So this past Monday I wrote a check for $30,000. Well, I didn't actually write a check, my parents bank wrote one in my name, then my parents gave the check to me so I could then immediately hand it over to the man from Mercury Titles and Loans on the 18th floor of a law office Downtown.

But still, it felt surreal. $30,000.... I had to say looking at that number was pretty daunting. Such a little piece of paper with so much significant. I had to stop and think what is the significance of this check:

1 piece of paper equals...
- 6,000 chipotle burritos
- A new benz (or 5 used Jettas)
- 30,000 junior back cheeseburgers
- 3,750 Hw Dup Bobs at Chicago Food Corp
- 25000 Pomegranate Martinis at J. Alexander's
- One year tuition at Northwestern

It was tough handing it over, but I did... and in return I got a fat ring of 12 keys that would let me into my new condo!

Now that I finally have my own place, its really weird. I've never had a living space of my own... EVER... four years in dorms. One summer in military housing. One summer in monestary housing. One summer in mud hut housing. Yup, definitely not my own place.

And it feels weird. Its mine!

when I was a kid, I remember getting so excited because my parents bought me a $50 nintendo cartridge of Castlevanie IV: Simon's Quest. Or the day I walked out of the Apple Store with my very own iPod. Or the first day I went to Superdawg and bought a Whoopercheesie... I had much more understandable emotions.

Maybe its because this purchase, though under my name, was in large part due to the assistance of my parents. Or maybe its because the amount is so large, its beyond comprehension. Or maybe because I've only paid like 10% of it. Whatever it is, I dunno its like this funny feeling of anxiety, excitment and apprehension. Maybe it will be better once I actually move in... which should be osmetime soon.

A funny story, tho... this week, me and Phil were thinking of different stuff we need to buy for the condo. The list making was going smoothly:

- kitchen table
- chairs
- sofa
- TV
- dining table
- coffee table

Then suddenly Phil blurts out, "Flour"
...
and I'm like, "What the freak are you talking about?"

"We need it for cooking? What if we need to make bread? What if we ever want to make cupcakes or something"



Now these quotes are nearly verbatim. So I guess Phil is really hung up about living by himself and wants to learn to cook... but FLOUR? Then he starts saying we need to be Condiments like salt and vinegar....

This is going to be an interesting ride....

I don't usually get floored when I read something.... but after reading this article, my mouth dropped. Not in shock or horror at the content, but in shock and horror that I was agreeing with most of what is seeming shocking and horrible content.

Read it for yourself:

After the shootings came an orgy of mawkishness, sloppiness, and false sentiment.

By Christopher Hitchens

http://www.slate.com/id/2164914/

Now this dude is about as disagreeable as you can get, He;s an iconoconclastic, ardent atheist, mother Theresa-basher... in his writing you just get this overwhelming sense that this guy is angry and not in a particularly happy place...  but I gotta say soem of what we wrote really struck a chord with me.

An excerpt:

Almost everybody in the country seems to have taken this non-event as permission to talk the starkest nonsense. And why not? Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle. Try this, from the eighth straight day of breathless coverage in the New York Times. The person being quoted is the Rev. Susan Verbrugge of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, addressing her congregation in an attempt, in the silly argot of the day, "to make sense of the senseless":

Ms. Verbrugge recounted breaking through the previous week's numbness as she stopped on a morning walk and found herself yelling at the mountains and at God. Though her shouts were initially met with silence, she said, she soon was reassured by the simplest of things, the chirping of birds.

"God was doing something about the world," she said. "Starting with my own heart, I could see good."

Yes, it's always about you, isn't it? (By the way, I'd watch that habit of yelling at mountains and God in the greater Blacksburg area if I were you. Some idiot might take it for a "warning sign.") When piffle like this gets respectful treatment from the media, we can guess that it's not because of the profundity of the emotion but rather because of its extreme shallowness. Those birds were singing just as loudly and just as sweetly when the bullets were finding their targets.

