RECLAIMING THE IMAGO DEI THROUGH THE TURBULENT SEAS OF COVID-19 AND WHITE PRIVILEGE | PART 3

July 21, 2020 by Chong Kim

BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 3 OF 4

Control Through Certainty and Effectiveness

Reflecting on our current participation in missio dei, I’d like for us to consider the detrimental effects of how our drive toward certainty betrays the very concept of imago dei. The drive and even obsession toward certainty creates elitism and perhaps unintended “class system.” It inevitably creates and draws the line of who is right and who is wrong—driving toward orthodoxy as if there is one supreme orthodoxy! The areas of certainty undoubtedly stem first and foremost from unattainable theological certainty and spill into areas of systems of how missions is done and should be done. Our concept of God can never amount to God. Our idea of God is not God. God is so much bigger than what Christianity claims God to be. God refuses to be contained in a religious box! God’s altar cannot be confined to churches or cathedrals or mosques, but the whole world is teeming with the wideness and wildness of God’s “wholly” presence.

Certainty exists when the world is built on simplicity. (Here, I am certainly J not saying that there isn’t any certainty in the world.) We’ve become more aware of the fact that life and the world are complex, more complex and mysterious than we care to admit. Recent books by Gregory Boyd and Peter Enns described certainty as an “idol” and “sin” respectively.[1] Paul Tillich’s seminal book[2] ends with this italicized sentence, “The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.” These books show that doubt is not the enemy of faith, but certainty is. Doubt is a natural and integral process of the spiritual journey. The drive toward certainty at its worst can translate into control and even manipulations, often disguised as carefully constructed “effective” systems.

Effectiveness is a top currency of modern progress. Bible addresses faithfulness, sometimes even against being effective. The actuating force toward effectiveness showcases itself as results (or fruits) driven, which has its roots in money, which also translates into control. If the results or fruits are the natural outcome of faithfulness, we ought to be glad and rejoice. Fruits are God’s gifts of encouragement to us, affirming that we are on the right path. However, our posture should be fundamentally that of seeking faithfulness, not effectiveness. Bible also portrays God’s love as never possessive or controlling, which is to say God’s love is unconditional. Can you imagine God operating out of effectiveness?

Imago Dei as a Foundation for Missio Dei

What then are some implications for embracing imago dei as a foundation for missio dei? Right off the bat, it levels the playing field, as it were. Nobody is above or below, in or out, with or without. We are all created in the image of God and the likeness of God. No exceptions. This foundationally should change how we relate to one another as fellow human beings. (We are human beings, not human doings, by the way.) This leads to the biblical concept and image of all humanity as fellow pilgrims and sojourners toward union with God. As we know, the concept of imago dei (Gen 1:26) is closely followed by the cultural mandate (Gen 1:28). The cultural mandate is a natural outflow of action from the reality and vision of imago dei. In other words, promoting the cultural mandate without the foundational assertion of imago dei can easily be distorted and dangerous in such ways that it can tilt and favor certain race over the others.

Paul Hiebert’s assertion of “centered set model” (over “bounded set”) some 40 years ago is a helpful framework with a couple of cautions. One is that while affirming that Jesus Christ is at the “center,” we dare not add our own theological convictions. The other is a precaution that no one (or group) judges who is moving closer to the center, who is going sideways, or who is going astray. If we are not careful, it can easily turn into a judgment game of who is closer. I understand this language of “moving closer to the center” is significantly better expression than “who is in or out.” Even then, it requires humility and vulnerability of our journey of all from all. Furthermore, Paul Hiebert’s addition of “self-theologizing” as the fourth self along with earlier foundation of the “three-self principle” proves intelligible for embracing imago dei. In other words, the concept of imago dei is the starting point for the four-self principle. Without this understanding, four-self principle morphs into a mere behavioral list of what to do or what not to do. Mike Stroope’s book, Transcending Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition, where he encourages the use of the words like pilgrim, witness, and the kingdom is quite helpful. In this vein, I am continually in favor of “alongsider” language.

[1] Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty by Gregory Boyd was published in 2013. The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our “Correct” Beliefs by Peter Enns in 2017.

[2] Courage To Be was published in 1952.

RECLAIMING THE IMAGO DEI THROUGH THE TURBULENT SEAS OF COVID-19 AND WHITE PRIVILEGE | PART 2

July 14, 2020 by Chong Kim

BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 2 OF 4

This spiritual drive originates from the truth that all human beings are created in the image and the likeness of the Triune God. From the “community of producers” of God, each of us were created in the image and the likeness of God. The end of spiritual journey is to be in union with God (transformed into the likeness of God), thus fulfilling the vision of imago dei. The Gospel of John confirms the narrative this vision unlike any other book of the Bible, highlighted by Jesus’ prayer of union at Gethsemane.

What would happen if current and future missions endeavors (our participation in missio dei) were to be launched out of the imago dei? The so-called “Third World Missions” phenomenon started in 1970s (though there were earlier pockets of this phenomenon, the decade of 1970s is widely accepted to be the beginning of the movement) and thus within in our lifetime. Even the “global” colonization drive and craze is only one generation removed. My parents still remember living under the Japanese occupation. In U.S., it is uncovering and helpfully exposing the systemic stronghold of the white privilege and white supremacy mentality that has seeped into so many layers of the society ever since the founding days of the nation. White privilege is “a sociological concept referring to advantages that are taken for granted by whites and that cannot be similarly enjoyed by people of color in the same context,” writes Robin DiAngelo, in her book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People to Talk About Racism. Charles W. Mills in his book, The Racial Contract, defines white supremacy as “the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today.” As I write this paper, U.S. is experiencing dozens of irenic protests and contentious outbursts of anger and mayhem all over the nation (and around the world), notably sparked by the latest incident of incidents--the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. His dying words, “I can’t breathe,” may have prophetic utterance on global societal consciousness as well as missional consciousness that is built on white privilege and supremacy.

The current impact of U.S.’s clumsy dealings with COVID 19 is aiding deglobalization, which is synonymous with dewesternization. The current missions endeavor is a milder or more sophisticated extension of the blatant western colonization which existed not too long ago.[1] In other words, no one would dare to admit publicly that the current missions effort is another form of westernization based on white privilege. To be sure, the Protestant missions effort was launched right from the colonial context of western dominance and privilege. I would be quick to affirm that we have made tremendous progress toward equality and integrity of the vision of imago dei—that all are created in God’s image and likeness and that no one is above or below, in or out, or with or without. Even then, there are subtle nuances and remnants of white or western privilege at work. At the same time, the flavor of the Church globally remains generally western, and sometimes the Church in the majority world remains more western than the West. It is a highly complex web of reality and thus I am not isolating western as simply the West.

[1] To be fair, I accept and understand that not everything in western colonialism was inherently bad. Even then, the colonialism in general promoted and maintained a belief and system of advantage based on race.

RECLAIMING THE IMAGO DEI THROUGH THE TURBULENT SEAS OF COVID-19 AND WHITE PRIVILEGE

July 07, 2020 by Chong Kim

I was asked by Bangkok Forum (Bangkok Forum is the name of the annual consultation of Korean mission leaders to evaluate and suggest ways forward in improving Korean mission effort) to write a paper on how COVID-19 impacts and alters the Korean mission movement. Seeing COVID-19 as an opportunity to change, my angle was to reexamine and question foundational and systemic ways of doing missions. As I began to work on the paper, George Floyd’s brutal killing took place on May 25.

I see COVID-19 decelerating and perhaps forever altering the shape of the globalization drive, which I say in my paper is synonymous with dewesternization. Westernization is based on white privilege and supremacy. It is designed to perpetuate and maintain the status quo of white dominance. Yes, the missions arena is no exception. This process of dewesternization is a welcome change. To be sure, the idea of dewesternization is not new, but the root of systemic white privilege and supremacy has not been adequately exposed and transformed. Thus, dewesternization can be viewed as one of the least common denominators for both COVID-19 and the impact of the death of George Floyd. If this is true or close to being true, then we stand before a historic opportunity and call to reclaim the concept of imago dei (the image of God) which Richard Rohr calls “the original blessing.” I will be sharing this paper with you in 4 part series.

Thank you for reading and reflecting!

BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 1 OF 4

COVID-19 is like a colossal and unpredictable hurricane that is wreaking havoc on countless lives, and systems and consequential ideologies both on societal and global levels. It is unlike we have ever seen in anybody’s lifetime. One area that has been dealt a significant blow is how people “do their religions.”

There has been enough distance both physically and mentally (and should I also say fundamentally) from regular religious activities for the last several months that many are asking what their religious participation really means for them in their everyday life. This period of quiescence and pause is doing us a service of creating sparks of epiphany for many to realize that their religiosity and spirituality do not necessarily mean the same thing. What COVID 19 has accelerated is this spiritual awakening that is independent of one’s religious affiliation or level of religiosity. This is not to deny that there are not also others who see greater value and attraction to their religion. Some choose to be spiritual without being religious while some choose to be spiritual while being religious.

