Foxes Have Holes: Gospel Lessons from an Immigrant

I was born in Korea and came to the US when I was 8 years old. While being from another country had presented certain challenges, once in a while I realize what a blessing it can be. For my experience as an immigrant has allowed me to understand some aspects of the Gospel that may be harder to see for someone who was born and raised in America.

For one, being a foreigner and a minority has allowed me to understand the idea of my allegiance and identity being tied to another country. While most people around me cheered for America during the Olympics, I cheered for South Korea. When I traveled to a different state I’ve never been before and I met a Korean person, we instantly formed a bond. Perhaps South Koreans are overly proud of their country and ethnicity. How much more, then, as Christians, should we align our allegiance to no temporary kingdoms but the Kingdom of God? How infinitesimally unimportant is America that will burn away like chaff compared to the Kingdom that was and is and will be coming, on earth as it is in heaven? If the ideals of American democracy conflicts with the command to love our enemies, to which shall we submit? Being from another country has allowed me to see that there can be a reality of a kingdom that isn’t immediately perceivable around us; that this invisible kingdom can manifest itself by the citizens of that kingdom living in the here and now. As John the Baptist has proclaimed, the Kingdom is here!

Second, I’ve realized in the last two plus decades that I’ve become more and more Americanized. I do not know when, but I’ve stopped identifying myself as Korean and instead identified myself as a Korean American. The switch wasn’t overnight but gradual. How important, then, is it for Christians to remain Christians. Were it not the preserving grace of God, no saints would be left to endure until the coming of Christ. Oh but how earnest is the battle! How hard shall we struggle against sin, not that we as Christians fear losing our status before God, but because we hate our indwelling sin more and more as Christ sanctify us more and more! So fall asleep not! The devil prowls, daring to stumble even the elect if he could! How gradual is the slide, how gentle and easy the slope to perdition!

Third, I’ve realized that the sacrifices that my parents have made will change the way I live. Because they have left behind everything in Korea – their careers, family, friends, support system, everything – I could live in America, to study here, to have opportunities that they never had.  Through their sacrifice, I was given so much more. Because of their sacrifice, I can’t waste these opportunities; my life is lived in humble gratitude, not begrudging duty. For to have the inner attitude of gratitude is the proper response to such self-less sacrifice; any other inner response would demonstrate that I have not fully understood their sacrifice at all. How much more thankful then, should my attitude be for the greatest sacrifice of all? How much more shall all avenue of my life be centered around thankful praise to Jesus? For the proper response to my parents’ sacrifice of their career would be for me to have a successful career. The proper response to their sacrifice of the support of their family and friends would be for me to care for my family, to get married and enlarge the family and to love and cherish many friends. What then would be the proper response to Christ’s sacrifice of the comforts of his home but to find my comfort, to find my home in heaven and no where else. What then would be the proper response to Christ’s sacrifice of his life but for me to sacrifice my selfish desires and submit to His will?

Because of my parents sacrifice, certain choices don’t make sense for me. My mind just loses any categories to comprehend them anymore. How can i live in a way that would dishonor their name? Likewise, because of Christ’s work, because of my new identity, sin loses its hold on me and my grip on sin is loosened. It just doesn’t make sense any more. How, or why would I do the things that I used to do? It would just be inconsistent with what He has done, with who He declares me to be.

Oh how small and inconsequential are all of life’s great calamities if through them we may peek into the mysteries of heaven. Oh how unimportant are the broken branches for those who are rooted in Christ!

Dominance of Personality

There is no face of a man on the moon; it is just that our mind interprets the craters and the shadows in a way that makes sense to us. The tree that falls makes no sound when there is no one around to hear it. The dog acts neither “friendly” nor “aggressive” when there are no human beings around to label his behavior. If this were the case, the higher would be conquered by the lower. Chaos overthrows order, and the darkness blots out all light. All traces of personality would eventually be extinguished with the death of the last person in the universe. Any trace of personality is due to our childish tendencies of anthropomorphism.

But Personality does not flow from bottom up. It can only flow from top to bottom ontologically. This can be shown in two ways. One, if personality flows from nothing to being, then it ceases to be personality and merely deconstructive chemical responses. Two, whoever claims that personality flows bottom up would have just made a claim regarding personality using his own intellect, an essential part of his personality, and thus have injected his own personality into his own proofs. Unless he is then ready to concede the transcendental properties of personality, he is trapped.

There is then, theologically, the “making new” that happens through the dominance of God’s personality. It is He who makes all things new. It is He who gives us names and calls us His own. Such is true to a smaller degree with humans and animals; thus in our roles as custodians we worship God in humble imitation. Such is true with humans and all created things. That is how we will rule with Him, as co-heirs.

