and coming glory. But, did he know world history? All of it? Probably not. (I would say, definitely not). Did Jesus (the man) know the rise of China in 21st century history? the apartheid in South Africa? the ancient myths of the Inuits in Alaska? No, no, and no. How could he? Or more importantly, why would he care? He had a sole mission, that was to save his people, not to worry about world history.

So should the fact that Jesus believed in the OT as historical truth affect if we believe it or not? No, because he was a man of that time; when he assumed into heaven, though, is another story.

Ultimately, the big problem is that if you adopt Jesus' worldview, you must adopt his entire worldview. You cannot know the world was round, that there are stars beyond sight, quantum physics and the like, because Jesus the man did not know it. So what exactly did Jesus believe? Well, the scholars have a field day on this question...

coming up, some good news...

Danger

2010-05-12T23:54:00.000-07:00

This year, many well-wishing people have taken the liberty to warn me about the theological dangers that they see at HDS. Don't worry, I already know, but to be honest, I sincerely doubt that HDS can teach me anything more about the struggle between faith and history than I have already picked up here at Princeton. I will attempt to briefly outline the heart of the matter of why I struggle so much in this area, and why it is, for me, a question of history and faith.

History is trap. It entombs meaning into a certain time and place, and does not leave us in the modern time with the tools of reviving the meaning of a that certain time and place. To illustrate this on a small scale, consider the book of Revelation. The fantastic imagery is directly lifted from Daniel, and thus in that way, it at least changes the meaning of the original Daniel context. Now, let's focus on the number 666, which in some other documents is actually 616. Both of these numbers have been convincingly shown to refer to Nero. If it refers to Nero, then, who else can it refer to? No one. Not to the President, Joel Osteen, or anyone else. It refers to Nero and always refers to Nero. That is the nature of History.

Now, expand this little idea into the entire book of Revelation. Revelation was compiled from different letters and a running story. There is great urgency in the book, one which shows that the authors of the community believed that the things in Revelation were happening then and there (circa 100 CE). This is again confirmed by the reference to 666/616 referring to Nero. This book belongs to the first century, and, it only belongs to the first century from where it came. It cannot go further into history. Therefore, since this book was written in response to severe persecution of the Christians by Nero, it can only remain in that context. The locus of authority is in the moment this book was authored. (This is not altogether true, but I will elaborate).

Now, expand the entire Bible into the historical framework. The reason why so much of it seems to incredibly alien is because it is alien to our time-period. It does not belong as a genetic descendant to our time-period. It is an ancient text, made by human hands, transmitted fallibly, and its creation also entombed it in cementing the meaning of the text. Its creation was historically and culturally mediated, that is, in both an Ancient Near Eastern context and also a Roman ruled Palestinian context. That is where it ought to stay, and cannot go further. To illustrate this point, let's look at the book of Hebrews, where Paul argues that Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant by doing some questionable interpretation of a very mysterious, but altogether unimportant figure of Melchizedek. Would his reasoning of how Jesus is the better mediator convince the rational person today? Absolutely not. We would look at him and say, you're crazy. However, it was a convincing way of arguing about Jesus in second-Temple Palestine, and it can only be convincing in that time period. We as Christians only accept it out of our reverence for Scripture. Also, look at the book of Jude and its blatant allusions to apocryphal material. Would we think that it is convincing now? No. Why not? Because we don't hold those apocryphal material to be authoritative. Well, obviously the author of Jude did, and he could because it was meant to be only in that time and place.

The only thing that allows Christians to look at Scripture and say that it can possibly speak to us is faith. Faith is impossible if you stick to the historical framework, it is the step that you cannot take within the bounds of human reason. The historian would say, "The Johannine community believed in the divinity of Jesus." The Christian would say, "I believe in the divinity of Jesus."

How do you make the jump? You can't, reason can't build up to faith.

Now when I said that the inception of the text is its death, I was wrong. The interpretation of that text called the OT or the Hebrew Bible is the great hallmark of Christian theology and of Jewish commentary. However, what you see throughout history is that the interpretations change, sometimes drastically. Also, the methods of legitimate interpretations change, very drastically. Even our standard way of reading the text, as a plain-reading exercise, was relatively late, perhaps as late as 900 CE ish, with the flowering of Karaite Judaism and Peshat reading. So, all interpretation and method of interpretation is relative. Each period believed that they had THE way of understanding scripture. This type of interpretation will continue, because, that is the very nature of interpreting any text.

However, from an academic perspective, this is fine. I can survey the interpretational topos spread out in time and space. However, it is one thing to do that, but it is another thing to believe in that interpretational schema, as a Christian MUST do. 1) Which time period would I choose to interpret? 2) Why do I privilege this interpretational method over another? If you are honest with yourself, I do not think that you will be able to find a suitable answer to this question, because, we are deeply deeply engrained in our cultural-historical ways of thinking.

So, we have the two-fold process of 1) History entombs meaning, and 2) All subsequent meaning about these texts are derived from relative interpretational methods and conclusions.

Now, add on top of this, the problem of the historicity and the historiography of the texts. Tonight, I had a conversation with a few people that said this. "I believe that the Old Testament is true because Jesus thought it was true." Well, okay. This is a terrible reason, because it inflates the divinity of Christ over his humanity, and also the fact that Jesus was limited in his knowledge.

(I will finish this post later. It's late.)

Books

2010-05-11T22:20:00.000-07:00

I am genuinely looking forward to going back to school next year, although I am a bit apprehensive about the future (in general). At HDS, I will be technically under Judaic Studies, although I hope to enrich that with a few courses on continental philosophy and literary criticism. The former I have a genuine interest for, although the latter is, well, we'll see. From the very little that I have read so far, it is not all that interesting, though perhaps the primers that I have/am reading are just no good.

I finished reading William Bartlett's "Irrational Man" two days ago, and I have to admit, it is a great compendium on existential thought, although, it is certainly a bit dated having been written nearly 50 years ago. One of the things that I found grating was his characterization of the "Oriental man", and his obvious stereotyping of the Orient as the negative reflection of the Occidental man. It's not that he does not praise "Oriental" thought - he certainly finds much to say in the idea of Nothingness and Non-being" as finding greater similarity in Buddhism and Taoism than in Western philosophical, positivist history. However, the sweeping brushes that he makes to characterize Oriental man are still a bit off-putting, because, I think, in his view the Occidental, Existentialist man arrives at the truths of the Tao and Buddha, but in a superior way. The West is still the light and the East in darkness, although the West now has tempered that darkness into its thought to cobble together a better philosophy. Still, I share in the author's repulsion of mass-homogenized culture and see through my own (and his) critical (some say cynical, I say, tomato to-mah-to) eyes at our modern society (I'm looking at you, Korean-Americans!)

Still, I find something greatly rewarding in his characterization of Heidegger. I am, by no means, well read in Heidegger. I am slowly mulching through Being and Time, but I keep finding myself distracted. But, his notion of Being as a context - as an encapsulating field that reaches beyond the subject-object divide, even reaching into time, rather than our traditional understanding of Being as a "soul" localized within time and space tethered to the body, is still very interesting and I hope to read again Levinas' Totality and Infinity with a better understanding of Heidegger. I do have a few questions, particularly on the role of agency in Being, but since I have not finished B&T I'll save it for later.

I am re-reading Jon Levenson's "Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, and Biblical Criticism" and finding his insights once more fresh and still salient in our understanding of the traditional modes of interpretation and the historical-critical. I hope to be able to work with him next year. To be honest though, I am very glad that I finished reading Kierkegaard a while back when I read this again, because it gives me a new light at understanding the role of faith and reason. (Kierkegaard might be offended though: I should call it my faith and not "faith" as a metaphyical substance). I know there are many ideas that I have still to absorb into my thought - Brevard Childs stands out as one in particular - I am growing more convinced that the traditional way of interpreting Scripture is "wrong". As much as I would want to read the book as a coherent story from a rational and coherent God, I find myself having to either mental gymnastics or heavy-handed reasoning to 'explain' the problem away. The plurality of voices in the OT all talk about God, but we must recognize them for what they are: pluralities, not univocal, of understanding God. Scripture is a choir, a symphony.

I am also blazing my way through a Giore Etzion's book on Modern Hebrew. I have finished 33 lessons in two weeks, out of 90. I have to admit, though; modern Hebrew is pretty easy if you know even the basics of biblical Hebrew. I hope to be able to finish this book by next month, start at an intermediate level at Brandeis, and hopefully enter a 3rd year level class at HDS.

Ok, it's late. Maybe I ll write more later.

2010-04-26T21:20:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot of courage to look up and pray sometimes.

2010-04-25T22:17:00.001-07:00

A rabbi once asked his old friend, a priest, "Could you ever be promoted within your Church?"
The priest says, thoughtfully, "Well, I could become a bishop."
The rabbi persists, "And after that?"
With a pause for consideration, the priest replies, "Maybe I could be a cardinal, even."
"And then?"
After thinking for some time, the priest responds, "Someday I may even rise to be the Pope."
But the rabbi is still not satisfied. "And then?"
With an air of incredulity, the priest cries, "What more could I become? God Himself?"
The rabbi says quietly, "One of our boys made it."

2010-04-23T21:52:00.001-07:00

i wish i could read books just by touching them

Martin Luther - Galatians 3

2010-04-15T18:24:00.001-07:00

Let your faith supplant reason. Abraham mastered reason by faith in the Word of God. Not as though reason ever yields meekly. It put up a fight against the faith of Abraham. Reason protested that it was absurd to think that Sarah who was ninety years old and barren by nature, should give birth to a son. But faith won the victory and routed reason, that ugly beast and enemy of God. Everyone who by faith slays reason, the world’s biggest monster, renders God a real service, a better service than the religions of all races and all the drudgery of meritorious monks can render.

reflections on Weil

2010-04-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

evil in order for it to be evil must be meaningless.

To try and put meaning into what is purely evil is demeaning to what is good, because it associates a good with evil.

evil must be pure, unalloyed, and completely devoid of meaning for it to be evil. anything with meaning is simply a lesser-degree of good and cannot be termed evil.

2010-04-15T11:00:00.001-07:00

Are you offended by all those who enter heaven before you?

2010-04-09T20:52:00.003-07:00

Every happy thing becomes meaningless when the family suffers.

"Asian" hermeneutics

2010-04-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been toying around with the idea of an "Asian" interpretive method. Of course, the term "Asian" is necessarily reductive, but the question remains; How would we go about even looking at such a topic? It would have at its advantages already Western thought at its disposable, of which particular importance would be ethnic boundaries, feminist critique, political theory. However, these critiques are all bound up in the larger, perhaps Western, idea that "what-actually-happened-is-actually-true." What if, as Asian religions traditionally tend to do anyways, dispense with historical reality as the end-all-be-all of truth, since they may naturally be more akin and sensitive to the power of myth and narrative than a Western audience?

The question then is, where do we begin to discover what is authentically Asian? Are we looking for an "authentically" Asian, or is it something that is simply "obvious?" (I question this, because authenticity is often tied to historical verification, of which I assert, is not so pressing an issue in Asian religion) Would it be trying to mine through ancient Asian texts and apply categories found in those texts unto Western texts? (But then, "mining" the text for theological datum might also be fundamentally a "western" understanding of what texts ought to be!). Or perhaps something more like a tabula rasa approach; ask an old Chinese farmer (who already embodies the authentic Asian?) to read a text and tell him to read it back to you in his own words, and see what is most stressed and what is elided.

More so, this large question ought to be a rising question in an Asia that is embracing Christianity, particularly in China and Korea, and no doubt, North Korea when it opens up. If we do not have something ready before China is Christianized, then perhaps Asia is doomed to make the mistakes of Western Christianity all over again.

2010-04-01T21:58:00.000-07:00

I'm less interested in the content of a person's ideas but more in the connection between the ideas and the person him or herself.

Family

2010-03-09T23:39:00.001-08:00

is difficult.

2010-03-07T23:23:00.001-08:00

Is religion really just tailored clothes?