The phenomenon of pursuing spirituality without being religious (or beyond religion) is not new. It can no longer be seen as a dawning movement, but perhaps that of a bright mid-morning reality. Brian McLaren’s book published in 2016, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to be Christian, deals with this topic head on. I’ve also personally witnessed and dialogued with pockets of people and leaders who are in this migratory journey globally and thus are familiar and agree with McLaren’s assertions. My only disagreement with McLaren is his usage of the term, Christian. It is no longer a movement of a Christian kind. It is fundamentally another reformation in the making, potentially as disruptive and hopeful as was the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago. I published a paper on this topic, “Another Reformation on the Horizon,” from a missiological perspective in 2006.[1] What I failed to see lucidly at the time was a reformation from within Christianity. These streams of genuine followers of Jesus from Islam, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions and followers of Jesus outside of traditional Christianity are converging like no other time in history, at the least blurring or perhaps even effectively dismantling the known and accepted boundaries of religions.

To be human is to be spiritual and to be spiritual is to be human. Whether to be religious or not is secondary. Jesus was a spiritual person. He did not fit into any one religious category of His time. He did not choose Judaism over other religions in His time. (He would not place Christianity over other religions in our time!) That was what drove the devout religious Jews piping-mad toward Jesus. Jesus could not and would not be confined within Judaism. Jesus both affirmed and rejected certain aspects of Judaism. Jesus was impelled to transform the religion from within to be as close to the “Kingdom spirituality,” like the parable of mustard seed. He refused to play the game of favoritism and presented Himself as the Savior and Messiah for all, regardless of their cultural and religious traditions.

For more info, you can go to https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/23_1_PDFs/17-19%20Chong%20Kim.pdf.

PERPETUAL REFORMATION

June 30, 2020 by Chong Kim

I am one who believes that continual reformation of the Church is needed. Deeper still, is the need for reformation of humanity’s collective God-given-consciousness—how we see God, how we see ourselves, and how we see the relationship between God and us and with one another. From this need for perpetual reformation, fundamental questions stemming from our contexts such as the meaning of life, how we ought to live our life, how societies and communities need to function, etc. would naturally emerge.

In many ways, unrelenting reformation is inevitable and necessary. The Protestant Reformation was a desperately needed reformation originated more from cultural disconnects and discrepancies rather than clear theological convictions. Theological differences were more incidental than primary. The main driving force was the cultural disengagement from the Latin ecclesial world of dominance and absolute authority tainted by corruptions and pagan practices. Luther and Calvin did what they had to do. If not them, there certainly would have been others. It was a cultural revolt against the religious control of the Latin South! (I published an article back in 2006 under the title of Another Reformation on the Horizon. In the middle of the article, I dealt with the Protestant Reformation more specifically. (I am warning you, it is a LONG article!)

I reject the notion that our call is simply to go back to the Reformation and recover what we think we lost. I also reject the notion that Christianity before the Reformation is all rubbish and we are to reject everything Catholic. I would encourage us to embrace the trajectory that was launched by the Protestant reformers. And this trajectory existed long before the Reformation, as there were many other “reformers” throughout history. We are to steward our unique “understanding of the signs of the times” to reinterpret, or if you like, contextualize, how God’s Kingdom ought to be the reality in our times. We are our unique voices in our generation!

This forces us to be students of our times as well as students of God’s ways revealed both in Scriptures and in creation (including our consciences). We then need to engage afresh in serious and robust “conversation” between our understanding of our times and God’s ways both individually and collectively. This duty and burden of “conversation” is unique to our time and should be ever ongoing. This will lead to prophetic (multiple) voices declaring what they are seeing and understanding followed closely by apostles who are eager to break new ground and spearhead new and fresh movements.

Reformation is called for because it helps to question how we got here and helps to shed unnecessary and ill-fitting requirements and boundaries that are not (really never meant to be) for our time. June 19, 2020, is radically different even from April of 2020. June of 2020 is a whole new world and reality away from June 2019. It is and should be a tireless effort in reinterpretation or deeper interpretation of what we think who God is and how God’s Kingdom needs to reign on this earth now.

Parker Palmer speaks with sheer honesty that is fitting for our time. It is a long quote but worth pondering.

“I would be lost in the dark without the light Christianity sheds on my life, the light I find in truths like incarnation, grace, sacrament, forgiveness, blessings, and the paradoxical dance of death and resurrection. But when Christians claim that their light is the only light and that anyone who does not share their understanding of it is doomed to eternal damnation, things get very dark for me. I want to run screaming out into the so-called secular world—which is, I believe, better-named the wide, wild world of God—where I can recover my God given mind. Out there, I catch sight once again of the truth, goodness, and beauty that disappear when pious Christians slam the door on their musty, windowless, lifeless room. Next to a Christian eclipsed by theological arrogance, an honest atheist shines like the sun. Next to a church proclaimed by its exclusion of “otherness,” a city of true diversity is a cathedral.”

I spoke of trajectory earlier. The overarching question is this. Where does this continual reformation go? Where should it be headed? In the words of Stephen A Smith, ESPN sports analyst, “What’s your end game?” It can neither be toward an arrogant theological perfection nor any religiosity’s appetite toward exclusion of otherness. This is the wrong panacea. Rather, it is a call to radical and generous love, more precisely Love. Because God is love, God is steering the entire creation toward union with divine intimacy, which is love both in essence and action.

Could this be God’s Kingdom coming on this earth?

FREE TO LIVE A FREE LIFE

June 23, 2020 by Chong Kim

Galatians 5:1-6, 13-18 (The Message)

1 Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.

2-3 I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.

4-6 I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.

13-15 It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

16-18 My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness.

Apostle Paul gives an “emphatic” warning and offers what life of freedom really looks like.

“For freedom, Christ set us free.” This statement from Paul is congruent with Jesus’ “mission statement” (in the words of prophet Isaiah) from Luke 4:18-19: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

This is one reason I am so drawn to Jesus! He is forever the ultimate defender and uplifter of the underdogs. “The poor, the captives, and the blind” were the underdogs in the culture in Jesus’ time, because their predicament was believed to have been a direct result of their sins and thus God had rejected them and had withdrawn God’s blessings from them. Conversely, being rich was believed to be a direct blessing from God. Thus, Jesus’ words upset these widely accepted beliefs. Later, Apostle John succinctly captures Jesus’ powerful words, “The Truth will set you free” (John 8:32). John also does not fail to grasp Jesus’ own punchy line, “I am the truth” (John 14:6).

Paul is absolutely clear in making the distinction that freedom is neither self-seeking nor self-indulging (e.g. “I get to do whatever I want to do or whatever pleases me,”) but in its practices and ultimacy toward and for others. Paul warns us that unless we embrace and live for others, we will “destroy” our freedom. This false freedom can and will destroy our true freedom. Paul goes on, “The free spirit is incompatible with selfishness.”

“Freedom gives and serves, while selfishness hoards and adds. The purpose of freedom is to do good.”

Living under “the rule-keeping system,” “the obligations of the slave life of the law,” and “your own religious plans and projects” are what Paul starkly calls the “old message” and slavery. Rather, “What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.” Paul calls the Galatians and the later saints to “use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows.”

The old messages of “rule-keeping systems,” “obligations,” and “religious plans and projects” are still alive and well, and they can put us and others in bondage. Matters turn grave when the old messages become the accepted norm and thus heralded blindly, putting others under the slavery of what Walter Wink calls, “domination systems.” We “fall out of grace” and are “cut off from Christ” when operating out of these old messages. Often times, old messages don’t start out being bad or old, but the exact opposite. Initially they can be noble and even necessary. But over time, they morph into old messages, if exercised without the freedom in Christ that sets us free. Keeping our eyes open for the entrapment and illusion of old messages is part of the freedom discipline and part of the freedom for which Christ invites us to fight for. There is a poignant truth that while Jesus always forgave individual sinners, He neither forgave nor succumbed to old messages and domination systems.

FREEDOM

must be undergirded by love. Freedom is always subservient to love.

The ultimate barometer of our freedom lies in the unselfish, outward, and others-oriented action founded on love. In this case, our external behaviors and actions flow directly from our interiority. One way to gauge our inner freedom is to observe our external behaviors (without pride or self-condemnation but with honesty and self-compassion) because they are the true reflection of our interiority.

Back in 1998, I took my family to Singapore for a 2-month break (it was supposed to be a furlough, but at the time, I did not know or have the tools for rest and renewal…soul care was a foreign concept for me then). While we were in Singapore, I learned that one of my (notice I am saying my) staff decided to move on to some other ministry. I remember having a difficult time with it internally and was forced to deal with the loss. In the following days, I eventually realized that I was operating under the harmful premise that the ministry of the Korean American Center for World Mission was mine. “How dare God move one of my staff workers to some other ministry!” was my honest thought at the time. What blasphemy and danger! I confessed my sin and released not only the staff but the Center. I still vividly remember a clear bodily sensation of freedom I experienced when I “opened my fists” and let them go. Years later, I came across what Ilia Delio, a Franciscan nun, captured in her book, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love, “Personhood is the freedom to be oneself and to love what one is without possessing one’s being; to know oneself in another.” That is the great paradox: freedom is the unconditional-others-directed-love, which is the true reflection of our interior freedom. Freedom is serving others in love.

The Truth that sets us free is not a concept or a carefully constructed belief system. It is a Person! The Truth is not this or that, but a Who. It is Jesus Christ!

“It is impossible to find Truth without being in love.” -Abraham Joshua Heschel

Could it be that the truths we have come to know and accept in life are Personal characteristics of Jesus Himself? The Truth cannot be and refuses to be downgraded to knowledge. Knowledge and Truth are not the same. While knowledge is about knowing something or someone, Truth is knowing the Someone. Knowledge can lead us to the Truth but can never be a substitute for the Truth.

