Love = Fear

As I get deeper with God, "fear" has taken on a new meaning. The idea of fearing God had been set in my head since I was a boy, and it was always some sort of a just punishment for my wrong doings. I was terrified of His eyes that were always watching me, making sure I knew when I did something wrong. However, I didn't realize how much God really loved me, and the things I had considered "punishments" were merely a curse I had brought on myself (which implies true justice), or a phase of inconvenience to strengthen my character.

"Fear" really took a big turn when I started to love God. I've found that two different kinds of fear exist in this world - fear in terror and fear in love. The former form of fear makes us live in anxiety and insecurity, while the latter makes us live with joy and respect (for God, others, and ourselves). It was hard to understand that we are supposed to love and fear God at the same time. But from understanding the deeper meaning of fear, It's now clear that I fear because I love.

I also believe fear from love and respect is where true accountability lies. It is when we practice this type of fear - to be concerned with the thoughts of God, our parents, and our friends - we are able to have deep accountability.

I fear the impression God has of me. I fear the impression God has of my actions, my heart, and my thoughts. I fear God because I love Him. I always want to deeply, maybe obsessively, be concerned with what He thinks of me.

Puffed Up - Pride

I had written this article for my first Trumpet submission, but after today's small group (where Pastor Jae taught a bible study on pride and ego) I thought I should add this article to my blog...

The root of all evil is Pride, the exact opposite of Humility. “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind” [CS Lewis, Mere Christianity]. My prideful mindset was unconsciously satanic and it was the main reason why I (and many others) could not accept or get closer to the God. I stuck proudly to postmodern worldviews, defended moral relativism, and refused to dig deeper in to these philosophical meanings. I proudly believed in pure logic, failed to see the actual source of logic, created delusions that everything must be proven, and attempted to solve the mystery of God. Even when I tasted a drip of God’s wisdom and grace, I suddenly began to act righteous, compared myself with others, became more judgmental, and failed to understand that the core of Christianity is humility. I proudly thought (rather than just executing) of performing righteous acts, pointed fingers when others did not behave the way I believe we ought to, instead of completing erasing myself from all equations so comparisons could never be drawn. It’s understandable that nonbelievers would be prideful, as this world preaches competitiveness and the “survival of the fittest” is the way to live. However, It’s truly mind boggling how having faith in the Lord can make people become such prideful beings, especially when God is asking us to “kill” ourselves and to fix our eyes only to Him. “It is a terrible thing that the worst of all vices can smuggle itself in to the very center of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell” [CS Lewis, Mere Christianity]. From my experience and meditations, I’ve drawn the below conclusions of pride, but hope to continue to discover how this cancerous vice makes people (including myself) delusional, and forces our thought process to be outside in.

1. Pride is based on competition in nature, as man can only feel Prideful when comparing himself to another. The form may be different and subtle for everyone- wealth, looks, cleverness, etc. And if everyone were exactly the same, Pride would not exist. But, as we all know, we live in a world that stirs Pride as our first instinctive, humanistic, delusional nature. This does not give us excuse to barricade ourselves from practicing the Truth- Love and Humility. We can easily tell how Prideful we are by seeing how much we hate it or how much we fight it. Think how much you hate it when someone brags about their large bank account or when someone talks “smack” towards you. In the absence of Pride, you would think that person is actually just plain silly, and would not feel any type of disgust at all (some may even play along). However, Satan works in deceiving ways. We hate it when others are Prideful because we immediate calculate how righteous we are compared to them, which is all a delusion, as no one is purely righteous. Although Satan persistently uses this vice, God has blessed us with a sword to fight the battle- Humility. I strongly feel that Humility is just as contagious as Pride, as one cannot continue being Prideful if the other is openly accepting all the blows- the Prideful man will quickly be able to see his own Pride in the presence of true Humility and will feel immediately foolish to continue. For example, when friends wrestle/fight (even for play), because of its competitive nature, as a winner and a loser will mostly likely be drawn, Pride will be stirred in both parties. If just one of the men chooses not to wrestle/fight, there would be none, and better yet, there would be no loser. The feeling of superiority would not be accomplished. I’m not saying to give up when someone challenges you. That’s not the point. Since you know the emotion of superiority is inevitable, the entire act in general should be avoided- mainly because you should care about the other person.