(of course not silly)

Maturity - KKG

2010-03-03T20:25:00.000-08:00

If it happened that the father, even the most loving and solicitous father, at the very moment he wanted to do the best for his child, did the worst, did the worst that may have disturbed the child's entire life - should the son, if he remember the circumstances, therefore drown his piety in the oblivious on indifference or change it into wrath?

Well, let shabby souls who are able to love God and people only when everything is going their way, let them hate and defy in ill temper - a faithful son loves, unchanged. It is always a sign of a mediocre person if he, when he in convinced that the one who made him unhappy did it for the purpose of doing the best for him, can be separated from him in wrath and bitterness.

It is the same with Christianity. Although it has made him unhappy, he does not therefore give it up, because it never occurs to him that Christianity would have entered the world in order to harm human beings; he continually retains respect for it. He does not abandon it, and even if he sighs despondently, "Would that I had never been brought up in this doctrine," he does not abandon it. And the despondency becomes sadness, that it must indeed be almost grievous for Christianity that such a thing could happen - but he does not abandon it. In the end, Christianity must certainly make it up to him. In the end, indeed, it is not little by little; It is much less and yet infinitely much more.

But only slovenly souls abandon what once made an absolute impression on them, and only contemptible souls despicably exploit their own sufferings by making from it the wretched profit of being able to disturb others, of becoming self-important by the most dastardly of all arrogation: wanting to bar others from finding comfort because one has not found it oneself.

LNY with PTS Folk

2010-02-14T21:58:00.001-08:00

Tonight I had the privilege of sharing in fellowship for Lunar New Year with a few people from PTS and Prof. Seow and his wife, LK. I was a bit reluctant to go in the beginning, probably because the thought of mingling with grown-ups (of which I do not yet count myself a member) did not sound altogether appealing for a single man(-boy) on a cold Valentines night.

One thing I noticed was that the conversations revolved heavily around the experience of God, not in a transcendentalist mystical way, but in the mundane. It was a theoretical conversation about deceitfully simple things like potential, hope, contentment, joy, and covetousness - words which we know but rarely in actuality. In this discussion as we tried to parse out careful nuances within the words, I noticed something: Chinese people love to interrogate the Chinese language in the hopes of exposing the different shades of the word (note: I am not Chinese, but think about it. How many times have you been around Chinese adults who would say a certain word a few times, trying to parse out its different shades? A lot. I'm not saying that English is incapable of this, but when we repeat a word out loud in English, we're trying to gain a contextual basis for it, not an essential one). In Hebrew, the words for Joy - which S. said quite adamantly was a deeply Jewish idea- and happiness had to be carefully distinguished from the word "blessed" (Not the commonly known barach, but ashrei - which is notoriously difficult to translate - as found in the Psalms). Ultimately, S. said that - though it has been used already in gawdawful Christian movies - that one needs to find joy in the moment and grasp each moment as a gift from God. Fair enough. (He talked about stages, although I think there is a very definite point in which gradations cannot be used and it becomes simply black and white. How far down must you go before you cannot help but be angry at your lot, where there is duty in rebellion, even against your dealt hand?)

Another thing I noticed was how much this conversation reminded me of those I had with friends at school (oddly, Stephanie Ng questions. Yes, her name is an adj.). Ironically, or perhaps not so ironically since it was Valentines, I saw what kind of person LK was best when she was conversing with her husband, and vice versa. It made me painfully aware (no, not that I was single) that growth - including intellectual growth - happens in twos . (iron whets iron). It was a good reminder, since lately I am becoming sharply aware of my selfishness, which runs deep into the heart.

It was a good time, one which made me "happy" if not "joyful" (both definitions are still at large).

2010-01-30T22:13:00.000-08:00

I had a conversation about death with my father about a month ago. He had almost drowned a few months ago in a nearby pool, an accident that in retrospect is not altogether surprising, considering his years of inactivity. He told me, as he was sinking into the pool, he had felt more than anything, an incredible sense of loneliness, a dasein experience of being thrust between realities; truly, naked we come, naked we go. With it, an absolute sense of horror, of frenetic terror. His thoughts were too incoherent to meditate on Christ, since meditation requires silence, but instead, human questions came vigorously came to the fore: who would take care of 'x?' how would they support themselves? and so on. When at last he had resigned himself, his body grew limp and rested on the pool floor, he was able to swim back. Easy water. As he got up, the water and the pool seemed to trivial, even juvenile, a distance that a child could have easily lapped to and fro.

I tend to think about death a lot; perhaps that is what attracts me so much to Christianity, since it is the only religion that demands death in the here-and-now in order for life in the time-to-come. Christians are already living a post-mortem life, although it does not seem so in most cases. Perhaps, it is that Christians as we know it simply does not take their own "deaths" seriously. Perhaps, we mask it with phrases like "mortification of the flesh", which though it has the virtue of being ancient and robust, still disguises the horror of what that actually means. Besides, it certainly is not the case that only our flesh ought to be mortified, but every thing with it - to cast will, self-ambition, and pride aside like dirty rags. I wonder, what does a contemporary man who has truly "died" look like? Jesus makes it clear that that man has no sense of self; his life is not "deeply entwined" with the other, but his very life is in the other.

I sometimes wonder, why do I matter so much? Not to sound pretentious, but sometimes I find the individualistic focus of American Christian too much, and perhaps, even decidedly non-Christian; people always say that Christ came down to save you, and indeed, he would have done so only for your sake as well. The parable of the lost sheep and the good shepherd. But after one has been converted, the process of death begins in which, you pray that the divine scrutiny is not on on you. Before Christ, the focus is individualistic; After Christ, you must die and lose that individuality. Of course, Christ is not simply analogous to "death" but to eternal life. But there can be no latter without the former.

(Aside: We are already dead before Christ: it is in fact that we are dying to our own death through Christ that brings us life. that is why it is necessary we take our own death seriously)

"What a wretched man I am! Who shall save me from this body of death? But thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 7:24)

2010-01-22T12:04:00.000-08:00

If we assume the text presents a unified, coherent understanding of God, w/o contradiction...

A. God is blue

B. God is red

How do you deal with the contradiction?

C. God is both blue and red.

_____

A. God is blue, and no other

B. God is red, and no other

Contradiction?

C. God appears blue in some cases, and red in other cases. Mediated by time, historical progression and evolutionary revealing of God's character.

C1. What is meant by "other?" - It means that God is blue, and there is no other GOD, not any other color.

_____

A. God is blue, and no other color

B. God is red, and no other color

Contradiction?

C. It is the nature of God to transcend color, therefore he encompasses all colors. He is totally blue, and also totally red; he has no colorful boundaries.

ad infinitum,

reductio ad absurdum

Is this simpler to do, or just say that the text contradicts itself?

Mindboggling

2010-01-19T23:11:00.000-08:00

It is really mindboggling how fickle and immature my heart is.

Truly frickin' amazing.

It only takes a few long glances before the fluttering starts,

and only a few weeks to get over it.

Some last longer than others, but they all inevitably end.

Armed with this foreknowledge, all strivings cease.

KKG (Not Kappa)

2010-01-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

The more culture and knowledge, the more difficult it is to become a Christian.

Kierkegaard

I would add, The more difficult it is to remain one, or, the more difficult it is to believe he had ever been one.

Further, it forces you to change your faith drastically.

_____

Another nugget:

Although in the world we frequently enough see a presumptuous religious individuality who, himself so exceedingly secure in his relationship with God and jauntily sure of his eternal happiness, is self-importantly busy doubting the salvation of others and offering them his help, I believe it would be appropriate discourse for a truly religious person if he said: I do not doubt anyone's salvation; the only one I have fears about is myself; even if I see a person sink low, I still dare not despair of his salvation, but if it is myself, then I certainly would be forced to endure this terrible thought. An authentic religious individuality is always so lenient with others, so inventive in thinking up excuses; only toward himself is he cold and severe like a grand-inquisitor. With others, he is as a kindly old man usually is with a young person; only with regard to himself is he cold and uncompromising.

______________

Another:

If it [salvation/eternal happiness/etc.] does not absolutely transform his existence for him, then he is not relating himself to an eternal happiness; if there is something he is not willing to give up for its sake, then he is not relating himself to an eternal happiness. Even a relative telos partially transforms a person's existence.

Hmm, KKG makes the mistake of not equating the being of God as divorced from the condition of mankind. Therefore, his vague definition of God in this book is certainly not the clarion call to serving mankind as it ought to be; though he says that acting must spring forth from the passion, or the contradictory-existence, he does not say in which direction, though the answer should be obvious; that to serve mankind. In that case, and also through an effacement of the self, we ought to look not so much for a metaphysical being, an ontology God, whose very name is being, or refers to self, but rather his actuality in the world; note Jesus says that He is in the "least of these" - the poor, suffering, lonely. The greatest good that we can conceive then, is an ideality one which does not exist in actuality, the real world. And since we are called to exist in the real world, we must act. But how do we surmount our inherent laziness and apathy? Bla bla bla, big words.

2010-01-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

translation of a text from one language to another coincides with the sobriety of the translated text; in the translation, play on words, "folk" humor, and the like seem to be either unseen or glossed over, in the hopes of making a holy text that emphasizes objective truth. translation shifts the aesthetics of a language into the realm of theological discourse?

2010-01-10T23:10:00.000-08:00

the funny thing about sermons are that they are directed at christians exhorting them to be christians, or "christian"

what would a sermon that started with "christian" as the default look and sound like?

2010-01-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

there is no religion that is outside of the people who practice the religion.

there is only the religious faithful, there is no "religion" as if it exists in a metaphysical object.

if this is so, then religion is very human indeed.

2010-01-07T22:14:00.001-08:00

i am such a fool

encounter #2

2009-12-29T21:36:00.000-08:00

I was congratulated by an old man; I had helped him carry his luggage from the Galway train station and he looked up and said very kindly, "You could get a job working here!" I was a bit surprised by his genuineness; it's not something that I see very often in the States, or if it is, I see it too much and become inured by it. I wondered why this old man was so appreciative; there were young men loitering around the station everywhere, surely, one of them would have helped the man had I not been there.

I got on the bus headed to Dingle; it would be a five hour ride, but we would ride all through Galway. At one of the stops, a large itinerant family with many children had gotten on. They were boisterous, and the matriarch reminded me of the loud Korean ahjoomas that I know all too well; domineering, iron-fisted, loud, and totally, utterly in charge. The children were squabbling and asking loudly, "when're we there?" Even the mother did not seem to know exactly which bus they were on. The little girl who had sat next to me was turned around, facing her family who had seated themselves in the backseats. Frustrated by all this noise, the mother finally erupted at the loudspoken girl seated beside me, "I don't know, ask the person next to you!"

She peeked a sideway glance at me, maybe to see if I was sleeping or not. She suddenly seemed quite unsure of herself, and her demeanor had changed to that of a reserved little girl. She asked, humbly, "Excuse me sir, does this bus go to x?"

I answered her, although I think she was more surprised that I spoke English without an accent, or perhaps that I spoke English at all. She replied, "oh alright, thank you very much." With that, she turned around and returned to her normal loud self.

The family got off at the next stop.

When I finally arrived, I was horrified to see a giant advertisement on the bus stop. There was a large poster with pictures of old men and women and a sign that said, "Who are these people to you?" It was apparently an attempt to combat a hostile sentiment against the older generation. It could be inferred from the ad that apparently many Irish youth saw the elderly as useless and senile bats, not fit for productive effort.

Perhaps this was the consequences of a nascent economy made composed of young people?

____________________________________

is Xnity a choice?

is Xnity synonymous with faith?

is Xnity an "approximate" religion?

I know where this road ends, but I am drawn to it already.

who is he who has been born?