But this dominance does not happen by sheer force. It happens, paradoxically, through self-denial, through Love. It is like the dialectical process of emptying out one’s mind to truly realize what one had sought to remember. It is forgetting what’s behind to take hold of that which Christ has secured, for He remembers who we are. Through this process, then we are then more of ourselves, when we are more like Christ. Our personality is fully restored when the core, the will, is submitted.

Defeating Pride

Pride is a monster that can hide in every corner of our lives. It is easy to take pride in our accomplishments; but more insidiously, we take pride in our failures through self-pity or inventing other measures of success. It is also easy to take pride in our moral behavior.  Conversely, we also take pride in our open-mindedness and our tolerance of those different from us, and claim that we are therefore better than those intolerant moral conformists.  No matter what we turn to, we are tempted to claim that we are better than others, that we deserve praise, that our good work or character should be acknowledged, that our faults are to be minimized and that our mistakes are justified by our past experiences.

Why do we do this?  We are struggling to exist; we want to remember ourselves because we are afraid being forgotten. Oh, how sweet is the doctrine of election! For we are chosen, not because of anything that we have done (because then we could just as well lose our salvation based on the whims of our fallen hearts), but through the finished work of Christ! We are remembered. “My name is written on his hands.”

Where then is room for pride, for self-pity? All self-aggrandizement is unnecessary, and incompatible with this grace. We cannot add anything to Omniscient God’s perfect recall. He will not forget you. He will not forget the work He has done. This gospel reaches into every corner of your being.

How then shall we face success? We shall praise God but we will not let them define us. For it matters not that people know us; they will soon forget. But rather we will seek to know God, even as we are known. How then shall we face failures? We will embrace them if through them we can taste the sweetness of the Gospel!

Pride is defeated, not by anything we do, not by us turning to different parts of ourselves, but by grace; we boast not in anything we do, but in what is given us. We boast not in anything that we do, but only in the cross.

In Not Of

Let us look at the example Christ sets for us. Yes he hung out with the so called sinners of the society. But he didn’t participate in their sins nor did he condone their sins. But rather he accepted them, not for “who they are” but because of (or with the goal of steering them towards) repentance. Jesus did not tell the tax collectors to continue ripping people off and steal money; no, he commended Zaccheus for giving back seven-folds all the money he has stolen. Jesus did not tell the adulterous women to continue on in her scandalous lifestyle; no, he forgave her and told her to leave her life of sin!

In engaging this secular culture, the biggest danger is becoming a pharisee; we should not isolate ourselves and condemn the world without a heart of love. On the other hand, we cannot give the world the impression that sin is okay by us, that Christianity doesn’t really inform the way we live or shape the way we view everything.

1 Peter 1,2

Repentance

To repent is one of the highest virtues.  True repentance requires all of your self: the intellect, to recognize the moral laws that have been broken; the soul, to come with a contrite and broken spirit; the heart, to jump over the chasm of fear to an unknown of punishment; and sometimes even the body, to prostrate on your knees to symbolize your weakness and submission.

But because of this, when any part of us is defective, we cannot bring forth true repentance.  Only a good man can truly repent; but a good man has nothing to repent of.  A bad man, who has plenty to repent of, cannot repent for the failing of his intellect, his soul or his heart.   He will suppress the knowledge of the moral law, denying its existence or its authority over him.  He will not come contritely, but rather try to march in with pomp through the gates of heaven, which will be shut and denied him.  He will be kept bound by the fear of losing his idols, the false gods that bring him comfort.  But what man can say that he is not this bad man?  Who can dare claim that he acknowledges his sins or recognizes the laws that he is constantly breaking?  Who can claim to have never approached the throne of grace as if it was a throne of works?  Who can claim that he has not shrunk back in fear from the light?  For no one is righteous; not even one.

We need help from the outside.  We need grace, to clear away the haze in our minds, that will help us see the futility of our ways, the offensiveness of our sins and our attempts at good deeds (for even our righteous deeds are done out of selfishness or in vain attempts to attain right standing before God).  We need grace that heals our souls, making it whole yet soft, thereby making it able to bend and be contrite.  We need grace to heal our hearts, the love that casts out fear, the love that proclaims we are sons, so that we will not shrink back but to truly repent, to truly love God.  Only when grace touches us are we able to begin the movement of repentance.  And when we do make this movement, we realize that the price has already been fully paid, that we are already forgiven!

Oh the wonders of the gospel!  What can make a wretch like me be called a son of God?  The longer we gaze into it, the more we realize how profound it is.

