This year I was asked to be the faculty advisor to BASA (the Biola Asian Students’ Association). It may seem logical because I am Asian American and I grew up in an Asian American church. But in some ways, this is a return to a past I thought I had left behind. In no way am I saying that I deny my Asianness, but my ecclesiological path has brought me from being in a Chinese American church to a Pan-Asian church and now to a multiethnic church.
In addition to this, BASA asked me to be their retreat speaker two weeks ago. This was especially challenging, because I had to return to my past, put myself back into the shoes of these Asian American students at Biola and try to imagine what they must be thinking and experiencing as the largest ethnic minority group at a predominantly white university (BASA is, in fact, the largest student club at Biola). The topic they chose was “Unity in the Body,” a rather ironic topic considering my struggles over whether to think of myself as Chinese American, as Asian American, or as one of a multiethnic body.
All of the above also is exacerbated by the fact that I am a missiologist and thus am fascinated with all kinds of different cultures, and I teach in a Western “Great Books” program (I always tell my students that Western culture is by no means homogeneous, and the Torrey Honors Institute is a study of worldviews across many different geographies, ethnicities, cultures, languages, and times). How do I squeeze myself back into “Asian” mode?
This is a summary of what I preached to the students in BASA on the retreat:
All of you know what it is like to be bicultural. It is a rich heritage which brings an extra dimension to the way you perceive the world, but sometimes it can also be an identity crisis. Am I Asian or American? Do I eat with chopsticks or a fork? Do I prefer white rice or bread? What language am I most comfortable speaking? Do I want to reject my Asian side altogether or fully embrace it? When I was in high school (which was 50% Asian), I rejected my Asian side and only wanted to be American. This was exhibited in the music I listened to, the girls I dated, and the food I preferred. I think I just didn’t want to be cookie cutter since I was surrounded by Asians. When I got to college, it was the opposite. Suddenly Asians were very much in the minority, and I grew proud of my heritage. I hung out almost exclusively with Asians, and again that was reflected in the food I ate, the girls I dated, the music I listened to. I made many trips to Asia and tried to reclaim my heritage by speaking Chinese as much as I could (which mostly involved hanging out with people who looked like me).
I’ve come to a happy medium regarding all these things. Yes, I play the violin, I am good at math, I speak Chinese, and I thought about being a doctor, a lawyer, or a businessman. These are stereotypical Asian American characteristics. However, rather than rejecting these things in an attempt to not be Asian, rather I realized my two cultural heritages are not mutually exclusive. Speaking Chinese does not mean my English gets worse. I can be fluent in both. In the same way, I decided to keep up my violin, but also learn to play the saxophone. I still love math, but I chose to major in history in college so that I am now well-versed in both disciplines. The hardest thing, though, was to let go of one of the “big three” (at least in the minds of first-generation Asian parents) vocations and enter Christian ministry. At first, my father’s reaction (he’s not a Christian, bear in mind) was, “I did not pay for you to go to Yale so that you could go to seminary and become a pastor!” What softened him about this matter is that I assured him, “Well, after seminary I could go get a Ph.D.” in which case he said, “Well, if you do that then it’s all right!” What frustrated me most about all that is that prestige and money were the factors foremost in his mind. In some sense, you can’t really blame first-generation immigrants for having such a mentality: they came to America with nothing, and made something of themselves with a ridiculously hard work ethic (which I could never hope to match) for the sake of their children’s future. If we, as second-generation Asian Americans, don’t get a better job (read: more prestige and money) than our parents, they feel like they sacrificed everything for nothing.
So how do we navigate our bicultural identity in a multiethnic world, especially with regard to our theme, “Unity in the Body”? Martin Luther King Jr. said nearly fifty years ago that Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. That’s still sadly true today. Even moving back home to L.A. last year (after being away fifteen years), I was looking for a multiethnic church and had such a hard time finding one. To some degree, I really don’t believe that monoethnic churches are Biblical. People often say, “We should return to a Book of Acts model of the early church.” I ask, “Which early church model are you talking about? Acts 2, or Acts 11?” Remember, Acts 11 is the first time that the church goes multiethnic (Jews & Gentiles together) and it is also the first time that the believers are called “Christians.” Coincidence or not? I think that multiethnicity is part of our duty as believers. The only time that monoethnic churches should be allowed is: 1) in cases of language, e.g. if you want to minister to first-generation Koreans, you should have a Korean-speaking church); 2) in cases where the local community is monoethnic. The local church ought to reflect the local population where it is based; you don’t want to deliberately bus in black people into a white church if the whole community is white. That would be a false multiethnicity. However, given that L.A. is so multiethnic, most of the time it is bad, in fact I would even say sinful, to have monoethnic churches in such a multiethnic city. Those are false divisions which cater to our comfortability, and I think Jesus challenges us beyond our comfort zones to reconciliation.