2009-12-24T22:05:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

(I do not think that Jesus felt no horror at his own death. Though he knew that that was the reason why he had been incarnated, i do not think that he was joyful or confident. he was doubtful, full of fear, hesitant, horrified at what he had been born to do. if jesus himself had not felt fear at the cross, he would not be our model of full humanity.)

encounter #1

2009-12-18T21:42:00.000-08:00

our eyes refused to meet, to acknowledge the other's presence, although convention and proximity demanded that we ought to have a long time ago. from the corner of my eye, i saw she was beautiful; bright green eyes, straight, brown hair pulled back in a coil; she had a suit on of some sort, classy but not showy; she didn't look irish in any way; her skin was a bit too dark for that, but her weariness made it was clear that she was familiar with this ride.

finally, we glanced at one another and we faced each other; too awkward to feign coincidence, we both smiled, embarassed; i said, hi, she said hi.

i figured that she had seen people who looked like me before; in dublin, there seemed to be chinese people everywhere, of which i was very surprised, although i doubted she knew anything about korean people.

she asked, "where are you going?"

a bit taken aback by the sudden curiosity, i answered, "Galway, just to visit. have you been there before?"

She said, no. after a short pause, she asked, "are you Korean?"

Now I was really surprised. her accent had given away that she had not been born in Ireland, but this was a new development. a bit too happily, i said, "yes! how did you know?"

she answered, "where im from, we used to have Korean missionaries work in the schools..." She was smiled deeply, looking very intently at me; she seemed relieved to have found something familiar at last, like a scent that triggers entire episodes of younger happier days.

i pressed her, "how did you know I was not chinese?"

she answered, "your eyes and your nose give it away."

it was only fair that i ask her.

"where are you from?"

"I'm Romania, I work in dublin."

I had been surprised at the number of romanians i had seen in my three short days in dublin. they seemed to provide much of the cheap labor, working behind reception desks, as barmaids, as servers. her outfit could have been one of a hostess from a more upscale restaurant, though i did not think it was appropriate to ask.

she smiled the rest of the ride, though we did not continue talking. when she left, we courteously said good-bye, though i wish she had stayed on.

...

2009-12-15T01:22:00.000-08:00

... it is impossible for me to write simply about my intellectual aspirations without discussing my faith. In short, I continue to be deeply unsettled by the evolution and state of my faith. In the beginning of my academic journey, I approached the crossroads of faith and religious studies with a naïve zeal, but I quickly learned that my undergraduate training had placed my beliefs squarely under my own skeptical eye. I do not say this to denounce religious studies as a humanistic study, for indeed I found it can also liberate us from well-intentioned, but false, propositions. However, as I become critical of my own religious beliefs, the more I am at a loss to state succinctly what those beliefs mean to me. It feels, as Kierkegaard writes about speculative thinking, as if I am eternally postponing a decision of supreme importance and consequence, a stance that I have so far found extremely disconcerting and untenable. I hope that after graduating from Divinity School, I will be equipped to begin to navigate through this theological welter and make some sense out of my role as both a Christian and an aspiring academic.

I am suspicious of any fashionable idea.

2009-12-13T22:46:00.001-08:00

Lord have mercy

Christ have mercy

Lord have mercy on me

lest i forget

2009-12-10T23:02:00.000-08:00

i think i fulfilled one of my life's goals tonight. well, "i" didn't actually fulfill it, it just sort of happened.

i think i finally saw a UFO!

I saw in the corner of my eye a blue orb of light that descended really quickly and disappeared. it wasn't travelling across the sky in a linear motion, but downwards towards the earth.

I wish i could have gotten a better look at it though

2009-12-09T09:34:00.001-08:00

when we are faced with the paradox, we choose between the negation of the system or the existence of a reality behind the paradox.

2009-12-04T22:13:00.001-08:00

Princeton needs a 24/7 cafe

and

a Pho restaurant.

_____________________

a problem in historical "evolution" of concept of God

The Christian God is also Jewish.

We worship the God who revealed Himself to be YHWH

We also believe that we have a "fuller" understanding of God than the Jews.

(inherent comment: The term "fuller" automatically says that the God found in the OT is "defective" in the sense "incomplete.")

But,

When does the God of Christianity become so "full" that it obliterates the God found in the Old Testament?

or in other words,

If the God of Christianity is the same as the God of the Jews, there can be no such thing as a "fuller" understanding of God for the Christians than for the Jews because we worship the same God. To deny this would fall to neo-Marcionism, to accept this is to acknowledge that we are still left in the dark about the relationship in the OT presentation of God and the NT.

It's all or nothing, either/or.

or no?

2009-12-03T23:58:00.001-08:00

it's difficult if not impossible for me to exist in the moment, without recourse to the future by planning or to the past by reminiscing.

perhaps this is based too much on an inward-facing mentality, as if answers are "within myself." what a farce, i have only found questions when i look inside myself.

perhaps through language, when we relate to one another are we ever really solidly in the "moment." the other person grounds us, and we cannot get lost in our own inwardness because the other demands us to acknowledge them, an image bearer.

to lift something completely from Levinas, the other is completely irreducible, therefore, he or she cannot be fully known, insuring a permanent sense of beauty in the other.

how is it that people get bored with one another? i can understand becoming inured, but boredom seems to mean that everything that can be known about a person is known, which is an impossibility.

2009-12-02T23:20:00.000-08:00

Ah, I am really thankful for my Alaskan friends.

I also dearly miss Alaska.

Perhaps in a few years, I will also miss Princeton the way I miss Alaska?

But the memories here have been too recent to be compressed under its own weight.

I'll have to wait until I reminisce about Princeton, though I do not know in what light my memories will be cast.

I think beauty is found in wonder; What you can grasp completely can never be beautiful, simply because there is nothing more to it. Yesterday night, I was walking home late alone and was struck at the deep deep blue of the sky and the full moon, and I praised God. But then I thought, the blue is scientific, the moon a round rock, and the stars luminescent stars eons away.

Perhaps the experience of "conversion" at the immediate is an emotional response, but the long-term response is a shift in biblical hermeneutics?

Also, I think there is more evidence that religion is a primarily a language, not simply a verbal one, used to communicate ineffable things. Unfortunately, one cannot communicate the immediate, individual experience of God, so we must make do with meaningless words and attribute meaning only by consensus.

(I was also thinking, what is meaning? what is the meaning of meaning? Does the existence of something means that it has to have a purpose? I think that that's an obvious NO. Also, when Christians say that God gives purpose to our lives, what are they really saying? Is purpose given? If so, then why can I not reject it?) I do not think that God gives meaning to our lives. I think he gives us the freedom to create it. *does meaning exist in an metaphysical plane? or can it simply be a career that one has? or perhaps, as a father? but if it exist in our plane, then it cannot be from God, because it is transitory. but if it exists in a metaphysical plane, then it is eternal. Simply telling me to worshiping God is my purpose in life does not mean that I will agree.)

2009-11-28T22:49:00.001-08:00

just saw a small band perform at Small World; they were great!

wouldn't it be nice just to play guitar and sing all day, for a living?

isn't that just as impractical as going into academics?

ha ha

...

I wish I could just go around like a hobo and just play guitar and sing.

2009-11-28T00:48:00.000-08:00

Our God is not a God of answers, but of tension and mystery. He gives no rationale behind suffering and its continuance. He offers no incontrovertible proof of his existence. If he care about such questions, he would have given us an answer. He offers no real meaning behind frivolous deaths or behind excessive suffering. Nor does he state explicitly that existence has meaning, nor does he give us "meaning" as if it is a holy object. In fact, he says the opposite; you live in a meaningless world, make it meaningful. He does not subscribe to our weighty logic, which we in our pride believe is heavier than his glory, nor is he encumbered by the very questions that that logic asks. The question of suffering is our deepest question, but he is not limited by the weight of this question. Our profound questions are still our own, and his questions are deeper still. Perhaps this is because he knows that we are never satisfied by an answer; that faith is experience, not knowledge. God cannot be "given" nor the experience of him vicariously felt. It must be immediate and individual.

If God had given me the reason for all the suffering in the world, I would probably not believe him, or, found some way to parry; isn't this the nature of reason? If God had shown me the suffering in the world, I would probably have doubted his goodness. If God had incited against me pain, as he did with Job, then I would understand my own wretchedness and look for him, in desperation or in anger.

2009-11-19T22:47:00.000-08:00

ugh, i think i do things to remind myself that i can still do them. isn't this a symptom for like 40 year olds?

In Ethics, there is only Best

2009-11-18T22:22:00.000-08:00

When the Levite on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem passed by the unfortunate man who had been assaulted by robbers, it perhaps occurred to him when he was still a little distance from the unfortunate man that it would indeed be beautiful to help a sufferer. He may have even already though of how rewarding such a good deed is in itself; he perhaps was riding more slowly because he was immersed in thought; but as he came closer and closer, the difficulties became apparent, and he rode past. Now he probably rode fast in order to get away quickly, away from the thought of the possible nearness of robbers, and away from the thought of how easily the victim could confuse him with the robbers who had left him lying there. Consequently he did not act. but suppose that along the way repentance brought him back; suppose that he quickly turned around, fearing neither robbers nor other difficulties, fearing only to arrive too late. Suppose that he did come too late, inasmuch as the compassionate Samaritan had already had the sufferer brought to the inn - had he, then, not acted? (kierkegaard, concluding postscripts, 340)

I say the Levite did nothing. If the distance between goodness and sin is measured by the height of the Levite's willingness to help and his sudden indecision, this results in the practical death of the sufferer. What good is the Levite's repentance if he had already forsaken that situation and the sufferer had already died? The moment the Levite rode past the sufferer, the sufferer died - which is a permanent matter and something that is not altered by the repentance of a third party.

If goodness is based on a criterion of the well-being of the other person, then goodness can only exist from the moment the Levite met the sufferer. Anything afterwards would have been equal to condemnation of the weak. Even if he returns in repentance, he is trying of his own will to remedy a situation that he had already permanently forsaken.

yea? nay?

On Divorce

2009-11-10T22:14:00.000-08:00

My sister dug this up in her SW textbook:

If there is a single predetermining factor in divorce, it is probably that individuals marry before the have firmly established a sense of independent selfhood. The more decisive question is whether at the time of marriage both individuals have passed through a certain psychological space in which they grappled with life alone, depended only on their own resources, and discovered that they could win the battle against their own fears.

I have lived through the death of one mother, the divorce of another, and the shoddy installment of a third. I am still picking up the fragments from all three episodes. They all continue to be burdensome, though they were outside my control. My most vivid memories are those of deep depression and calamitous anxiety, for my father and siblings. The highlights of my life are periods of intense discomfort, with some connecting line of mundane existence. I found ease in Alaska's long, dark winter nights and in its mysterious way of muting the reality of the world; anonymity is safe and detachment is best.

Death is forced evisceration, and divorce is a self-amputation without anesthetics. Second, third marriages are shoddy, forced, unnatural, emotionally-draining, unedifying, and full of hate in one form or another - that is - until the new person(s) become integrated into this new body, if they do at all.

Worst of all, it is the children who pick up the fragments. In every divorce, the sins of the parents spin and unravel over the children, the children who are always, constantly, dwelling in the past and in the future, but never at ease with the present. There are too many opportunities for disappointment in the present, new anxieties at every nook, every show, or in every new acquaintance. There is relief always in the future, in the unknown, somewhere and sometime better, a place and time that is always better than the here and now.

If you're going to get married, you better know what you're doing, or you're going to be making a lot of people's lives miserable for a very long time. Bear that responsibility dutifully even if you can't do it joyfully, that is, up to a certain point.

On Love: thinking out loud

2009-11-02T23:22:00.000-08:00

It's amazing how ground-less feelings are, despite the reality that at their culmination they seem to consume our very being. Its entire gamut, from rapturous love to livid fury, all eventually dissipate according to its season and time. But if we are called to love one another without any sort of equivocation, then it cannot mean that love is an aesthetic-romantic emotion, since such a thing is untenable in eternity - the infinite time frame that God's commandments must be made manifest. We cannot simply love when we feel like loving, but we must love regardless of our desire to love. We echo, then, the command, not the choice, of Scripture: Love the Lord your God, and, Love your neighbor as yourself. (Of course, it is within our free will to choose to follow the command, but for the Christian, such a convenience ought not to exist... maybe?)

