From Skeptic to becoming the Christ-follower

We live in a plularlistic society where intolerance to other religion is intolerant. The majority of Americans believe in God. The numbers are astounding. According to the Washington Post, 92% of all Americans believe in God and even one in five atheists believes in God. I think this is funny. Atheism gets all this airplay, but there seems like a few dozens in the country. They get all the Time articles and come out on CNN, but it's a minority group, come on, 8%. But here is a thing, 92% of Americans believe that there is some sort of God, but at the same time, the majority of Americans believe that no one religion can know the fullness of spiritual truth. And that those who claim they do know the absolute truth, they are mocked as arrogant and intolerant.

A common parable of the elephant and the blind men proves the point. The story goes like this. A group of blind men were asked to describe an elephant.
And the first one grabbed the trunk and said, “An elephant's like a snake. Yeah, it's just like a snake with two holes on the end. It's really weird.”
And the other one was touching the leg going, “No, it's nothing like a snake.” He’s feeling the leg. “What are you, blind? Does that guy not have any hands? It's like a tree trunk. An elephant's like a tree trunk.”
And the other one is feeling the side of the elephant. He goes, “What is wrong with these people?” “It is nothing like tree trunk.” “An elephant's like a wall.”
The last guy's at the end; he's just holding the tail. He's like, “No, it's kind of hairy, and long, and humid.”

The point of the parable is to show how each of the religions, although somewhat correct, is in the end wrong. If anyone is making absolute claim like, “An elephant is like a snake” or “an elephant is like tree trunk,” he is wrong. Furthermore, if he is making absolute claim about it, then that guy is arrogant and foolish and causes violence against humanity.

But there is a serious problem about this parable. The problem is that it is intellectually inconsistent. It accuses Christians for being intolerant when in reality the skeptics are no more tolerant. Let me explain. The only way the parable of the elephant and the blind men makes any sense is if the narrator of the story sees the whole elephant.
What skeptics are saying is that they see the whole picture, and Christians do not. The point is this. The moment you claim that ultimate reality is unknowable, you have just claimed the knowledge that you say can't be known. The moment you say ultimate reality is unknowable, you've just claimed what you say can't be claimed. This is intellectually inconsistent.

Here would be skeptic’s affirmations: that God is ultimately unknowable, that no one can know and claim the absolute truth about God. The only way you could possibly know that would be to know how the universe is wired, why it's wired that way, which is the same thing. What they're claiming can't be known.

I (Christian) and the skeptics, we're claiming the same thing: an understanding of ultimate reality, Only difference is I'm considered arrogant and I'm intolerant because I say I know ultimate reality. To the notion of Skeptic, I don't really know ultimate reality, but he knows ultimate reality, I'm arrogant for claiming I know ultimate reality because he really knows ultimate reality.

If you are skeptic about Christian faith, set the religion (Christianity) aside, and try to get to know Jesus; His life, his teaching, and his work.

Missional Living

The National Study of Youth and Religion, conducted from 2001 to 2005, a study on the religious and spiritual lives of American adolescents. This project resulted in a book called, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (the ages of college students --18 and 23). It is written by Christian Smith and Patricia Snell. The book deals with questions like these;
How important is religion for young people in America today?
What are the major influences on their developing spiritual lives?
How do their religious beliefs and practices change as young people enter into adulthood?

The book reveals there are six major religious types among the emerging adults:
1. Committed Traditionalists (no more than 15%)
2. Selective Adherents (perhaps 30%)
3. Spiritually Open (about 15%)
4. Religiously Indifferent (at least 25%)
5. Religiously Disconnected (no more than 5%)
6. Irreligious (no more than 10%)

Let me explained a couple of these categories. The Committed Traditionalists are the ones who accept traditional Christian beliefs. But the Selective Adherents “believe and perform certain aspects of their religions but neglect and ignore others.”
They, basically, “pick and choose what they want to accept.” Most often rejected beliefs are traditional views related to sex before marriage, hell, and select doctrines such as the Trinity and the divinity or resurrection of Christ. They pick and choose only those they want to accept. Notice, 30 % of people belong to this group.
For this group, the main idea is that “the absolute authority for every person’s beliefs or actions is his or her own sovereign self.”