How do you, as Asian Americans, appropriately express unity in the body? Here’s the thesis of my sermon: True unity comes from humility, and true humility comes only from the Gospel.
Let’s start with the Gospel. As Christians, we think we know what it is, but I find that it is a difficult thing to articulate despite it being so central to our faith. I want to argue that the true Gospel is holistic, and a holistic Gospel is both transcendent and immanent, i.e. it encompasses both the vertical and horizontal aspects, both the First and Second Greatest Commandments, both faith and works working together, both worship and service, both the Matthean Beatitudes and the Lukan Beatitudes (“Blessed are the poor in spirit” as well as “Blessed are the poor”; “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” as well as “Blessed are those who hunger”). Holistic is opposite of Gnostic; it treasures both the spirit and the body as creations of God and thus as good. Evangelism and social justice are both part and parcel of mission. Personal holiness and helping the poor are necessary—as James 1:27 says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
I think that if we are not holistic in our interpretation and outworking of the Gospel, we are sinning. It is a halfway Gospel, which is no Gospel at all. We would be breaking one of the two Greatest Commandments, and that causes disunity, either between us and God, or between us and our neighbor. And actually, the two are inextricably linked. Lack of love for God leads to lack of love for neighbor, and vice-versa. How you deal with others is how God will deal with you. The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Matt. 18:23-25), 1 John 4:19-21, and Matt. 7:1-2 are prime examples of this. For a fuller explanation, see my blog here, which was actually another sermon I preached in the Biola chapel.
This is my theme verse to prove my thesis that true unity comes from humility, and true humility comes only from the Gospel.
The great Christological passage from Phil. 2 says:
(1) If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, (2) then make my joy complete by being likeminded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. (3) Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. (4) Each of you should look not only to your own interest, but also to the interests of others. (5) Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. (6) Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, (7) but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. (8) And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! (9) Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, (10) that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, (11) and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
First of all, you can’t be united to each other without first being united in Christ. Verse 1 talks about unity in Christ (“being united with Christ”), and verse 2 makes clear that we ought to have unity with one another (“being likeminded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.”) Our unity with each other flows out of our unity with Christ, i.e. the horizontal comes from the vertical. Unity comes from a holistic Gospel, and more specifically, our imitation of Christ.
Unity is, frankly, extremely difficult to achieve. Look at the countries of China and India. These are the two most populous countries in the world, but they are vastly different. China is relatively homogeneous—95% of the people are of the same ethnicity and nearly everyone speaks Mandarin; India is so diverse that people call it a “subcontinent”—thousands of different languages, religions, and ethnicities. The former is Communist; the latter is technically a secular democracy. In many ways, China is a lot better off than India because it is more prosperous, it has less crime and poverty, and thus it has more unity. However, it has fewer freedoms—human rights, religious freedom, and freedom of speech. Often, in the secular world, in order to achieve unity, one has to have a dictator like Mao make everyone the same, or else you have to deal with diversity to the point where the whole country has a difficult time in getting along like India.
This brings me to my second point. Christianity has the solution to unity: humility. Only in humility, where people are submitting their differences (not to be PC or to lose individual freedoms, but in worship of the One who is worthy to be praised) can we have true unity. When we consider others to be better than ourselves, when we do not judge lest we be judged, when we love our neighbor, these actions of humility cannot help but cultivate unity.
However, the only reason we can have any humility is because Christ had humility first, as it implies in v. 5. Look at vv. 6-11 where Jesus voluntarily gave up his equality with the Father. Yet, because of this humility, he was exalted. This is nothing less than the upside-down kingdom that Jesus preached so much: that the first shall be last, and the last will be first. That everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. That the meek, those who mourn, and those who hunger & thirst, are truly blessed. That whoever wanted to be great has to be a servant. That God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, that he chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. And here, according to Paul, Jesus was equal to God, and then he emptied himself and made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant—and therefore every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
It is in our imitation of Jesus that we can achieve humility, and only in that humility can we achieve unity. This is a key component of the Gospel.
