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  • Find Your Purpose in Life Over Resolutions

    The beginning of a new year.

    It doesn’t really have much intrinsic value or significance. Yet, we look forward to it and celebrate with big countdowns, cheers, and kisses. We reset our mental and emotional clocks and dig deep to find a different will-power to achieve our New Year resolutions. We want to get more fit. We want to be happier. We want to be a better person.

    I stopped believing in making New Year resolutions from an early age. It was pointless. The new calendar year did not provide any magical power or motivation to achieve previous resolutions, thus I stopped believing.

    However, finding purpose in life, has been a game changer. It works, not only at the start of a new calendar year, but through the mundane rhythms of life. It works on a macro scale, providing framework and direction. It works on a micro scale to provide daily tasks and goals.

    I have searched wide and far for the meaning and purpose in life. I will save that full story for another time. But for now, I want to start this new, calendar year of 2021 with documenting my purpose in life.

    Purpose
    Participate in creating a new creation.

    Vision
    I want to leave whomever I come in contact with a little more loved,
    I want to leave whatever I touch a little more beautiful,
    I want to leave wherever I go a little more cleaner,
    I want to see a good, new creation.

    Mission
    Participate in healthy living and healthy working.
    Participate in loving relationships.
    Participate in rich thinking and learning.
    Participate in proper reflection and worship.

    Participation is key here.

    Not everyone may share the same beliefs that I do, but for those who claim to worship and love YHWH, Jesus Christ, Father, Son, and Spirit, for those who submit to biblical authority, for those who don the confusing title of Christian, participation is key.

    Understanding the biblical narrative, which thus shapes and overarches our own narratives, invites the people of God to participate in the mission of God. It is not our own mission that we devise ourselves. Often times I have found that I tried mixing secular wisdom of finding one’s own purpose with simply participating in the grand purpose of God. The syncretism of these values express itself in modern, Western Christian teaching as, “finding God’s calling for me.” It sounds holy, but in reality it is simply using the holy name of God masked around our own selfish desires and pursuits.

    Participation is key, because it reminds me that life is much bigger than my own little ideas and values. It is easy to drink the Kool-Aid of modern, post-modern life and believe that I am the most important person in the world. If that is true, then I determine my own purpose, not the constricting values of society or archaic philosophy of religion. The Kool-Aid tastes good at first, but at the end of the day, it is made up of artificial sugars and false promises. However much we want to believe that we are autonomous, self-enlightened, rationale beings, we all have been influenced and shaped by values bigger than we can see. What we want to listen to, what we want to shape our lives, is our choice. And that is why participation frees us from the tyranny of both institutional oppression and individual self-fulfillment.

    One does not have to look far to see that 2020 into the beginning of 2021 has not been a very good year for most. As much as we have advanced as society, we are still plagued by microscopic viruses that make the strongest leaders and people crumble to their knees. Global and local tension highlight a lack of peace and unity, despite all the movements towards harmony. Our earth is being raped of all its goodness by the very people that depend on her. And while Christianity and Christians have not always been the hero, the narrative that God is writing, the author of life and history, is one where there will be a new creation. And this is not a new purpose, a beautiful, good creation was the intent from the beginning, and will be fulfilled in the time to come. It is this story I want to be a part of, it is the story of God that I want to participate in. And the beauty of participation is that I can still be me, I can bring what little I have and offer it as I simply build along side the ultimate Creator.

    This purpose, has shaped my vision, and has given me a particular mission. It is a holistic approach to loving and worshiping God. And with it, I am excited to tackle 2021. I am excited about weekly plans.

    I am excited about each day that I can participate in creating a new creation.

  • December 9, 2020

    • Reading: Evangelical Ecclesiology, Esther
    • Building: Christmas ornaments, relationships
    • Exercising: 3x/week body weight circuit, stretching
    • Studying: ICT trading
    • Listening: NPR radio
    • Playing: League of Legends
    • Cooking: Not as much
    • Writing: Planning

  • November 3, 2020

    • Reading: The Gospel Comes with a House Key, Acts
    • Building: Office desk
    • Exercising: 3x/week body weight circuit, stretching
    • Studying: ICT trading
    • Listening: NPR radio
    • Playing: League of Legends
    • Cooking: Pork belly three ways
    • Writing: NaNoWriMo 2020

  • NaNoWriMo 2020

    First attempt at writing a novel with a goal of 50,000 words!

  • Sep 29, 2020

    • Reading: The Forgotten Ways, The Gospel Comes with a House Key, Jonah
    • Building: Bookshelves, office desk, this site
    • Fighting: A sore throat and body ache, for my marriage
    • Exercising: 3x/week body weight circuit, tennis
    • Considering: Trading course, writing a book
    • Watching: Schitt’s Creek, Daniel Tiger

  • Beautiful House, Ugly Home

    I recently moved into a new house. What a journey it has been from the initial far-fetched dream to this new reality.

    Buying a house has not been the hardest transition in life. Yet, it has certainly brought about significant challenges. Pair that with a marriage tested with one of the hardest challenges of having a kid, then we certainly have one messy recipe.

    It has been about three weeks after moving to the new house. There were various reasons for the move, but it was definitely the right decision. The house is absolutely beautiful. The real estate agent said she typically does not desire the houses she shows her clients, but this one really stood out. The inspection agent said that this house falls under the 2% of houses that have hardly any issues considering it is five years old. It is truly a beautiful house.

    But what good is a beautiful house, if it is not a beautiful home?

    The family that moved in seems like any “ordinary” family. Perhaps that is exactly the problem. We are an ordinary family in the sense of broken mediocrity.

    My wife and I have been through one of the hardest years of our lives in 2019. Our beautiful daughter was born in 2018. The following year we had many transitions — motherhood to full-time job; father and full-time student to full-time caregiver. Becoming parents alone is a hard enough transition. Being a primary caregiver as a father is a whole other challenge. Through the transitions, identities were shaken, communication was broken, and “vicious cycles” partaken.

    We knew there would be necessary adjustments after having a child. We knew that extra work was needed. Thus, we “tried” to make things better. But then, the dream of the house, communality, and family, took priority.

    And now, we have a beautiful house, and an ugly home.

    Is it really worth coveting anything that seems beautiful on the outside, but is decaying on the inside? House, car, job, marriage, family, spirituality, friendships, insert whatever.

    Perhaps going from a one-bedroom apartment with three adults and one toddler, to a four-bedroom, 2500 square foot house, gives you more space to be in separate rooms to write reflections “in peace” after having another tiff with one another. At the end of the day, all the space in the world will not mend any deeper brokenness that festers in a broken home. It is easy to repair things around the house, build beautiful dining tables, clean and organize so that everything appears to be in order. It is inexplicably harder to repair stonewalled hearts, scars from spoken and unspoken words, or a dull apathy that slowly settles downs as the new norm.

