I heard a story a while ago now, back when I was in college, given by a pastor during his weekly Sunday sermon. I forget now the main topic of the sermon, but the story was memorable. He began his sermon by talking about how, when he and his wife were much younger, they were in some financial difficulty and were having trouble staying afloat from month to month.
One particular month, it was particular stressful for them and they needed something on the order of $2,000 like, immediately, or they would be in serious trouble. The pastor then relayed how hard it was to pray for help from God, because it seemed that to ask for something so material, so direct and so... financial, was a bit like testing God and asking for a miracle. Well, they prayed anyway. In the morning, when he got up and checked the mail, inside the mailbox was a letter that contained a check for $2,000. He had been due the check (Again, I forget now whether someone had borrowed the money from the pastor or whether it was a rebate, or whatever) for some time now, and both the pastor and his wife had forgotten about it completely. The pastor went on to talk about prayer and so on.
It is freaky sort of, but I have a lot of freaky "maybe this is a coincidence but maybe it is God" stories with respect to this particular pastor. Another post, another time I guess.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I never did take much stock in stories like this. Of course, I never had any doubts that the Pastor John was telling the truth. I am just about 100% certain that it happened exactly as Pastor John told the story. But I never took much stock in it, because nothing like that happens to people like me. I've heard of things happening to other people, and I've SEEN (been witness to) things happening to other people, but not much happens to me.
I remember when I was a kid, for like 5 years straight, I prayed to God (or maybe it was Santa) that I would get a red and white remote controlled gas-powered airplane that I could take outside and fly around. And some years for Christmas and my birthday, I would get a sweater and corduroys, and other years I would get shoes and gloves, etc. My interests having changed since those years, I am still, today, without that red and white remote control airplane.
Of course, many would dispute the comparison between a struggling pastor praying for $2,000 and a greedy silly kid praying for a toy airplane, at least from God's point of view. But, it isn't God's point of view that I am talking about right now. It is the prayer person's point of view.
We all pray for stupid things, and sometimes we pray for important things. Sometimes, we pray for things that aren't stupid but aren't necessarily that important either - "God, please help me get a parking space closer to the elevator so I don't have to pass that guy who smells who always tries to make conversation with me." But regardless of what we pray for, we do try to keep track of our "win-loss" record and see if we can't make any generalizations.
But every now and then something happens that makes you think twice about the nature of the relationship between you and God.
A few weeks ago, I was in pretty dire straits at work. I had screwed up an assignment quite a bit, but the partner didn't give me back my work with his corrections. Instead, he told me to print out a fresh copy of what I had done, and then correct it myself to see what mistakes I had made. I loathe this kind of teaching method.
1. If I knew what the partner knew, I wouldn't be an associate doing ambiguous and difficult assignments without the big picture, and without full knowledge of how to do whatever it is that I am supposed to be doing.
2. If I knew what mistakes I made, and how to fix them, I would have corrected them before I handed in the assignment to my partner.
3. Asking me to go back and revisit my work without telling me what I did wrong, and how to correct whatever it was that I did wrong, is like telling a kid who just cleaned his room to go back, saying "fix it, I'll be up in 2 hours to check to see if you did." And the kid is thinking, "fix WHAT??!"
And yet, there I was, heading back to my office. I re-printed out my assignment, and of course I had no idea what to do. The main reason, apparently, that my partner had asked for me to be his associate was because of his belief in my ability to think quickly and correctly. I was about to prove him wrong. Panic was building; the one person who could help me, was deliberately testing me to see if I knew what I clearly didn't know.
I turned to the one person I could - my wife. And she did what she could do, which was to pray and ask me to do the same. And so, in the middle of the work day, both of us in different places just closed our eyes and prayed for help.
Not five minutes later, a senior associate, Joe, who had been on vacation for the past 8 business days popped his head into my office to say that he was back, and seeing the look on my face, he sat down across from me and asked, "Got something back, but he didn't tell you what was wrong?" Over the next hour, Joe sat down with me and went line by line over my assignment, giving me the knowledge I needed to correct what I did wrong. I finished making the corrections on my own, armed with the knowledge I needed to do the assignment correctly.
Joe wasn't supposed to come back until Monday, but he came back early anyway, just to see what was up. He came back early even though he lives in Long Island with his family and the commute is one of the worst you can imagine.
