Face to Face

In Family Vocation: God’s Calling in Marriage, Parenting, and Childhood (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), Gene Edward Veith Jr. and Mary J. Moerbe write:

A man and a woman become one flesh. In doing so, they engender a child, who is made from that flesh and who is part of the fleshly union that constitutes the family. The Bible uses ‘one flesh’ to describe both sex (1 Cor. 6:16) and marriage (Matt. 19:5-6). In God’s design, the two amount to the same thing. So then Children ‘share in flesh and blood’ with their parents (Heb. 2:14). (p. 104)

A man and a woman become one flesh and a child springs from that flesh. The union of a man and a woman within marriage is a fleshly connection. The birth of a child is a fleshly extension of the one-flesh union. A child begins with God’s gracious giving and results in a life-long reliance on God’s daily bread. The calling of God is very fleshly, for our Lord is the Lord of incarnation. He became flesh and dwelled among us (Jn. 1:14). He anticipated messiness before becoming flesh; he entered into messiness by being flesh; he handled messiness in flesh.

It is a great anticipation to see you face to face in flesh.

My Reorientation Letter 2013

My Reorientation Letter 2013

My 2011 Sabbatical Year

The year of 2011 was my unexpected sabbatical year. I didn’t plan to have such a year. I just thought that it was a right time for me to stop serving at my previous pastorate and plan for what might come in the future. As I get older, I realize that there is no such thing as perfect timing. The best of time and the worst of time often occur at the same time. Indeed, both are usually mingled together as one knot. It is just a matter of how I handle myself in such a time. The sabbatical year was a period of time for me to do serious reflection on theology, ministry, life, and people. Generally speaking, I am often positive about the life of disorientation. God is with his people in creation, exile, and redemption. The pattern of orientation-disorientation-reorientation has stayed with me since I learned it from Walter Brueggemann when I was in college. Of course, I learned it through his writings, not in person.

This threefold orientation has given me a theological perspective in life. No one can stay in one particular orientation for too long. There is a cycle. This rhythmic cycle has a sanctifying function that we are being purified or purged from being so attached to the old self. Before we realize that we are too stubbornly fixed with what we know and have, he puts us off balance through various means. That’s God’s foreknowledge. Disorientation is such a time that puts us off balance. The cycle of disorientation is usually unproductive in a secular sense; however, it is productive in a spiritual sense. It is a “useless” period in people’s mind. But my belief is that a tree can only grow tall by being “useless.” If it is too useful, it is being cut off by someone. The cycle of disorientation is usually stationary. When a snake changes its skin in mutation, it doesn’t move but remains stationary. Transformation usually occurs in the cycle of disorientation. David wrote many psalms to articulate his longings toward God in the wilderness. He couldn’t write those psalms in palace. It is a slow work because it is a soul work. I think Eugene Peterson calls it Soul Craft.

I am positive about the stage of disorientation because reorientation will follow after. There is no resurrection if there is no crucifixion. It will come. But God determines its timing. His timing is beautiful (Eccl. 3:11). Beautiful can be understood as good or appropriate. His timing is always appropriate in his plan in which I am in, or I am graciously invited to participate in. Ecclesiastes 3:11 is my theological conviction; it is my knowledge of God; it is my understanding of time.

The 2011 sabbatical year has become a special year in my life. It is special because it offered me a broad space to search. Searching is a spiritual act. “Search for the Lord and for his strength; continually seek him” (Ps. 105:4, NLT). To the Judean exiles in Babylon, Jeremiah sent them a letter from Jerusalem:

For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile (Jer. 29:10-14, NLT).

Searching, seeking, and finding are all covenantal languages. They are covenantal because they are grounded in his promise. His promise functions as an anchor in the cycle of the threefold orientation. From one orientation to another, his promise still clings to us: I will bring you back.

