August 2006

Today I was just overwhelmed with the enormity of the city of Bangkok. Wealth, poverty, and how it all coexists together. I had occasion this noon to go downtown to meet up with Mike, a mentor of mine, and Mark, another misso visiting down here from northeast Thailand. After lunch, I took the skytrain over a few stops to see Central World, this new mall that just opened up. Its supposed to be the largest mall in SE Asia. And its next door to Paragon, what for the last few months was the largest mall in SE Asia. And this is in the midst of 10 large shopping malls that are essentially adjacent to each other, across a couple intersections. I was walking back to the canal boat dock to go back towards my part of the city (this canal happens to be one of the main sewer corridors of the city) and I stopped on a footbridge over one of the busy streets, just taking it all in. All around me I saw glitzy, enormous shopping malls, skyscrapers, the skytrain, traffic that included BMWs and Mercedes, richly dressed people walking in and out of the malls…I also saw construction sites for new buildings where just a few months ago large slums had been. I saw the vendors on the street selling food for 1/5 the cost of the cheapest meals in the malls. I saw beggars and amputees lying on the ground. I saw traffic that included hundreds of motorcycles and also many rickety old busses (circa 1950s) puffing out black smoke. I saw perhaps as many as 40 people packing into each one of these busses, each of which aren’t much longer than one of those BMWs next to it with just 1 or 2 people. I wondered at how much profit a few businessmen must be making from these glitzy malls and skyscrapers. I thought about who built them, probably workers from Isaan (NE Thailand) breaking their backs for $5/day and living in worse than slum conditions while the construction is going on.

Here I am in the megacity of Bangkok, home to 12 million people. But the countryside of Thailand is so different from Bangkok. I bet if some old grandma from Isaan came to Bangkok and it was her first time to the city that she’d probably faint from what she saw. Its like an alien planet compared to the countryside. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently wrote a post on the power of an indestructable joy. That was mostly related in terms of encouraging hope where there is despair - particularly the kind of fatalistic despair common among my neighbors in Permsup. Since then though, I’ve been thinking about the relationship of joy to pain. There is pain in despair, sure, but its a pain where an indestructable joy, drunk with the reality of hope, is a truly compassionate thing. There are many situations, however, where such joy is not compassionate but seems almost insensitive. I’m talking of situations where people have received terrible things, and at no fault of their own. Friends suffering from random, debilitating diseases, kidnapped children in northern Uganda being forced into soldier service raping and pillaging as they have been raped and pillaged, etc. Where pain exists and exists in abundance, does joy even seem relevant? While the reality of hope is still a true thing there, what difference does it make? As Henri Nouwen has been teaching me, I think the thing there is just to suffer with people.

Now this makes sense of course, everybody knows that one of the best things you can do for people in pain is just to be with them. Just show them that you care. Don’t run away from the pain, or try to make it seem less than it is. But dwell in it with them.

My question though, is how do we mesh joy with pain? Doesn’t joy and hope have anything to say unto pain? We are people of eternal hope - and we are also called to suffer with people. It’s generally assumed that joy and pain are mutually exclusive. If we have joy, we can’t be experiencing pain; if we are in pain, we can’t be experiencing joy. But is this true? It would seem to me that the entire Christian enterprise rises and falls on whether this assumption is false or not. Because in Christ, there is most certainly hope and therefore joy. But we cannot be followers of Christ unless we endeavor to suffer with those in pain. If we run away from pain, we are not followers of Christ, for Christ left all the glory of heaven to dwell among us and suffer with us. It must be true, therefore, that joy and pain can simultaneously coexist. Read the rest of this entry »

God is just rocking my evangelistic world. How have we gotten things so off for so long? I think most people who are anxious about evangelism are so because they’ve never been equipped with a way to share the gospel that really makes it great news. In the past, I think I was resigned to the reality that though I knew the gospel was so much more than the bridge diagram, I would just have to be patient and hope people saw the real mmmph of the gospel in the way I lived and in deeper conversations we’d get into. I had no way to summarize the gospel that included God’s designs on healing this whole world (with us as a key part in that plan) rather than just an individualistic ticket into heaven, sin exchange summary.

The idea that we don’t have to first convince people that they are sinners, but rather just establish together that we live in one messed up world (a much easier thing) is so freeing. And that the key hook isn’t just a ticket into heaven, but a role in a worldwide revolution to heal this messed-up world, that’s so much easier to sell. What have we been doing all this time starting off the “good news” with a message of condemnation (”you are a sinner”)? That’s not good news, its bad news! (And its not news, deep down, most people know they’re sinners anyway.) But the message that God is about fixing this broken world and that he wants our company in fixing it, and thinks we can be of use to him in fixing it - that’s good news. Read the rest of this entry »

I just got done reading The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. My mind is on fire. The picture I can’t get out of my head is of the Great Solid people entreating the Ghosts to stay…but without an ounce of sorrow or pity. At every point, their joy was indestructable.

I started reading this book at the suggestion of my good friend Dan. I had previously lent Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian trilogy to him and his wife Liza. We’ve had many a discussion on issues McLaren brings up, particularly the question of hell addressed in the final book, The Last Word and the Word After That. Dan suggested that McLaren must have gotten many of his paradigms from Mr. Clive Staples. Just this morning, Dan was saying that he never really took The Great Divorce to be an analogy for heaven and hell, but for what essentially happens here on earth. Its interesting how I read it from the opposite view, but I think end up at the same point. What I mean is, if we’re talking about eternity being in every moment and every moment being in eternity, what’s the difference? Heaven begins now, as does hell. Heaven is now, as is hell. We’re experiencing heaven now, and some are also experiencing hell now. Now. And that’s exactly what Clive Staples says.

This is so amazing to me, because it means that we indeed can become like those shining solid giants in the “high country” whose joy is so indestructable. Here. Now. In Permsup, in Boston, in Los Angeles, wherever we may be. In 2006. Or 2549. Read the rest of this entry »