Tov Meod- the return of the Red Pool

The Red Pool has returned, albeit in its eastern incarnation. I like blogging more than I like email updates, simply because if the random masses want to read my stuff, it's a much better vehicle for them to do so with bated breath. Plus, it gratifies my ego immensely when you comment on my site. So sue me. I have a pride problem.

I type this freshly arrived at my home after a wretched bear of a day. I started at 2:00 PM and I traveled all around Kunshan, teaching assorted companies and offices English for their everyday use. In one day, I did two classes at a five-star hotel (one of which can barely read- I conducted it mostly in Chinese), one class of Korean high school students and one class of Taiwanese manufacturing managers who talked about KTV for two hours (KTV is the Chinese manifestation of the Karaoke bar, but, as I learned second-hand from these men, it is decidedly less wholesome. Imagine a bar, with bad singing, slimy clients and a brothel upstairs, and you will begin to get the idea. I am rather glad I have never personally had the pleasure of frequenting such an establishment). Not only that, but the only food I had all day was KFC, that ever glorious staple of Kunshanese cuisine. Simply put, today sucked.

At least that's what I thought. One the way home, right as I am a few blocks in the direction of my house, I get a craving for Ba Bai Wan (800 Bowls)- a noodle place right near work. I was going to go home and try to cook or eat cereal, but I didn't have a whole lot of food in the house (because I have been rather too busy to go shopping) and I wanted something warm because of the cold weather (none of these companies are magnanimous enough to turn on their heat) so I caved in.

The great thing about Ba Bai Wan is that they serve this really marvelous fresh veggie beef stir-fry. Most Chinese home-style places have enough MSG to give you cancer at 50 paces, but not Ba Bai Wan. The veggies actually taste like they are real, cut up veggies from the supermarket, not the pirated, hyper-fried, street-stew crap (Yes, you read that correctly- the Chinese do pirate veggies, don't ask me how they do it, but they do it). The beef is possessed of a consistency much greater than that of the chewing gum fat strip counterparts at your local hot-pot. Ba Bai Wan is probably the best Chinese place I can find in Kunshan. Plus, this place is open late. I love all-night places, because they drip travel and nomadism and a kind of pleasing recklessness that causes you to wonder with a smile "why would anybody eat this late?" Even down to the staff making jokes to try to make the best of a bad situation, (wouldn't you if you had to work till 1 every night?), everything about a place like this screams a provisional, family-style, home-away-from-home. Simply put, I went to the Chinese version of IHOP (without the magic coffee that only tastes good at 2:00 AM, of course).

At this point, I took out my Bible to pass the time and I read the first part of the creation account in Genesis 1. The first paragraph is really great when read in Hebrew because it uses all these words that come from ancient Babylonian creation epics. All the words for "deep" and "formless and void" sound like the ancient names for the Babylonian gods of chaos. It's a really cool text to read, because I feel like the writer is taking the names of the pagan gods and using them to say, "That's not how it happened, it really happened like this- God makes order out of chaos, not the cronies of some over-venerated guilded, stump." God, not Marduk or Tiamet, rules the day, and don't you forget it!

Over and over, the text talks about how God takes chaos and turns it into order, with the result being "tov" (good) or in the case of mankind "tov meod" (very good). While I was sitting there in the middle of this Chinese diner, God spoke all this to me. If He can use fresh veggies and the names of Babylonian deities to bless His people, then there is nothing that is not subject to the creative power of his word, especially at those times at which it chooses to give life. When God's word orders a situation, everything becomes good, even my busy days full of creepy Taiwanese managers.

Paul said it best when he admonished the Corinthians to not let any possible influence from God go untapped. He admonishes, saying,

So let no one glory in men; for all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.
(1Co 3:21-23)

Even fresh veggies, and especially busy days.

HTGR

Daniel

Never surrender

Never surrender. Ours is a world at war. Of course it's difficult. Things hurt and people are idiots. They are also cross-worthy and valuable beyond all belief. The Lord is good and He is deep and and He is sneaky. He rarely gives a straight answer but is worthy to save and make our fight valuable beyond anything we could ever imagine. The Lord is mighty and celebrates our victories like he mourns our defeats. He encourages us to live and breathe and move on and wants to speak to us like crazy. He is really really really good and the challenge of human history is believing that truth.