Hope Thinking

Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope has carried me through day after day. “It is through faith that man finds the path of true life, but it is only hope that keeps him on that path.”[1] I encountered Christ through faith. In faith, his righteousness has been imputed to me. He is my justification. Hope has kept me on the path of sanctification. God is the God of hope (see Rom. 15:13) who is not beyond me or above me, but before me. The resurrection of the crucified Christ becomes a transforming power for me to anticipate the coming of the kingdom of God. It opens up for new possibilities because his resurrection triumphed over the ultimate impossible—death. John Goldingay says that “It is unwise to think about hoping until you know there is a basis for it. It is difficult to face up to hopelessness until you know there might be an answer to it, a way of facing it.”[2] Christ’s resurrection is the basis of hope. Moltmann’s idea of hope is not only grounded in the resurrection of the crucified Christ, but also the cross of the risen Lord. Hope without the cross is a form of human-constructed utopia. Moltmann writes:

 

Hope alone is to be called ‘realistic’, because it alone takes seriously the possibilities with which all reality is fraught. It does not take things as they happen to stand or to lie, but as progressing, moving things with possibilities of change…Hope makes us ready to bear the ‘cross of the present’. It can hold to what is dead, and hope for the unexpected.[3]

It is this kind of theological thinking that has helped me theologize my journey. I hope for the unexpected without neglecting the present; I face up the present reality without losing hope. It helps me sail adventurously along with the leading of the Spirit—“the wind blows wherever it wants…” (Jn. 3:8, NLT). During my sabbatical year, I realized that I didn’t have any existing thoughts to help me move forward and solve puzzles in my mind. I turned to Moltmann’s hope thinking. In return, his hope thinking has given me a new horizon to see things. I am thankful for this hope thinking in my faith.

Hope Lam, Fort Wayne, Indiana

We won’t stay in this city in a long run. But I believe this place is and will be a special place because my daughter would say, “I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana.” Someone would then ask, “Why were you born there?” She’d say, “Because my heavenly Father called my dad to pursue a doctoral degree in theology there. That’s why. And that’s why I talk like a theologian.”

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[1] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 20.

[2] John Goldingay, Walk On: Life, Loss, Trust, and Other Realities (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), p. 83.

[3] Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 25, 31.

David's Dysfunction

“David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years” (2 Sam. 5:4, ESV). The Book of Kings begins with David of old: “Now King David was old and advanced in years” (1 Kgs. 1:1a, ESV). The story begins with the degenerated David and implies that someone will rise in power sooner or later. The servants found the old David a beautiful young woman, Abishag the Shunammite, to keep him warm. Of course, it was more than keeping him “warm.”

By bringing a beautiful virgin to be his nurse, serving him and sleeping with him, they hope to infuse David with energy, both royal and sexual. Sexual potency and royal power are seen as linked: if the king is sexually impotent, the country and culture will become spiritually slack and listless. Abishag is thus reduced to a sexual function with political ramifications.[1]

The servants hoped to regenerate the degenerated David through this virgin. The text mentions Abishag’s beauty twice (vv. 3, 4). “She was of service to the king and attended to him, but the king knew her not” (1:4). The NLT makes it more explicit: “But the king had no sexual relations with her.” Due to her beauty, David might want it, but he couldn’t. He might even lose his appetite. No matter what, David was dysfunctional in a lot of ways. The virgin brought out the weakest side of the king. What a contrast between a young virgin and an old king.

Immediately, “Now Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, ‘I will be king.’” (1:5a) Adonijah was David’s fourth son born in Hebron (2 Sam. 3:2-5). The eldest son, Amnon, was murdered by the third son, Absalom. Absalom was killed by Joab, the general commander. The second son, Kileab, was missing or dead. (The text doesn’t say.) As the eldest surviving son, Adonijah seized the moment to rise in power. Even in David’s old age, he couldn’t stay away from being betrayed and hurt. Those who know you the most hurt you the most. I believe David understood and lived with it throughout his life.

When David was out of control, Adonijah wanted to be in control. We don’t see any family allegiance in David’s family. What we only see is power struggle within it. From a rising king (age 30) to a dying king (age 70), David spent forty years to build a kingdom. But did he forfeit his family? How did he live as a father in these forty years? How did he interpret family? Did his family reflect some aspects of his relationship with God? As John Goldingay insightfully comments:

Saul and David might have lived happy and honorable lives as farmer and shepherd if they had not been made king. Saul is wise enough to try to hide from the summons to leadership, though he does so only half-heartedly. It is difficult to determine whether he or David pays the bigger moral and religious price for being king. In each case, the second half of their story is one of religious and moral collapse, with a terrible price paid in family relationships.[2]

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[1] Eugene Peterson, Leap Over a Wall: Earthly Spirituality for Everyday Christians (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p. 219. Peterson partially agrees with this interpretation of the text. He refuses to only see Abishag as sex object or political tool. Rather, he prefers to view her as “a witness to the sanctity of death, a sacred presence to David in his dying.” (p. 219) I really don’t think so.

[2] John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology: Israel’s Gospel (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 550.