Ilia Delio wrote, “Wisdom is knowledge deepened by love.”

We know the Truth through being perpetually in love with Jesus. That is wisdom leading to the Truth at work.

GROUP SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

June 16, 2020 by Chong Kim

You have a special treat this week. I’ve asked my wife, Grace, to write a post on group spiritual direction. She writes below that we “somehow stumbled into several group spiritual direction spaces” recently and she is right. I knew that she as a spiritual director deeply resonated with group (groups range between as small as 4 and as big as 8) spiritual direction perhaps even more so than the one on one kind. For me, this opportunity has been a surprising discovery—simply savoring the process of “accompanying” others and being “accompanied” by others. At the core of who I am, this practice fulfills my deepest desire of freedom—inner freedom to pursue and discover one’s authentic created being. One particular joy I am experiencing is that my wife and I get to do this “ministry” of accompaniment together. (It is more her leading and facilitating and I get to ride along beside her.)

Group Spiritual Direction

By Grace Kim

Someone recently wrote to me, “Together, may we be part of a movement of space-makers!” My heart fills with hope as I ponder such a movement. A core value I have is holding hospitable space for others. Chong and I have somehow stumbled into several group spiritual direction spaces during the Covid-19 pandemic. We have discovered that we love building community around group spiritual direction. Group spiritual direction builds deep connections within a community in ways that are counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.

Group spiritual direction provides a space that is hospitable and safe. We begin with grounding ourselves together in the reality of God’s loving presence. We then have a time of reflection where we can examine our lives and recent interior movements. This can happen through a variety of practices, such as Lectio Divina, Prayer of Examen, reflection questions, etc. We take turns “presenting”. The space is made and held in which the presenter can hear herself and become attuned to how God is with her in the moment. The rest of the group is there to support and hold her in that loving presence of God and to pay attention to the movement of the Spirit for the presenter and the community. The group is blessed as we attune ourselves to the presenter and to God’s presence with her. Our own desire for God and love for the presenter find spaciousness and deepen as we listen to the Spirit together. At the end of a session, we often jokingly will say, “This is like a drug.” I think what we are saying is that we have ventured into a space and experience that is unlike what we normally experience anywhere else, which leaves us hungering for more.

Such a space is fostered through some foundational beliefs that we agree to enter into together. The first is the agreement that the presenter himself holds the key that can unlock the answers that he is seeking. ee cummings said, “We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch.” In group spiritual direction, we listen deeply, so the presenter can experience the sacredness of his being and his own story. Chong and I have been deeply impacted by Henri Nouwen’s definition of hospitality. Nouwen says, “The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations.” This is a beautiful description of the art of group spiritual direction.

Another foundational belief is the deep trust in the work of the Holy Spirit that is already taking place in the presenter’s life. As a community, we enter together into what the Spirit is doing. The group, as such, does not try to give advice or offer solutions. We trust that God has been actively at work in the presenter’s life and that “he who began a good work. . .will bring it to completion” (Philippians 1:6). We are all cooperating with the Holy Spirit together to bring about what God desires to bring about in and through the presenter’s life. We are all participating in the One Love, Who is God.

As you may know, Chong and I are in a season of discernment for what God may have for us for our next season of life and ministry. We have found joy in engaging in group spiritual direction together and want to explore further opportunities. If you are part of a group or a community who seek a fresh mode of building deep connection and a sense of belongingness in an atmosphere of love and freedom, Chong and I would be happy to talk to you about helping you cultivate such a group!

JESUS SPIRITUALITY

June 09, 2020 by Chong Kim

Jesus was not a “Christian” nor did He found a religion called Christianity. Jesus lived an embodied spirituality that focused on pursuing union with God. Union foundationally with God, absolutely yes! But also union with ourselves, with others, and with creation. The world has yet to fully see what this spirituality of union looks like. . .

Jesus’ spirituality for all humanity can and should reside in all cultures and religions without one culture’s or religion’s domination and dictation. Jesus’ spirituality towers over any one culture or religion. It is clear from stories in the Gospels that Jesus didn’t force Gentiles to become like Jews or adopt Jewish ways of living. Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman at the well has a universal message, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24, ESV). She remained as a Samaritan to follow Jesus (both in her culture and religion) and furthermore, shared her intimate life-changing encounter with other Samaritans back in her village (John 4:39-42).

The watershed moment of the Gospel breaking through beyond the Jews to the gentiles is well chronicled in the Book of Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council. The Council opened the flood gate for gentiles to follow Jesus inside their cultures and religions. Centuries later, when the Protestant Reformation took place, a similar movement took place in creating an environment where peoples could follow Jesus in their own cultures and religions without becoming “Roman” and taking on the Latin way of thinking and living. And now. . . I see another “reformation” taking place. There are many around the world that are moving away from institutionalized Christianity and other religions.

PEOPLE ARE DESPERATELY SEEKING

“Jesus spirituality” of pursuing union with God, oneself, and with all of God’s creation.

Jesus becomes absolutely central in the spiritual reformation and revolution. One cannot pursue union with God without following Jesus. Jesus with curt dogmatism and certainty told us that He is the way, the truth, and the life! Furthermore, Jesus modeled how to be in union with God. The Book of John traces and elaborates both plainly and mystically this theme of union with God and how Jesus went about this transformative journey, thus providing the blueprint for all humanity where no one is excluded.

This spirituality is not a one size fits all or some sort of cookie-cutter spirituality, forcing everyone to be the same. To be human is to be spiritual. The converse is also true, to be spiritual is to be human. Being authentically human means that we all are unrepeatably unique. Thus our “spirituality in the making” will all look different. At the same time, our spirituality all point to one thing: union with God. Ways to get to and experience our unrepeatably unique spirituality is to understand God’s unique creation, that is each and every one of us.

Pursuing union with God is not merely an interior journey of transformation. One’s pursuit of union with God naturally translates into outward contribution and benefit to the world.

THOMAS MERTON

June 02, 2020 by Chong Kim

Thomas Merton rescued me. By now, you can see that I am a huge fan of Merton. During arguably my darkest nights of desperation, his writings gave words to my soul that I didn’t know existed. The first Merton book I picked up was New Seeds of Contemplation. I still vividly remember uncontrollably weeping when reading the book, in a café in K-town, Los Angeles. My wife looked at me, like, “what’s going on with you?” While I would not say I am a “Merton expert," I can say his writings profoundly impacted me more than anybody in the last 7 years. Merton’s writings greatly influenced contemporary contemplative authors like Richard Rohr and Parker Palmer (among countless others) both of whom I have followed fairly religiously.

Probably the way Merton has impacted me the most has to do with accepting myself (the contradiction that I am a saint and a sinner at the same time) as who I am and what God “had in mind” when I was created. Merton captured poignantly, “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.” Merton gave me permission to pursue and discover who I am and provided a roadmap toward sanctity and salvation as to what my remaining life’s pursuit ought to look like.

This week’s blog, though, is not about the above topic. Rather, I would like to share a couple of snippets of Merton’s “obscure” and expansive insight as well as his comical human side. The first extensive quotation comes from Merton’s The Way of Chuang Tzu (1965), toward the end of his life. He was criticized by some to have turned into a heretic, because he dove deeply into Zen traditions and other Asian mystical religions. Merton clearly respected the writings and thoughts of Chuang Tzu, but he also delineated Chuang Tzu’s teachings from Apostle Paul’s. Merton writes, “Once this is clear, one can reasonably see a certain analogy between Chuang Tzu and St. Paul. The analogy must certainly not be pushed too far. Chuang Tzu lacks the profoundly theological mysticism of St. Paul. But his teaching about the spiritual liberty of wu wei and the relation of virtue to the indwelling Tao is analogous to Paul’s teaching on faith and grace, contrasted with the “works of the Old Law.” The relation of the Chuang Tzu book to the Analects of Confucius is not unlike that of the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans to the Torah.” What I've come to appreciate in Merton in this case is his generous and broad-mindedness about what truths are. The proverbial “all truth is God’s truth” certainly is at work here. To borrow Richard Rohr’s language, “everything belongs.”

Specifically, Merton shares one wisdom story from Chuang Tzu. Merton distills the story into a nugget of gold in the last sentence.

“One of the most famous of all Chuang Tzu’s “principles” is that called “three in the morning,” from the story of the monkeys whose keeper planned to give them three measures of chestnuts in the morning and four in the evening but, when they complained, changed his plan and gave them four in the morning and three in the evening. What does this story mean? Simply that the monkeys were foolish and that the keeper cynically outsmarted them? Quite the contrary. The point is rather that the keeper had enough sense to recognize that the monkeys had irrational reasons of their own for wanting four measures of chestnuts in the morning, and did not stubbornly insist on his original arrangement. He was not totally indifferent, and yet he saw that an accidental difference did not affect the substance of his arrangement. Nor did he waste time demanding that the monkeys try to be “more reasonable” about it when monkeys are not expected to be reasonable in the first place. It is when we insist most firmly on everyone else being “reasonable” that we become ourselves, unreasonable. (P. 32, The Way of Chuang Tzu)”

In another story, Merton shares a wild and comical side of his humanity. I could not help but to chuckle because I could totally see myself in Merton’s experience. This one is from Merton’s The Sign of Jonas.