Another unfortunate thing about love is that its emotional response, the feeling of being in love, is that it cannot be willed, and thus resists commandments. I cannot say to myself, "Self, I want you to will yourself to feel love for this person so that my efforts to love this person will be natural and joyous." On the other hand, I also cannot say, "Self, I want you to stop feeling love for this person so that I would not be distracted from loving others." Feelings of love tend to be, at least for guys, largely due to the girl's appearance. For guys like me then, it's imperative that I make sure that I am in love not with the body, which invites an unsustainable eros love, but with the holistic her, her entirety. Fortunately, people are irreducibly complex so there is no end to exploration... (unless they're just incredibly dull people.)

Also, I have been trying to understand how really to love someone. For (apparently) emotionally-stunted people like me, it is easy to fall in love with the feeling of being in love or the idea of being in love, rather than the person who ought to be the object of the love. This makes itself most manifest in the idealization of the person away from his or her actual fallen humanity - and this is a dangerous dangerous thing because it sets you up for profound disappointment at the ineluctable fall from grace from the ideal person to the real person. So, what part of that person am I loving? If not his or her entirety, I can hardly call it "true" love but only an approximate love. But maybe, in our fallen nature, this is the limit of our love; we can only love approximately but never fully, just as our actions are never winged by pure motivations.

Likewise, it is easy to fall in love with the idea of the Christ (which anybody and everybody by nature can do and does) but very difficult to fall in love (in the emotional sense) with Jesus the Christ - the person (which only the Christian can do, but just barely at least for me).

A Man of Constant Sorrow

2009-10-29T22:31:00.001-07:00

Today I realized that it is life's constant stream of disappointments that enables me to see more clearly and revel in the certainty of God's grace. Everything other than God that I exalt as my prime source of joy reveals itself to be flawed by its very nature - inconstancy and fluidity. It is in these moments that I understand that God is both a faithful God and jealous one, since for to me, these two attributes are one and the same. In His jealousy to be our deep channel of joy, He smashes every idol that usurps this rightful throne, and indeed, He will go out His way to refocus your mind on Him alone. When it seems too difficult for us to tear our eyes away from the false beauty of our idols, God Himself will smash them down and expose them as empty vases with merely the semblance of permamency, in order to make clear that He only is the inexpressible one who is the source of permanent and utterly superior beauty. In this sense, God is threatening in His love, as a father is threatening in his discipline.

Therefore, draw out joy from God's grace and it only; trust it, and it only, since it is the only anchor and ground that has no changing. All others are as Solomon says, habel hebalim, utterly meaningless.

________________________

Today, I asked a sister if she agreed that love was a choice. She agreed and explained very clearly how much of a choice it is sometimes. I suppose the "feelings" of love, which dwell in a man, is something short-lived and transient, is overshadowed by love itself, which operate outside of him in the real world.

A Passage from Concluding Postscripts

2009-10-29T00:16:00.000-07:00

This was something for me. I thought as follows: You are quite bored with life's diversions, bored with girls, whom you love only in passing; you must have something that can totally occupy your time. Here it is: find out where the misunderstanding between speculative thought and Christianity lies. (241)

Needless to say, Kierkegaard lived a celibate life.

... for without risk, no faith; the more risk, the more faith... (209)

When I feel that I am stepping away from faith, I realize I can never take the final leap back to the faith-less existence. It would require an infinite amount of resolve to hurdle that leap, because the chasm below is terrifying. A great sense of horror arrests me when I think about a faith-less existence (should that be my lot). It might seem morbid, but in my zealous younger days, I contemplated the appropriateness of suicide at the cusp of losing faith. Though only a little bit wiser, "losing" faith still ought to be on par with such a concept; it is, after all, not simply physical damnation but spiritual destruction as well. This is why I have never understood how some Christians can be so blase about the state of their faith; Isn't it an eternal matter with eternal consequences? More so, I wonder, if they lose faith, how did they cross that River Styx that separates life and death and emerge without spiritual scars of any sort?

Faith ought to be tenacious enough to survive on a sliver of hope.

Learning

2009-10-27T23:38:00.000-07:00

I don't think I learned a lot during my time at Princeton, but instead, how and why to learn. Now that I don't have that burden "Thou shalt learn!", it makes me realize how awesome it is to learn.

Since I have eternity to learn this stuff, I'll try to take it one at a time.

Languages: Classical & Mishnaic Hebrew, Aramaic, Attic Greek, Syriac, Latin, German, French, Arabic, Korean (I wonder; what if God had chosen to use Korean or Chinese to transmit the gospels or the Old Testament? How would our understanding of the gospel have differed?)

Philosophies: Existentialist, Phenomenologist, Postmodern (Really curious what type of philosophy might emerge after Postmodern; You can't say post-postmodern!)

Theologies: Narrative, Rhetorical

Topics: Late-antique Christian-Jewish formation and interaction in texts and theology, Old Testament interpretation, the Historical Jesus

Random: Chinese poetry, (took a chinese lit. class once; loved Meng Jiao, such a sad honest man, and Li Bai, his drinking moonlight poem), literary theory/criticism, various myths and folklore.

Instruments: Banjo, harmonica

Sometime in between, I hope to get married too.

Also, I think it would be totally awesome just touring Europe or something with a guitar, trying to get by with the least amount of money. Also, I want to learn how to be a farmer like my grandfather.

Jae Han

Psalm 27:1

2009-10-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

יהוה אורי וישׁעי

ממי אירא

יהוה מעוז־חיּי

ממי אפחד

The Lord is my light and salvation

whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the fortress of my life

whom shall I dread?

_____________________________________________

There is a sense of irony in this Psalm. The rhetorical question, echoed "whom shall I fear?" does not actually elicit the response, that I will fear no one. In fact, the answer to the question is actually, "You Lord, I fear you; though you are my light and my salvation, you are also the one who creates distress. Because I gave my life to you, I am at your mercy. Do as you will, and forgive my fear of the unknown."

Here I am reminded again of the verse in Amazing Grace, 'Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear, and Grace my fears relieved!" With the total holiness of God in view, our sin becomes most stark, a defiant speck in a consuming light.

Perhaps it is not so much that there is security in God, but rather, that the fear of God trivializes all other fears.

"Then he isn't safe?" asked Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king I tell you."

But it makes for bad counseling...

2009-10-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

"The Bible requires and insists upon human interpretation, which is inescapably subjective, necessarily provisional and inevitably disputatious. I propose as an interpretive rule that all of our interpretations need to be regarded, at the most, as having only tentative authority. This will enable us to make our best, most insistent claims, but then regularly relinquish our pet interpretations and, together with our partners in dispute, fall back in joy into the inherent apostolic claims that outdistance all of our too familiar and too partisan interpretations. We may learn from the rabbis the marvelous rhythm of deep interpretive dispute and profound common yielding in joy and affectionate well-being. The characteristic and sometimes demonic mode of Reformed interpretation is not tentativeness and relinquishment, but tentativeness hardening into absoluteness. It often becomes a sleight-of-hand act, substituting our interpretive preference for the inherency of apostolic claims.”[1]

[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Authority of the Bible,

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2104.

Love can be commanded

2009-10-05T22:08:00.000-07:00

me: i love you!

NOW SAY IT BACK TO ME.

Jeremy: y

me: DO IT!

Jeremy: im not fallin for the same trick again

me: :(

I'm going to cry myself to sleep.

Jeremy: i know your not going to

dont deny it

me: and I'm going to read Jeremiah and cry cry cry.

1:06 AM Jeremy: ok

me: Say it!

This is a command!

Jeremy: sleep

me: No.

sae. eet.

I'm going to keep writing annoying things on your FB wall, like, "Jeremy is soooo cuteee! ^^"

if you don't say it.

1:07 AM Jeremy: .................................................

me: do it.

Jeremy: Jae: i love you!

me: I ll give you the count of 5

Jeremy: i said it

me: no.

Jeremy: wooooooooooow

me: you copied and pasted.

Jeremy: i love you!
SUCCESS

Bleh

2009-10-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

On Christ the solid rock I stand; All other ground is sinking sand!

I wish that this line was true in my life.

Hymns and old slave spirituals resonate because they acknowledge the reality of loss while bridging it with coming glory. In this manner, they reflect the height of the cross, much more than songs like.. (In the secret, in the quiet place... this song in particular, if you took it out of its 'Christian' context, comes out remarkably, and frighteningly, stalker-ish. We're not stalking Jesus here, people.)

With that said, I am still deeply struggling with the problems that come from faith, or at least, the faith as I have known it. Cutting theological questions lacking satisfactory answers push me away from simply the experiential and the superficially-intellectual satisfying faith I've known in my early college years. The more I think of it, the more I am inclined to say that faith cannot be systematic, but rather has to exist at the phenomenological level then proceed very cautiously theological level; it is no use flattening scripture into a synchronic medium, but each book needs to be explored for its own theological intent, building on the historical moment which founded its existence in the first place. (Ah! I said it!) That said, I am tired of patching holes in this theological house of cards that I've built or others have built for me, with its leaky rooftop.

But can I attest to God's goodness? Yes! To his supernatural nature and his power to save? Of course! Of his working in people's hearts? Take my own life as an example! But then the problem lies again, what is that bridge from the head-knowledge and my heart-knowledge? Why are they so disjunctive?

Apparently, very many scholars have written very many books on these topics already. (A side note, when I was younger I used to wish that I could read and comprehend books simply by touching them. Of course, I would balance this wish out with the necessary precautions and consequences; if I had touch-read too many books, I would have to sleep for many hours) Unfortunately, they come second. Doubly unfortunately, if a freshmen should ask me where I stand theologically, I would be at a complete loss to say much with much conviction. I could, however, point to testimonies (mine and other's) which are more phenomenological than filled with a retrospective-process of meaning-making. (Big words! Oh no!)

On a happy note, it was James An's (my roommate's) birthday today! He is 23! So Old!

Want to (re)read list: Exclusion & Embrace; Postscript to Philosophical Fragments; Being and Time; Barthes Church Doctrine

______________________________________

Let's start a band!

Jesus as Man: Acts 5:35-39

2009-09-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

What does it mean that Jesus was man? (warning: pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, and potentially blasphemous musings ahead; I also freely admit I was and am heavily influenced by Levinas and Kierkegaard, that is, to the best of my ability to understand them)

Perhaps this theological truth carries far more weight than has been traditionally explained. While tradition says Jesus was fully man, it does so in dealing only with his ontology, which confines Jesus' humanity solely into the idea that he was man, and totally ignoring the external aspects of mankind.

While ontology is limited to interiority (ie., what is man? How do you describe man?), one can and must also talk about the exteriority of man - which deals with the location - both spatially and temporally - of man (ie., where is man? How do you locate him in time - culture, society, etc?) Because all things in creation are historically-mediated, that is, they exist through history, we must also be able to locate man within that same mediation. Therefore, because man is historically-mediated, Jesus must also have been if he was to be fully man.

This might come as a no-brainer to many people, but if so, I would really challenge them to think about the issue and press it further. If Jesus was historically-mediated, and he must have been since he was fully man, then he must have been born into a world in which he was similar to the others around him. This is not to say that he was not unique, but at the exterior level, he must have come at a moment when his contemporaries would have found him unremarkable in relation to other's who had preceded, contemporaneous, and after him.

So how do we situate Jesus? Firmly in the late second-Temple Era in Israel, a time when many "prophets" and wonder-workers arose: Honi the Circle-Drawer, Judas the Galilean, Theudas, The Egyptian, Simon "the Magician," perhaps even, John the Baptist, the Essenes, and later, Simon bar Kochba. By coming from this very milieu, with its many colorful figures, Jesus demonstrated his full humanity.

To make this even more specific, within the breadth of this time period, Jesus would have been no one particularly special in his exteriority; and this is precisely what was necessary. In order for Jesus to have been fully man, he must have come at a time in which he would not have been recognized by the retrospective eyes of history (though not necessarily by the contemporaneous individual who is easily amazed by Jesus' miracles) as someone altogether special. Jesus hardly announced his dual nature, fully man (in both interior and exterior sense) and fully God, to the world with a blast of the shofer.

_______________________________

I wish I was a child again because everything was new back then.