    But f*** all that.

    As my contrarian self and pursuit to live an extraordinarily ordinary life, here is my stake in the ground to turn an ugly home, to match the beautiful house. I thought it wasn’t worth fighting for anymore, I probably will feel that way at times in the future, but I know this beautiful house will not last, no matter how hard I try to maintain it, if it is not coupled with a beautiful home.

    So, let’s go back inside.

  • Family as Salt and Light

    The Christian faith has become increasingly implausible in the modern period. This has occurred due to the secularization of society particularly through the decline of the bidirectional influence of family and religion. The deterioration of the traditional family in our age and the current “modern social imaginary,” are reasons why it will be difficult for Christianity to flourish and will be even more challenging for individuals, including Christians, raised in this post-Christian, “family-less” society.

    There have been numerous studies on the secularization of society in the modern West. However, many take these theories for granted and simply assume that religion and Christianity, more specifically, will face an inevitable death.[1] Some of the more conventional narratives of secularization predominantly include the impact of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, with their prized fruits of science, technology, and materialism.[2] While some truth exists in these explanations, Mary Eberstadt provides a different perspective on the secularization of the West, which she argues has been most influenced by the “Family Factor.”[3]

    A common theory has been that “religious belief comes chronologically first for people, and that they then tailor their actions accordingly—including their personal decisions about family formation.”[4] Eberstadt challenges this causative assumption and provides compelling suggestions that there is a “double-helix” relationship between family and religion. She identifies that the Family Factor plays just as much of a role in people’s religious decisions. Sociologists have shown that decisions such as “whether to have [a family], whether to marry, how many children you will have” are all “strong predictors of how much time you do (or do not) spend in church”—the studies also show that unmarried people without children are less likely to attend church. [5] An interesting challenge to the unidirectional influence of religion on family decisions is the relation between religion and contraception. A common assumption has been that because of religious restrictions on the use of contraception, religious people have larger families. However, most of the religious modern world no longer has any restriction on the use of artificial contraception, and yet the data reveal that religious people continue to have larger families than the nonreligious.[6] Eberstadt makes another stunning correlation with the dramatic rise of postwar religiosity across the West that accompanied the more commonly known “demographic phenomenon, the baby boom.” As the studies and data suggest, the Family Factor and having more children may lead people to religion.[7]

    The Family Factor has a significant impact on religiosity, as Eberstadt has shown, and thus trends have demonstrated that a decline of the family may have impacted the decline of Western Christianity.[8] For example, looking at the French provides circumstantial evidence in that “French religiosity did not decline in the absence of family decline,” but rather, “their spiral fates were historically joined.”[9] Another correlative trend that is often overlooked is how the Industrial Revolution had a direct impact on the family. “The one thing that all scholars will attest is that as a general demographic rule, urbanization leads to falling birthrates.”[10] The Industrial Revolution and the rise of urbanization had a detrimental effect on families, which in turn may have “made it harder for people to believe and practice their Christian faith.”[11] Further analysis has shown that the most irreligious parts of the West tend to have the “smallest/weakest/fewest natural families,” while the opposite also holds true, i.e. religious parts of the West tend to have stronger families.[12] These trends do not indicate, nor does Eberstadt argue, that family alone is the reason for religious decline. However, they do illuminate how much negative impact there has been on the family correlating to the gradual demise of Christianity in the West.

    The impact of the secularization of society through the decline of family persists as an ongoing reason why Christianity has become increasingly implausible in the modern age. Fewer people are getting married, having children, and adhering to the traditional model of the natural family.[13] If the evidence and trends of recent history continue to hold true, the lack of families alone may drive less and less people to Christianity. Further complicating this matter is the growing acceptance of nontraditional or antitraditional families, making the plea toward a Judeo-Christian understanding of family more difficult to accept.[14] Not only this trend, but one does not have to look far to see the mere brokenness in the family structure even within Christian communities. The “mere proliferation of broken homes across the West poses one more problem of its own for receptivity to the Christian message.”[15] Eberstadt warns her readers, “It is in this way that broken and frayed homes not only interrupt the transmission of the Christian message: in some cases, they provide the emotional material for a whole new barrier wall to Christian belief.”[16]

    It is evident that society has changed drastically over the past few centuries. There also has been a deeper subconscious transformation of how people in the modern age view their existence. This is not only in theory, as scholar Charles Taylor argues, but is an all-encompassing “social imaginary.”[17] The development of the “modern social imaginary” over centuries has produced a new way of thinking, believing, and behaving and is significant to this discussion because of the way it challenges “the descriptions of God’s providence and the order he has established among humans in the cosmos.”[18] The modern social imaginary has an all-pervasive effect not only affecting discussions among the elite or educated. It changes the mere definition of family itself, as previously discussed, what constitutes the public sphere, the weight of economic reality, the sovereignty of people, and even what fashion means in light of the authority of public opinion.[19] The modern social imaginary has created a new space for God to exist in the secular world, from the once public and enchanted world to the now private and immanent domain.[20] Thus, the traditional forms and expressions of Christianity will continually find it difficult to be a healthy conduit in the modern age for the good news of Jesus Christ and the whole biblical narrative.

    All individuals—since that is the modus operandi for any person steeped in the moral order of the modern social imaginary—will find it difficult to have faith in a transcendent God and institutionalized religion. The challenge to believe and practice Christian faith is not just for the harmful distinction of a non-believer, but for the very people who identify as Christian. Faith or skepticism is no longer a simple polar dichotomy in the secular age. We exist in the “cross-pressure” of belief oscillating between “doubt and longing, faith and questioning,” illustrates James Smith.[21] Christians who belong to the modern social imaginary live in a personal tension when their social imaginary is confronted by the biblical narrative and find it unsettling. If they are able to overcome this personal tension, then they must face the public sphere at large and the risks associated with carrying one’s own cross.[22],[23]

    The institutional church and the leaders teaching their community of individuals ought to reinforce the biblical narrative and combat the fictitious aspects of modern social existence,[24] reminding followers of Jesus Christ to be in, but not of the world.[25] Identifying and confronting what it means to be in the world, but not of it has many faces, yet one in particular that the church has failed to address is in regards to the family. Eberstadt explains, “In their efforts to reach out to individuals who wanted a softening of Christian doctrine, the churches inadvertently appear to have failed to protect their base: thriving families whose members would then go on to reproduce both literally and in the figurative sense of handing down their religion.”[26] The secular world that promoted “the legalization of divorce, the particularly momentous invention of modern contraception, the consequent increasing destigmatization of out-of-wedlock births,” was given even more support “by related changes in Protestant theology… that unwittingly amounted to more blows against an institution [i.e. the family] already being roundly battered.”[27] The modern individual continues to take a stronger foothold in this age and is less convinced of Christianity and religion as both the secular data and the Christian message preached dismiss—whether consciously or subconsciously—the significance of family.