“Yesterday Father Cellarer lent me the jeep. I did not ask for it, he just lent it to me out of the goodness of his heart, so that I would be able to go out to the woods on the other side of the knobs. I had never driven a car before. Once or twice at Saint Bonaventure’s I took lessons. Father Roman tried to teach me to drive a little broken-down Chevvie he had there. Yesterday I took the jeep and started off gaily all by myself to the woods. It had been raining heavily. All the roads were deep in mud. It took me some time to discover the front-wheel drive. I skidded into ditches and got out again, I went through creeks, I got stuck in the mud, I bumped into trees and once, when I was on the main road, I stalled trying to get out of the front-wheel drive and ended up sideways in the middle of the road with a car coming down the hill straight at me. Thank heaven I am still alive. At the moment I didn’t seem to care if I lived or died. I drove the jeep madly into the forest in a rosy fog of confusion and delight. We romped over trestles and and I sang “O Mary I love you,” went splashing through puddles a foot deep, rushed madly into the underbrush and backed out again.

Finally I got the thing back to the monastery covered with mud from stem to stern. I stood in choir at Vespers, dizzy with the thought: “I have been driving a jeep.”

Father Cellarer just made me a sign that I must never, never, under any circumstances, take the jeep out again (P. 258-259, The Sign of Jonas).”

Thanks for letting me share. . .

My question to all of us today is. . . How is your unique journey of discovering your true self unfolding?

A CALL TO COMMUNION | PART 3

May 26, 2020 by Chong Kim

This week, for my final entry on communion, we will take a slight detour exploring how longing and belonging ties back to communion.

No one of us, as well as the entire creation, is created to exist in isolation. Rather, we are created to belong. Isolation, no, but, solitude, yes. Solitude enhances community and paves the road to communion which is a lifeline for the soul. True solitude originates from the place of need to belong and to commune while isolation rejects the very notion of the need.

John O’Donohue speaks insightfully, “Our hunger to belong is the longing to find a bridge across the distance from isolation to intimacy.”

Henri Nouwen speaks of a movement from “a desert of loneliness to a garden of solitude.”

Isolation creates a desert of loneliness. Loneliness is a symptom of heightened modern isolation. Solitude is an act of longing to belong. In our day and age, materialism and consumerism have aided individualism to deeper isolation and have blinded and dulled us to the need to belong. Our heart does not and will not know how to rest until it finds belonging. “The heart is an eternal nomad,” writes O’Donohue.

The problem is we have learned to long and belong to “things” thinking that they would satisfy our eternal desire when in fact, our heart ultimately is looking for love. Love is the only gift that true belonging can bestow, and our heart will know. When we find love, everything else fades away. One characteristic of the sanctification journey is to chase away and reject “wrong” longings while continuing to say “yes” to the eternal Longing this world does not understand or value.

The restless eternal longing is the longing after both God and for ourselves. This is the same longing. This longing after God and for ourselves (as in discovering our true selves) is generated by none other than love. Love is the source of our search for Ultimate Longing and for ourselves. This then naturally translates into true longing for others as well as being that longing for others—all toward generating love and intimacy. Our life lives a life of belonging, belonging to God, to self, and to others.

One of the better books on the topic of belonging is John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes. He writes, “The word ‘belonging’ holds together the two fundamental aspects of life: Being and Longing, the longing of our Being and the being of our Longing.”

COMMUNION + BELONGING…

What O’Donohue calls belonging and what Merton calls communion are almost identical. Our life is ultimately created to belong and to be in union with God, ourselves, with others, and with the entire creation.

Communion and belonging are inseparable, really. Pursuing belonging will lead to communion; pursuing communion will put belonging in its rightful place. The longing to belong is an ancient and eternal God-given gift. We mistakenly think it is “our” longing, but it is God’s longing working in us. Without it, there is no homing device for us to find true home, to Ultimate Longing who is the triune God.

As we learn to exercise and practice belonging with others and the creation, we are awakened to deeper Ultimate Belonging. This is an upward spiral movement.

Nature often unlocks our soul’s longing. When our heart and mind find rest being out in certain settings of nature in solitude, we realize that our soul’s at rest and allow us to declutter our mind and heart to discover what our true longing is. Over time every tyranny fades away and every callus softens, and being out in nature brings uncanny focus into what truly matters or what we long for in our soul. This is a unique contribution of Celtic spirituality that opens up nature to be God’s open sanctuary to discover our soul’s true and unique colors and songs and dances. Nature gifts us with tranquility and has the ability to declutter our messy modern mind that sides with objectivism and ignores our soul’s language which comes to us in symbols, flashes of intuition, and/or still small voices.

When Merton speaks of “symbols” it is confirmed by voices from our soul thus leading to a deeper mode of knowing, communion.

Our soul’s voices are essentially our authentic and eternal longings which were programmed and created by God.

Our longings validate the fact that we are pilgrims on the journey of discovering our true selves for our own sake and for the sake of the world.

A CALL TO COMMUNION | PART 2

May 19, 2020 by Chong Kim

In my last blog post, I described how communion is a deeper mode of knowing and how the symbol is an effective servant in our journey toward union with God. That is, symbols are necessary when pursuing communion. God is not an Object to be known, but a Subject to be experienced. This week, I will try to integrate Parker Palmer’s insight of objectivism’s failure and how subjectivism ties with our experiences of symbols.

Parker Palmer hits this theme (communion and how we experience communion) from the education angle. He observes in his earlier work, To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey in 1983, “The aim of objectivism is to eliminate all elements of subjectivity, all biases and preconceptions, so that our knowledge can become purely empirical. For the sake of objectivity, our inner realities are factored out of knowledge equation.”

Parker is not naïve in simply bashing the system and is not on a crusade to eliminate all objective education/training. He sees values in objectivism, albeit a limited one. Palmer sees that “inner realities” will not be awakened through some sort of empirical pursuit of objective knowledge.

Parker further clarifies:

. . . But it is even more important to recognize that narrow-minded or triumphalistic spiritualities are not the major obstacle to a universal community of nature and humankind. The major obstacle is objectivism that persists in making “things” of us all. This objectivism—with only a little prompting from religious or secular ideologies—is quickly translated into political and social programs of division, manipulation, and oppression. The threat to community posed today (whether the Christian Moral Majority or the Islamic fundamentalists) comes not from the heart of their spiritual traditions but from objectivism that reduces everyone not in their fold to mere objects for conversion if possible, or elimination if necessary.

I’ve seen plenty of narrow-mindedness or triumphalism both in myself and in the missions enterprise, not to mention in normal everyday operations. And they are no small giants to slay.

However, Palmer considers objectivism as the root of deleterious behaviors. One way this objectivism operates in my life is that it blinds me to play the “compare and contrast” game constantly with others, which is the main function of the ego. It legitimizes and empowers the “objectivism” of the world’s system which my ego uses to compare and contrast my best with others’ worst. This is one of the worst illusionary traps.

Subjective knowing has been viewed as a second class knowing and we are told not to trust it as it betrays the modern empirical objective mind. “If it can’t be proven objectively, it must be not real” is the basic idea. However, as Parker alluded, our inner realities cannot be awakened by objectifying pursuits. I want all to give permission to all, first of all, to pursue inner awakenings, which can only take place through subjective experiential knowing. Now, let’s consider how subjectivism and symbols tie together.

Symbols are everywhere. They happen in every day mundane life. They are epiphanies of God breaking through to us and reminding us that God is here and near to us. Symbols are subjective spiritual experiences that cannot be objectified. In this sense, we are all subjective mystics who are learning to experience God’s presence and access God’s love through symbols. However, as modern societies, we have conveniently banned or at least downplayed anything that is not quantifiable and logically explainable. If they can’t be objectified, then we are led to believe that they must not be trustworthy or not be worth of our time.

Symbols also come to us through books, conversations, being out in nature, observing children, and being in silence and solitude. And, of course, through prayer. The list goes on . . .

I have a growing resonance with Finley that prayer is “meant to lead us to a radical transformation of consciousness in which all of life becomes a symbol.”

Life then becomes a natural conduit in which we experience God and perfect and unfailing Love. This is Supernatural merging with natural and vice versa. We experience the extraordinary God in the ordinary. And we who are ordinary experience the extraordinary in the ordinary context called life.

A CALL TO COMMUNION | PART 1

May 12, 2020 by Chong Kim

For 6 years, James Finley’s spiritual director and mentor was Thomas Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Finley compiled his insights and lessons into a book, Merton’s Place of Nowhere, published in 1978. The book fundamentally addresses the question of ultimate human identity, which was the basis of Merton’s whole spirituality. In the book, Finley helpfully unpacks the notion “of the true self in God as opposed to the false self of egocentric desires.”

After reading the book (really meditating) over Christmas break, I am still chewing and regurgitating over what I read. It feels almost like having walked lost in some sort of enchanted forest seeing and discovering things I hadn’t seen before (but really seeing familiar things in different ways). It was also during this Christmas break that I “slew hordes of orcs” in desolate “Mordor” marshes and fields while playing my first Play Station 4 game (which my children gifted me for Christmas). It was a different kind of enchantment, so one could say I was vacillating between two different landscapes of enchantment.

