Tried With Fire

Organic chemistry was a required class for my undergrad major. I hated the lecture, but I liked the lab. It was easier than my physical chemistry lab, and the TA wasn't nearly as tough of a grader as some of the other instructors. I was surprised one day to have my lab notebook handed back to me with a comment of how well I expressed myself in English. It was on the tip of my tongue to sarcastically say that English was read and written even in remote places like New Jersey, but I took pity on  him. He meant it as a compliment, which I received  rather awkwardly, although I tried to correct his wrong impression about me with the usual, "I was born here. I'm an American. Blah, blah blah." There could have been a number of factors that played into his wrong assumption. He was a grad student. He could have been running on caffeine fumes and probably had tons of work on top of a teaching assistantship. He may have come from a part of the country with very few Asian im...

The following quotes are from  Heal Us, Emmanuel: A Call for Racial Reconciliation, Representation, and Unity in the Church , which contains contributions from various pastors in the PCA. I started reading this in earnest over the weekend and could not put it down. I don't agree with everything, but there is much that I do. Regardless, this book is thought-provoking and uncovers assumptions and unconscious privilege that the Christian majority culture  (white culture)   may be bringing to the table. There is more that I could write particularly in how those assumptions trickle down in application for women, but it will have to wait. My day job is calling me. You may disagree completely that there is any privilege whatsoever in play. Fair enough. My intent is not to point the finger but to  encourage you to listen to a side you may not have considered before. Above all, my motive is for the peace and healing of the Bride of Christ. I told them I was an elder o...

Suffering has been the latest Sunday school topic at my church. The class has been very helpful and thought-provoking. It has probably been challenging for the teacher to try to condense this weighty subject because suffering touches on the sovereignty of God, the problem of evil, justice, and ethics to name a few. But the class has been the easy part. The hard part will be applying what I have learned. Also a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Just because I've read books or have been through a class on suffering doesn't necessarily mean I will be sensitive to others in their pain. As I've been mulling over this, here are some thoughts that come to mind: Don't lump a suffering in a single category. The sorrows of life in a fallen world are not the same as evil being perpetrated by sinful people. Don't put suffering on a scale and be the judge of who is suffering more or less. Be careful of an unbalanced view of God's sovereignty such that the categ...