    Family has been an important factor in the history of Christianity, as discussed thus far. There is compelling evidence for the influence of family on religious decisions, and thus a decline of the family over recent centuries has accompanied the decline of Western Christianity. There has been a simultaneous growth of the modern social imaginary during this time and now is the primary lens that Western people imagine existence. The modern social imaginary has redefined the meaning of family itself and esteems the individual to new heights. It has impacted the message of the Western church to cater to these changes, since the very leaders and members of these communities live immersed in and in tension with this imaginary. As we traverse deeper into the ever-evolving modern social imaginary, perhaps a mere focus to become missional families will be enough of a witness as salt and light of the world.[28] Christian families or the lack thereof have been “no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.” Perhaps families can be a light so that the world may see the good work of simply being a family and then people will be open to and welcome the Father who is in heaven, ultimately giving glory to God.[29]

    [1] Mary Eberstadt, How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2013) Kindle Edition, 60.

    [2] Ibid., see Chapter 2.

    [3] Ibid., 21.

    [4] Ibid., 91.

    [5] Ibid., 93.

    [6] Ibid., 100.

    [7] Ibid., 122.

    [8] Ibid., 108.

    [9] Ibid., 110.

    [10] Ibid., 117.

    [11] Ibid., 115. Also see Catherine A. Brekus, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 45.

    [12] Ibid., 118.

    [13] Ibid., 169-172.

    [14] Ibid., 163.

    [15] Ibid., 177.

    [16] Ibid., 163.

    [17] For a full explanation on social imaginary, see Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), Chapter 2.

    [18] Taylor, 5.

    [19] Ibid., 151, 167. In light of recent events, the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the modern social imaginary’s posture toward the power of economic reality, where we commonly find the significance and importance of saving human lives on par with the significance and importance of saving the economy.

    [20] Ibid., 193.

    [21] James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 14.

    [22] Taylor, 182.

    [23] Matthew 16:24 (ESV).

    [24] Taylor, 183. “We regularly come across ways in which the modern social imaginaries, no longer defined as ideal types but as actually lived by this or that population, are full of ideological and false consciousness.”

    [25] John 17:14-18.

    [26] Eberstadt, 140 (emphasis added).

    [27] Ibid., 168.

    [28] Missional understood as and operating in participation with the mission of God. I expound upon this in my essay, “Hey Google, what is mission?” (essay, April 2020). Family as a vocation is “[not] just as a socioeconomic benefit, cultural nicety, or fear of being an idol, but as one expression in the participation of the mission of God, as a church and as a witness to the image of God, dwelling with creation and being a blessing to those around and all nations.” Lee, 10.

    [29] Matt 5:13-16. Eberstadt laments, “How can that relationship between creature and Creator be understood when the very word ‘father’ may be associated more with negative than with positive characteristics?” Eberstadt, 176.

  • Culture of Enlightenment Births Evangelicalism

    Through its culture of reason and progress, the Enlightenment created a new environment for Christian faith and practice, particularly expressed through the complicated birth of evangelicalism.[1]

    The Enlightenment consists of multiple people, events, behaviors, and ideas that stretch across a large breadth of time and place. The eighteenth century in particular has been most notably known as the Age of Enlightenment.[2] This century had seen a greater “push for societies based on reason rather than religious confession.”[3] More legitimacy was given to the separation of church and state and “the will of the people rather than the will of God” was becoming the predominant voice of society.[4] There were significant advancements in science and technology, and new understandings of anthropology, sociology, and the modern economy.[5]

    One could say that the “social imaginary” — “the way people imagine their social existence” — was ultimately transforming.[6] This transformation primarily took place through “the public sphere among educated elites in the eighteenth century” and the set of practices developed by the public sphere “gradually changed their meaning for people, and hence helped to constitute a new social imaginary (the ‘economy’).”[7]

    These broad trends and cultural shifts were demonstrated in the heart of a local town in Newport, Connecticut. Documented in the life of Sarah Osborn, an eighteenth-century writer, she provides a “unique vantage point” of the changing times.[8] Her story illuminates three cultural tones of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment: consumerism, capitalism, and humanitarianism.[9]

    The economic social imaginary that was developing in the eighteenth century consisted of an abundance of material goods that were to be traded in the marketplace. Technological advancements provided a better means to living and thus a “consumer revolution” took place in Newport, where people “could savor the pleasures of buying a new book, choosing a new outfit, or investing in a matched set of Wedgwood plates.”[10] Sarah welcomed this consumer revolution and saw it “as a reflection of God’s beneficence toward his creation.”[11]

    With an abundance of goods and a growing marketplace, mercantile capitalism began to take shape. New opportunities were offered by the marketplace and while “[Sarah] and other evangelicals saw nothing wrong with either making money or buying things in the marketplace,” there was a growing skepticism to some of the inherent values supported by capitalism. “Capitalism depended on a commitment to the values of acquisitive individualism, benevolent self-interest, and free choice.”[12] The merchants in Newport, “acted as though they were the master of their own fate” while Sarah fought against this value system that seemed to displace the providence of God.[13]

    Related to this new economic reality was the cultural voice of humanitarianism. An emphasis on the will of the people over the will of God changed the narrative of the roles of humans in society.[14] The humanitarian movement was characterized by religious skepticism or even disbelief, viewed happiness as the greatest good, sought to abolish suffering, believed humans could make the world a better place, and ultimately claimed humans as essentially good.[15] These values stood in stark contrast even to the prior century.

    Due to Sarah’s existing faith in God, she lived in tension when these economic and humanitarian values intersected with her beliefs and thus embodied the impact of the Enlightenment with Christian faith and practice.

    Consumerism and the increase in material goods and standard of living created a temptation for the “the Powerful Love of the World and Exorbitant Reach after Riches.”[16] The tension that arose was not with the materialism itself. When “people participated in the consumer economy, they were encouraged to imagine themselves as free agents who could fashion their identities however they pleased, gratifying their desires instead of repressing them.”[17] It was this kind of choice that Sarah saw sinful and the emphasis on the autonomous individual over and against her sovereign God.[18] While eighteenth-century ministers condemned the sin of covetousness, they were ironically “pioneers in using commercial techniques to spread the gospel. Like merchants who advertised their goods in local newspapers, they publicized their meetings in order to attract as many people as possible.”[19] While there was a prophet-like condemnation on luxury and corruption, ministers of the time “knew how to ‘sell’ religion.”[20] The effect of consumerism impacted both personal and public expressions of Christian faith and practice.