Back to the forest of enchantment. There are many things still to discover in my own life in regards to how what I read in Finley's book applies to my life and beyond, but I’d like to share one insight which Finley highlighted as ‘The Insight’ as his last chapter of the book. Finley asserts that Merton “distinguished between communication and communion as two fundamentally different modes of knowing.” Finley continues, “Communication is logical, quantitative and practical in its application” while communion “carries within it the promise of renewed and deepened levels of intimacy and union.” Finley helpfully notes, “The failure to communicate is frustration. The failure to commune is despair.” While communication is motivated by clarity and order, communion is motivated by intimacy and belongingness.

MERTON WROTE…

“the function of the symbol is to manifest a union that already exists but is not fully realized.” Finley picks this up, “the ‘union that already exists’ is the true self concealed by sin.”

Finley then observes, "Purely objective statements miss the mark, for God is not an object. He is Person. Nor are we, as persons, objects. Here all is Subject. There is no 'object' 'out there' to 'see.' Here all is presence and communion."

It is a being to Being encounter which is to say, subject to Subject. We are not mere objects that belong to the Subject. There is nothing to understand and know. True transformation is ontological in nature. It has little to do with methodologies, programs, or having systems in place that promote behavioral and/or structural changes. Rather these changes are natural-by-products of the ontological transformation.

SIMPLICITY, SOLIDARITY, AND SILENCE

May 05, 2020 by Chong Kim

Two words that have captured my heart and prayer during this global pandemic have been simplicity and solidarity. I would like to unpack what these words mean to me in this season and then toward the end of this blog post, I have a proposal to share with you.

So read on. . .

My wife has been facilitating a small group spiritual direction for about two years, and I joined the group about 6 months ago. During one of the latest (April 21) sessions, my wife led an exercise that probed the major emotions we are sensing these days. Two emotions that rose to the top for me were contentment and joy. Both of the emotions were somewhat surprising to me. I ought to be disgruntled, sad, and disappointed, especially since my ideal vision of a sabbatical has been shot to pieces in many ways... As I dug deeper and tried to validate these emotions with some specificities, I realized that I was content mainly due to the fact that I really do not need much to live my life now. We have food or have access to food (we now have toilet paper! Before yesterday, we were down to a 2 weeks supply). I can only eat so much without destroying my health and body! I have a roof over my head, and so forth. . .

I am experiencing sustained joy mainly because of the every day mundane relationship with my adult children (3 out of 4 are living with us now). Hannah has been asking me, “what can I make for you, dad?” She has baked large batches of chocolate chip cookies with walnuts twice and other glorious and healthy desserts. From time to time, she and I walk our husky in the evenings and talk about stuff. (A proposal I share at the end of this blog came from one of those walks!) Grace and I have been watching a Korean TV variety show with Michael, Begin Again Season 3, almost every night. It is a show about a handful of Korean musicians who traveled to Europe and performed busking. I also get to play PS4’ NBA 2K20 with Michael. Just the other day, Michael asked me, “Dad, wanna play catch with me?” With Brad, it is just good to have him home. He is our family’s top introvert who likes to study and hang out in his room. We also get to enjoy dinner together every day as a family. With Elizabeth, it is about exchanging sweet and life-related text messages as she is settling down in St. Paul, Minnesota.

What more can I ask God for?

In addition, my life has slowed down so significantly that I began to notice things I had not noticed before.

As I dwelt on these emotions of contentment and joy, I appreciated the meaning and gift of simplicity specifically highlighted by the current non-accomplishments in life. I’m coming to a fresh realization during this first significant pause in my life that I had not stopped “doing stuff” for most of my life. Additionally, of course, COVID-19 bolsters and “locks down” the pause. I also realize that both contentment and joy arise from simple simplicity, not stemming from an aggrandized notion of extravagances and extraordinary feats in life. My thought quickly went to, “How can I maintain the sense of simplicity and its awe and attraction even after the pandemic crisis and sabbatical?"

Now to solidarity. . .

Definition of solidarity

“union or fellowship arising from common responsibilities and interests, as between members of a group or between classes, peoples, etc.”

The idea of interdependence and “with-ness” is key to solidarity. Solidarity gives humble feet and hands to the very spirit of incarnation. Solidarity is the earthy and grounding force of incarnation at work. During this global pandemic, since the whole of humanity is experiencing pain and loss, I believe our capacity to suffer with and come alongside others globally has significantly increased. Where there is suffering, there is suffering Christ also. Solidarity is the intentionality and willingness to suffer with, rejoice with, and/or simply “stand with” otherness. It is the "union or fellowship" as humanity, not for any one religious, regional, or cultural interests or goals. As is the case, opportunity for experiencing global interdependence, however grandeur or small, is unprecedented and unique to our time. For the life of me, I can’t think of any other time in modern times (or any other times in human history) that, we, as entire humanity is experiencing the same predicament, ever.

I share my thought of simplicity and solidarity for a reason today. While I am glad to open my life and share my reflection without any proposed action and hesitation, today, I would like to submit an idea. Maybe a vision. . . a small vision. I am a bit hesitant and sheepish about sharing the idea, but here it goes. . .

What if some of us could come together over zoom to embody the spirit of simplicity and solidarity and offer our presence and prayer for one another and for the rest of humanity?
30 minutes weekly at a designated time. . .

My idea of how the 30 minutes will unfold is pretty simple, with very few words spoken. I would like to embrace silence as our main way of presence and prayer. Only silence can do justice in capturing the depth and breadth of our collective predicament. Too many words would cheapen and turn our deep and complex reality into a well-defined, controlled, small, and shallow box, I am afraid.

30 minutes would then look something like this. . .

>Two Taize worship songs (Taize songs are known for their simple and repeated modes) in different languages. If not in English, there will be translations. Each of us may or may not choose to sing (with all of our microphones muted). You can easily YouTube Taize songs and you will see pages upon pages.

>Scriptural reading (in different languages) with no sermons or someone talking. Scripture only.

>Silence for 10 minutes in the middle of our 30 minutes. Together in solidarity with one another and with humanity. Practicing solidarity with silence may be counter cultural, but perhaps only silence can capture God’s mystery and mercy. In other words, silence just may be the only language that can contain God’s “mysterious, cosmic dance” and God’s unfathomable mercy. Silence is poor and yet rich. Silence is barren and yet full. Silence is nothing and yet everything.

>We end our time with liturgical prayer that have been written to pray for each other and the humanity.

I have no idea how long we would do this. I am thinking we would know when the time comes. . .

Here are the specifics.

We will start on May 13 (Wednesday) evening at 7 pm (US Pacific Time). You can figure out your local (global) time... It will be every Wednesday at 7 pm (US Pacific time).
If you are interested in joining us, you can either send me an email (chong.kim@frontierventures.org or reply to Free as the Sky campaign email) or comment below. You will receive the zoom link by next Tuesday.
Feel free to invite others who may be interested.

A HIDDEN LIFE

April 28, 2020 by Chong Kim

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs” [italics mine] From “Middlemarch” by George Eliot.

(Along with Eliot’s words, consider Thomas Merton’s own composed version of the classic saying of Chuang Tzu in his book, The Way of Chuang Tzu. This particular saying is titled as When Life was Full There was no History.

“. . . They [worthy men] were honest and righteous without realizing that they were ‘doing their duty.’ They loved each other and did not know that this was ‘love of neighbor.’ They deceived no one yet they did not know that they were ‘men to be trusted.’ They were reliable and did not know that this was ‘good faith.’ They lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history.”)

During COVID-19 lockdown, we have been watching quite a few movies. We strolled down memory lane and watched Roman Holiday and fell in love with the timeless romantic story. It oddly reminded me that we would have been in Spain right about now walking the Camino de Santiago had it not been for COVID-19. Frozen 2, You’ve Got Mail, Little Women (the new one), some random Chinese martial arts movies (only for me), and Korean variety shows are among the few we’ve watched so far.

My wife and I also watched A Hidden Life directed by Terence Malick. I found out later that Malick also directed The Tree of Life. Years ago, my wife and I watched The Tree of Life and were completely befuddled by the experience. At the end of the movie, my wife and I exchanged one of those non-verbal total bewilderment look. While A Hidden Life didn’t grab me initially while watching, it lingered with me, particularly the quote by George Eliot at the end of the movie. (Don’t worry. I will not spoil it for you here.)

I can’t help but to wonder and ruminate on the qualitative truth about Eliot’s words. Eliot is fair and careful to use the word partly; I would be tempted to use words like sizable or even significant. The main character in A Hidden Life, Franz Jägerstätter, is an Austrian peasant farmer who refused to give his allegiance to Hitler and fight for the Nazis. He is one of many countless lives that were so remarkably ordinary and yet so extraordinary.

“The good of the world” has to be in direct contrast to the evil of the world. It is a knock-down-drag-out fight to the end between the good and the evil.

In his latest book, What do we do with Evil?: The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, Richard Rohr describes, “The devil, therefore, is those same corporate evils when they have risen to sanctified, romanticized, and idealized necessities that are saluted, glorified and celebrated. . . ” Rohr goes on, “Paul knew these forces that were really running the show were hidden inside of common agreements that every culture idealizes for its own survival.” Rohr concludes, “I believe Paul and his school teach that sin shows itself as social, cultural, or historical entrapment, cultural blindness, or bondage, along with personal complicity with such delusions.”