 

Now I remember when I first heard about the shootings. I was working in my office and saw the headline pop up on CNN's homepage. 2 dead at VaTech... I was like dang! Then a few hours later 20 dead... 22 dead... 30 dead... I was like what the heck! I was definitely in shock and horror. People just shot up on campus... a campus not to different from the one I work at.

But I did feel a certain amount of uneasiness at the way the media and all of us collectively blew up this tragedy into a huge cultural, spiritual and political event that now that I think about it didn't really mean much. Gun control? Campus saftey? Treating mentally-ill students? Minorities' treatment?

Those are all lessons that could be in some way drawn from this event... but we definitely took it a lot further than that... there was definitely big balls of fluff thrown at us in the aftermath-- Tim Kaine's eloquent, watered-down, but strangely effective compliment to the Va Tech students: you united! you came together as one! that's why this tragedy is a good thing! I as your governor am so proud of you! (at the end of a day it was superficial and probably not really true, but I understand why he said it as comforting words); Nikki Giovanni's poetic address filled with long run-on sentence and ambiguous political conotations followed by the anthemic, if not unoriginal, basketball chant "WE ARE VIRIGINA TECH!" There were a lot of other addresses that tried to make some sense out of the events (don't get me even started on Bush's clumsy talk... haha)

Now Hitchens bashes the Korean Community's cries against "potential backlash"... that is something that we have been praying for as IV staff... I agree that that is a concern for many Korean Americans who resonate very much with this as something "one of their own did". But there's line that's gotta be drawn, guys.

You can just read it as you browse Korean folks' xangas... they write "Why did it have to be Korean?" (as if it would have made sense if it were a mexican or a black or a white). We demonstrate this incredible shock, anger and frustration at how a Korean, of all people, could be capabale of such a monstrous act. Now I understanda nd resonate with the fact that Koreans share a larger collectivist ehtnic mentality that most 100#% westerners will never understand... but as Korean Americans we have to pursue truth and the truth of the matter is that his Koreanness had just as much to do with this act as his English-majorness or his East-coastness or his male-ness... c'mon... let's not get too worked up about this here! And fear of backlash? We pray against that yes, but let's not make too big of a deal here... the people who are going to backlash are so moronic anyways that not even our prayers or sensible words are goign to stop them. These are the people that don't know the difference between China, Japan and Korea... we should be fearful of their backlash no matter what.

Hitchens calls it an "unstoppable quest for greater 'meaning'." And I think his criticism of all of us is completely justified. But at the same time, that's what people do, don't they? They try to make sense out of the sensless... there seems to be this innate qualitiy in all of us to see, from the mundane to the extrordinary, a larger purpose in what we do... we seem to desperate crave a significance larger than ourselves... even the most catostrophic things that we experience. The question we have to ask ourselves (and hithcnes does a great job of helping the point) what is an intelligent, thoguhtfully appropriate way to mourn and empathize... and how are we being subconsciouslly told what to think and how to mourn by the media?

I'll let Hitchens take over from here (probably the best part of the whole essay):

It was my friend Adolph Reed who first pointed out this tendency to what he called "vicarious identification." At the time of the murder of Lisa Steinberg in New York in 1987, he was struck by the tendency of crowds to show up for funerals of people they didn't know, often throwing teddy bears over the railings and in other ways showing that (as well as needing to get a life) they in some bizarre way seemed to need to get a death. The hysteria that followed a traffic accident in Paris involving a disco princess—surely the most hyped non-event of all time—seemed to suggest an even wider surrender to the overwhelming need to emote: The less at stake, the greater the grieving.

 

I don't think Hitchens is much different than the rest of us, however. He too, is on that unstoppable quest for greater meaning... only he doesn't agree with where some people chose to find it. This is how he chose to describe what happened at VA Tech:

The grisly events at Virginia Tech involved no struggle, no sacrifice, no great principle. They were random and pointless. Those who died were not soldiers in any cause. They were not murdered by our enemies. They were not martyrs. 