    The capitalistic values of individualism, self-interest, and free choice may have had one of the biggest impacts on Christian faith and practice. This is most evidently seen by the evangelical emphasis on personal experience and one’s choice to believe. Catherine Brekus explains that

    Enlightenment philosophers defended the right of the sovereign individual to … worship according to the dictates of his own conscience… Evangelicals were ambivalent about the individualism that was enshrined by the Enlightenment, but in response to the challenges of their time they crafted a new form of Protestantism that was based more on the converted individual than the covenanted community… [Even] though evangelicals agreed that both personal and communal transformation were important, they put their pronunciation more on the individual, arguing that one could not be a Christian without a personal experience of grace.[21]

    While Sarah and other “evangelicals did object… to the model of selfhood that formed the bedrock of the emerging capitalist order,” the influence of the Enlightenment may have given greater significance to Sarah Osborn’s story and personal conversion, especially during a time where the female voice was a minority. Evangelicalism “gave women a new vocabulary of individual experience to justify their authority and leadership.”[22] This was clearly evident in Sarah Osborn’s life.

    Another impact of individualism and the larger socioeconomic changes were on the family dynamic, which as Mary Eberstadt argues, has a correlative effect on religious practice.[23] In the seventeenth century, ministers viewed the family as a “hierarchical ordering of both church and state.”[24] This began to change as the institution of the family began to have less influence on its members. “[Whether] or not evangelicals understood the underlying historical forces that were changing the family, they were disturbed by their effects.”[25]

    The humanitarian movement had a more direct effect on Christian faith and practice, as one of its characteristic traits is religious skepticism. The view of the essential goodness of humanity inevitably brought the doctrine of sin into question. “Ordinary Protestant” believers found the language of total depravity, corruption, and evil “extreme, perhaps even absurd.”[26] As seen in her writings, Sarah did not adopt this particular message of humanitarianism and in numerous occasions highlights her sinfulness. Nonetheless, there was a growing popularity in “a new gospel of human goodness.”[27]

    A very complex dynamic that arose between humanitarianism (and the broader changes of the Enlightenment) and Christian faith and practice is through their birth of the antislavery movement. Interestingly, it was neither of these two forces alone that ultimately addressed the inherent wrong of owning and selling another human being. First century Christians up until the early eighteenth century have coexisted with slavery.[28] While Sarah had a tremendous heart to welcome slaves and free blacks into her home to sing, pray, and listen to their stories, she was more concerned with their salvation than their bodily freedom.[29] Most Enlightenment philosophers “imagined reason as the sole property of white European men, denigrating all other peoples as ‘racially inferior and savage.’”[30] Historians have studied how the antislavery movement picked up particular strength in the late eighteenth century. Explanations include how “it emerged in tandem with the humanitarian movement, revolutionary rhetoric, and mercantile capitalism.”[31] It was this complex dynamic of these cultural forces along with a strong Christian ethic that gave breadth to “a powerful indictment of slavery.”[32] For Sarah, because of “her zeal to save sinners she sometimes turned a blind eye to the entrenched evils of her time, especially slavery.”[33] However, through the radical change in the late eighteenth century and the influence of abolitionist Samuel Hopkins, she also had a change of heart seeing the “horrid sin” of slavery.[34]

    One other particular impact of the Enlightenment on Christian faith and practice, worth mentioning in brief, is how the overall trend toward reason and knowledge as well as the evangelical emphasis on personal experience may have both contributed to the demise of the authority of Scripture. “[Evangelicals] did not view conversion as an intellectual assent to the truths of the Bible or as a slow, imperceptible turning to God; for them it was a ‘new sense’ that was as real as the physical senses of seeing, hearing, or tasting.”[35] And through the elevation of scholarly study, the Bible became like any other ordinary ancient text examined for its truthfulness and usefulness to contribute to the broader pool of knowledge.[36]

    It is clear that the Enlightenment and its cultural values had a significant impact on Christian faith and practice, particularly seen through the eyes—or rather words—of eighteenth-century writer, Sarah Osborn. Although it was a brief review of the complex interactions occurring at the time, this exploration of history provides, as John Fea argues, “one small way of cultivating the virtues necessary for a thriving democracy.”[37] He continues, “We can attend religious services with people who share our socioeconomic status, skin color, theological beliefs, and style of worship… ‘How can we take responsibility for our society if we remain in such a state of isolation, growing fat in our ideological enclaves?’[38]

    While Sarah Osborn—nor any person in history for that matter except Jesus Christ—was not perfect, she did exemplify a life that most definitely reached across different skin color and socioeconomic status, and attempted to live a life most pleasing to God as she wrestled within the tension of the growing values of the Enlightenment and her own expression and practice of Christian faith. She reminds modern day Christians to do the same.

    [1] Catherine A. Brekus, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 9.

    [2] Iain Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017), 391.

    [3] Ibid.

    [4] Ibid., 392.

    [5] Ibid., 391-2.

    [6] While outside the scope of this essay, there is a strong case for the argument of an eighteenth-century social imaginary, as presented in Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).

    [7] Taylor, 30.

    [8] Brekus, 5.

    [9] Ibid., 7. While these words and the modern understanding of the concepts did not develop until later, “language often lags behind reality” as demonstrated through the life of Sarah Osborn.

    [10] Ibid., 193.

    [11] Ibid.

    [12] Ibid., 213.

    [13] Ibid. 193.

    [14] Provan, 392.

    [15] Brekus, 218.

    [16] Ibid., 44.

    [17] Ibid., 193.

    [18] Ibid.

    [19] Ibid.

    [20] Ibid.

    [21] Brekus, 187. Charles Taylor corroborates this point in his analysis of the “disembedding” of individuals. He notes that Protestant—or perhaps more specifically, evangelical—churches “operated, where one was not simply a member by virtue of birth but had to join by answering a personal call. This is turn helped to give force to a conception of society as founded on covenant, and hence as ultimately constituted by the decision of free individuals.” See Taylor, 62 (emphasis added).

    [22] Brekus, 183.

    [23] See Mary Eberstadt, How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2013).

    [24] Ibid., 45.

    [25] Brekus, 45.

    [26] Ibid., 46.

    [27] Ibid.

    [28] Ibid., 287.

    [29] Ibid., 269-70. E.g., Jonathan Edwards did not view slavery as a sin even referring to Scripture. See Brekus, 268.