3:29 AM

2009-09-28T00:23:00.000-07:00

sometimes i feel so sad that everything comes and goes, and nothing stands forever.

then i'm reminded of a new heaven and a new earth, of eternity and perpetuity, when coincidences and missed chances, brokenness and isolation, have an eternity for amendment and fulfillment.

Ethics of Want and Need

2009-09-23T19:16:00.000-07:00

I usually have a difficult time buying things that I want though not need; the more I want it, the more I struggle against actually getting it. However, for necessities like food and shelter, I find little room for such scruples. Also, for things that could benefit me in some manner, I have no problem spending more than necessary. For example, I just bought an expensive $20 Moleskine instead of the $2 Wal-Mart Notebook; I justify this extravagant spending by noting that I tend to use more carefully and thoroughly things of higher value. As for the Moleskine, I have faithfully been using it for my Hebrew study. The other Wal-mart Notebook, on the other hand, has in its cheap plastic spirals the shredded remains of roughly-torn lined pages, and its innards are moist from ill-treatment.

Tonight I was going to get an album off of iTunes. But I hesitated, and am still in that moment of hesitation. It is ten dollars.

Having been influenced by Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" in a class and also, The Lives of Saints, particularly St. Anthony's legendary biography, and also, the Catholic vow of poverty for the monks (which is still further problematic; All Christians and called to give all they have; not just the monks; also, Luke 18:22, James 2:14-17) I stumble increasingly as I decide between what is necessary and unnecessary; good and un-good, or not-as-good (I hesitate to use 'evil'). I cannot place this difficulty within the same spectrum of actual money-spending: just as there is an ethics involved in spending too much and thus fall into hedonism-selfishness, there is one that is related to that of parsimony, epitomized by Ebenezer Scrooge.

But what if I refuse to spend money on myself, for things I want, but for others, for what they need? (If I believed Singer with absolute certainty, I would put the complete law of Singer's conclusion on myself, which is impossible. I would have to cut drastically on the things that I buy yet again, even into the necessities and study materials. Thus, I proclaim myself a hypocrite in that sense. Still, we could all strive for that ideal.)

The ten dollars I spend for myself, for something silly, could instead help immeasurably more somewhere else. I would only be pretending to be loving my neighbor as I loved myself, if I had spent a mere 50 cents on him and 10 dollars for myself. (I realize the problem also in this statement, since it reduces and quantifies something like friendship, but, really, the "amount" we esteem others' is strongly correlated to how much we are both willing and actually do spend on them.)

So what should I do?

(Or perhaps, I missed the entire boat. Maybe God isn't calling us to give our possessions, but the thing that we hold dear the most. But then again, I am reluctant to"spiritualize" such things.)

In Memory

2009-09-11T20:55:00.000-07:00

Eleven years ago on this day, my mother passed away.

We have a picture of her when she was attending college, when my dad was courting her. They had sent love letters then, though they are now lost. The picture itself is shaded, though I think it captures her as she must have been back then; a bit lonely, transparent at some angles, unsmiling but still warm. She minored, I think, in French literature; there is a copy of The Little Prince, addressed to "My Little Princes and Princess, 1994." It must have been one of her favorites, matched by her romantic sentimentality.

Eleven years have blurred what recollections I might have had of her. I remember the warmth of her body when I was younger; most of the nights I had fallen asleep hugging her. When I was installed and instructed to sleep in bed, I remember how it was strange, cold, and alienating. My body was not yet big enough to produce warmth; blankets for a mother is a poor exchange. I remember her asking once if getting the middle finger was bad. Yes, it was, we had told her. (She was apparently a poor driver.) When her father died, I remember dad taking us out on deliberate walks, as if to shield us. When she re-emerged from that dark room after we had spent all day in the light, her disheveled look of loss impressed on me. So this is what death does. I remember more clearly the room in the hospital. We did not visit her much, maybe that was our fault. We were still in the happy illusion that suffering never touches good people. (Probability is a bitch; 1/100 is unlikely, but that 1 percent is final.) She gave us her hospital food, and I feigned interest. She would get better, so there was no need to worry. When the stroke left her paralyzed, she still wanted to talk to us. (Oh how!) Her heart must have ached dearly to articulate the sentences in her mouth, but we could not recognize the words or her voice.

She is buried in Rose Hills, off the 605N in California. I have not been back in a year or two, nor do I feel much of a desire to make some blase ritual of the matter. What does it matter if a year or fifty? But when I do happen to return to that spot in front of her grave, we talk. It's strange, since it really is a conversation with myself, and I talk about how I've changed since the last time.

The flowers we buy from the cheaper florist outside the cemetary, and we clean up the marble and uproot the weeds. There are other graves there too; the one near was another mother; but my mother is the youngest.

When I turn 23 next year, I will have lived most my life without her. I don't know why this is significant, but it feels as it ought to be. Perhaps when I do turn 23, I will finally feel out of the shadow of her passing.

"Where, Death, is your victory? Where, Death, is your sting?"

A Narrative Approach to 1 Kings 3:16-28: The Two Prostitutes

2009-09-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

(Note: This is an expansion from Kugel's, "How to Read the Bible", 505.)

In this story, King Solomon is faced with perhaps his first real test of wisdom. Two prostitutes approach the king, both claiming to be the mother of the same boy. One woman cries out,

"To me, My Lord. This woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth while she was in the house. Then on the third day of my childbearing, this other woman also gave birth... And this woman's son died in the night because she layed on him. And in the middle of the night, she picked her own dead son and put him in my bosom, and placed my living son in her's. And when I arose in the morning to nurse my son, Lo! He was dead! But then, I looked closely at the child, and Look! He was not my own!"

Then the two start bickering in front of the king. Now the king recounts what he had heard, perhaps feigning an air of deep contemplation and musing, and says,

"This one says, 'this is my son who is alive, and your's who is dead' and the other one says, 'no, your son is dead, and my son is the living one.' Then the king said, "Bring me a sword."

Since there is no fair way to judge, he jumps to the conclusion, in accordance to legal code. Since there is no clear winner, he will cut the living boy in half to satisfy both parties. The emphasis and callousness of his words are emphasized in the juxtaposition of "living child" and "halves," as if the child was inanimate (and thus already dead). He is of course aware "halving" the child would kill the child, though he will not say it; He gingerly shies away from, "I will kill" but "I will divide" in order to elicit an emotional reaction from the two women. When he pronounces this judgment, a woman cries out,

"Oh, my Lord, give her the living child, and certainly do not kill the child!" Then the other one cries out, "He shall be neither mine or hers; divide him."

Notice that the other woman uses the word "divide," agreeing with Solomon's judgment wily-nily, instead of the consequently word "die" that the compassionate woman cries out. Solomon, in his great wisdom, deduces that the compassionate woman is the biological mother and hands over the boy to her... Or does he?

When people read this passage, most are struck particularly by the lack of creativity on Solomon's part. They think, "I could have thought of that!" Could this short measure be the real limit of what is called in the concluding verse, Solomon's divine wisdom (hokmah elohim)? If so, it certainly does not seem to be all that impressive. But this is missing the real picture. What makes Solomon's wisdom so apparent is not that he has correctly identified the biological mother of the living child, but rather, he has identified the compassionate one who will nurture the child.

There is a deep ambiguity in the story over who exactly is the child's true mother, since both say the same story. While it seems most obvious to us that only his "true" mother would be "moved with compassion" for the child, the narrator systematically complicates identity in the story. The two women are intentionally nameless and lack any distinction from the other. Still, v. 26 does say "the woman whose son was alive said to the king because her heart yearned for her son..." but this does not positively identify which of the two women this was. Was it the one who spoke first to the king, or the second? Who was telling the truth, and who was lying? This questions, which is in our forefront is actually inconsequential. The child given to the one who was the most maternal, whether she is his biological mother or not.

Also, we are conveniently led away from the image that these two women are, in fact, prostitutes. Still, casting them as prostitutes was not merely a device to create a plausible setting for the story. Instead, their occupations color our perception to emphasize the moral twist in the story. The setting, two prostitutes bickering over a boy, is completely in line with the common low conduct expected from such women. What kind of woman would replace her own son, dead as he is, without grieving, in order to claim another's? Who else would have the audacity to take this matter to the king's court, and in front of him, bicker and rabble? Certainly not a woman of the court, but a low and immoral woman. But, when the climax of this story is reached, we see how one woman is cast in the best, human, and compassionate light, despite her expected conduct. The woman who agrees with the king acts in the way that is most expected of her, in a "prostituted" way, while the woman who appeals shows herself to be the caring mother, prostitute or not.

My Brother's Summary of Job

2009-08-31T21:36:00.000-07:00

gods watching job

right

then

satan comes over

and hes like, oh blahblah,

if hes your greatest servant, he will still obey you after i ruin his life

blahblahblah

so he one by one gets rid of everything

and then jobs friends come over

and he says like i still love god

blahblah

and he gets back like twice what he had before

the end

im right

Insight from a Concert

2009-08-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

So today I went to a Switchfoot concert. It was my first concert ever. It was in Atlantic City, and I went with Dennis Yap and his friend, Kiet. Also, I got to go backstage and I shook their hands. I even had a conversation with Jon Foreman! He said, "Hi I'm Jon" and I said, "Hi I'm Jae." I'm never going to wash these hands again. (just kidding)

In one part of the show, Jon Foreman got down off the stage and waded through the crowd, singing as he went along. He went a bit forward, then climbed on top of a fence and sang quite loudly into the microphone (in fact, everything was just very loud.) And there was the encounter. As he lifted himself up from the crowd, the crowd rejoiced because he had stepped down and stood up again; he was glorified. Even I, unimpressed as I usually am, was slightly taken aback by the realness. It took that image of him being so followed and so adored by the crowd that reified my understanding of glory.

But then, my thoughts turned to Christ. Jesus, the God of all the world, the Almighty! the one who sings eternal songs into lives, the one to whom all honor and glory and praise is due. Yet, He is the one who stepped down from his stage, but was not glorified or recognized even by his own. Could the only difference be between Jon Foreman and Christ be that of proximity? That I see Jon with my eyes and can shakes hands with him? That would be a lie, since God even put His Spirit within us. There is no closer proximity than self. If I was inclined to give praise to Jon for his human songs, then should I not praise God eternally for His eternal songs?

I have not yet begun to honor God!

Today is August 5

2009-08-05T00:48:00.000-07:00

There are now officially only 10 days before I return to Princeton. Although I am very much looking forward to leaving sterile SoCal, I feel that I might miss home for once. Actually, let me rephrase that. I will miss (only) Jeremy. I convinced him to come stay with me for a week in Princeton, but I don't think dad was too keen on that idea.

I see so much of myself in him, and in some ways, I feel more like a father than a brother. His social-consciousness, frugality, sense of humor, and sensitivity reminds me of a younger self. He is really a good kid, but not as self-confident or outgoing as I was. He mumbles a bit when he talks and finds it difficult to speak in front of others, especially older people. These things he will hopefully grow out of as he cements his identity. He, like me, avoids conflict like the plague until it cannot be ignored any longer, but that, also like me, often leads to passivity and frustration. Still, I thank God that he turned out this way, considering everything. He has a good head, some ambition; what more can you ask for? Last year, I got in the habit of saying "I love you" as often as I could to him; I think he needs it. I tricked him into actually saying it back to me once too; it took a good 15 minutes. Also, I heard that he was popular with the ladies. Not in a direct charming kind of way because he's kind of awkward, but in that dark, talented, mysterious manner (that Asians seem to be so fond of). He, of course, denies all this.

It has been (really) difficult for me transitioning into this pseudo-nuclear family. Basically, this means that my immediate family is now seven people: Dad, his wife (Joanne), step-brothers Andrew and Thomas (8 years old!), Jeremy, Amy, and me. Still, it is so obvious to see the ways that this half and the other half differs. This difference is so vast that there is no point in really trying to foster a "unified family" air; Jeremy, Amy, and I are well past that age. Frankly, I am not even trying to "love" Andrew and Thomas as much as Jeremy. This might sound entirely hateful or cinderella-y, but really, I can't love them as much as I do Jeremy, so we'll just have to settle for civility. And to be honest, I do not even think of them as my "brothers" nor do I feel any reason why I ought to. This marriage had nothing to do with me, thus, they have nothing to do with me except proximity, and again, to be honest, often even that proximity is unwanted or stressful. It makes me (and Jeremy) feel like guests in our own home, and that really drives people crazy. Perhaps this is the way they feel, too. Of course, it is puerile to simply blame the kids. All I know is that when Jeremy is not happy, I'm not happy.