History is not merely made or advanced by the usual suspects, the list of so-called history makers. The modern mind has learned to almost “worship” larger-than-life heroes, especially with our need for entertainment and technology and our ability to revise and spin history mainly from the “dominant” point of view. I say this in solidarity with those who are helpfully trying to debunk the very idea of going along with the usual suspects. History makers are those who made headlines by creating and impacting “watershed moments” in history, almost always after the fact. We have become enthralled with such “heroes or heroines,” some of which for good reasons. I am not discounting or even downplaying the impact of the usual suspects and the overall good. I am questioning our own tendencies of blindly and uncritically accepting the usual suspects.

Even then, it is quite illuminating that both the “faithful” and the evil at work are mostly hidden, and therefore the fight between the good and the evil is also mostly hidden. Perhaps our one collective work as Jesus’ followers is to turn these hidden (both good and evil) work visible for the good of many.

At the end of the day, whether our heroes or heroines’ lives are hidden or not (which explains “partly dependent”), it comes down to each of us stewarding what we can from our own originality, authenticity, and creativity as human beings. Heroes and heroines are made in the extraordinary times where genuine courage and creativity are called for as we are living right in the middle of that now. Another true story I read from a Dutch priest named Adrian van Kaam tells the story of a mailman during peaceful times turning into a guerrilla band leader and fighter against the Nazis. His “real” or true identity was hidden and dormant until the war broke out. Crises (both external and internal for sure, but in this case external) often force us to discover who we truly are. They are open doors for us to walk right in to let our instinct and God’s creative and thus our natural make-up to take over.

I believe that the Kingdom is mostly built and advanced by these hidden and unsung lives rested in unvisited tombs or those “who made no history!” Jesus’ own words of the Kingdom parables speak of these unspectacular and visibly hidden from normal line of sight.

LOVING YOUR ENEMY

April 21, 2020 by Chong Kim

A few years ago, my wife and I were driving across the dry, cactus ridden, long and monotonous Interstate Highway 10 from Los Angeles to Phoenix for a wedding. I started sharing with my wife, fumbling around my new and very different interpretation of Jesus’ words about loving your enemy as part of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:43-48).

The Sermon starts out with the famous Beatitudes, “Blessed are . . . .”

Whenever I read the Beatitudes, I didn’t think I measured up to the “standard” Jesus set. I miserably fell short more often than not. I used to read them as a set of conditional requirements, if I am poor, meek, and/or hunger for righteousness, and so forth and so on, then God would bless me or I am a blessed person.

Over time, I have come to realize that the Beatitudes itself is Gospel. It is not an if and then indictment. It is not an invitation to high moralistic achievements. It is when (not if) or as you are merciful, mourning, and/or pure in heart, you are blessed or God’s presence is with you.

I am not poor, meek, merciful, and/or pure in heart most of the time. In fact, I am mostly the very opposite of what Jesus outlined. Nonetheless while tilting heavily on the side of the opposites, I am still both and. We all are.

Jesus then segues into being the salt of the earth and the light of the world (I will loop back to my reflection on this below further). And then what follows is a long, tedious, but enlightening and shocking section on Jesus positioning Himself to reinterpret and to fulfill the Scriptures (The Old Testament). He is not bashing the Law. The Message translation puts it, “I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama.”

Then the section on loving your enemy. . .

What I rambled to my wife during the drive was the thought that loving your enemy is loving oneself that is not in line with God’s blessings. It is loving the enemy within, as the enemy of the true self (I do think Jesus mainly meant to communicate enemy as others. But I also experienced that the Scripture is multi-layered in meanings and depth…so I offer this thought). In other words, Jesus may be telling us to have self-compassion and to love the part of who we are without condemnation and hatred. Extending grace to your enemy-self, as John O’Donohue defines grace as “the permanent climate of divine kindness”, is what may be at stake here. O’Donohue continues, grace is “the perennial infusion of springtime into the winter of bleakness.” Again, because the truth of the matter is that we are all both-and (going back to the Beatitudes above).

It is right in the middle of the both-and state and predicament that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We do not have to try to be the salt and the light, we just are. What this means is that we are not approaching the world with perfection, superiority, and certainty which is what ego wants and likes. We finally have the ability and capacity to have compassion and solidarity with all humanity.

Philo of Alexandria said, “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”

We can truly come alongside others with tender-heartedness and humility. It is precisely in the state of solidarity and humility, we can be faithful salt of the earth and the light of the world.

The chapter ends with this verse (48)…

“You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

The word perfect can be misleading here. I believe the word has more to do with growth and maturity, not moral perfection.

I resonate with what Eugene Peterson captured in The Message. He expands the verse this way…

“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

PART 3 | WHO AM I?

April 14, 2020 by Chong Kim

WHO AM I? (continued from last week)

Fast forward to 2012. This was the year I said yes to general directorship (along with two other men) of Frontier Ventures (formerly known as the U.S. Center for World Mission). I stepped into the role out of  reluctant but full obedience to God. Our organization felt deeply the turmoil that usually comes after the death of a founder, and I was thrown right into the middle of the action. What soon followed was a personal level of pain and suffering I didn’t know how to manage (see my previous blog on suffering). My “coping mechanism” (which is really my ego) simply failed to serve me. I panicked and panicked hard, trying to grasp anything that came my way in order to survive. I felt like I was stuck in wet cement, knee-deep, which was slowly hardening. I usually am a pretty good escape artist, but this time, I was being calcified!

One of my life’s coping mechanisms has been to avoid pain and suffering by creating a buffet of possibilities and options in the future so I don’t get stuck in the present. My go-to sin then is “gluttony.” I do enjoy food and can still pack it in, but the way gluttony works in me is profoundly more subtle and deeper. Being (or the perception of being) stuck can be one of the worst and the most horrific things that can happen to me.

Thank God that my ego could not rescue me anymore. “It was the worst of times, it was the best of times!” (changing the order of the famous Dickens' opening phrase.) I then was forced to examine how I navigated my life and began to learn to rebuild, this time being more aware of my ego trappings and slowly discovering my true self… 

Out of sheer desperation and panic, I began to search for help. The book that fell on my lap was Richard Rohr’s The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective. I fully dove into the Enneagram wisdom tradition and began to understand who I am and how I am made. I began to see  what my uninhibited coping and survival mechanisms look like in their naked forms. I began to learn to hold my gift and sin together with humility and compassion. [There is so much to unpack on the Enneagram tradition and how it impacted me. I will need to highlight this in a later blog.] The idea of holding the contradictions of gift and sin together rather than trying desperately to get rid of the contradictions is at first counter-intuitive. It is an invitation and a call to integrate contradictions. Ego’s main survival function is to compare and contrast (whether we do it subtly or forthrightly), driving toward superiority and winning at all costs. We tend to compare our best (gift or strengths) with others’ worst (sin or weaknesses) as individuals, groups, and cultures. No wonder Jesus makes a big deal about not judging others! Jesus makes an astonishing paradoxical statement, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). His life ultimately demonstrated this very paradox through the cross and resurrection: In order for us to live, we must die. This paradox is Jesus’ invitation for us. Paradox is contradiction integrated and transformed. (In a few weeks, I will share my further reflection on the blessing of paradox.) Paradox resides at the very heart of following Jesus. Without it, we quickly follow certainty-driven, dualistic and manmade “low” religions.

A couple of practices I have learned to incorporate in my life are emotional sobriety and being in the present moment. As a seven (Enneagram), I normally live life with my feelings suppressed, especially negative ones. Learning to acknowledge my feelings (sometimes out loud so I can hear myself) and giving permission and precise language to what I am feeling have been significant building blocks for my life. Practicing the now has also been elusive for me. Similar to emotional sobriety, this is a practice of being in the present. My mind will often wander off to far distances and into the future. Escaping the present by thinking about the future is common for me. Past is a former now. Future is an imagined now. I can only love God and follow Jesus in the now. I can only access reality in the now. (A slight rabbit trail here. . . I often wondered why Jesus would say, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Children are utterly loyal to the present. This very quality of being present is what I think Jesus lauds, as spirituality can only take place in the now. Animals and nature share the same quality of being in the present. They are all our superb teachers to be in the now.) Some of the practices I’ve embraced have been focused on being with my body. I’ve learned my body doesn’t betray the present. Physical activities, exercise, and Yoga (yes, I started practicing about a year ago) have all been extremely helpful. The body is thoroughly grounded in the present. No wonder I consider playing basketball once a week so therapeutic, as I can’t think about the future when playing ball!

Going back to discovering my true self’s vocation . . . It is too soon to even put into words, but some of the nuances involve developing people (especially younger people) who desire growing capacity to love in communities. And to do this with my wife. . .

In the meantime, one thing I am working on now is to build upon what I have learned in life and integrating my other streams of faith (particularly my missions journey) with the new-found contemplative and mystical tradition. I see deep correlations and connections between missional and contemplative streams. Articulating and educating the connections seem to be one of my intermediate contributions to the world.

PART 2 | WHAT IS GOD LIKE? AND WHO AM I?

April 07, 2020 by Chong Kim

As we wrestle with the question, who is God? another question emerges, where does Jesus come in and what do we do with Him?

WHERE DOES JESUS COME IN?

I’ve come to believe that while everything in Scripture is inspired, not everything carries equal weight. To me, Jesus trumps everything. Not even the modern mind’s favorite, Paul, come close (I now read Paul’s writings through the lens of Jesus, not the other way around).

Jesus deconstructed the prevailing concept of God so thoroughly in His time on earth that religious leaders did not know what to do with Him. And because of that, they eventually crucified Him.