    [30] Ibid., 267.

    [31] Ibid., 284.

    [32] Ibid., 287.

    [33] Ibid., 219.

    [34] Ibid., 287.

    [35] Ibid., 94.

    [36] Provan, 401.

    [37] John Fea, Why Study History? Reflecting on the Importance of the Past (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 117.

    [38] Ibid. Fea quotes Nicholas Kristof, “The Daily Me,” New York Times, March 19, 2009.

  • “Hey Google, what is mission?”

    A Google search for “what is mission” returns the top two definitions: “1. an important assignment carried out for political, religious, or commercial purposes, typically involving travel. 2. the vocation or calling of a religious organization, especially a Christian one, to go out into the world and spread its faith.”[1] This understanding of mission has shaped much of modern Christian faith and practice and evidently the world—or at least Google—has taken note as well. Merriam-Webster provides an additional definition: “a preestablished and often self-imposed objective or purpose.”[2] This definition of mission may help us better understand the mission of God.

    I argue that the mission of God is to create and dwell with all of creation, including the people of God and the nations. This understanding of the mission of God shifts my perspective on personal and ecclesial identity and gives shape to my vocation.

    What is the preestablished and self-imposed objective or purpose of God? A good place to start would be, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”[3] The creation narrative illustrates whom, what, when, and where God created, however, it does not explicitly explain the reason why. I have often heard that the purpose of God is to save people or to redeem creation, yet I never found these answers satisfying as to why God created anything in the first place, if the sole objective was to see it fail in order to redeem it.

    What if the purpose of God in creating was to simply enjoy the very act of it as well as the end product? When God creates light, water, land, vegetation, fruits, lights to rule over the day and night, sea creatures, birds, living creatures on the earth, and ultimately humankind, God sees each creation as good and when God sees everything that was made, “it was very good.”[4] Afterwards, “God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”[5] It could be said that the mission of God, the preestablished and self-imposed purpose, was to create good work and when it was finished, to rest and enjoy the good creation. Like an artist who paints a picture, a cook who prepares a feast, a coder who designs a website, and a parent who raises a child, there is something beautiful and meaningful in the very act of creating and in the creation. When many in the modern age view their work simply as a means, most often to make money in order to provide a living, God demonstrates that work ought to be good in and of itself. That was and continues to be the mission of God.

    Placed within the story of creation, is the introduction of humankind. An interesting note to make, particularly when we as humans are inclined to make ourselves the center of the story, is that the creation of humankind did not even encompass a “day” of its own. We shared it with the creation of the beasts and livestock of the earth.[6] The special trait that humankind did receive is that we were created in the image of God, a motif I will explore in more detail. [7] Humankind was given a purpose as well. On the indicative of being blessed by Creator God, humankind was to be fruitful, increase in number, fill and subdue the earth, have dominion over the living creatures, and eat.[8] Humankind was placed in the good creation and was given the same enjoyable purpose of working and taking care of it.[9] Yet, as most interesting stories go, there are always characters who mess things up.

    God dwells with creation and with humankind as initially intended.[10] However, instead of fulfilling the simple and enjoyable purpose set forth by God, humankind disobeys by doing the one thing they were not supposed to do. Like one who vandalizes a painting, a server over-seasoning a meal, a hacker inserting a bug, or a child disobeying a parent, the good creation was ruined. Instead of issuing the initial consequence from disobeying, God formulates a new purpose for restoring what had been marred.[11] God executes this specific purpose through a covenant with Abram, through whom “all peoples on earth will be blessed.”[12]

    The Bible takes its readers on a complicated journey of how God will fulfill this new purpose. In contrast to most self-imposed objectives where the work is ongoing and the end result uncertain, we are fortunate to know how this story will end. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God restores the broken relationship with humankind and will fulfill blessing all peoples on earth. Bible readers have a glimpse into the ultimate reality God has planned.

    “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”[13] The people of God are found in the new creation, where the gates and foundations of the city have the names of the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles of the Lamb, respectively.[14] The nations will walk by the light of God and their glory and honor will be brought into the city of God.[15] “And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”[16] Once again, God is at work creating a good creation, “a new heaven and a new earth.”[17] God is fulfilling the purpose of redeeming the people of God, through whom all nations will be blessed. God is ultimately continuing the purpose of creating good work and to enjoy good creation. God states, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.”[18] What a masterpiece.        

    This framework, or missional hermeneutic, is imperative for understanding the Biblical narrative, as Christopher Wright argues in The Mission of God.[19] The Bible itself is a “missional phenomenon,” providing within its own texts and as a whole (as demonstrated above) the mission of God.[20] “In short, a missional hermeneutic proceeds from the assumption that the whole Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of the whole creation.”[21] This “missional basis of the Bible” can only be properly understood when there is radical shift in one’s preconceived ideas of mission.[22] The story of God’s mission, according to Wright,

    begins with the God of purpose in creation, moves on to the conflict and problem generated by human rebellion against that purpose, spends most of its narrative journey in the story of God’s redemptive purpose being worked out on the stage of human history, [and] finishes beyond the horizon of its own history with the eschatological hope of a new creation.[23]

    I owe much of my own “missional hermeneutic” to the argument presented by Wright, with a particular emphasis on the beginning of God’s purpose in creation. Understanding the historical and “grand metanarrative” of the Bible and fully capturing the mission of God affects all other aspects of mission, including the mission of humanity, Israel, Jesus, and the church.[24] The mission of the church, which has often been the primary or only study of “missions,”[25] “means the committed participation of God’s people in the purposes of God for the redemption of the whole creation.”[26] In order to do proper justice in our participation, it requires—and I quote at length—“a missional hermeneutic [that] means that we seek to read any part of the Bible in the light of

    • God’s purpose for his whole creation, including the redemption of humanity and the creation of the new heavens and new earth
    • God’s purpose for human life in general on the planet and of all the Bible teaches about human culture, relationships, ethics and behavior
    • God’s historical election of Israel, their identity and role in relation to the nations, and the demands he made on their worship, social ethics, and total value system
    • the centrality of Jesus of Nazareth, his messianic identity and mission in relation to Israel and the nations, his cross and resurrection
    • God’s calling of the church, the community of believing Jews and Gentiles who constitute the extended people of the Abraham covenant, to be the agent of God’s blessing to the nations in the name and for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.[27]

    Adopting this missional basis of the Bible, will allow Christians to sing more richly,

    Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,

    As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

    World without end, Amen.[28]

    “This is not just a liturgically conventional way to end prayers and canticles.” Wright explains, “It is a missional perspective on history past, present and future, and one day it will be the song of the whole creation.”[29]