The Religiously Indifferent –2nd largest group “neither care to practice religion nor oppose it. They are simply not invested in religion either way. “It just doesn’t matter that much for them.” They are simply careless about religion.

The 3rd Group “Spiritually Open” people are very willing to engage explicitly religious conversations. They are willing to talk about religion, but they are “not taking a lot of initiative in pursuit of the spiritual stuff.
So, if you look at this study, we can see the Selective Adherents (30%) and Religiously Indifferent (at least 25%) make up the majority (55 %). If you add, the Spiritually Open (15%), 75% of the people don’t really care about the truth and authority of Scripture.

This study represents a massive shift taking place in our culture that carries huge ramifications for the outreach strategy of the local church. Traditional churches are committed to events and program and invite “people to come to church.”

At AKPC EM, “Missional Living” means that we are community of believers sent by Jesus to the world to live out the mission of God incarnationally, relationally, and intentionally by integrating our faith into whole spectrum of life.

God sent us out, wherever we are, to bring this message of Christ by living the life He wants us to live. Here is the third key word. We must be intentional about how we live our lives and integrate our faith in every aspects of life to bring this message of Christ. It is not about making programs and events. It is about the people going out and building a healthy and meaningful relationship to show Christ to them through the message of words and good deeds.

Is a child with Down Syndrome worth living?

We need to think about this before answering the question. In my college ministry, students asked me to give seminars on the topics they are interested. abortion is one of the topics. Al Mohler recently wrote an article on aborting babies with Down Syndrome. In the medical community and parents are facing huge moral, ethical, religious issue at hand. We just had a new born baby in July, 2009. During pregnancy, the doctor has given us an option to find out if the unborn child may have a Down Syndrome. We've decided not to find out. Over the resent years, the birth of babies with the Down Syndrome has decreased by 15 %. In the future a simple blood test find out a definitive diagnosis of one of more of the genetic variants of Down syndrome. More parents will receive the testing and will face the choice to abort the baby when the diagnosis suggests the risk of DS in the baby. Dr. Brian Skotko's (expert on DS)research indicating that 92 percent of women who learn they are carrying a baby with Down syndrome choose to abort the pregnancy. "As new tests become available, will babies with Down syndrome slowly disappear?" What does this say about our society's value on human life? Is a child with Down Syndrome worth living? Or, can we celebrate life with the Down Syndrome? Tell me what you think.

Public speaking

It made a good laugh.


Recently I came across the Top 10 Newscaster Bloopers at the Time.com. It is known that public speaking is one of the top fears for the most people. In the video, you can see as the anchor makes mistake one after another, his confidence simply vanished. While watching this video I laugh out loud real hard, but as a pastor preaching week after week, I understand some mistakes speakers make. I watched even a great anchor like Anderson Cooper had a blooper. I have to tell you, there are times when I feel so horribly did preaching, I would like to run and hide. Poor guy, I think I know how he feels.

anger, racism, depravity

Watch this video.


At this point, I don't care how well Serena Williams plays tennis. She showed such poor sportsmanship. In fact, it's not just an issue of sportsmanship, she completely lost herself and anger took control of her. Then I see something beyond not just sportsmanship and anger, but racism. The line judge was happened to be quiet Asian woman with completely reserved response. Serena's reaction toward the line judge was simply not acceptable. It was a death threat, "I will kill you." Even if it was a wrong call, such utterance shouldn't be made from professional athlete. I wonder if Serena Williams would have done and said the same if she was not the quiet Asian woman.