On the lighter side, I have never seen my dad laugh so hard than a couple weeks back. Yesterday, he and Joanne even went to the beach together! That was a watershed in my understanding of him. He is definitely happier and less busy, and he does need someone to take care of him (he is, after all, still a first-generation Korean male). But, when Jeremy and I passed by our old apartment, we both just really really wanted things to be the way they were before. It was stressful then, but at least it was known and safe.

Why is life sometimes so difficult? (And yet, even when I say this, I realize that I am still blessed for many many things.)

Damn.

2009-08-03T01:12:00.000-07:00

I have a long, long, long way to go.

A Dream that I Had

2009-07-30T01:57:00.000-07:00

I had a nightmare a couple days ago.

I was in a large building and it was full of people. I don't know what we were doing there but suddenly the door bursts open and masked men with guns appear.

Their leader yells, "Fifteen of you will die. Choose amongst yourselves."

Immediately, panic breaks out.

For some odd reason, this building is combination of rococo architecture and futuristic design.

People run into plastic pods and are immediately suctioned away somewhere, escaping our captors.

I don't remember running, but I end up in an enormous room with many many doors on each side. It had varnished wood on the floor, and I think a chandelier.

I know that they are coming soon, but I need to make a choice; which room will I hide? Probably not the last one furthest away from the door; that would be too obvious. The closest one?

I decide to hide in the room fourth to the right of the entrance.

As soon as I hide, the terrorists enter.

"I know you are in here!"

One of them stops just short of my room, and lights a cigarette.

Then I look outside.

There is already a line of people waiting outside, awaiting their execution.

But, one of the victims starts impassionately talking about the merits of justice! of Love! of humanity, goodness, and joy!

At the climax of his speech, the guard cuts him short.

"Alright, I'm going to kill the person next to you. Or, you can take his place, and I will kill you instead. Will you do it?"

Defeated, the orator backs down and the person next to him is condemned.

From my room I think, "I have no right to be hiding here. I could save that person's life."

The vividness of dreams help cement unlikely experiences. They provide a much-needed blow to the head. It is so easy to say, "Of course I would give my life for a friend," but dreams encapsulate you in an alternate reality in which you are often forced to either take back or seriously rethink the easiness of false certainty.

The thought that immediately came to mind was Christ. Here I was, quivering over the saving of one life. How my life was valuable, even more valuable than one life. In Gethsemane, what could Jesus possibly have felt? What horror, uncertainty, doubt, value of his entire mission? Not just for one life, but to be responsible for the fate of mankind! I could not make my mind over one person, and in so doing, I already stood condemned.

Doubts

2009-07-28T20:56:00.001-07:00

Right now, my faith is splitting apart, forks approaching different ends. I, to be honest, do not know the Bible as well as I would like. I know, or at least, I have absorbed at face value the traditional reformed theology of the institutionalized Korean-American Church, and at Manna, have been blessed to learn the sundry theological stances within our small community. Of course, I am indebted to their investment and cultivation of faith, but at this juncture, it is near impossible for me to hold unto the shape or form of faith that I have known all my life. It is still faith; I am not falling into apostasy, or unbelief, but merely doubt, (hopefully) a healthy point in which I am exploring new grounds of theological inquiry.

When people tell me that they are at a low point in their Christian walk, I understand them to mean "spiritually" or "emotionally." The causes are quite obvious, and it seems that for most part, they feel that they are at a low point because they feel guilty for neglecting QT's, Prayer Times, reading the Word, etc. I think it's important not to confuse feeling guilt and low points in our Christian lives. For me, although I do neglect these spiritual disciplines, I do not think that one needs to be absorbed completely in their wake in order to feel spiritually fulfilled. In fact, I do not place that much value at all on my feelings; God will be God, He will be good, despite my feelings towards Him; and really, doesn't Job who have suffered every violence by an (seemingly?) unjust God sit quietly before Him? (I had a chance to read Wiesel's "Night" and felt that he was in the right for putting God on trial... ) Of course, it's nice to be touched now and then, and He does indeed break me occasionally, or prompt me with His Spirit to pray for certain people, but when I do not feel Him, it is not for me a problem. God, by definition, is the ultimate good, and whenever I align myself to do good, I am aligning myself with God, despite my "feelings." Of course, I would still want to do it for His sake, but Jesus says to identify Him with the least.

Perhaps though, there is a correlation between my emotional walk and my intellectual walk (as if I was so naive as to think that they could possibly be separated!). But, at the end of the day, before I sleep, my thoughts wander to questions and prayers. I pray that God would lead me in the right intellectual path, to ultimately lead me through life as the true Head. But immediately, I am swayed; What about "this?" What about "that?" How does this go against the Gospel as I understand it? How does it support it? Is it Orthodox (I use this word now with a sense of militant impatience)?

The doubts begin, quite literally, "In the Beginning", Genesis. The Documentary Hypothesis, which in its traditional form has been largely modified, really exploded my paradigm of the Pentateuch and what it means for Scripture to be "inspired." Then came the other ancient Mesopotamian myths whose connections to the "supposedly-unique" story of creation placed the first two chapters of Genesis firmly in the Mesopotamian myth category, although, of course, with its own developments. Following this was the dissolution of the much-revered "historicity" of the Pentateuch. Although the Pentateuch is ostensibly "historical," it is only in appearance, and a good chunk of it is not relating history, but aetiology, ideology, and theology. This is bolstered by archaeological digs that largely disproved the Israelite Canaanite conquests. And finally, The Art of Biblical Narrative, by Robert Alter, cemented the literary aspects of the Pentateuch in a manner that made it clear that the book is literature, not history. (I don't want to talk about the problems with historiography here). Despite all this, I still hold, by sheer will or choice, to believe that the Old Testament is still the inspired Word of God; in what form, I do not yet know, but, at least in the Pentateuch, historically is out of the picture. I now see the books themselves as products of history, and not simply relating history.

I am questioning even the concept of the "canon", though my thoughts should develop first before I talk about it. (I think it would be an interesting essay topic at least!)

As for the Bible, I can hold it as the authoritative Word of God and doctrinally infallible, but I cannot hold it to be historically infallible. (Perhaps this is an untenable position though). What I am hindered by is that the Bible (there it is again, the "canon!") is not the stopping point. It relates a historical event, and meaning is attached only after the historical moment. When Jesus was raised from the dead in that cave, the Marys (or Peter, or other disciples, who exactly was it?) only could respond in astonishment. Meaning about the resurrection was only attributed later, and most dominately in our minds, by Paul, this mysterious Jew. Can I believe in the historical moment but not the interpretation of that moment, since the interepretation is itself a product of history, and thus an approximation? Where can I find ground? (Perhaps it lays in Jesus' self-claim, "I am the way, the truth!, the life)

I do not yet want to talk about the gospels, or the "Historical Jesus," but just to rant a little here. I am tired of Christians saying that "Christianity is a relationship not a religion." That is so stupid. Of course it's a relationship, but it fits within certain doctrinal limits. This theological system is a part of the definition of religion, though not its whole. Another FB group that I saw read, "The Historical Jesus is the Jesus of Faith!" I do not think the creator of the group really understood what that means or what far reaching consequences there seems to be. The first time I went across that board, I was instinctly going to join it; Of course He is! What else could He be? But now, I scoff. There needs to be a reason behind it, other than simply faith.

Hope this was not too depressing.

Firmly in Christ,

Jae Han

_____________________________________________

In other news, I am still tutoring and using most of my days reviewing my Hebrew (it's coming along slowly but surely) and reading, and have very-somewhat successfully read the first chapters of Genesis! *pat pat. I think I've given up on the idea of book review (I know, I'm a flake) particularly because I don't know exactly what to say about them, except in the most juvenile way, "I LIKE IT! IT WAS SUPER NEATO!" I am right now reading two books, E.P. Sanders The Historical Jesus, which I do not think is all that great (although to be honest I think I was spoiled by Meier's Marginal Jew) and after reading Prof. Kaufmann's preface, also Martin Buber's I and Thou. I really wish I brought my other Alter and Kugel book, the ones that I found IN THE TRASH on moveout day (it isn't coincidence!) but I simply have to read them later. I am also interested in "Narrative Theology" or what wiki calls "Postliberal Theology" so if any of my MANY MANY readers happen to know of any books, please let me know. (I was tempted to buy yet another book on Narrative Theory called, "The Nature of Narrative" but decided against it. Now I regret it.) I also feel like I should read The Brother Karamazov, not really because I want to, but because everyone smart I know has read it. Peer pressure, I thought I was over middle school. Aside from that, I have rediscovered my love for Chaim Potok, The Chosen, The Gift of Asher Lev, and so on. It turns out that Potok was highly critical of Buber's romantic take on Hasidism! And speaking of Jews, apparently there is a showing of Fiddler on the Roof in the OC Performing Arts Center. Whee. My life is so exciting! :)

To life, to life, L'chaim!

2009-07-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

It's often so easy to forget our thirst for God. It had been a while that I had prayed, but tonight, it suddenly struck me that I had not spent time with my Beloved. What had happened in these short months after graduation?

The Holy Spirit is truly alive, and our Father is more than willing to supply when we ask.

Our Father gives us peace when we need it, and he sustains us with his Spirit. Every problem, every issue, every sin, He takes our filth, our needy petitions, and accepts them. Though they are far beneath what He deserves, He willingly takes them up with careful ear and sends His Spirit and angels to minister. He refreshes us, and He is good. He provides joy especially when there is none. It is good to adore Him!

As a side note, the devil hates it when you will to be with God. He will do little tricks to make you forget, even until the very last moment. As I was walking to the room to pray, all of a sudden there was a loud crash in the bathroom and the hair dryer was on max volume. Of course, this could be coincidence, but the timing was too impeccable. This happens often, actually, although sometimes in a harmless guise.

Book Review: A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus

2009-07-20T22:41:00.000-07:00

Review of John P. Meier's, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus

John Meier, in appropriate keeping with Historical Jesus questers, warns us up front of the challenges that really shades this field of research. The picture of Jesus that he draws so far for us in this book, in keeping with the methodological rigor, is someone who is quite "marginal" - someone in the social periphery. This Jesus was, even during his ministry, someone who stayed in that periphery until his fateful clash with authorities. This book is still only the first of Meier's as-of-yet incomplete corpus, but it clearly outlines Meier's sensitivity to ancient texts and his dialogue with other historical Jesus scholarship, particularly butting heads with "sensationalist" writers.

I am, however, most taken in by what I had referred to as Meier's methodological rigor, particularly the criteria that he uses to sift fact from "fiction" in the Jesus narratives. Particularly because of the sensitive faith issues, Meier is careful to not use the word "fiction" but simply relegates such material as unprovable or matters of faith. But, I think, he is fair in this matter: Just as he rejects the Gnostic texts, including the Gospel of Thomas, he rejects the Genealogies of Jesus as bereft of information for the Historical Jesus, though for different reasons.

To give an example of one of his criteria, he cites the Criterion of Embarassment. This is basically any of the "hard" truths that would have been embarassing to the early church but had become too connected to the historical figure of Jesus to be discarded. These could be phrases, actions, etc. For example, the phrase, "I have a dream" is forever associated with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; It is the same with Jesus as an inferior when he is openly baptised by John the Baptist, for the "baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins." Particularly fascinating, for me, is the claim that such actions/words traceable to Jesus remained within the tradition because of a strong "conservative" force within the religious body (however it might have looked like). I imagine a coalition of the "oldies" (A Mary or two, Peter, James, maybe Paul will pop up now and again. Thomas would of course be somewhere in India) mentoring the newbies.