    Wright references this short Trinitarian hymn to capture the whole breadth of the mission of God.[30] The Trinity, as Eugene Peterson explains, “is the theological formulation that most adequately provides a structure for keeping conversations on the Christian life coherent, focused, and personal… If God’s presence and work are not understood to define who we are and what we are doing, nothing we come up with will be understood and lived properly.”[31] This understanding of God may seem like mere abstraction and some aspects certainly are, however, Peterson argues that the Trinity ought to be “a witness that God reveals himself as personal and in personal relations,” and thus is not understood as intellectual categorization, but rather and only through relation.[32] Miroslav Volf corroborates this notion in his work, After Our Likeness. “[These] brief and abstract considerations concerning the one and the many indicate that the way one thinks about God will decisively shape not only ecclesiology, but the entirety of Christian thought.”[33] This relational understanding of God, which Volf explains theologically as the perichoretic personhood of God,[34] aligns with the mission of God, to dwell with all of creation, the people of God, and the nations.

    Volf interacts with two leading voices from the Catholic and Orthodox tradition to assess how different understandings of the Trinity has led and continues to lead to different understandings and expressions of the church. Different traditions and theologians have emphasized and have an affinity towards universalization or pluralization, depending on their Trinitarian theology.[35] While older traditions have been steeped in Trinitarian thought and practice, the Trinity “has remained largely alien to the Free Church tradition.”[36] Volf aims to place the “cry of protest of the Free Churches — ‘We are the church’ — into a trinitarian framework and with elevating it to the status of an ecclesiological program… that is dogmatically fully orthodox.”[37] The focus of his work is on the inner nature of the church and he explicitly states that he does not directly address how the church should “participate in God’s mission in the world.”[38] Thus, it would be unfair to respond and critique his work specifically in regards to the mission of God, but there are two aspects of ecclesiology worth mentioning.

    Volf argues that the church is the image of God and must be understood in light of God’s new creation, “as the anticipation of the eschatological gathering of the entire people of God.”[39] If the church is the image of God, then the mission of the church is the mission of the triune God, to be in communion with the entire people of God in the new heaven and new earth.[40] If the church is understood strictly in this manner, perhaps then we will be better equipped to understand the mission of God. Having a proper understanding of God and “the church as community is therefore simultaneously a missiological dispute concerning the correct way in which the communal form of Christian faith today is to be lived authentically and transmitted effectively.”[41] While the “decentralized participative structure and culture” that Volf presents seem like a more plausible expression and form of church, one must remain grounded in theocentric mission and worship, rather than a predominant ecclesiocentric view.[42] Volf reminds us that “[successful] participative church life must be sustained by deep spirituality. Only the person who lives from the Spirit of communion (2 Cor. 13:13) can participate authentically in the life of the ecclesial community.”[43]

    Understanding more of who God is and the mission of God in the world, continually shapes my identity and vocation. The tendency, as we saw from the beginning, is the desire to make ourselves the primary character and author of our lives. I do not believe this is solely a modern dilemma of extreme individualism, but can be a tribal flaw as well, such as the role and emphases of the institutional church. Wright argues that a “shift in paradigm” is necessary, from “our human agency to the ultimate purposes of God,” from “mission as ‘missions’ that we undertake, to mission as that which God has been purposing and accomplishing from eternity to eternity,” and from “an anthropocentric (or ecclesiocentric) conception to a radically theocentric worldview.”[44] I believe my personal identity has been greatly impacted by fully understanding the mission of God. However, having been shaped by the “modern social imaginary” and the evangelical emphasis of personal experience in salvation, I believe we in the modern West will continue to live in this tension, until the new creation.[45]

    In the Fall of 2019, my wife and I rested from attending a local Sunday gathering of a Free Church. We were in search of what it means to be the church, instead of being a mere consumer, lay participant, or even a devoted member to the various programs of churches. We were unsure of what we were looking for, but wanted to avail ourselves to the possibility of a new rhythm that the Spirit of God would reveal. By understanding the mission of God and the church as the anticipation of the eschatological gathering of the people of God, Volf provides a strong theological dogmatic to our ecclesiology, even expressed within a family unit, another important growing theme.[46] While I do not believe I have landed anywhere concretely, I certainly have a strong platform to jump off and claim, “We are the church!”

    According to the biblical narrative, who we are is shaped and defined by our relation to God and who God is and our vocations ought to be shaped and defined by our relation to what matters to God and what God is doing.[47] It is important to understand this grand metanarrative, but Steven Garber reminds us, “To have good lives, we cannot spend much of life talking about utopian fantasies, about ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ worlds.”[48] In order to combat the tendency to veer towards a utopian ideal, we can “live proximately” and one way to do so is through the vocation and calling of family. Not just as a socioeconomic benefit, cultural nicety, or fear of being an idol, but as one expression in the participation of the mission of God, as a church and as a witness to the image of God, dwelling with creation and being a blessing to those around and all nations.

    “For eternity, all my heart will give, all the glory to your name.”[49]

    [1] Lexico, s.v. “mission,” accessed April 14, 2020, https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/mission (emphasis added).

    [2] Merriam-Webster, s.v. “mission,” accessed April 14, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mission.

    [3] Gen 1:1 (ESV).

    [4] Gen 1:3-31. I use the translation of “adam” as humankind, taken from the NRSV translation and explained further by Iain Provan in Seriously Dangerous Religion (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014), 80-1.

    [5] Gen 2:3b.

    [6] Gen 1:24-26.

    [7] Gen 1:26-27.

    [8] Gen 1:28-29.

    [9] Gen 2:15.

    [10] Gen 3:8-9.

    [11] Gen 2:17.

    [12] Gen 12:1-3; 15.

    [13] Rev 21:3.

    [14] Rev 21:12-13.

    [15] Rev 21:22,24.

    [16] Rev 21:5a.

    [17] Rev 21:1a.

    [18] Rev 21:6.

    [19] Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006). This book deserves its own space for reflection and response, yet I will do my best to briefly summarize the main points in this essay.

    [20] Wright, 48-50.

    [21] Ibid., 51.

    [22] Ibid., 62. I will return to this shift as it deeply resonated with me personally.

    [23] Ibid., 63-4.

    [24] Ibid., 63, 66-7.

    [25] Ibid., 33-4. Most studies of or rather for Christian missions is “to find appropriate biblical justification and authority for the mission of the Christian church to the nations.”

    [26] Ibid., 67.

    [27] Ibid., 67-8.

    [28] Ibid., 64.

    [29] Ibid., 65.