2. Pride also leads people to be self-centered. Instead of orbiting around God and our neighbors, we, due to our insecurities, grab the wheel and force the orbit to spin around ourselves. Naturally, it prohibits us from loving others because “everything is about me”. If we could only shun our prideful mindset, stop thinking about ourselves for once, and orbit around God and our neighbors, we would realize true freedom- freedom to forgive, freedom to serve, and freedom to love. Only when we stop orbiting around ourselves can we actually love another literally as ourselves. Don’t we always forgive ourselves for our own idiotic acts? We should be able to do exactly the same for all our neighbors (Criminals, Muslims, Atheists, etc), as we are all created in God’s image and to judge, we’d be essentially be attempting to play God. You can say it’s idealistic, but I say this is what it’s meant to be. We just lack discipline and are weak- becoming disciplined is a whole another topic.

“When we discern Jesus moving forward us and encircling us with an infinite, self-giving love, we are invited to put our lives on a whole new foundation. We can make him the new center of our lives and stop trying to be our own Savior and Lord. We can accept both his challenge to recognize ourselves as sinners in need of his salvation, and his renewing love as the new basis of our identity. Then we don’t need to prove ourselves to others. We won’t need to use others to bolster our fragile sense of pride and self-worth. And we will be enabled to move out toward others as Jesus has moved toward us” [Tim Keller, Reason for God]

3. Pride is a tricky vice. It’s used to crush other smaller vices and Satan laughs at us! “Be the bigger man and just say you’re sorry”, I remember saying. Obviously I didn’t realize I was falling in to one of His tricks again. He makes us believe we are performing the righteous act, but gives us cancer instead, as we quickly begin to clap ourselves on the back and collect our Pride. However, the more we become delusional, collect, and build on this vice, the harder it becomes to let ourselves go and see the Truth. Even when God blesses us with wisdom, it comes soaked with pride, and must be handled carefully. No matter the amount of wisdom gained, if a man judges another (and it’s easy because as Christians we believe we know what other men do not), he has underestimated the depth and breadth of God’s wisdom. For God’s wisdom is endless and no matter how much we strive, although we ought to, we will only merely eat crumbs of His wisdom. It’s like a child bragging to another child that he can ride a bicycle, while the other child is still on tricycles. As adults, we know this is silly, especially because the former child is bragging about his skills on a bicycle while there are incredible people that fly airplanes! These humanistic urges should be contained and we should constantly be in a struggle, as Satan relentlessly plays tricks on our minds and makes us think, “I’m being humble”, when we actually are, which immediately creates pride- pride at our own humility. CS Lewis describes how Satan speaks to his minions, to trick men even when they are attempting to be humble:

“By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible” [CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters]

I end with this last quote, which is my favorite:

“How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of Pride towards their fellow-men” [CS Lewis, Mere Christianity]

I pray that, if we have not yet realized, we no longer serve a phantom God, no longer force the orbit to spin around ourselves, but forget ourselves completely and swim in God’s glory, wisdom, and love.

Lukewarm?

As God chipped away my bricks of pride and my self absorbed ways, I was able to yearn to understand more of His heart and His will. And as I meditated to get my heart to be in sync with His heart, I was hit with a revelation regarding my false humility - I'm constantly praying for cleansing (feeling humble as I seek Him) but then standing back up to go on with my own subjective ways. It hit me that true humility is not when I simply pray for forgiveness. This is only half of the process, and without the latter, it is false humility - a delusion, and a lie to myself. I realized I need to seek forgiveness, and right away, live out my repentance - resurrecting and dying to myself so that I am able to carry out His will, not my own.

One thing that sharply struck my heart, as I dove deeper into Him, was my lack of concern for humanity. It's so easy to go about my own business and not care of others who can really benefit from just a moment of my time. And it's so easy to fool myself to think that I care about true equality, when my actions prove otherwise. It's funny now thinking of how I had wanted a softer heart for humanity while not doing anything about it. This world really does a great job of blinding my eyes so that I cannot see, taste, and hear the Truth. It likes to keep me in my comfort zone and tell me I'm doing fine - that thinking of loving is enough. I realized my hesitation to serve and "get dirty" evolved me to be more and more self absorbed and jaded from realizing real beauty, and experiencing true joy. Even my prayers were constantly focused on myself - "God help me to understand" instead of "I want to serve Your kingdom". It looks like I've been pleading to God to serve me, and not the other way around. I repetitively forget that This entire story is about Him!