I do not want to write too much about it, since it really is something that you should read on your own, but one minor detail: I really wish that it was written in paperback. It's quite large and difficult to carry around. Also, the book itself is quite short: it is the endnotes that take up a good half of the book. Still, if you're interested in this kind of stuff, this is a must-read. It's rigor and attribute to detail is really great.

BTW, Meier's is a Catholic Priest. :)

Denominational Thinking

2009-07-13T23:43:00.000-07:00

Lately, I have been really thinking about joining a certain "denomination." I have said I have "grown up in the Church" without realizing, at least at the human level, what the "Church" is or was. I'm tired of this groundlessness. Maybe, I am just tired of wandering. I want certainty and authority.

I have been growing more and more attracted to the High Churches, yet perhaps for the wrong reasons. I find the rituals, the incense, the "religion" that Protestantism has long branded as "dead" or "irreligious" to be beautiful in its austerity and somberness to God. The awesome and holy God is sometimes forgotten in our (youth Protestantism) expression of worship.

I have entertained Catholicism, but I do not think I can force myself to believe in the theological "baggage" that it entails. Of course, there are the schismatic priests, the defiers of Tradition and Pope, but I wouldn't want to be that kind of Catholic, much preferring this quasi- nondenominationalism to war. But, I cannot deny the beauty of Mass, the communal songs (though not many sing along!) the haunting simple songs (Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!) and the procession of the crucified God. Again, though, I detect in myself an affinity towards a certain type of romantic religion, a constructed emotional religion, that I ought to expel at its root.

There is no true anchor but Christ! No other head!

_______________________________________________

I have finished reading Meier's book, and have started Alter's, The Art of Biblical Narrative. I will try to review, or at least summarize the former, but Alter's book is really really good. :)

Excerpts from A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus

2009-07-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

These are found in the chapter titled, Conclusion to Part One: Why Bother?

Funny Quote:

Fundamentalists object to the quest for the exact opposite reason: the historical Jesus is naively equated with the Jesus presented in all Four Gospels. All tensions and contradictions in the four narratives are harmonized by hilarious mental acrobatics. (197)

Good Quote:

Against any attempt to 'domesticate' Jesus for a comfortable, respectable bourgeois Christianity, the quest for the historical Jesus, almost from its inception, has tended to emphasize the embarassing, noncomformist aspects of Jesus: e.g., his association with the religious and social 'lowlife' of Palestine, his prophetic critique of external religious observances that ignore or strangle the inner spirit of religion, his opposition to certain religious authorities, especially the Jerusalem priesthood. (199)

I-don't-get-it Quote:

Like good sociology, the historical Jesus subverts not just some ideologies, but all ideologies, including liberation theology. (199)

Book Review: Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament

2009-07-08T21:03:00.001-07:00

Review of Peter Enns', Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament

Many people have recommended this book to me because of my present interest in the Old Testament. The author, Peter Enns, is a controversial figure in the theological world at the moment. A 14-year professor at Westminster Seminary, he resigned/was fired partly due to flack from this book, though it was voted within orthodox boundaries. Quite aware of this antagonizing atmosphere, Peter Enns urges readers in his epilogue to be humble, loving, and patient when dealing with such (I think) enormous theological endeavors. He is right, though. It seems that modern understandings of the OT relationship to Christ is in dire need of development, especially in light of the 20th century discoveries. (or, I really need to read more. Probably this).

Thesis of the essay: We accept the OT for what it is. Not simply a text that records history, but one that operates under its surrounding near eastern culture. Just as Christ became man, to condescend to our level, the Book does the same, being incarnated into the world in the guise of the world so that it might have a potent message for the world. This, Enns calls "Incarnational Theology." In a sense, the logos of Christ is incarnated into the Bible, and as such, it takes the form of human endeavors full of human fingerprints. The OT is no Qu'ran.

Though the book is certainly an interesting read, I am not currently sure if I am altogether willing to approve of incarnational theology as the starting place for such the endeavor. Enns, he confesses outright, is not trying to say definitively how we ought to think, but only to get the ball roling.

In Incarnational Theology, Enns kinds of just drops this on the reader, and although I am sure that its theology has been developed somewhere, it just doesn't seem to me very convincing. This might be because two reasons. a) it seems a bit of a cop out since it doesn't necessarily have to be about the Bible as an Incarnation, but rather, simply a Christ-like Parallel to the Incarnation of Christ. It is simple and elegant, though (two things that can never be trusted! *shifty eyes). b) there is no Criteria provided why it is only the OT that must be considered under "Incarnational Theology." Why not the Iliad, or the Odyssey? Or a Upanishads? It seems to me that there needs to be boundaries provided in which Incarnational Theology is the appropriate "type" of theological device to use. Just because it fits for the OT doesn't preclude its match with other religious texts.

I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with this statement:

"The reality of the crucified and rise Christ is both the beginning and end of biblical interpretation." (Enns, 163)

In a way though, Scripture, precisely because it is written from a or many perspectives, serves as a dynamic interface between the historical moment and its interpretation. The moment inspires the interpretation of that moment, incarnated into Scripture, while Scripture points back to the reality of that moment.

Of course, there are problems with this as well, the largest being the serious claim that the identity of this perspective is not, in fact, God, but the human redactors of the OT. Faith in God then is kind of just topped on top of these very human redactors, making God the proverbial cherry atop ice cream. Enns solves this by pointing to Christotelic Hermeneutics, showing that regardless of their intent, Christ is the culmination and the climax of the OT. (What does this mean for the many many Christian prefigurements?) Also, how do we do justice to the original setting of the book and the authorial intent while still agreeing applying Christotelic Hermeneutics? Is it simply a book of "Create-your-own-adventure?"

Another problem is, if we see the moment interpreted by the author of a book, that author must be speaking out from his own sitz im leben (life setting). Then why should I trust the normative prescriptions of someone else' sitz im leben? The Bible ceases to be the absolute point of moral departure if we see the Bible as interpretation of a specific moment in time. (I can hear the objections flooding in). Only when the Bible is seen as out-of-time, or time-less, and not pertaining to a moment but to all humanity, can we agree that the prescribed morals are indeed even appropriate for our age. (Of course, I would make distinctions between the Jesus' own words and the apostles, as even Paul is careful to note, "Not I, but the Lord" and "Not the Lord, but I") .

I think I could write an essay on what could be fleshed out in the book, but since it is summer time, I'll refrain.

Verdict: Read it if you're interested in this field, but stay far away from it if you just don't care. If you're not interested and you read it, or if you're not a Christian, it might not serve you very well. If you are interested, read the book and join the conversation.

Next Book to be Reviewed: John P. Meier's, A Marginal Jew

Following: Robert Alter's, The Art of Biblical Narrative

(In these long summer days, I am very quickly running out of books: Recommendations welcome!)

A Scene from Dr. Faustus

2009-07-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

A Conversation between the human Dr. Faustus, willing slave of the devil, and the demon Mephistophilis, reluctant slave of the devil.

Faustus

How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

Mephistophilis

Why this is hell(!) nor am I out of it.

Think'st thou that I that saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal joys of heaven

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,

In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

O, Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,

Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.

Faustus

What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate

For being deprived of the joys of heaven?

Learn thou of Faustus' manly fortitude,

And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.

Go bear these tidings to great Lucifer,

Seeing Faustus hath incurred eternal death,

By desperate thoughts against Jove's deity.

Say he surrenders up to him his soul,

So he will spare him four and twenty years,

Letting him live in all voluptuousness,

Having thee ever to attend on me,

To give me whatsoever I shall ask,

To tell me whatsoever I demand,

To slay mine enemies, and to aid my friends,

And always be obedient to my will.

Go, and return to mighty Lucifer,

And meet me in my study, at midnight,

And then resolve me of thy master's mind.

Mephistophilis

I will, Faustus. Exit.

...

Faustus

I think hell's a fable.

Mephistophilis

Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind.

Book Review: How to Read the Bible

2009-07-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

Review of James L. Kugel's, How to Read the Bible:

This book carefully goes through the entire Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible, or Semitic Bible, or whatever you'd like to call it) gently juxtaposing both ancient and modern (aka, academic) interpretations. I say that he does it "gently" because this book is full of his own questions about the nature of the Bible and how we ought to read it or conceive of it in light of what we know now. James Kugel, an Orthodox Jew, is extremely sensitive to what this means to not only the practicing Jew, but also to the Christian as he or she tries to understand the inter-testamental relationship. He asks many of the questions that have been churning about in my own head, though does not propose solutions. He is after all, not a theologian...

His thesis is that the modern and ancient interpretations are irreconciliable. They cannot be forced into the same categorical box. This is undeniably true. The OT was never meant to be a historical document (aside from the problem of what good historiography should look like in the first place) and there is no way to divorce Genesis 1 & 2 from the Ancient Near Eastern myths (or for that matter, the Deuteronomic laws, the Temple, Wisdom literature, Prophethood, the names of God, and many other similarities with surrounding ancient myths). In fact, many arguments that try to uphold the "historicity" (again, what does this mean?) of the text fall flat on their face or are simply laughable.

As for the actual content of the book, it is really an introduction to the various theories or scholarly opinions (really, consensuses) of the Old Testament. Document Hypothesis (and all its modifications), Source criticism, Etiological narratives, Archaeological refutations, etc., are all things that have thoroughly trounced the modern lay perspective that the OT is somehow more "divine" then "human." (So far, Enns does addres this with his concept of Incarnational Theology, but I'm not fully convinced that is the way to go...) In fact, the OT is a very human document full of human fingerprints; of course, this does not in any way preclude that the hands were not God's.

So, the questions still remain. However, after this book and as I read Enns, I am increasingly doubtful about the concept of the "canon" more than anything else. Canon as an authoritative, closed book I can accept, but its natural reflex, which is the inter-testamental, "scripture reading scripture" hermeneutics immediately becomes suspect. Regardless, scripture must be a written from someone's perspective. Something must change in the way I (we?) understand scripture, though I'm just not sure what.

Verdict: Sensitive, Captivating, Enormous erudition behind the enormous book (what else to expect from a Harvard prof?); Guaranteed to make you think twice about the way you look at the OT and its relationship to the NT, especially if you have not been exposed to OT studies. There is room for Jewish-Christian dialogue in this book. Also stresses the point that we don't necessarily simply believe in the Bible, but we believe in an interpretation of the Bible. Read it, if you have the time, or if you want to risk being bit by the bible bug. :)

Next Book to be reviewed: Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament

Following: John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus

Book Review: The Reason for God

2009-07-06T18:52:00.001-07:00

I am going to try and keep myself to this project largely so that I can retain what I've learned through the books.

Review of Tim Keller's The Reason for God:

While reading this book it immediately becomes clear that Rev. Keller is casting a wide net to reach a diverse (yet strangely similar) crowd. It reads like an engaging sermon, full of personal anecdotes and references to books that his urbane crowd is undoubtedly familiar with. The projected audience is sophisticated, secular with spiritual leanings, not too keen on abandoning all religious affiliation, yet at the same time trying to cope with an palpable sense of cosmopolitanism. To me, he provides a breath of fresh air by really pushing aside what people think Christianity is, and what Rev. Keller proposes it actually is. By and large, I think he does a decent job at expelling the (erroneous, or otherwise inconsistent) philosophical underpinnings of modern man's qualms with religion and proposing the gospel as something not only true (historically), but as an ideal that even if one could not believe in, one ought to want to believe in.

His argument proceeds simply by first attacking philosophical underpinnings of what his urbane audience hold and reaching (a surprising, but true) conclusion that their beliefs are completely arbitrary. However, this is where it begins to fall apart. Perhaps it is precisely because he is trying to reach out to so many people, or maybe he has just dug himself a hole, but Rev. Keller fails to adequately explain why the philosophical underpinnings or simple assumptions of Christianity are not arbitrary and/or are true.