Now, this may seem to be rather trivial to some of you, but the magnitude of this small miracle cannot be understated. I firmly believe that that assignment, as given to me to correct by the managing partner of my law firm, was a test I needed to pass in order to stay at the law firm. And in this economy, at this stage of my career and life, and at this time in my family's life, there was no more important assignment to get right. That night, leaving the office, I was filled with such relief and emotion that I had to chill a bit before driving home.
Anyway, if that don't beat the red and white remote controlled airplane, I don't know what can.
-David
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
Reassessment
It is the end of the year, and a quiet moment during the long nights often invite self-examination and critique.
We look inward to find answers to questions that remain unspoken behind the tasks of our lives. While the days fly by, we focus our minds on that which we must do in order to make it to the next day in better shape. But every now and then, a silent interlude slips in between the chaotic needs of our lives. In such a moment, we can close our eyes and think on the things that rarely make the dialogue of our minds. For those like myself, the question that most often pushes to the front is, "How did I end up the way that I am?"
In the world of law, there is an important idea that permeates the societal structure that binds individuals together collectively in this world. There may not be a more important idea in law; first year law students get drilled on this from day 1: proximate cause.
What is proximate cause?
Well, it is difficult to define without examples, but perhaps the easiest way to understand it is to think in these terms: is the effect of action or inaction a result of a reasonable person's decision to act or not to act? This is a melding of direct cause and effect, and a culpability factor that resides in every reasonable person. When someone asks, "are you responsible?" what would your answer be?
The question is loaded, of course. It is hard enough to define "responsible," much less determine whether one is, in fact, responsible. But it is doable, and we must face ourselves at some point. We must face ourselves, let me add, before we face God.
So, preliminaries aside, let me answer my own question.
I am responsible for my condition of being, and I got here, the way that I am, because of the choices that I made and did not make.
Oh, the burden on my soul. For all the victories and the successes I have enjoyed, for all the people that I have helped, for all the incremental benefit that others have derived from my existence, for all the joy I have been a part of, I am also a flawed creature. I have been the cause of great harm, capable of even greater harm, and I continue to exist in a flawed state.
Let us, for a moment, indulge in the proverbial American dream. Why? Well, this is the reality of the life that I am in. A second generation Korean-American, I have pushed my entire life to achieve the dream that had been laid out before me since before I could remember. So let us say that I have everything that I could ever hope to have, possessions, family, friends, financial security, societal stature, and that I am a positive force for the environment around me. In such a state, would I not feel as though my life has been an overwhelming success?
Projection and extrapolation into such a reality, and I think I am still unsure about everything. How can it be otherwise?
I did not ask to be born, I did not ask to be put into this body or with this mind that never ceases to search for answers in the gloom of night. And yet, I cannot help but think that none of these things mean anything without a more complete understanding of what is Right and what is Wrong.
My understanding of Right and Wrong comes from the Bible, and the belief in a Creator that defines all existence in binary. With God, we are in the Right. Without, we are in the Wrong.
And in these terms, I see some unsettling truths.
I am selfish. I am self-centered. I am less than honest. I am self-indulgent, shallow and prejudiced against all others. I am the robber who comes at night, and I am the murderer who shatters families without thought. I am all these things, and the American Dream is ground into dust and blown away against the Reality set, not by me, but by a Creator that cannot compromise Reality to save a troubled soul.
It is easy (easy! he says!) for a Christian to respond, "well, thank God we have a Savior who has sacrificed His life to save our own." But too often this kind of thinking merely whitewashes what is, really, an all-together ugly soul.
Grace is a difficult concept to wrap one's mind around. Grace says, "I forgive." The recipient of Grace can then go about his or her routine, prone once again to fail. But nowhere does Grace say, "I forget." That is our own province, and likely to be the proximate cause of much of the suffering in the world.
But here's the rub - my mind does not forget. In fact, and what is rather ironic, is that I have a poor memory for many things. I have a poor memory for people's names, for what people verbally say, for directions and even for words. But the one thing that I do not have a poor memory for, is for when I do wrong. Then I do remember.
And even so, even with my near-perfect recall for my own faults and errors, I do not necessarily change for the better.
And that, is what I face tonight. My reassessment is this:
Of all the things that I wish I could change about my life, the one thing that I wish more than anything else is that I would become a better person. It isn't like I am asking to be made Perfect, but Better.
-David
We look inward to find answers to questions that remain unspoken behind the tasks of our lives. While the days fly by, we focus our minds on that which we must do in order to make it to the next day in better shape. But every now and then, a silent interlude slips in between the chaotic needs of our lives. In such a moment, we can close our eyes and think on the things that rarely make the dialogue of our minds. For those like myself, the question that most often pushes to the front is, "How did I end up the way that I am?"