Kiss God

Daniel

Prophecy, Pathos and the birth of the Revolution

Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book, The Prophets, said this regarding the prophet Hosea,

"The marriage of Hosea was no symbolic representation of real facts, no act of recreating or repeating events in the history of Israel or experiences in the inner life of God. Its meaning was not objective, inherent in the marriage, but subjective, evocative. Only by living through in his own life what the divine Consort of Israel experienced, was the prophet able to attain sympathy for the divine situation.... [the marriage's] purpose was not to demonstrate divine attitudes to the people but to educate Hosea himself in the understanding of divine sensibility.
"The tragic disturbance in the relationship between God and Israel must have determined decisively his attitude and outlook. Hosea, who again and again emphasized the unchanging devotion of God to Israel, was not simply an advocate of the people. His mind was powerfully affected by the embitterment of God, echoed in his own sympathetic experience."

Later in the book, Heschel calls this divine sympathy by the Greek word pathos. This is the source of our word 'pathetic' though it doesn't have such a negative connotation in the way he uses the word here. Pathos originally meant deep feeling or empathy with something beyond yourself. (Yet it is interesting to note, that while the word originally meant a sympathy with a transcendent experience, these experiences messed people up to the point where the victims of this pathos ended looking a lot more pathetic than they probably would have liked. Look at Jerimiah)

Anyway, Heschel's point is that the hallmark of prophecy is pathos with the heart of God. In order to hear God, you must know Him and His heart. And I'm learning that such pathos is the crux of a good relationship with Jesus. Knowing His heart, what He thinks and feels and values, what keeps the Lord up at night, and what helps Him sleep soundly, helps us hear what He is trying to say.

In John 10:27, Jesus tells His disciples that, "My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me." Knowing the Lord, and hearing the Lord, and following the Lord are all facets of the same diamond. This inspires love for God and love for others. I would dare say intimacy, being at the heart of love, is at the heart of the Gospel (Mark 12:37, Matt 22:33). The Lord called us to that intimacy. And this is all nothing new. If you find yourself at this web's even, then its probably a given that you know all this. So what's the point?

The point is: being intimate with Jesus changes things! The idea that God is always speaking, always working and always loving people is new to me on practical level, and it is a lot easier to preach it theologically then it is to live actually. Yet if these ideas are true, then they change (and maybe sanctify) everything. Things happen! This is why it says in First Corinthians 14:27, that if all prophecy and an unbelievers comes in, then God is seen to be in our midst. The guy will fall on his face and worship the real and present Lord. Intimacy with God, pathos with the risen Christ's passion for the world, prophecy in the truest sense of the word, really can change everything because we meet God here and He can change everything. Intimacy is the impetus for our faith!

God really exists, not just on a theological level, but an actually level. If you believe this, that God exists and earnestly rewards those who seek Him (Heb 12), then go live like it! That's all there really is to life.

Daniel

God and us, may it be so!

Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Oh the blessings of all those who flee to Him for refuge! Psalm 2:12

If the Lord really feels like this towards us, then how far are we willing to go for Him, our soul's Lover?

Baruch Atah Adonai! Shem HaKavod

How far are you willing to go for true love in the middle of a world at war?

Words can't express our true love, Lord. You are fierce and beautiful LORD, like a kiss. I pray we would understand you in this way and love you with this passion. Let us hear your voice with a passion for You and not from a man-pleasing desire to seem spiritual and pious and close to you. We deserve nothing, Lord, and Your grace is sufficient. We Love You. I love You. Be fierce in our midst. We love You LORD! I, we all, die without YOU oh Lord, maker of Heaven and earth! I am in love!

Song of Songs 8:7

Daniel

PS be with Sonja's family, it's tough for her Lord.

The story of the real St. Patrick

St. Patrick was a British youth born in the late 4th century. As a youth, he was uninterested in Christianity and shirked his scholastic duties for more libertine pursuits. Though he came from a Christian home, he remarks in His Confessions that he probably didn't even believe in God.

At age 16, he was taken captive by Irish raiders and brought to live as a slave in the Land of Erin (Ireland). After working as a shepherd for a time, he was later transfered to the ownership of the chief druid of the island where he learned the ways of the pagans, especially legends that a mystic figure named Iosa had visited the druids, proclaiming a mystic message the druids only understood in the hindsight brought by missionaries like Patrick. It was during this time that Patrick began to understand the faith of His fathers.

At age 22, Patrick was able to escape from the Ireland and bartered for passage on a ship living the Irish coast. It still took him a few years to arrive home, but he eventually did, settiling in for what he believed was a life of relative obscurity. This was until He had a vision of a man named Victorius with a stack of letters, on top of which was read "The Voice of the Irish". Each of these letters had a different Irish voice beging him "to come and walk among us once more". He was unable to read more, in his own words, feeling "stabbed in the heart" by the plantitive cries of his former captors. He had no choice but to return to Ireland.