The worldview that he speaks from, of course, is biblical. However, there is little if any satisfactory explanation of why the Bible is (or why we should believe the Bible is) a proper medium of divine revelation and transmission. Admittedly, this seems to be a gaping hole in theology especially with convincing explanations for the purpose and transmission of the Bible (Don't worry, I am currently reading Enns), but it must be addressed. Rev. Keller's presuppositions are biblical, but there is no charge given why we ought to believe in the Bible as he sees it. Or perhaps someone might argue and say, "But Jae, he wasn't trying to say something about the Bible, but the reality of the events that lead up to the composition of the various books" but that itself is a large question itself.

I cannot help but think, "That's it?" when I finish reading this book. Rev. Keller was, admittedly, speaking from his own decades-long experience when composing this book. He was not, I do not think, producing an academic paper. He is deeply committed to the heart of the issue: the historical reality of the resurrection and the ontological reality of a triune God, both things that are very necessary to Christian faith, yet those do not come without its own set of presuppositions. Just to be clear, I agree with him on many things by faith (and not by a thorough understanding of the topic itself. Perhaps that is simply blind irrationale?). There are various other things that I (gingerly) disagree, particularly his claim of Christianity's soteriological uniqueness and Moral Obligation, but overall, there needs to be a more robust understanding of these topics before I am fully willing to wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately, this might take an entire forest of paper and might not happen till the eschaton.

Verdict: Good introductory book, breathes life into contemporary objections to religion, (though not necessarily Christianity), but skimps out on very fundamental issues of transmission and reliability. Particularly troubling is the lack of any discussion of Old Testament material. But, admittedly, that wasn't his aim.

Next Book to be Reviewed: James L. Kugel's, How to Read the Bible
Following: Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation

Home(?) Again

2009-06-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

It always strikes me that I really do not understand what it means to be at home. When you go home, I imagine there to be a sense of relief, "comfort" not in purely the convenient sense, but in a deeper current, a sanctuary even. To me, the ring of "home" has no current meaning and I placed it in the extremities of time (Eden and New Jerusalem). In fact, "home" seems oddly constructed and even unnatural, though I know it is not the case.

I return "home" to a new house, with a woman and two kids I have never spent more than an hour with prior my arrival. I have no place of my own, no history embedded in these walls or floors, no memories of these people, and more importantly, no memories of this new family formed through its rough collisions. We are currently softening the residue of these collisions, but I think it will be incomplete even after the children had left. There is just too much history that cannot be forgotten; there is no Pandora's safe and history has a way of catching up to the present. Hopefully the force of time and human kinship will knit strands of familial connectiveness.

In this new home, I sleep in the living room (the common room?) next to the wall; downstairs, as my new brothers and old brother sleep above, with my father and my new "mother" (purely in the legal sense). This is not a complaint. Once again, this is not a complaint. But certainly, this is not home.

They are good people. She is too nice to her children, my dad too old to begin the long process of discipline. The children are happy, at least the youngest one is. The middles ones need to recognize the other as human, but they have four years to work on that.

In the meantime, I also graduated two weeks ago. I do not think it will "hit" me until the next time I see my peers, which is as always, "soon." At this point, I do not actually "miss" anyone, I think. It is simply a fact of life that people move away; we are largely passive creatures in that way, making our way through life alone, though people flit in and out. It proves that humans make weak anchors; there is only one foundation that is reliable, only one person. But then again, I think maybe this is only a condition that I placed on myself; perhaps for people who are good at keeping in touch with others, it is not like that. I don't know, but it certainly gives me pause to think about the weight I place on relationships. During our DR trip, the guys and I said that we would all actively try to pursue relationships, platonic and romantic. Peter already had us beat. *Cue Beyonce's, "All My Single Ladies."

On to lighter matters, I am trying to plan a roadtrip to San Diego and to Seattle from LA. Anyone wanna come? :)

in Jesus Christ,

Jae Han

sanctification

2009-04-22T03:21:00.001-07:00

It's 6 21 AM. I can't sleep. Maybe it's the coffee that I drank hours ago coupled with this new preoccupation of mine.

I've thought about what it means to be holy, what it means to be sacred, and finally, what it means to be perfect.

It boils down to one question.

Can God be "holy" (q d s) without His angels or humans, or without a multiplicity within His own nature?

The answer is:

No.

Because "holiness" is otherness, and otherness must be affirmed by more than one.
YHWH cannot be holy without the Angelic trihagion.
God, manifested in three persons as the Trinity (or at least, a binitarianism), must have multiple persons within Himself in order to declare His own "holiness."

This leads to the question: What exactly "is" holiness?
Is it goodness? No, because then it would be called... well, goodness.
Is it piety? No, for the same reason.
Is it an idealized, spiritualized, and necessarily transcendent form of these virtues attributed to God? Probably not; other things can be holy too, like, the "Holy Bible" which is a book and does not have the consciousness or personality necessary to act on these virtues (because... well, it's a book)

Holiness is simply "otherness" transferred through the creation/process of God as the creator to the created. I am holy only because God has "made" me holy (again).

Sacredness, on the other hand, is the same model of "transferrance" but not necessarily with God as the creator; it is a lower level with "man" as the creator. Thus, we can call civic religion "sacred" or beautiful art "sacred" or even children "sacred" simply because the existing people transfer the sacredness to them.

The emergence of the sacred and the Holy are both co-emergent developments. They are self-contained processes within themselves, thus they are necessarily "other" to outside people.

6 31 AM: Time to try and sleep.

2009-04-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

today i went out to go study, but as soon as i went out i was hit with a wave of groundlessness; i didn't know where to go. usually its because there are so many places to study that the options themselves become the paralysis, but this time, i just felt like there was nothing keeping me grounded. i felt like i was homeless; consequently, i did all the little things that ive been neglecting, mainly cleaning out my carrel, but after that i decided to find another place to study, etc. eventually, i kept on walking around and around, down witherspoon, up and around, through holder, etc., eventually going all the way down to frist. there was just a sense of impermanence and i just didn't want to stop "going" a frustration or a nostalgia for a place that i have never been. it felt like i was wandering all around, trodding the same steps that i had been through before, some in new and some in old ways. hm.

no suffering too deep that is not undercut by joy

2009-03-31T23:18:00.001-07:00

Hallelu-Jah, anyhow (anyhow)
Never never never let your troubles get you down (get you down)
when life troubles comes your way
hold up your head up high and say,
Hallelu-Jah, anyhow!

Perhaps this song is too naive.

"This too shall pass"

Complete Change in Topic

2009-03-27T23:09:00.000-07:00

There is no more displeasure between me and God.
If there is, it's only from my end.
Even when I sin, God does not see it, but He sees His Son instead, and is pleased.
Hence, there is no reciprocal displeasure, but only one-sided displeasure,
and it's always from me.

Amy asked me what I would be like if I wasn't a Christian .
Impulsive, angry, bitter, rash, violent, all come to mind.
But the thing is, the dead man rises from the grave a bit too often.
I have felt all of these since coming "home."
It'd funny how families work like that, bringing out the worst in you so quickly.

The more I realize how fast change approaches, the more I realize that it is only Jesus who is the anchor of my life; He is my idyllic past and my hopeful future.

On Korea and Korean-Americans

2009-03-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

This represents my views on Korea as a Korean-American as of now.

Korea is shrouded for me somewhere between a mythical Eden and my own self-constructed experiences, fragments of inchoate memories that never focus. That is Korea for me. However, Koreans are not from that land. Koreans, and if you're Korean or a particularly perceptive foreigner, you'll understand me when I say this, Korean-Koreans are for the most part alien to me; the social-hierarchical etiquette is irrational (age never equates to respect, though there might be a general correlation), their pop-culture is for the most part simply embarassing, and though I feel it in me as well, its inclusivity and introspection, largely hailed as a remnant of past backward generations, seem to makes itself felt experientially, though it is not embedded within belief-systems. In other words, Korean think too much about other Korean and does not seem to be comfortable in a cosmopolitan world; it is simply a form of mental sadaejuii.

I was joking on the car ride to retreat and a Korean female singer came on, sounding exactly like Alanis Morisette. Another female group, the "Afterschool" (so hot) group is boldly and explicitly proclaimed as a "Pussycat Dolls" derivative. Another group, "Stony Skunk" is clearly a ludicrous crossover between Jamaican reggae and Korean lyricism. (Just realized all my examples pertain to music) This is a form of cultural theft, stealing from a dominant culture without reciprocating.

(TBC)

Grace

2009-03-18T23:53:00.000-07:00

All your sins are forgiven
Past, Present, Future
How many of your sins?
All of your sins.

I don't confess my sins to get right with God,
I confess my sins because I'm already right with God.
Even sin can't keep me far from God.
I am the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ.
When I sin now, God looks at me and says, "My Son already paid for that. Now stop."

It is true, but it's so good to be true.
We are righteous now, we are holy now, we have the inheritance now.
Doesn't this give us license to sin?

"By no means!" (3x)

You are righteous, even when you sin!
You are righteous, even when you sin!
God never condemns you when you're in Christ.
Because all of God's wrath was put on His Son.
There is no more condemnation in Christ.
None, not from the past, present, or in the future.

All is grace.

"You will never be passionate for Christ, unless you know how much Christ is passionate for you."
Start praying prayers that are impossible.

This all I believe. Then, how did I get so callous, dull, apathetic?
Pray impossible things, and step out in power.
Father help me to do that. I need courage.

Grace is too small a word for the infinite goodness that it is!

Sometimes I feel...

2009-03-16T19:29:00.000-07:00

I love Black Spirituals.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long long way from home.

Hmm and Rawr

2009-03-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

Everything in the present is mundane. Meaning is only attributed later.
The most important event in history was the resurrection of Jesus.
Yet, if I were in that tomb when He was resurrected, I would have been simply surprised.
I would not know that it meant a cosmological restoration, the redemption of mankind, etc.

Then there are two options.
1) Meaning is artificial.
2) We lack the capacity to see meaning at the present time.

Reason says one, faith says two.

?

In other news:

Today is one of those days when you want to just start a fight and punch people in the face. I like to think I'm a nice person most the time, but the old man fights back pretty strong. It's probably just because I'm tired, but recently, people have just been getting on my nerves, even for minor things. I'm tired of being patient and sometimes I just want to be left completely alone. I don't want to care about your situation. I do not want to hear your problems all the time. I'm tired of thinking all the time, being stressed out for other people, worried about other people. I want to be a solipsist, an island. I don't want to be attached to anyone and I don't want people to be attached to me. Loosy Goosy, wouldn't it be easy? Float through life like a balloon; it's a lie though, you know it and I do too.

How do priests and pastors do it? How is it possible to be a Christian all the time, to bear one another's burdens? I have my own burdens to bear, and they're enough for two.

"My yoke is easy and I am lowly in heart."
Then why is it so hard so many times?

Sigh. I should pray more.

That Scoundrel!

2009-02-10T00:32:00.000-08:00

I've realized that nearly everything that I thought was original and novel has already been conceived, developed, and much more beautifully elaborated upon by Blaise Pascal. Thanks, buddy.

Jae Han

5:17 AM

2009-02-08T02:17:00.001-08:00

Pastor Jae said never to make entries early in the morning when the brain isn't functioning.

I think he's right.

Good night.

What I meant to say...

2009-02-03T23:20:00.000-08:00

Suffering is real; very real, and by stating this, I reject all forms of oriental thought on suffering. There is no Yang nor is it an illusion (and thus, making escapism the only soteriological method). It is real, and people suffer. However, Jesus on the cross seized not the reality of suffering, but suffering itself. For the Christian, suffering itself, though extant, is now recapitulated, analyzed, and defeated by its antithesis and conqueror, joy. There is no place for the Christian in which joy is outmatched by suffering, or which channels of joy are undercut by suffering. And, irony of ironies, our suffering itself becomes infused and expanded by joy, since it is now a method of our Father's rebuke, and, He only rebukes those whom he loves. Our appropriate response, as always, is to be joyful!

Be joyful always; God adores a cheerful giver; Joyful beyond our understanding;
Meditate on His true promises and be filled with the joy in knowing that He is capable! Eternal life, companionship, love, acceptance, community. If we are filled with joy at this earthly level of promises, how much more will our joy be when we have perfection in all those aspects?

And as always, there is no middle ground.