Living with Flaws

Why is it that when I tell my wife on a daily basis that I'm not perfect she seems to be okay with that but then when it comes to an issue that is more sensitive that issue seems to be enough to damn our relationship? The key word is "seems". We've been going on for several hours without saying more than necessary. I suppose it will end tomorrow but this being the big deal it seems to be, it may take longer. Meanwhile, I'm trying to get as much work done as possible so that I have room to negotiate tomorrow. Lest the reader think I'm arrogant, I know I have flaws. That's why I've become interested in Calvinism in recent weeks. This gives me a sense of freedom and acceptance. But in moments of not feeling accepted it makes me wonder if Calvinism can be true. And yet in those moments, such as these, where I don't understand why things are such a big deal, I find great peace in the idea that God might accept me in spite of my many flaws. However, that doesn't mean that God is really okay with my flaws. Could God be seen through the perspective of my wife, who although I think she will leave me if she has any sense, she probably won't and instead she will sweat drops of blood in order to make sure I'm a million times better. It's just that the idea of a loving God whom I can't see are get into an argument with seems much more romantic, no pun intended.

Taking the Reformers for Granted

I started reading the intro. to Calvin's Institutes. It's amazing how oblivious I am to the Reformers' suffering after all the theology I've studied. I think I've focused more on what they believed than who they were as people. And I'm grateful that John Calvin took the risk and wrote his Institutes. I'm not sure if I'll get them read before I have to return the book. If not, hopefully it will make good vacation reading. But then again, hopefully I'll begin to get started. I'm still trying to look at the eyes through the world of Calvinism to see whether this is a plausible perspective. I experienced two things today that made me think of this perspective. The first was in the church service I participated in today. It was in English, which was a nice change. We sang a sang that spoke of submitting to the Lordship of Christ. This struck me as odd in a way. If God is sovereign then why are we submitting ourselves to the Lordship of Christ? Doesn't Christ already have us? But then I wondered if there could be a paradox in that and if that is part of the futility of being human, that we don't really have a right to choose. The other was in an e-mail from a student who spoke of "losing" the Holy Spirit. I began to wonder what it might be like to not be able to lose the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is a downpayment which is to serve as a guarantee of what is to come, how could we lose the Holy Spirit. I hope s/he only meant that s/he felt like s/he had lost the Holy Spirit, but I suppose both are plausible in Wesleyan or Arminian thought.

The Psychology of Calvinism

I'm still entrenched in Calvinistic thought, perhaps more now than last time. I'm in the desert at the moment. I'll say more about that shortly. I felt a lot of peace today as I considered the idea that we are all filthy and the fact that anything good happens is a shear act of the Divine (aka God). I found myself surprised at various moments today, such as when the department secretary covered the sign outside of my office door which had a professor's name who no longer uses the office since he moved elsewhere. I was also pleased to see students responding when they did. But I was still disheartened when they didn't respond. Yet that didn't seem to wear me down as much as it has in the past. I've also been thinking a lot about unconditional love, something I could sure use a lot more of. Or so it seems. At the moment I can't comprehend the possibility that a relationship with God could possibly be broken to the point that one had no salvation though one had begun the process of salvation. What a joyful thought that there is absolutely nothing I could do to end the relationship with God. Verses such as Romans 8 (Nothing can separate us from the love of God...) and the promised Holy Spirit which is to serve as a guarantee of the fulness of salvation. What good is a guarantee if God doesn't follow through with it? I recalled what my university and seminary professors said about Calvinism being a logical system and I wondered what might be wrong with that in contrast to those anti-Calvinist scholars who made statements against Calvinism based on preference ("I have never liked Calvinism" or "Since I believe in free will going to a Calvinistic school was never much of an option to me"). I'm still not sure about concepts that God chooses who to save and who not to save but total depravity makes a lot of sense to me. There was a battle that I began against Calvinism in varying degrees (i.e. from 3 points to 4 1/2 points) when I enrolled in a Bible school in the fall of 1996 and I feel like I've been in battle against Calvinism until now. It makes me wonder if my resistance to Calvinism robbed me of the joy I felt when I first started attending that school. And now I find myself wanting to surrender to the God whose perfection makes my greatest deed look like the most filthy of crimes. But to be honest, the thing that makes me resonate the most with Calvinism is that I feel the most wicked in my own heart. Hearing about the optimism of Grace from the Wesleyan perspective sounds ideal but overwhelming to me. I like the Aristotelian philosophy of perfection in terms of actualized potential rather than perfection in the absolute sense. And yet I feel like even in terms of purpose I fall short and that I might as well aim for absolute perfection for the result seems to be the same at the end of the day. When I think about my own inadequacies and connect it with Calvinism's total depravity, the thought "Well Duh" comes to mind. That is to say, no wonder I feel so dirty inside because I AM dirty inside! That was all good and well until tonight when I had a fight with my wife over something that seemed so trivial and yet now is such a big mountain that we can hardly talk at 12:12am. I thought I was managing myself very well in struggling to understand a normal Korean conversation between my wife and some students. Of course she knew I was frustrated with myself and wanted to know how she could help me the next time. The way I saw it, I was the one whose works were as filthy rags who had made the mistake or that I had sinned. But she wasn't satisfied with that and as she kept asking me I got more and more frustrated along with her and I once again proved my wickedness by fighting fire with fire. I even tried praying to God to confess my unknown sin at which point she left the apartment for a few hours and just returned. I guess I'll try to resolve the conflict and pray that the Sovereign Lord might somehow intervene in spite of myself.