In the world of law, there is an important idea that permeates the societal structure that binds individuals together collectively in this world. There may not be a more important idea in law; first year law students get drilled on this from day 1: proximate cause.
What is proximate cause?
Well, it is difficult to define without examples, but perhaps the easiest way to understand it is to think in these terms: is the effect of action or inaction a result of a reasonable person's decision to act or not to act? This is a melding of direct cause and effect, and a culpability factor that resides in every reasonable person. When someone asks, "are you responsible?" what would your answer be?
The question is loaded, of course. It is hard enough to define "responsible," much less determine whether one is, in fact, responsible. But it is doable, and we must face ourselves at some point. We must face ourselves, let me add, before we face God.
So, preliminaries aside, let me answer my own question.
I am responsible for my condition of being, and I got here, the way that I am, because of the choices that I made and did not make.
Oh, the burden on my soul. For all the victories and the successes I have enjoyed, for all the people that I have helped, for all the incremental benefit that others have derived from my existence, for all the joy I have been a part of, I am also a flawed creature. I have been the cause of great harm, capable of even greater harm, and I continue to exist in a flawed state.
Let us, for a moment, indulge in the proverbial American dream. Why? Well, this is the reality of the life that I am in. A second generation Korean-American, I have pushed my entire life to achieve the dream that had been laid out before me since before I could remember. So let us say that I have everything that I could ever hope to have, possessions, family, friends, financial security, societal stature, and that I am a positive force for the environment around me. In such a state, would I not feel as though my life has been an overwhelming success?
Projection and extrapolation into such a reality, and I think I am still unsure about everything. How can it be otherwise?
I did not ask to be born, I did not ask to be put into this body or with this mind that never ceases to search for answers in the gloom of night. And yet, I cannot help but think that none of these things mean anything without a more complete understanding of what is Right and what is Wrong.
My understanding of Right and Wrong comes from the Bible, and the belief in a Creator that defines all existence in binary. With God, we are in the Right. Without, we are in the Wrong.
And in these terms, I see some unsettling truths.
I am selfish. I am self-centered. I am less than honest. I am self-indulgent, shallow and prejudiced against all others. I am the robber who comes at night, and I am the murderer who shatters families without thought. I am all these things, and the American Dream is ground into dust and blown away against the Reality set, not by me, but by a Creator that cannot compromise Reality to save a troubled soul.
It is easy (easy! he says!) for a Christian to respond, "well, thank God we have a Savior who has sacrificed His life to save our own." But too often this kind of thinking merely whitewashes what is, really, an all-together ugly soul.
Grace is a difficult concept to wrap one's mind around. Grace says, "I forgive." The recipient of Grace can then go about his or her routine, prone once again to fail. But nowhere does Grace say, "I forget." That is our own province, and likely to be the proximate cause of much of the suffering in the world.
But here's the rub - my mind does not forget. In fact, and what is rather ironic, is that I have a poor memory for many things. I have a poor memory for people's names, for what people verbally say, for directions and even for words. But the one thing that I do not have a poor memory for, is for when I do wrong. Then I do remember.
And even so, even with my near-perfect recall for my own faults and errors, I do not necessarily change for the better.
And that, is what I face tonight. My reassessment is this:
Of all the things that I wish I could change about my life, the one thing that I wish more than anything else is that I would become a better person. It isn't like I am asking to be made Perfect, but Better.
-David
Monday, December 18, 2006
On Christmas
You know, I have a thing about birthdays.
But I guess before that I have to preface this with a hypothetical story of a boy and his lamb.
In a land far away, a long time ago, there was this boy who had a lamb. The lamb followed the boy around as the latter did his errands. And since the boy had many errands to do, the lamb and the boy were pretty much inseparable for much of the day. It was a good thing they did not mind each other. The boy liked the company and did not much mind the smell of the lamb. The lamb did not mind the company, and liked the way it smelled just fine thank you.
The boy had this routine that he went through each day. It was good that he had such a pattern, else he might forget a chore, and being of a rather simple mind, trying to remember something he may have forgotten would have been a terrible way to spend the day. The lamb also did not mind the routine, for the lamb had its own idyllic thoughts that would be crowded out by new ways of doing the same old things.