    [30] The appearance of this hymn has declined drastically since the late twentieth century. See Hymnary.org, s.v. “Gloria Patri,” accessed April 14, 2020, https://hymnary.org/text/glory_be_to_the_father_and_to_the_son.

    [31] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 6.

    [32] Ibid., 7.

    [33] Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 193.

    [34] Ibid., 208-9.

    [35] Ibid., 193-4.

    [36] Ibid., 196. Volf associates Free Church as “churches with a congregationalist church constitution” and secondly as those who affirm the separation of church and state. See Volf, 9.

    [37] Ibid., 11, 20. The study presented by Volf is far-reaching especially for the modern society and church. I believe it is crucial to understand how he defines the church, the mediation of faith, and the “polycentric-participative” model, however, space will not permit me to fully engage with his material here.

    [38] Ibid., 2, 7 (emphasis added).

    [39] Ibid, 128, 197.

    [40] Ibid., 257.

    [41] Ibid., 11. Through the Trinitarian understanding of ecclesiology expressed through the Free Churches, I believe the model that Volf presents is better equipped to engage with modern individualism and human rights, sociological hierarchy and structures, and roles and responsibilities of the individual and community. See Volf, 220, 226, 228.

    [42] Volf, 257 and Wright, 62.

    [43] Volf, 257.

    [44] Wright, 62 (emphases added).

    [45] See Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries and Catherine A. Brekus, Sarah Osborn’s World.

    [46] Volf, 17-18, 36.

    [47] Steven Garber, Visions Of Vocation (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2014), 161.

    [48] Ibid., 220.

    [49] Listen to Hillsong Worship, “You Hold Me Now – Hillsong Worship,” YouTube, accessed April 15, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ldX-5y8ulM.

  • Loving God with a Social Imaginary of Expressive Individualism

    What does it mean to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength?”[1] I have pondered this question numerous times in my journey of faith. Loving God with all my strength was “easy” to practice as it meant faithfully attending Sunday gatherings, tithing, and generally living with a decent moral compass. Loving God with all my mind had brought me to Regent College to wrestle with some of the skeptical questions I have had, prior to which have either been dismissed with juvenile responses or left unanswered. Despite all the good deeds and contemplation thus far, ironically, it seems that at this juncture of my journey I am reminded once again, to have faith like a child and to love God like a child. I believe this disposition is most crucial to the Christian and to the church. Simply put, love God with all your heart.

    Loving God with all your heart is crucial to the Christian and the church because it is central to the greatest commandment, referenced above. Our hearts contain our identity, character, and attitude, thus loving God in this manner requires our whole selves, which I believe is the very essence of being in relation with a living and dynamic God. And being in relation with God further reveals our identity, shapes our character, and aligns our attitude. It is from this foundation that all other expressions of love and action ought to take place.

    This disposition is crucial to the Christian because a deeper understanding of our identity helps clarify and fulfill our purpose. Understanding ourselves and discovering a purpose is ubiquitous in the narrative of the modern West. For the Christian, we may rephrase this as identifying God’s purpose for me, hearing the call of God, living a life honoring to God, being faithful witnesses, or searching for a vocation, to name a few. Despite any criticism of contemporary culture, this is the main thread that weaves through the lives of countless individuals, Christian or not. Without a proper understanding of one’s identity, it will be difficult to live a life of purpose that is distinct from someone who does not have a relationship with God. Self-centered, consumeristic, and immanent lives plague the Christian in the modern West.[2] Perhaps loving God with all our hearts will move the Christian to a God-centered, giving, and transcendent life that will be a blessing to those around him or her.

    The church being the body of Christ, made up of different members, ought to consist of these individual Christians and as a whole, love God as a community. I believe that without the first commandment being exercised fully, it will be exponentially more difficult to follow through with the second commandment, that is, love your neighbor as yourself.[3] While simplistic, perhaps this definition of church is ever more necessary in an ever more increasingly complex society. Church is more about going to church or doing church and is being pulled in endless directions of identifying with either a tradition, political party, or particular stance. Perhaps the foremost identity the church ought to reestablish is to love God with all our hearts. This may seem too philosophical for those who do not sit in academic institutions or too airy for those who are busy standing in the corner of marketplaces, but I would argue that bridges must be built across all gaps of Christian communities to affirm a unified identity.

    While important in a local setting to be an example of love and peace to the community, it is equally important to establish this identity in the broader biblical narrative and global context. It is crucial to understand the history of the people of God represented through Israel as well as in the early church. The current narrative engrained into most is Western Christendom, however a retelling of the Christian story is critical particularly for those in the modern West. I believe this must start from academic institutions that emphasize this particular narrative over the lost Eastern Christianity and of even more relevance, the burgeoning Christianity in the Global South. Without a humble, unified identity, there is no hope for a global ecumenism to flourish.

    Without a renewal of the heart to and for God, without a proper identity, redeemed character, and humble attitude, I believe the church will no longer have any relevance in the modern West. Just like the empty cathedrals in Western Europe serving as tourist attractions to ancient days, it is only a matter of time before church and Christian would become irrelevant to the fast-paced, changing culture. Whether in Vancouver where folks are mostly politely ambivalent to any religious overtone or where the bright lit crosses littered throughout the city of Seoul hold little to no meaning of hope, the need for a renewed love for God is ever more necessary.[4]

    This change of heart is very much needed in the modern West and quickly wherever modernity and affluence reach next. It is particularly more pressing where Christianity was once fruitful but now is becoming more secular. Growing up in the Greater New York area, I have certainly felt the cross-pressures between faith and questioning.[5] Raised as a nominal Christian by parents who were “first-generation Christians,” it was easy to become an atheist once I learned about evolution and science in my early years and later in my adolescence mostly living between either as an agnostic or Moralistic Therapeutic Deist.[6] This was the foundation that I stood on, albeit being shaky, and the lens that I saw the world through. Inevitably, I became a product of the secular age.

    Plagued by a “profound dissatisfaction with a life encased entirely in the immanent order,” whilst faithfully attending Sunday gatherings and participating in mid-week communal activities, I began my own quest to search for a deeper meaning than what I had known thus far.[7] This journey began with exploring a myriad of “meaningful activities,” from volunteering at soup kitchens to joining professional student organizations and because of my religious background, an attempt to read the Bible seriously with an open heart and mind. What remained were the tugs of the transcendent. In Evangelical terms, the grace of God. While my personal spirituality was growing and the relationship with a living God blossoming, I was still dissatisfied with the status quo of Christian belief and activities, oscillating between a self-righteous attitude and a “holy discontent,” as some have described. After relocating to Vancouver in an attempt to explore God not only in an academic manner, but also at ground level in the “real world” of downtown, I am still on this journey that started years ago.