Forcing myself to turn my revelation into action, I went to New York City to serve at Feed 500. I have to admit, it wasn't easy getting up early to head in to the city to spend time with people I didn't know. And I had always wanted the passion first, so that I can serve. I didn't want to fake it. If I was going to serve, I wanted the desire to be there. I guess I really underestimated the power of sin in this world, and how it calluses my heart to suppress and destroy the desires to be righteous. But really, it was just as it's written in the Bible - like the crippled that initiated the healing process by reaching out for Jesus before actually being healed. When I finally obeyed first, and served, I understood God's will and it stirred the passion in my heart. Although it was a struggle the entire way up to Harlem, as soon as I got there, the Spirit started to steer the wheel. And John, the director of Feed 500, really set the stage for my heart to yearn to serve.

"We are not here to feed as many people as possible. We are here to love them by listening, spending time with them, and showing them that we care. Thousands of people walk passed them every single day. If this happened to you, wouldn't you murmur and talk to yourself? Wouldn't you be just as consumed with loneliness and fear? You all have two lunch bags. One for you and one for a person that is homeless."

As John spoke these words, I was finally able to relate. I started to imagine thousands of people walking passed me as I desperately asked for money for my next meal. I started to imagine a world without family to watch out for me. I started to imagine being tortured because I was vulnerable, without anyone to care about me. Why didn't I do anything to care for humanity before? How can I be a Christian if I cannot get out of my head and genuinely love like Christ loved? Talk is cheap. I never cared for humanity because I never chose to get dirty, understand, and gain real perspective. This event truly opened my heart to love people a little more.

The day went great. I hung out in the open near Penn Station with a couple of people that were homeless at the time, and we had a blast eating lunch together. They were so happy to just have someone listen. And when I asked if I could pray for them, they were estatic! The cost of all this? Just a moment of my time...

This experience allowed me to understand how to love. It is never just standing there and romanticizing to love - nor is it just loving those that we believe are "worthy" of our love. But to love is exactly like how Christ loved - how he gave up all the glory and comfort, limited Himself to time and flesh, got dirty in this sinful world, and died to raise all of humanity. I need to love by breaking my comfort. I need to get down and dirty. I need to die to myself - my will and my subjective ways - so that others may know the Truth. I want to serve with this love.

It feel so good to cry

When something goes terribly wrong, (especially if our hearts are not jaded) our emotions overwhelm us, and it pours out of us in uncontrollable tears. Likewise, when something amazing happen, (especially if our hearts are not jaded) our emotions once again dominate us, and it pours out in ridiculous laughter or joyful tears. In both scenario, we know that our expressions of our emotion will not have any effect on the event that's caused it, but we let it out anyway because it not only feels great, but it satisfies and completes our emotion. It's like saying, "I love you," to the person you love, and not holding it inside of you - it just feels so damn good when you say it. However, as soon as we begin to think about our "irrational" behavior, we immediately cut off the natural reflection of our spirit.

John Piper describes this perfectly when he says that "our emotions are a means to an end". I really believe this. Our emotions simply just complete how we feel deep within, but we don't expect to change our current environment (if we do, we are being delusional or our motives are selfish).

One time I remember I tried out for all state chamber orchestra (i played the violin), and even after practicing for hours and hours everyday for months, I didn't make it. When I found out, I was devastated. I went to my room silently, closed the door, sank my face in to my pillow, and just cried for at least 30 minutes straight. It felt amazing. It didn't change the fact that I hadn't made all state, but my heart definitely felt lighter and a lot of my frustration disappeared. I know it's a silly illustration, but what if in the middle of my crying I started to think rationally? What if I started to question, "Why am I crying?" "Is it going to change the outcome of the roaster if I cry?" If I did this, I would have immediately cut off the chance to express my emotions. My rational mind would have stopped the natural/irrational outpour of my soul. And this would have sucked. It felt so good to cry... it felt amazing to let out my emotion that was really saying, "I am not in control of my life." It felt so good to let my insecurities out in the open.

I really believe we (christians and non-christians) do this constantly, especially at the worst of times - the times when God wishes to speak to us or move us. We have a hard time worshipping as our spirit leads us because we think "rationally" during service. We have a hard time witnessing to people around us because we allow our environment to break our discipline. We have a hard time soaking in the spiritual revelations because the mind of the world dominates our thinking process. We have a hard time allowing spiritual gifts to flow out of us because our logic consumes us. There's should not be any logical thinking when the Spirit of God touches us - only an open heart for the Spirit to overflow out of us. As soon as we become rational about this sort of behavior, we cut off the Spirit from driving us.

It must really upset God the way we think - the way we place our reality over His. But this is what really gets me.. how RELENTLESS He is. He never gives up! He keeps trying to talk to us over and over and over again, until that one moment when our pride breaks and we are able to feel His presence and hear His whispers.. And we realize that He's been there all along :)