Jesus challenged and reinterpreted the dominating paradigm that humanity at that time had of God. Jesus, once and for all, presented the perfect picture of who God was (and still is). In the upside-down radical “Sermon on the Mount”, Jesus emphasized He did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it and proceeded to reinterpret the law. He gave wise instructions and warnings as to how to live. The Beatitudes would have been enough to rock the boat of His listeners and would have provided an unforeseen sense of hope that…the Kingdom was available to them.

Fast forward to Jesus’ last week before the crucifixion, which started out with the Last Supper (John 13).

Jesus, as their rabbi, rocked the boat again by washing the disciples’ feet and commanded them to love one another. To Jesus, that was the true mark of discipleship and how all people would know they are His disciples. The most brilliant and coolest teaching of Jesus took place when he summarized the entire 613 laws in the Old Testament (no, I did not actually count them) down to 2 (which were embedded in 613, but with one minor change):

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.”

By following Jesus, we experience Jesus’ God and Jesus’ God becomes our God. To me, this is why I follow Jesus—moving from my woefully inadequate concept of God to the perfect and ultimate presence of God.

WHO AM I?

Right off the bat, I would like to consider who we are *not*. We are not what we do. We are not what we have. We are not what others think of us. And then there is the biggest impostor of them all— we are not what we make or project ourselves out to be. We are not what we construct ourselves to be.

This idea of construction is all about ego-making. Early in life, the ego is a necessary life coping mechanism. Without it, we would not know how to survive. It is our learned way of preserving and defending ourselves from hurts, wounds, and perceived danger from the world. The problem is that over time, it disguises itself as the “real us.” It drowns out and overshadowed the true self that is in all of us. . . until our ego’s survival tactics don’t work anymore in life. This is what many refer to as a “mid-life crisis.” I think the label mid-life crisis is a bit of a misnomer, mainly because it doesn’t always happen in “mid-life”. It seems to me that it is hitting people sooner, and people are becoming more honest about “hitting the wall,” “hitting rock bottom,” or some sort of a meltdown.

The question, Who am I? is really a question of what is my true self? Our true self is what God originally created us to be and thus who God really intended us to be. Because of ego’s activism, disguise, and dominance, our true self is often buried deep. However, from time to time, we catch glimpses of it, and we can’t help but be completely enraptured by the original beauty, which is a mere and true reflection of God’s creative beauty. The true self can only be discerned and discovered over time in safe space from ego’s allure and cannot be manufactured by will even if they are out of good will. Who we are is given to us from the beginning. The true self will invariably showcase its being into doing: doing what we love and loving what we do. This discovery (some people call this “personal vocation”) process “is written into one’s concrete history and into the inner dynamism (that is, the movement of the inner forces) of one’s life,” according to the late Father Herbert Alphonso. His concise book, Discovering Your Personal Vocation, is a gem of a book on this topic. Alphonso continues, “I am convinced that the personal vocation, once discerned, becomes the criterion of discernment for every decision in life, even for the daily details of decision making.”

A cautionary tale here… The question, Who am I? is not a narcissistic pursuit of modern and post-modern obsession with individualism. The Genesis account (Gen 1:26) makes it clear that we are created in the very image of the Triune God. In other words, from the very beginning, we are created as relational beings, first with the Triune God and also with others. We are never meant to be isolated. God does not and will not leave us alone. Our creation DNA will not leave us alone. Each of us is created for relationships. This is where the supreme paradox of individuality and community co-exist, never short-changing one or the other. Thus, the question of who am I? is not an isolated journey of individual discovery but a communal one!

 In 2001, I first came across the dictum by Saint Irenaeus, “The glory of God is man fully alive,” in John Eldredge’s book, Wild at Heart. I remember exactly where I read this—at Starbucks on the corner of Washington and Allen, close to my home. It was that shocking! I dropped the book and was dazed for a good several minutes. I didn’t know what to make of it at first. Confusion and shock hit me simultaneously. My then theological frame could not handle such “man(kind) centered” theology! Moreover, I was blown over by the thought that my aliveness is directly related to God’s glory! I was operating out of John Piper’s famous phrase, “Missions exists because worship doesn’t.” My way of bringing glory to God was to engage in missions with all my heart and life, which I had done since 1988. The Irenaeus dictum disturbed my modus operandi!

Looking back, I would say that the following years resulted in a perpetually slow simmering confusion. Often times I found myself juggling between seemingly contradicting paradigms and trying to make connections and synthesize. All in all, I was not satisfied with where I was.

(To be continued next week. . . )

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PART 1 | WHAT IS GOD LIKE?

March 31, 2020 by Chong Kim

Two of life’s most fundamental questions that I’ve found to be true in my own faith journey are,

What is God (or whatever name you use for the Supreme Being) like? and Who am I?

What we do or don’t do in life is foundationally governed by our answers to these two questions. How we answer these questions sets our life’s trajectory and translates to our daily behaviors.

That is, until we are so thoroughly deconstructed or disordered (as Richard Rohr likes to call it), meaning the “box” we created for value and meaning does not work anymore, that we are completely befuddled and confounded. Not one of us has a perfect “box” that doesn’t need some form of deconstruction. I’ll unpack the topic of deconstruction at a later time.

Back to the questions. I’ve found that these two questions are intimately intertwined. But first, I’m going to unpack the first question…

The shape of

“the Supreme Being,” the Consciousness, or God determines how we ultimately view ourselves. For some, this God is an orderly rule enforcer ready to pounce and forcibly meddle in life when needed. For some, this God is powerful and zealous in maintaining His glory, that everything else pales in comparison. For some, this God is absent, uninvolved, and detached, leaving everything up to us to figure out. For some, this God is compassionate, caring, and kind. Whatever the shape (or combination of different shapes in different time) of who our God is like, we all “dimly” see God.

Nobody can say God is this or that in absolute terms. God can never be confined to our concept of God. God and our concept of God is not the same! When we say God, we mean our limited and incomplete view and experience of God rather than God Himself. One can even say that God refuses to be confined to our concept of God. Thus, our answer to the question of What is God like? keeps evolving and hopefully getting closer to who God truly is.

As alluded above, this process of knowing God is more experience based than cognition based. My “knowledge” of God when I look back is mostly about how God came to my rescue in desperate situations, answered my prayers both in clear answers and in silence, showered me with unearned grace, etc. In other words, it is God I have personally experienced in real life context. Often times, I admit that the God I have experienced is the God of the Bible that I met and thus confirms what I have learned about God through scripture. At the same time, we can think all we want regarding what we think or even believe (cognitively) God is like, no less from the Bible, but that is not as sufficient as we once thought. It doesn’t automatically translate into our personal working knowledge of God.

And then there is the Bible, given to us to understand what God is like. But why does it seem like God in the Old Testament is radically different or inconsistent to the God in the New Testament? What do we do with seeming contradictions and discrepancies?

For years, I racked my brain trying to understand the God of the Old Testament who seemed to be the author of unspeakable violence, anger, and malice in the name of maintaining His justice and order. Over time, I saw myself (my soul to be precise) refusing to believe this God. It just didn’t resonate with my experience of God. Why the Old Testament then? (This is a significant rabbit trail. I will further reflect on this very topic in the near future. But for now, among others, three recent books address the question and I would recommend these books. Peter Enns’ How the Bible Actually Works: In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers―and Why That's Great News and Richard Rohr’s What Do We Do With the Bible? There is also Rachel Held Evans’ Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again.)

One of the questions that is a natural by-product of the question, what God is like? is this: How big is our God? By big, I mean magnificent, radically generous and inclusive, and unfathomably immense in His scale and reach. As soon as we make God to fit into our concept and image of Him and restrict His activities to justify our actions, we turn our God into a small-minded-feeble-tribalistic God. This is not the God Jesus proclaimed and taught us to follow and love!

Whether we are aware of it or not, we define our existence based on our understanding of what God is like. Thus, the question, who am I?

I will continue my blog with what to do with Jesus and the question of who I am next week. (There will be two more blog entries.) This post was already getting too long. :)

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SUFFERING AS A FRIEND AND A TEACHER

March 24, 2020 by Chong Kim

In my life, I have found that suffering often serves as a wake-up call from illusions. Suffering disrupts the facade of maintaining the status quo and superficiality. Suffering is also a matter of “when” not “if”. Suffering does not play favoritism; it hits us all with no exceptions. Thus, the question is, what do we do when we are submerged under suffering? Some of life’s most poignant and difficult questions emerge during times of suffering.

Where are You? Who are You? What are You like? Why are You silent and absent? What is this life supposed to be?

These are a few questions I have asked during my seasons of suffering. Suffering is profound mystery. No one who is experiencing suffering can ever say, “I know exactly why I am going through this.”

Yet suffering often drives us towards God or some divine being. Suffering happens when there is an absence of control or deviation from our plans. Richard Rohr’s definition of suffering is “whenever we are not in control.” The degree of suffering is directly proportional to our perception of control. Anything that is not in our control triggers the reaction of what we call suffering. Suffering’s main arena is in the mind, while pain is in the body (suffering can lead to pain and vice versa). What becomes more real is the presence of suffering than our perception of control. Our sense of control is an illusion. Suffering is real, and control is illusional.