Each day, the boy would take his trusty axe and go into the forest to cut some wood for the fires that needed tending. Then he would take the pail and draw water enough from the nearby stream to fill the barrels. Finally, he would collect the berries, the honey and any fish that got caught in the nets before coming back home. The lamb would follow, spending its time lost in thought and idly passing the time.
The village elders were not particularly impressed with the boy or his lamb, and a vote was taken to rid the village of the boy or the lamb. The village council thus passed an ordinance making it illegal to own a free-thinking lamb, and the next day the boy was put in jail for a week for a statutory violation while the lamb was released on its own recognizance.
The moral of this story is that sometimes, doing things your own way, as reasonable as it may seem to you, can rub people the wrong way.
Alright, back to birthdays.
The way that I look at things, I see birthdays as possibly self-defeating. People, in an effort to make someone feel special, gather together on the anniversary of such a person's birth, and wish that person well, often with gifts and cake. The tradition begins at birth, which more of a celebration for the parents, and then later the focus turns to the child who then seeks the attention, the gifts, and the glory for... surviving. Since most children have no resources, will or capacity to survive independent of parental support, and due mostly to modern science, nutrition and relatively high standards of living, the act of surviving another year really has little to do with the fortitude of the child anymore. And yet, they want a birthday celebration.
There is more. I have found that some folks end up treating birthday people different on their special day. That is to say, they are "nicer", more generous, etc. on the anniversary date of such a person's birth. I wonder why this is so. If you are able to be as nice and as generous as you are on such a person's birthday, why not so act on the other days out of the year? Why reserve kindness, love and respect to one day out of the year?
Pushing this further, if, in the above example, you are unwilling to be nicer or more respectful except on that person's birthday, then why celebrate it at all? What is the point? I receive cards and well wishes from people on my birthday every year, even though I do not hear from them on any other day of the entire year. If they really wished me well, would they not seek to find out, say, a few months down the road, whether I am in fact doing alright?
I myself try, not always succeeding, but trying, to hold myself to the principle that I should treat everyone around me as best that I can, on any day of the year. That, to reserve some resource of mine, or some faculty or spirit, and hold it back only to unleash it upon such a person on 1 day out of the year, would be contrary to how I view the relationship between me and such a person.
To put it more simply - if you can act with love only one day out of the year, then don't bother. If you can act with love throughout the year, then that action will be recognized by the recipient regardless of whether you hold their birthday on high.
And this leads me to Christmas.
Do I celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ? Yes. Why? Because I get the day off, because it is a cultural and national tradition. Because I would look cheap if I just accepted other people's gifts and did not give any in return on such a day. And/or I would appear demented if I told my friends and family that I, a Christian, do not celebrate Christmas. And so, I do celebrate Christmas. Grudgingly.
But, honestly, I do feel like the commercialism and the materialism of Christmas has so overshadowed the meaning of the birth of Christ - that is to say, the meaning of salvation, grace, repentance, and love - that Christmas no longer has much relevance to me other than as a time when, during the brief holiday respite from work, I can meet up with people and spend time with my family and friends.
And, of course, Paul had his own ideas in Romans 14.
One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
The point - it isn't whether you celebrate Christmas, and it isn't whether you are a vegetarian. What matters is why you do such things, one way or another. Christmas comes from God, and so it is good. But if you do not celebrate Christmas for God's glory, then it is better than you didn't celebrate it all. Or, if you choose not to celebrate Christmas, then one should hope that the reason is to get closer to God by moving away from materialism and idolatry. Either way, do it for the right reasons.
And Paul said something else in Romans 14. He said not to judge, because that would only cause us to have an obstacle between the judger and the judged. Why place a barrier between people that has no purpose other than to separate?
So this brings me back to the boy and his lamb story.
Many might think that the evildoers in this story are the village council people, those that were opposed to the keeping of lambs who think for themselves. But that really isn't the case. Nobody in the story did wrong, except the boy who was duly punished for his statutory violation. And a week later, the boy was released and did his chores without the free-thinking lamb. In time, I believe the boy replaced the free-thinking lamb with a free-thinking goat, which was perfectly fine for all involved, including the goat, who didn't care much either way.
-David
But I guess before that I have to preface this with a hypothetical story of a boy and his lamb.
In a land far away, a long time ago, there was this boy who had a lamb. The lamb followed the boy around as the latter did his errands. And since the boy had many errands to do, the lamb and the boy were pretty much inseparable for much of the day. It was a good thing they did not mind each other. The boy liked the company and did not much mind the smell of the lamb. The lamb did not mind the company, and liked the way it smelled just fine thank you.