St. Patrick was one of the many great lights largely responsible for the Preaching of the Gospel in Ireland. It was a distinctly Irish Gospel, using symbols like the three-leaf clover and the sun (a druid pagan symbol) to explain the message of salvation in a way people could understand. His underground movement attracted the persecution of several local kings who tried to stamp out this Spiritual revolution. The were eventually unsucessful as several times as the Lord rescued Patrick several times through Divine intervention, even once transforming him and his disciples into deer to escape the the angry intentions of their pursuers. Through this, and many other stories, Patrick has become a role model for the modern missions movement and a symbol of the vibrant spiritual life of the persecuted church, even today.

You can read Patrick's own account at

http://prayerfoundation.org/st_patricks_confession_1.htm

or for a great fictional rendition of the Patrick story read Patrick: Son of Ireland by Stephan Lawhead.

Happy St. Patrick's day!!!!

Daniel

The richest of fare...

I am reading the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, and it just occurred to me that the Father never asks for the kid to pay back all the money he wasted. The Father could have worked for years and years saving and working and scrimping to leave His sons a legacy when He was gone. It could have been all His blood, all His sweat and all His tears. Yet it meant nothing in light of the return of His son. In fact, the only time the wasted inheritance is even mentioned is when the older brother complains that the father is treating the younger too well in spite of His libertine ways. The Father essentially responds that all that grace was available to the older son as well, he just didn't ask.

Ay, there's the rub. We don't ask, mainly because we think asking involves this false assumption that we owe God something, and that even if Jesus paid the debt for us, we are still responsible somehow. I don't agree. In fact, that whole paradigm about Jesus allaying the just wrath of the father, just doesn't work for me. It sounds as if Jesus was for us, but He had to convince the Father because He was pretty mad that we totaled the Spiritual car. What kind of family is that where the older brother has to fight off the fury of the father on all the little siblings like that? It just rings hollow.

That said, I think that the Father is just as much in our corner as the Son and the Spirit are. Or maybe more so, because you could make a case that sending Jesus was His idea. He loves us and wants us to come back, not so He can demand repayment from Jesus or Us or anyone else, but so we can follow the path of life, being freed from the path of death (we die more every step we take when we are walking away from Jesus. In the words of Lewis, how can somebody not die so far from the fountain of life?). Sin is by nature self-destructive, and anybody who has been engaged in self-destruction behaviors can tell you that it is so easy to think every one is against you. How many addicts have the friends try to help them, only to have cries of "you are judging me!" hurled at their confused ears. Maybe the wrath of God is more that God essentially gives the self-destructive what they want, freedom from Him. The problem is, then they end up in hell.

However, the Lord refuses to let sin and judgment and consignment to eternal perdition be the last word. Namely, that Christ, born of a virgin, being a master teacher, died on a Roman Cross. Being dead for Three days, he woke up, being resurrected. Those who would follow this risen Rabbi must die as He did, enabling them to live in the same manner. This is the Great Romance, that Christ became sin for us, and killed it, so we all might live.

HALLELUYAH!

Daniel

PS, I'm trying to edit blogs more, if you say any bad grammar, or quick haphazardness, comment and let me know! Thanks!

The Shulamite's song...

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
-the Postal Service

"smeared black ink: your palms are sweaty and I'm barely listening to last demands
i'm staring at the asphalt wondering what's buried underneath where i am

i'll wear my badge: a vinyl sticker with big block letters adherent to my chest
that tells your new friends i am a visitor here: i am not permanent
and the only thing keeping me dry is where i am

you seem so out of context in this gaudy apartment complex
a stranger with a door key explaining that i am just visiting
and i am finally seeing why i was the one worth leaving

d.c. sleeps alone tonight

you seem so out of context in this gaudy apartment complex
a stranger with a door key explaining that i am just visiting
and i am finally seeing why i was the one worth leaving
the district sleeps alone tonight after the bars turn out their lights
and send the autos swerving into the loneliest evening
and i am finally seeing why i was the one worth leaving"

I love this song.

Often we think we need to beg God to let us back, that we stand pounding at his door screaming for him to let us in. The song doesn't get to this part, but pretty much if God is anything at all as wonderful as the girl at whose door this guy is singing this song, He will welcome us back and d.c. won't sleep alone ever again. May you realize you are the one worth leaving, but that you are never left. May you always be a vistor in the world which you find yourself and may the Spirit of the Shulamite dwell richly in your heart, soul, mind and body as you respond to your Great Lover in the deepest of embraces. May you get lost in His eyes and intoxicated by His embrace. And as always, as you and He get ever closer, may the Great Romance ever increase!

AMEN!

Daniel