Me? A Calvinist?

I could have posted something when I had a hard day last week. It was one of those realities where I'm not perfect and even though sometimes people need to accept me as a flawed human being, I would like to overcome those flaws so that people wouldn't have to cater to my flaws. In that case, it wasn't about my current flaws but about my past flaws that created issues of distrust. The following day, I beat myself up over the feelings I had about myself not being perfect. While all those thoughts were coming about what a flawed human being I am, thoughts of Calvinism also came to mind. You probably know me well enough to know that I try to be as Wesleyan as possible and as little Calvinism as possible. I started to wonder last Monday if that was just because I didn't want to face the fact that I am flawed. I was thinking especially of the first point of TULIP which states that all human beings are totally depraved. That thought seemed more in line to me in that moment than the idea that there is something good in human beings, especially in this one. I further thought about my long battle against Calvinism that started when I went to Bible school. I saw a video-lectured recording of Dr. William Abraham in which he stated that he thought Calvinism came from the pits of Hell and further stated his allegiance to Wesleyanism, a perfect fit for a Methodist. That statement made me wonder how many times we choose what to believe based on what interests us the most. I know that Dr. Abraham is a million times smarter than me, and so I proffer this blog not as an attempt to outsmart a theological genius but rather to suggest a point of view to myself that I might like to be more open-minded to. As I reflect on the many conversations I've heard on this subject, I recall hearing a lot of non-Calvinists reject Calvinistic thought (which I want to remind the reader is not necessarily equivalent with John Calvin's thought) based on their own presuppositions or that they just didn't like Calvinism and I have heard more Calvinists argue on Biblical grounds that the system is true. I suppose both could be misrepresentations in one way or another, for there must surely be Wesleyans on a more Biblical front and Calvinists on a more philosophical one. When I was a student at a Nazarene university I found this dilemma could only be resolved on philosophical rather than Biblical grounds. Now I am looking at it from more of a psychological perspective than a philosophical one. I want to close this blog by sharing some good news about myself and my beliefs. I have found myself being much more skeptical about Christian thought since I have gotten married. I now see the truth in my friend Brad's counsel that whether or not our spouse shares the same faith we do has a lot to do with what we actually believe ourselves. I trust this is a good thing, whether I am resting in a second naivate or simply resting in what seems to be the most solid truth as far as we can tell as human beings. I suppose where I am at in that regard is still up for debate. But I am also hopeful that being more resolved in this regard of faith will also give me even more freedom to wrestle with the hard questions without being the double-minded person that the Epistle of James talks about.

A New Day

This is the first night that my wife, Sinae, and I are in our new place of residence in Cheonan since we got married. This is all very new to me, even though we have been through three formal events which we are classifying as "getting married". Which reminds me of a riddle we came up with. "What do you call it when someone gets married three times without ever getting a divorce? International marriage." Please feel free to edit this to make it better. Meanwhile, I think this sums up our experience pretty well.

For some reason I've been more uneasy today than I've been through all the other events. Being married seems a whole lot different to me. Whereas before, I did what I wanted to when I felt like doing it, I can't do that anymore. I also feel the realization that it's not about me anymore but rather, it is about pleasing my wife. And I think there is a significant dose of fear throughout all of this, mainly because I know I have to be better than I was before I got better. I hope you don't read too much into that "have to" because it's something I want to do.

While I was in America, I bought, "The Christian Atheist", which is a pretty easy read but is giving me a lot of "food for thought" about all the ways in which I am hypocritical and how my actions don't line up with what I say I believe. I think it also reminds me that what I believe is important not just for the sake of my eternal destiny but also for the sake of how I live my life. This brings much more meaning to me as far as the significance of faith because it isn't just about being right.

"What I Don't Want to Do...that I do..." Simply a pre-Christ reality?

Hello again.

It has been a long time. As usual, when things don't go as things ought or seem like they should go, I come back here, not knowing whether what I am thinking and feeling and the way I am acting should be recorded on public record. And yet there is a sort of accountability through this method.