Loving God

Do I really love God? Which parts of me can I honestly say love God, and which parts of me rebel against Him and His laws?  Sometimes I realize, looking into my heart and my actions, that I do not love God.  Does not the very inner part of me hate Him? Does not that core despise His existence or at best cares not to value Him supremely according to His infinite worth?  Is that not my true self, an enemy of God, an idolater?  Even the parts of me that wish to change the core are only the external parts, the shells that are circumstantial and temporary.  All these externalities are not my true self.  I do not wish to change; there is no refuge in the inner island of righteousness.  For even if such island were to exist, it is not located within my core, and therefore cannot change the core.

But, there is hope.  There is grace.  We can’t force our hearts to love God.  We can’t force ourselves to sin less and believe more.  Only when we realize how much we are loved by God will these byproducts of our faith flow out of our lives.  That’s the trick with christian life. It isn’t about trying harder, being sincere, or forcing our hearts to believe.  At the heart of the christian walk is realizing just how much He loves us for His namesake.

Win Over Our Hearts

How can you convince us or reason with us when our intellectual capacities have atrophied, and our minds are filled with thoughts of doing evil?

How can you make us love you when our hearts long for idols and other lovers?

How can you call us friends when we are your enemies, when we hate you and your laws?

Your grace is irresistible because your will is un-negotiable, an unstoppable tidal wave of love.  Your grace also turns our hearts and our minds back to you.  We come to love you, to love your laws, to find in them beauty.  And through this grace, we are declared to be “Righteous!”  We come to delight in your laws, we come to delight in you.

So win over our hearts.  Make yourself irresistible to us.

Courage

When I stare into my sinful, selfish self, and at the end of that dark and lonely passage of reflection sits a little boy, afraid.

We are so afraid.  And that is why we sin.  We are afraid that our idols will fail us.  We suppress the truths that are written on our hearts, these truths that tell us that these are false gods who will not save us.  We are afraid that we will be found for who we are, as sinners, as frauds, as charlatans. as glory-thieves.  We are afraid that for all our struggles, climbing and clambering up for just a hint of meaning of existence, that we know that all of our struggles are for naught, that we can’t save ourselves.

We want heroes.  We desire to become our own heroes, but we are afraid that we might succeed.

And that is why courage is such a critical virtue.  At the testing point of our fears, the true nature of our struggles becomes evident.  THE struggle: the unveiling of His sons.  The true nature of the courage itself is revealed: the dying to ourselves, to our fears, to crucify our worries and to trust.  For to be courageous is to live a paradox, to risk death and injury to save our lives, to risk losing everything you have to gain everything there is.

Heads and Tails

If you’re a Korean christian, you’ve no doubt heard this phrase being prayed in Korean: “Let us be the head and not the tail.”  Like a lot of Korean words I hear, I mostly let it drift over my head. But when I tried to make sense of what is actually being said, I really could not make heads or tails of it.  (yes, pun totally intended).  How does it make any sense to pray this?  Where is this in the Bible?  And what was the context?  I really can’t recall where or whether this phrase is from the Bible, but I do know John 13.

1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

I really don’t know where in the Bible it talks about leading the congregation according to the latest business models and techniques.  When I think about the meaning of the Gospel, I really can’t reconcile it with wanting to be at the top, at the front, and being the head.  That is not what it means to love others.  If you wish to be the greatest, you must be the least.  This is at the very center of the meaning of the universe; in order to save your life you must lose it; the Son of Man came to serve and not to be served.

I am pretty sure that the most radiant of saints in heavens will be someone who no one has talked about on earth, those who have lead others to Christ and not to themselves, those who strove to be the tail and not the head.

The God Gulf

Hunger.  Suffering.  Wars.  Both non-religious and religious groups are working (sometimes together) to try to solve these global problems.

Yes, even from the Christian perspective, these are problems.  And yes, we can love our neighbors who suffer from these problems by trying to alleviate their suffering.  Loving them is not less than trying to solve these problems, but more than that.  Because from the Christian perspective, what is THE problem?  THE biggest problem is that of God’s wrath.  The biggest problem is eternal separation from God.  So any humanitarian efforts must have in mind solving this infinitely more urgent, infinitely more important problem of spiritual death.  So the so called God gulf can only be bridge from one side, the eternal side, the Christian side.  The natural cannot break out into the supernatural, but the supernatural can step in to the natural.  The natural has no guard against it; but once the supernatural enters in, it becomes part of the natural.  This is the definition of miracles.  Similarly, the so called God Gulf can only be bridge from our side.  We can work with them, but they will find it impossible to work with us if we are true to our mission.  They will find our aims repulsive and dishonorable.  Only God can bridge a God-sized gulf.