This is where I divergef rom Hitchens. Those words betrays his personal numbness to tragedy, death and murder... for him, a mass shooting on a college campus is not "significant." Its just another tragedy, one that happens all over the world. What he seems to be concerned with is the powerful, the intersections of ideas, the clash of nationstates and civilizations... 33 dead? Just another statistic to this guy.

And that's pretty scary to me. Certainly, we probably have gone too far in mourning these dead when there are more dying all over the world for no apparent reason. Certainly, people in their shallow philosiphyizing and sermonizing have drawn incredibly moronoic conclusions that are so out of touch with reality that they are insulting to any thinking person. But critciizing empathy itself? To mock that poor Blacksberg pastor for finding solace in her faith, in the familiar in what she knows is beautiful? That's a concession I'm not willing to make. As Christians... I think we're probably called to live in the tension of this world is jacked up people die... but to never become comfortable with it... I personally think Hitchens is taking the easy way out... instead of having to wrestly with the question of "How do you mourn some random tragedy that happens thousands fo miles away?"... he just decides not to, to take it for granted and move on to mor e"important things"... Thinking Christians are called to a higher standard than that.

When  Hitchens finds a tragedy "significant" enough for mourning, "significant" enough for lowering the flags, "significant" enough for vigils and ballons, he should probably  let us know becauase then with his permission we will know its worth it.

But in the meantime, I think everyone should at least read his article... I think its a helpful critique of the way our society and media in a lot of ways controls our own emotions and how we are mourning for those suffering thousands of miles away.... its good to hear his views, especially if you disagree with them... i know it helped me think....

I've never considered myself an evangelist. It was always pretty low on my spiritual gifts radar. I enjoy leading worship, studying and teaching the Bible. I love being in relational contexts-- with Christians and non-Christians. But when it comes to evangelism, I've always had cold feet.

I think that's true for a lot of Christians, and I think I can say Asian American Christians in particular. Its really interesting because we have an ideal for evangelism and most of us would self-identify as Evangelical Christians, but I think practically speaking, evangelism was never much of a priority in our religious training.

[If you're reading this and youre not a christian (maybe even if you are a christian) even the idea of evangelism or proselytizing is probably offensive to you. I've had many a conversation with folks who not only disagreed with my religious beliefs but also disagreed with the idea that I'd tried to push them onto others. Well, maybe you might find this post interesting in that probably all the objections you have with me evangelising, I've felt and continue to feel about myself at one point or other.... ]

I think one way I rationalize why I'm not all that big on evangelism is becauase I've seen it often done so poorly-- and I Really have. Quick story: I remember freshman year me and my roommate received a knock on our door by two young men from a ministry that will go unmentioned. They extremely nervous and clutching a tin box of cookies... (they were fantastic btw). It was strange because as soon as I opened the door they started awkwardly reciting some lines that they had clearly tried to memorize about who they were and what they were doing, offering home-baked cookies and talking about Jesus. I remember Jimmy (my roommate) and I were like "yo dudes! We're christian too! Rock on!" (not exactly like that, but we were being supportive and like yea... saying good job and stuff. But it was kind of like they didn't hear what we were saying and just continued with their memorized lines and invited us to some kind of evagnelistic meeting later that night. we were both like uhhhhh and just took it and they said bye and walkeda way... I closed the door, looked at Jimmy and we were like uhhhhh at least the cookies were awesome.

My fear is that I will be like those awkward dudes... and I can sooo easily see me being like that, its not like they were stupid or awful or anything, I'm sure they were well-intentioned, passionate Christians who really believed.... but I Think that coudl be anyone who is nervous about doing it.

But anyways, I think the fear being perceived as that "weird guy who wants to convert you" kind of kept any kind of contact evangelism off my radar screen. I always categorized evangelism in two ways: the weird, strange, bold, in your face method and the cool, relational method. I always thought very lowly of the former and saw myself as supporting the latter.