I made a big mistake today by having dinner with a female colleague. That in and of itself isn't so bad, but the fact that I broke a long-standing promise with Sinae NOT to eat alone with one woman is what made it bad. I was in a difficult situation before and Sinae was probably more understanding than she needed to be but today I didn't get the same same slack.

I know I was wrong. I know what I could have done differently. I just have a knack for finding myself in these compromising types of situations. How? Today it started because I casually mentioned that I was going to lunch and the other person asked if she could join me. Stumbling over what I could say so as not to sound accusatory I find myself agreeing, knowing I would pay for the decision for the next few days or however long. I was hoping I'd get the same benefit of the doubt as before and when I read the message my heart sank even deeper and that is where I have been all afternoon. Of course I know that if I would have just slipped out quietly that there would have been no problem. It's just that I don't think a step ahead and then I find myself in compromising situations.

You know I struggle with shame. Shame has been my bedfellow for as long as I can remember. It's the one friend I've always had that understood my pain when nobody else did and it's also the friend that has kept me humble. It's also the friend that constantly impairs my judgment, the friend that tells me I should get angry with Sinae for asking me sensitive questions about how I relate to women when all I really have to do is show her that I love her.

And those words that I hear every now and again really sting me. Those words that I don't really love Sinae. I won't say where the source comes from. You can probably figure that out, yourself. The important thing here is that I am failing at loving Sinae in a way that she knows I really love her that isn't just lovey dovey, impractical emotional sentiment. And today, this very moment, I find myself rock bottom at the bottom of the barrel of what it means to love another human being feeling totally clueless as to how to love someone else as well as how to overcome my own inadequacies.

I find myself at the foot of the cross once more, where the ground is level, where nobody is adequate enough. I hear the Wesleyans saying we sin no more, which may be an oversimplification of that theological tradition. And I hear the Calvinists say that we are inclined to do this continually. My understanding of the Bible and theology says that's bogus and yet that is where I find myself experientially on July 25, 2011 at 6:14pm, Korean local time.

Another voice I hear is the voice of St. Paul, whose words have been twisted every which way to suit various peoples' theological interests. Perhaps the two most extreme views are one that says Paul himself sinned continuously for he himself said "what I don't want to do that I do and what I want to do that I don't do." Then on the other side are those who say that for Paul to have confessed to constant sin would undermine his whole argument that Christ makes us free from sin.

You can probably induce rather easily that I fall in line with the latter, but in my experience in this moment I sympathize with the latter. I wonder if it could be possible that when we forget who we are and whose we are, that is when we fall into the grip of sin but that when we find ourselves AGAIN at the foot of the cross, confessing, "Almighty God, I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed..." that the Triune God responds with "Of course you have. You forgot me."

I hope things will be okay, that I'll find ways to keep myself away from compromising situations. I think for the rest of this week, I'll be making sure I make it up in time to eat breakfast. And I'll skip lunch and take time to focus on my natural inclination to sin and try to find my way through the forest with my friend, Shame. I want to start with you, God. I confess that I have sinned against YOU in thought, word and deed, in what I have done and in what I have left undone. I have not loved you with my whole heart and I have not loved my neighbor as myself. I am truly sorry and I humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on me and forgive me of ALL my sins that I may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name, forever. Amen.

And then I turn to you Sinae, and then to all of my other neighbors whom I have let down in so many ways. I don't expect you to give me another chance. God knows I don't deserve that. Whatever happens, I'll do my best to learn from this situation and change my own behavior, with God's help. If you find it in your hearts to forgive me, then I will change, with God's help. But I really can't do it alone. Is there anybody out there who will help a friend of Shame to find his way?

Ice Cream and Gravesites

I heard a story today that touched my heart in the most mysterious way. Before I tell that story, I'd like to tell a story of my own about someone very dear to me who died without me even being able to say goodbye to her.

My favorite place to go when I was a child was to my mom's hometown, actually six miles or so outside of city limits. My friend was a person of few words and had a love that seemed to know no end. When it came time for my parents to want to leave, Grandma would always ask us if we would like to have some ice cream and cake before we leave. Eventually my brother and I learned this was a good way to delay our departure back home which took several hours. We learned to say, "Grandma, can I have some ice cream." Because she loved us more than her own self, she would always say yes. And we were usually able to buy another thirty minutes or so before we had to leave.

Unfortunately, Grandma is not here with us, at least not in visible site. And that is why the next story I want to tell is so touching. The story is quite simple. There was a person who ate ice cream at the graveside where his parents were buried. That's the story. And there is something that is literally bittersweet (no pun intended) about that kind of a scenario. I imagine myself doing that very thing, asking Grandma why she didn't call me while she was in the hospital or why she didn't do this or that to prevent her passing. And I know that as I eat that ice cream that Grandma is somehow with me just as the person who actually did this experienced her or his loved ones' presence as s/he ate that ice cream.