    This past summer, my wife and I took the time to explore what it means to be the church without strictly defining it to a tradition or local gathering. Personally, I am still asking God what it means to be a good and faithful servant,[8] and in tandem feeling the pull of asking what it means to be the faithful church. While we were so accustomed to having a regular rhythm on Sundays, which demarcated our weeks, I wanted to challenge ourselves to worship God not only on Sunday with the gathered body of believers—although that no longer is the case as most churches accommodate to the non-believer, seeker, or whoever else—but to live a life of worship every single day without having the crutch of the rhythm of Sundays. This season of exploration has led us to encounter so many different expressions of communities attempting to live faithful lives. There are a select few who voluntarily choose to live in an impoverished area to see greater flourishing to those in the margin, without treating mercy as a ministry program. There are those who want to engage with their local community through housing refugees and aiding them to be assimilated into a foreign country, without any stipulation of first believing in the same belief. There is a leader who seeks to be deeply embedded in rich traditions, however does not want to be limited to be congregation focused, but rather community focused. There is another leader who realizes the urban context and culture they are centered in and thus seeks to be a resource ministry to all those who come by and alongside them.

    Clearly, there is a desire for change in various capacities with a common theme of focusing on the larger community. It is encouraging to see these glimpses of impact of faithful churches. However, most of these efforts come from the “institutional community”. While I believe that the traditional models of church and the work that the institutional church does is necessary, in the Age of Authenticity,[9] in a culture of growing distrust of centralized power, in the spirit of innovation and disruption, perhaps there can be new expressions of being the church.[10] But more than creating a new model, more than assessing what may be the most efficient missional strategy, more than discussing what tradition or doctrine is right or wrong from debates over centuries ago, more than attempting to determine what political party or stance is righteous, more than anything else, it is to first and foremost be certain that there is a genuine love of, for, with God with all one’s heart. I believe this is most relevant in our day and age, where authenticity of the individual and the whole is at stake.

    Love God with all your heart may seem subjective and my very proposition is one that has already been doused with “the social imaginary of expressive individualism.”[11] And there is a plethora of arguments against this spirit from traditional religions and institutions.[12] But what if we can be open to a different “take” rather than assuming the existing ‘“spin” – an overconfident “picture” within which we can’t imagine it being otherwise, and thus smugly dismiss those who disagree’?[13] How can this disposition be cultivated and encouraged?

    First, it is a simple, yet difficult question of asking what do you truly believe? What do you truly love? If we were given the space to slow down, if we were given the space to be frank with ourselves without fearing any judgement or the need to go along with a herd mentality, maybe then there will be a clearer identification of what our hearts desire. Equally important is studying our own culture and language. Without leaders realizing the limitations of the language they have assumed and used, it will be impossible for anyone else to see the blinders they may have put on. Scholars such as James Smith and Charles Taylor provide such a rich contribution to this conversation, but there is a need to make this available to the masses in a way that is engageable and understandable.

    A practical application for the leadership for the church is to teach the biblical narrative in light of an exilic motif.[14] As secularity and its ideologies continue to grow at rapid rates and Christians, their language, place, and values are being pushed further to the margins, there is an abundant source of wisdom and hope in forging an identity rooted in exile. From the literal exile of the people of Israel, to the exile and diaspora in the early centuries of the church, adopting this identity as our own in the modern West may give us the right lens to correct our posture and attitude in our culture and society. A change of heart, a “conversion of the church” is core to the vast amount of issues facing Christian witness and living.[15] “While many traditional churches will never be able to make some of the radical shifts necessary to thrive in the new cultural reality, they can participate in the renewal of the church by supporting these kinds of initiatives.”[16] Hopefully, traditional churches will have the ears to hear and listen carefully to the changing tone and landscape of this modern age.[17] With a humble heart and child-like faith and love for God, perhaps then the Christian and the leadership of the Church can exercise a “prophetic imagination,” which “leads us to recall that exile is a time for people to consider where they have come from and to discuss what traditions and practices from the past no longer function effectively as ways of doing ministry or articulating faith in a new contextual reality.”[18] With a renewed love for God, the Christian and the Church can then practice new skills and competencies that provide effective witness of God and perhaps then can any real ecclesial unity flourish with global participation and cooperation.

    This brief reflection on the contemporary age and the church may seem urgent and necessary, however I must frankly conclude that this concern is a far second priority compared to the immediate influence I have as a Christian—first, knowing that all must begin with my own love with God and second, to my wife, my toddler daughter, and my immediate communities.[19] The wisdom from exilic prophets are rich, yet, I am also aware that it is not a prophet’s duty to change the hearts of the people of God and it is ultimately the work of the Spirit.[20] Prophets are held to a higher responsibility to obey, they are tasked with doing ridiculous acts to speak to the people of God, and even sometimes have the love of their life taken from them.[21] I am glad that there are a few who find this concern a noble call and I hope that it is rooted in a deep desire to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

    [1] Mark 12:30 NIV.

    [2] The concept of immanence and secularity in this essay is adapted from James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014).

    [3] Mark 12:31.

    [4] South Korea is an interesting case study of the dramatic rise of Christianity in the early 20th century followed quickly by modern advancements, and now facing the challenges of secularity only a century later. See Robert Lee, The Influence of Economic Prosperity on Religious Flourishing: A Case Study of South Korea (Research Paper, Regent College, 2019).

    [5] Smith, 14.

    [6] The term “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” comes from Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

    [7] Smith, 89.

    [8] It is interesting to do a careful study of the parable of the talents where this commendation is found. While preachers may use this passage to distinguish different “talents” of individuals doing the work of God, it is primarily a parable couched in economic terms, found in the greater Mount of Olives discourse, regarding the end times.

    [9] Smith, 85.

    [10] While weighing out the pros and cons of the necessity of institutions and traditions is outside the scope of this brief reflection, I do believe that they are necessary. But just like the Hilton hotels did not become obsolete with the disruption of Airbnb or taxi medallions with Uber, I believe there ought to be more room for the institutional and traditional church to accommodate the changing the times.

    [11] Smith, 85.

    [12] Ibid., 90.

    [13] Ibid., 94.

    [14] I am indebted to the vision presented by Lee Beach, The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015).

    [15] Beach, 148.

    [16] Ibid., 152.

    [17] Ezekiel 2-3.

    [18] Beach, 144.

    [19] In reference to the Circle of Influence and the Circle of Concern found in Steven Covey’s, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (New York: Free Press, 2004), 81-91.

    [20] Ezekiel 2:2.

    [21] Ezekiel 3:18-21; 4:12; 24:15-27.