That is, until recently. I had a couple of positive experience doing it myself and had a few great converfsations with some people I Respect who are proponets of the more cold turkey method. I've developed an interest in this so I pick up this book by York Moore (who totally rocked the house at Urbana... you have to listen to him preach the Gosepl on the Urbana Web cast... it was a beautiful thing) and started reading it. Essentially, this man is in love with talking about faith with anybody, friends, co-workers, strangers... and he has so many stories of incredible conversations and often incredible conversions. And if you meet this guy... on one hand he's this larger-than-life guy who preaches with incredible eloquence and passion and on the other hand this totally chill, funny down to earth fellow who's... but I'm thinking to myself-- he's one of a kind, man!

Anyways, I'm reading this book in Barnes and Noble just minding my own business. But the book is pretty challenging. I read this one line:

"Let me also challenge you to share the gospel message with someone near you... perhaps you could put this book down and say something like, I was just reading this book and it made me want to stop and ask you some questions."... regardless of how you start or with whom you start, the point is to start. Without begining our own personal journey of gospel proclamation, we will never reach the countless masses. Why not start today by sharing with just one person?"

So normally I Would just breeze through words like this without even giving it a second of thought... but for some reason I really felt something (perhaps the holy spirit) compelling me to strike up a conversation with someone in the cafe. And I knew at that moment exactly who it should be, this dude who was sitting right next to me studying. So I prayed for a second trying to ask if this is something God wanted me to do... no concrete answer, but I felt a nudge in my spirit. So I decided... hey what's the worst thing that could happen? I'm not going to push him or be a weirdo or anything, I'm just gonna ask him what he thinks about faith and if he's interested in talking about it....

but then, the fear grips me... I don't know what it is about evangelizing that makes me frozen in fear. I love striking up random conversations with strangers about other topics. But maybe its because faith is such a sensitive issue, butI really got scared. But I kept telling myself, "its not a big deal..." but yet something still scares me to death.... so I literally sit there for twenty minutes telling myself, "just say hey to this guy, its not a big deal." But I can't move.

At this point, I really start to wonder why the heck I can't just say anything. It seems so stupid. So I actually get frustrated at myself and wonder if there's something beyond just my own insecurities that's preventing me from talking to this dude.

I see that's he's not even studying any more he's eating some kind of smoothie. So I finally force to just say, "Hey man... sorry to interrupt you, but I got a really random question for you. I'm reading this book right now that says that people are naturally inclined to talk about religion and faith. Do you think this is true?" (At this point, I can't believe I'm even asking this question, but I just force the words out of my mouth.)

The guy pauses, thinks to himself and answers with an easy tone, "There are two things that I don't talk about every, religion and politics."

I'm kind of confused and a little scared... this doesn't seem like a really great answer. But the really ironic thing, is that we end up talking about both for the next thirty minutes. Turns out this guy is a second generation Palestinian Christian who actually visits Palestine once every so often. We talked about life in his homeland (he has family outside of Tel Aviv). I told him about my experiences in Egypt. It was really cool.

We even talked about how he used to try to evangelize to his Muslim friends, but it wasn't all that successful, led to too many fights and now he doesn't do it any more. He told me of this one Muslim friend who after his father died, started to have random dreams about his father telling him that Jesus can make make him clean... and he had them numerous times, but could not bring himself to even talk about Jesus.

But to sum it up, it was a great conversation and I was really glad that I took a risk like that. I realized that even if he wasn't a Christian, the worst thing that could have happened is that he wouldn't want to talk about it and I would have just gone back to my book and he woul dhave gone back to studying. But I realized that Evangelism, even contact style evangelism, doesn't have to be weird or awkward or leave a bad taste in someone's mouth... it can just be a great conversation with a stranger. And maybe, God is work is already working in the otehr person's life and he/she is interested in hearing about Christianity and if not, you can always have a good conversation.

Anyways, that was a great interaction that continues to make me excited about sharing the good news of Jesus with others... I hope I can continue to take risks like that. But I might try not to read this book in public places again. =P