Grace vs. Judgment

Just the other day, I was going on my way to pick up my daughter. But I was there about an hour half early. So, I stopped at the Whataburger and took my Bible out and preparing last week's sermon.
I was eating my meal, meditating and taking notes, then, a few teenage looking guys walked in with their skateboards. One particular guy was wearing a gray tank-top, pretty wet with sweat, wearing a black baseball cap, and a red bandanna around the cap. Because it is a tank top, I could see hair stinking out in his armpit. Passing by him to get a refill, man, the armpit smell was just killing me.
I yelled at him, “put a T-shirt on,” actually I did that in my thinking. Then I observed him. during my stay at the restaurant, he was in and out taking breaks from skateboarding. He asked for a cup for water and drank water, and then some iced tea.
I realized than, I was ready to make some judgment on him in my thought. Then I asked to myself, “Why do we judge other so quickly?”

We pass judgment on others based on the style of clothes, the manner of speech, and the life experiences. People tend to be judgmental toward those who are different from them, those with different background, culture, and life-style.

According to the Unchristian, Christianity has an image problem: Non-church people from age 16—29 perceive the Christians as 1) anti-homosexual (91%) 2) judgmental (87 %), and hypocritical (85%). They see that Christians judge and ostracize others who are different from them.
We love grace. Grace is so attractive to many of us. We long for it. We anticipate it. We want to experience it. We want to taste grace. There is something about grace that we are drawn to it. Grace has this magnetic power that attracts us and amazes us. Jesus who did not condemn the woman who was caught in adultery is so gracious and attractive.

Indentiy or legitimacy in ministry?

Yesterday, I briefly tuned in the Nine Conference online where many presenters gave a short talks. For that brief moment of time, I listened to Skye who is an editor of the Leadership Journal, a Christianity Today publication. I thought he said something insightful. Often we hear question about the leadership and why it doesn't succeed. Is it because lack of strategy or low energy and motivation. What Skye said rings true to me. From reading somewhere, 70 % of pastors deals with feelings of inadequacy. I think one of the reason is that Leaders often compare with other leaders, particularly with influence and success stories. One measure of success is obviously number. pastors ask, "how big is your church?" So what happens is that pastors and Christian leaders equate success (number of people or influence leverage) with legitimacy of ministry. If a Christian leader who does not have strong influence on large number of people then his/her ministry (I am thinking small group leader, Bible study teacher, pastor of small church...) seems not legitimate. Often leadership is defined "influence." however, what I see is that some leaders are so bound by pressure to succeed often in resulted in number. Skye points out that outcome of ministry is not something that we create. We are called to abandon the outcome to the Lord. God is One who makes our ministry grow. We plant the seed and water it, then God causes it to grow. The legitimacy our ministry comes from ourselves as children of God. It is the identity issue, "Who am I?" If we are rooted in Christ as sons and daughters of God, then the power, strength, and motivation come from Him.

Funniest conversation

During our car ride our kids in the back always playing, talking, sometimes hitting each other. This is recent playtime between Isaiah and Ellie. They were playing a spelling game. Ellie had a list of spelling words for her class (it must have been her old paper in the 1st grade).
Isaiah goes,
Nuna, can you spell "Look?"
Ellie spells out, in reply, it is "l-o-o-k."

Isaiah asked her again, spell "whore."

While driving, we are thinking to ourselves, "what!" "how does he know this word?" But we didn't interrupt.

Ellie goes, "what is "whore?""
must be thinking to herself it must not be in the list.
"Whore," what's whore?"

Isaiah responds, "you know nuna, "whore," "h-o-u-r."
Ellie goes, "ohh, you mean "(h)our.""

It was a moment of good laugh.

By the way, kids learn so fast, especially what big brothers and sisters and adults do and say. Those of us around the little kids watch our words and deeds.

An ordinary guy can start a movement!

watch this video.

Future, Investment, it's backward.