Surrender then is the opposite of suffering. Surrender is letting go of our sense of control, which was illusional, to begin with. Surrender is about submitting to whom. This process, rooted in the reality of to whom we belong, allows us to discern whether we surrender, fight, or flight. We don’t surrender to a concept or an idea but to a Person. Surrender is also about submitting to NOW.

Being present and loyal to the present moment is one of the greatest spiritual disciplines.

This discipline is elusive for me as a type seven on the Enneagram; my mind is often fixated in the future. I (or my ego) have learned to escape suffering in the present by thinking about the future, where there is no suffering. My futuristic mind often betrays my present body. For me, listening to my body (which can only be felt in the present moment) is a required discipline of embracing the present moment and the Ultimate Presence.

Suffering

is one of the greatest and most surprising teachers of life. Learning to embrace suffering as a friend and a teacher without demanding hurried answers translates into one of life’s most unexpected fruits.

When I look back at my life, I can almost always point to my growth due to the suffering I encountered. A great spiritual truth, however way you say it is, the idea of “failing upward,” a breakthrough after hitting a wall, etc. capture similar truth. God does not and will not tempt us but He will allow suffering for reasons I don’t fully know. [This is a part of the mystery. Just think of Job.] I would think one of the reasons is that it is an essential part of the package of the inviolable freedom God grants us.

I am who I am because of suffering. I will become who God created me to be because of suffering. And it is precisely the experiences of my sufferings that can be used as gifts to others whom I meet in my life’s journey. And vice versa. . . The only requirement is that we all wear the badge of suffering. All sufferings are both unique and universal. While suffering is unique to all, it is the universal nature that binds all humanity.

The first line of Psalm 46:10 reads,

“Be still and know that I am God.”

The phrase, be still, is one word in Hebrew. According to Strong Concordance, the word רָפָה râphâh has “a primitive root; to slacken (in many applications, literal or figurative):—abate, cease, consume, draw (toward evening), fail, (be) faint, be (wax) feeble, forsake, idle, leave, let alone (go, down), (be) slack, stay, be still, be slothful, (be) weak(-en).” Be still means to cease, fail, faint, be feeble, forsake, idle, let go (especially the hand). To sink down, relax, let drop, let go, and be quiet bear what the word, be still, meant to capture. It is the posture of lowering our hands, opening up our hands (facing upward), and saying, “I am not in control anymore.” It is the posture of surrender.

The next verb, know [יָדַע yâdaʻ], is also loaded. The word know does not mean anything close to cognitive knowing. It is experiential and deep relational knowing. The same word is used for “knowing” through sexual intimacy in the Bible. It is absolutely the most intimate and personal knowing. God promises us that He will reveal Himself as we let go, sink down, and open our hands, which means we stop working and surrender. To paraphrase the verse, it can be read this way: “Let go of control and you will experience a deep personal knowing of Myself.” Or “Surrender to NOW to experience a deep intimate knowing of Myself.” Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the ultimate example of this verse.

To push this further, I believe that on the other side of suffering is love. God does not leave us alone with suffering, but God who is Love comes to rescue. The personal intimate knowing of God is Love in action. Invariably, this is how God woos us over again and again.

The rest of Psalm 46:10 reads, “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” At first glance, this is an amazing leap from the first sentence. The intricate and inevitable connection between what is personal knowing and universal knowing is only what God can accomplish!

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EULOGY FOR MY FATHER

March 17, 2020 by Brittany David

[With a bit of encouragement from my wife, I decided to post my eulogy for my dad. I titled it now.]

In the final hour of my dad’s time on this side of heaven, I asked God, what do you want me to say or pray? God gave me Psalm 23. I later found out my sister had the same inclination and that my mom reads Psalm 23 every day. I read Psalm 23 out loud by my dad’s bed, hoping that he would hear what was being read and thus be comforted. As I read a few times (in Korean and English in different translations), the Message version stood out to me. I’d like to share this morning what I meditated and prayed as a result.

God, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction. (v. 1-3)

God has been my dad’s shepherd both seen and unseen, recognized and unrecognized. My dad does not need a thing now. The word need is no longer necessary or germane to where he is. My dad loved being outdoors, road trips, camping with family, hiking, and fishing. He especially enjoyed going to National Parks. As a result, camping was part of my happy life and eventually became my own DNA, and I have tried to instill the same in my own family. My children now love being outdoors, which is a direct tribute to my dad. He would love lush meadows, quiet pools to play in and drink from. Talk about his love language! He does not have to gasp for air now. And God has sent him in the right direction—being with Him forever.

Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty shepherd’s crook makes me feel secure. You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies. You revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing. (v. 4-5)

My dad traversed life’s ultimate Death Valley. He is now no longer afraid because the Good Shepherd is by my dad’s side and He makes my dad feel secure. Fear melts like wax in the presence of the Good Shepherd. My dad was hyper-conscious of security which he faithfully provided to his family. Nothing escaped his mind in terms of details, although his detail mindedness drove me nuts from time to time.

Several years ago, my dad shared with me his broken dream with tears in his eyes. His dream in life was to become a doctor and help people in need. He had to forsake his dream in place of providing for his extended family when he was only 18 years of age (when his father passed away) as he was the oldest son in the family. Knowing my dad, he would have been a great doctor. As my dad faithfully provided for his extended family and our needs, he now is being served a six-course dinner right in front of his ultimate enemy (which is death) and his head is now completely revived and his life (which we are celebrating now) is brimming with blessings.

Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I’m back home in the house of God for the rest of my life. (v. 6)

I told my dad that I loved him and that he was my hero. He is my hero not because he was a perfect human being and father but in spite of his imperfections, he modeled what it meant to put family first and to love with the best of his ability. Generosity and responsibility are the hallmarks of his character. I now realize albeit faintly that God’s beauty and love chased after him every day of his life. He lived a beautiful life! And that he is now back home in the house of God for the rest of his “life.”

MY GRANDEST JOURNEY

March 10, 2020 by Chong Kim

I have a spiritual director that I meet with every month at the blissful and picturesque Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center in Sierra Madre…along the sloping hills of the San Gabriel mountains. On clear days, I can see a sliver of the glittering ray of the Pacific Ocean on the far horizon. Up close, I’m often greeted by a herd of placid deers against the backdrop of rugged and handsome mountains. The landscape of my soul is not as blissful, though. I feel more like an explorer excavating deep and dark crevices of desert canyons. My sessions with him require a lot of inner excavating work. It requires vulnerability and no falsity while practicing gentleness and self-compassion toward my soul. I am driven toward inner spiritual freedom which is no different from discovering the likeness of Christ in my soul. Who I am in my innermost being without ego’s distraction and falsity IS Christ that is in me. That is my grandest journey.

One of the appreciative qualities of my spiritual director is that he has respect for my unique soul. The role of a spiritual director is not to “direct,” so the title spiritual director is a misnomer (my wife, who is a spiritual director, shared this misnomer with me). He lets me fumble around in the dark, gives me the freedom to chase a few rabbit trails, and ultimately discover my own answers to the questions I have, which is essentially about listening to the work of the Spirit.

He also gives me space, a safe space. It is being a relaying instrument of God who is safe and always loves.

“A director is not a superior.”

—Thomas Merton

Dom Augustine Baker, a 17th century Benedictine mystic who stood his ground against autocratic spiritual rulers, said, “The director is not to teach his own way, nor indeed any determinate way of prayer, but to instruct his disciples how they may themselves find out the way proper for them. . . ”

Contrast the above postures with this story I am remembering now.

Years ago, in a large group setting, my wife shared a bible passage that impacted her. This required great courage on her part since she is a flaming introvert. After the meeting was over, a leader (globally renowned missions leader who will remain nameless) made a beeline to my wife and basically told my wife she had interpreted the passage inadequately. He went on to correct my wife’s interpretation using Greek words and all. I must have been busy talking to others while standing next to my wife, wondering what was taking place. I found out later what transpired and it made me very upset. The fact that I am still remembering the incident and feeling the anger tells me how violated I felt from the incident. It was a violation against soul’s self-discovery process. My soul knew it was simply wrong.

Imperialism in missions is still rampant, I am sorry to admit. Anytime we operate out of right from wrong [which is mostly about perceptions and which stems from what Gregory Boyd and Peter Enns respectively call “idols or sins of certainty”], teaching and dictating, and having prescribed questions and answers, we run the great risk of a new spiritual (or religious) imperialism.

I am not a spiritual director, but I aspire to the qualities I see in my spiritual director as well as in my wife’s spiritual directorship. I want to maintain genuine respect for all souls, all fearfully and wonderfully made by God. I want to create and fearlessly defend safe space. I want to be God’s instrument embodying self-discovery for others.

Foundationally, I desire inner spiritual freedom for all. The inner spiritual freedom is a mother to all external freedom proper to their time and contexts.

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BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 3 OF 4

BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 2 OF 4

BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 1 OF 4

“The good of the world” has to be in direct contrast to the evil of the world. It is a knock-down-drag-out fight to the end between the good and the evil.

I am not poor, meek, merciful, and/or pure in heart most of the time. In fact, I am mostly the very opposite of what Jesus outlined. Nonetheless while tilting heavily on the side of the opposites, I am still both and. We all are.

WHO AM I? (continued from last week)

WHERE DOES JESUS COME IN?

What is God (or whatever name you use for the Supreme Being) like? and Who am I?

Where are You? Who are You? What are You like? Why are You silent and absent? What is this life supposed to be?

Contrast the above postures with this story I am remembering now.