The boy had this routine that he went through each day. It was good that he had such a pattern, else he might forget a chore, and being of a rather simple mind, trying to remember something he may have forgotten would have been a terrible way to spend the day. The lamb also did not mind the routine, for the lamb had its own idyllic thoughts that would be crowded out by new ways of doing the same old things.
Each day, the boy would take his trusty axe and go into the forest to cut some wood for the fires that needed tending. Then he would take the pail and draw water enough from the nearby stream to fill the barrels. Finally, he would collect the berries, the honey and any fish that got caught in the nets before coming back home. The lamb would follow, spending its time lost in thought and idly passing the time.
The village elders were not particularly impressed with the boy or his lamb, and a vote was taken to rid the village of the boy or the lamb. The village council thus passed an ordinance making it illegal to own a free-thinking lamb, and the next day the boy was put in jail for a week for a statutory violation while the lamb was released on its own recognizance.
The moral of this story is that sometimes, doing things your own way, as reasonable as it may seem to you, can rub people the wrong way.
Alright, back to birthdays.
The way that I look at things, I see birthdays as possibly self-defeating. People, in an effort to make someone feel special, gather together on the anniversary of such a person's birth, and wish that person well, often with gifts and cake. The tradition begins at birth, which more of a celebration for the parents, and then later the focus turns to the child who then seeks the attention, the gifts, and the glory for... surviving. Since most children have no resources, will or capacity to survive independent of parental support, and due mostly to modern science, nutrition and relatively high standards of living, the act of surviving another year really has little to do with the fortitude of the child anymore. And yet, they want a birthday celebration.
There is more. I have found that some folks end up treating birthday people different on their special day. That is to say, they are "nicer", more generous, etc. on the anniversary date of such a person's birth. I wonder why this is so. If you are able to be as nice and as generous as you are on such a person's birthday, why not so act on the other days out of the year? Why reserve kindness, love and respect to one day out of the year?
Pushing this further, if, in the above example, you are unwilling to be nicer or more respectful except on that person's birthday, then why celebrate it at all? What is the point? I receive cards and well wishes from people on my birthday every year, even though I do not hear from them on any other day of the entire year. If they really wished me well, would they not seek to find out, say, a few months down the road, whether I am in fact doing alright?
I myself try, not always succeeding, but trying, to hold myself to the principle that I should treat everyone around me as best that I can, on any day of the year. That, to reserve some resource of mine, or some faculty or spirit, and hold it back only to unleash it upon such a person on 1 day out of the year, would be contrary to how I view the relationship between me and such a person.
To put it more simply - if you can act with love only one day out of the year, then don't bother. If you can act with love throughout the year, then that action will be recognized by the recipient regardless of whether you hold their birthday on high.
And this leads me to Christmas.
Do I celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ? Yes. Why? Because I get the day off, because it is a cultural and national tradition. Because I would look cheap if I just accepted other people's gifts and did not give any in return on such a day. And/or I would appear demented if I told my friends and family that I, a Christian, do not celebrate Christmas. And so, I do celebrate Christmas. Grudgingly.
But, honestly, I do feel like the commercialism and the materialism of Christmas has so overshadowed the meaning of the birth of Christ - that is to say, the meaning of salvation, grace, repentance, and love - that Christmas no longer has much relevance to me other than as a time when, during the brief holiday respite from work, I can meet up with people and spend time with my family and friends.
And, of course, Paul had his own ideas in Romans 14.
One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
The point - it isn't whether you celebrate Christmas, and it isn't whether you are a vegetarian. What matters is why you do such things, one way or another. Christmas comes from God, and so it is good. But if you do not celebrate Christmas for God's glory, then it is better than you didn't celebrate it all. Or, if you choose not to celebrate Christmas, then one should hope that the reason is to get closer to God by moving away from materialism and idolatry. Either way, do it for the right reasons.
And Paul said something else in Romans 14. He said not to judge, because that would only cause us to have an obstacle between the judger and the judged. Why place a barrier between people that has no purpose other than to separate?
So this brings me back to the boy and his lamb story.
Many might think that the evildoers in this story are the village council people, those that were opposed to the keeping of lambs who think for themselves. But that really isn't the case. Nobody in the story did wrong, except the boy who was duly punished for his statutory violation. And a week later, the boy was released and did his chores without the free-thinking lamb. In time, I believe the boy replaced the free-thinking lamb with a free-thinking goat, which was perfectly fine for all involved, including the goat, who didn't care much either way.
-David
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