What's wrong with policymakers? Cosby cries out "Stop cutting School funding!" Isn't what we have learned that education is the future of a nature?" I found it to be very wrong that it costs less than $5,000 a year to educate a young person but $33,000 a year to incarcerate someone. This is so backward. Many young people, who has not been invested and cared for due to many reasons, cutting school funding being one reason, end up being in jail, taxpayer's money spent when they are incarcerated. Just today, I read USA today, school budget cuts shut down sports. I can see that some schools spend way too much funding on sports. Our children need to on the field and something to do. Coming form youth ministry experience, far too many children are sitting in front of computer, not being able to develop interpersonal skills face to face, not to mention, exercising, lack in social activity. I am aware of that our young people have different ways of social networking through facebook and twitter. I believe that interaction with others face to face is needed. Anyway, issue that I see is that kids don't get opportunities because of cutting school funding, not invested in their education, end up in jail. And more fund is spent when they are in jail than in school. This is so backward. Where is investment for our students, the future? We adults must get involved in and invest into our children' lives.

Student Leadership

I love being at our college group leadership retreat. We had leadership retreat in the past three years. Every year, it gets better. A few things about the leadership meeting is that students open their eyes and see something beyond what they are used to see. I believe they see the potential they can be and grasp the vision that they can invest their energy and time.

In the first year of our leadership retreat, which was not used to them, I mainly challenged them with what is expected from leaders. Leaders must learn and grow in order to lead others. I believe in old saying, "if you stop growing today, you stop teaching (leading) tomorrow." Whether a leader like it or not, leaders are expected to lead. For leaders, in fact much are expected and demanded, in the aspects of spirituality, conduct, and lifestyle.

In the second year, I challenged our student leader to face the real issues in ministry. We had hours and hours of discussion talking about the issues of our ministry.

In this year, one of my main focus was to provide them perspectives. The perspectives of the leaders. At one conference I learned something so crucial about leadership perspective. At leadership conferences, a few main talks are always on the significance of the character of leader and on the leadership skills. One crucial perspective of leader is confident understanding of who I am, what I am serving, and where I am I going.

Coming back and engaging in ministry after the leadership retreat, I can see and feel the the energy and passion our student leaders bring into the ministry. I am so grateful form them. Now I hope to see in our ministry seasoned maturity of our leaders that lays strong foundation. My prayer is that our leaders raise the bars of maturity, expectancy, and resilience.

A few weeks ago, I went to KASE conference and had a conversation with a friend. We were talking about ministry, especially doing ministry at Korean church. Conversation was more of my venting out some painful experiences. Personally, my experience and observation about the church tells me that basically many churches are unhealthy. Church being unhealthy I mean Christians hurt and burnt by judgementalism (condemning others), legalism, religious elitism (too many modern say Pharisees), hypocricy, pretence, self-centerness (not caring the community--lack of ministry of mercy and compassion and social justice), I have far too many people experienced negativity in the church. Since that conversation, I have been thinking about my vision for the healthy church. I tend to think that the healthy church is marked by its transparency and authenticity. People need to be who they are, not pretending someone they are not. I like the concept of the "no perfect people allowed." It is creating a culture where sinners come as they are, they don't have to change anything to come to church. The Christ following community must be patiently wait and accept the people with respect and love. However, we hope that as they come and hear the gospel and attract to Gospel, they don't stay as they are, but transformation takes places over time in the environment where they are accepted and loved and challenged by the gospel itself. Church need to be a place where outrageous generosity of God practiced. A healthy church is also marked by three main ministries that Jesus had done; preaching of the good news, teaching, and healing the sick. Most churches has been at least emphasized the aspect of preaching teaching ministry. However, ministry of healing the sick, which includes feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoners, setting free the oppressed and bringing social justice on earth.

Cost of Riasing kid vs. its Joy

Raising a kid to age of 17 --before college costs $221,000. I have four children and it is going to be about a million dollars. Jeremiah was born about 6 weeks ago, and these day my wife and I are sleep deprived. I had a conversation with a church member about having kids. He was saying that having kids are good, but what comes with is a big of challenge; of course financial challenges, whole deal of raising infant--lack of sleep, carrying a diaper bag, crying.... what some people around me are saying is that they want to have kids, but they don;t want to go through those challenges. I tend to think that life itself is a challenge. Though at times it is tough to raise kids, but it is a huge blessing and pleasure to be a father. As I see my kids growing up, playing with them, I am indeed grateful to the Lord for such blessing.