Practically, how do you cultivate humility? I think there are two ways: service and worship.
Service (vv. 6-8):
1 John 5:2 says that “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God: to obey his commands.” Love is eminently practical! The other day I got an email from a couple at my church asking for help, because the grandfather of the husband just died. This couple, facing a lot of financial and time stress, really was having a hard time dealing with the funeral, the emotional implications of that, and just lacking time and manpower to clean out the grandfather’s house. So I ended up volunteering. One of the tasks they had me do is take two huge pickup truckloads of garbage to the local dump. So there I was, unloading what seemed like a ton of garbage under the hot sun at the local dump, thinking “I have a Ph.D.! Is this what God wants me to do with my gifts and talents?” In the midst of my griping, I remembered a blog I had read from one of my colleagues, Dr. Paul Spears. He expressed similar sentiments but he helped me to put my griping into perspective. After reading that blog, it sobered me and helped me to realize that service is humility, and that kind of humility keeps me from having a big head, from thinking I’m better than other people in my church or community or workplace. That, at the end of the day, we’re all just like the garbage in the dump—it doesn’t matter if I have talents or degrees or wealth—but our worth comes from God not from these earthly things that puff us up.
In Rom. 1:14-15, the Apostle Paul says, “I am bound both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.” Another word for “bound” is “owe.” But what does Paul owe to unbelievers? He owes the Gospel! When God saves us, there is no way we can repay God back. In fact, there is no virtue in paying someone back, even if we had the ability to pay God back. If someone gave me $100, and I gave them that $100 back later, that does not make me virtuous in the least. It’s merely quid pro quo. However, if someone did something for me but never expects anything back, that’s virtuous. With God, however, though his love is unconditional, there is a hope: that we would pass it on to others. We can’t pay God back, but we can surely pay it forward. There was a movie released in 2000 by that very name: Pay It Forward. If, instead of paying people back who did something for us, we could each pay it forward to five other people, think about how this world would be transformed. As such, Paul owed the Gospel to others because God gave it to him. This is another example of how service grants us humility, because it puts us in the position of being indebted to nonbelievers instead of having an attitude of superiority over those we are called to serve.
Worship (vv. 9-11):
When we’re all worshiping, we’re all in the same boat. It doesn’t matter what your race, gender, social class, or anything else is. We’re all in submission to the Living God, the Creator of the universe, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. We’re looking to God as the greatest of all, and thus we are not thinking about ourselves.
But worship should be diverse. As we already talked about, in the early church the first place that the believers are called “Christians” is not actually in Acts 2, but rather Acts 11—the first multiethnic congregation. In Revelation 7:9, it says “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” Amazing! In heaven we still retain our identity! We don’t lose our ethnicity or language, but it will be like a beautiful mosaic. John Piper said it well: “The beauty and power of praise that will come to the Lord from the diversity of the nations are greater than the beauty and power that would come to him if the chorus of the redeemed were culturally uniform… Unity in diversity is more beautiful and more powerful than the unity of uniformity.”
Gal. 3:28 also talks about unity when we are all submitted to Christ: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” I really think that Christianity is the most egalitarian religion in the world, because salvation is by faith. Therefore, anyone can do it. It’s not by works, not by ethnicity, not by gender, not by social status. There is a common phrase, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” What does this mean? When the bombs are exploding around you and the bullets are whizzing overhead and you are down in that trench wondering if you will die in the next second, you pray. There are no atheists in foxholes. When we are stripped of everything we have, there is no one to turn to but God. We are most equal when we’re lacking everything. This is why humility leads to unity. And under God, especially when we worship, we realize how much we need him because we are so weak and small and sinful.
So, where do Asians fit in?
How do we apply these principles of service and worship to cultivate humility and thus unity?
As Asian Americans, we have a unique position—I often liken us to pandas, which are neither white nor black but Asian! But if the last will be first and the first will be last, where do we fit in if we are neither black nor white in this American society? How do we apply these principles of ethnicity?
Maybe instead of saying we are neither black nor white, sometimes I actually feel like one or the other at different times. When do we feel white? When people look on us and say that we have high educational levels, we’re smart, we’re financially well-off, and we’re socially accepted because of our light skin color. When do we feel black? When we are judged by how we look instead of who we are, when we have racial insults thrown our way, when white people think that we “all look the same,” when we are seen as strange because we think or act “differently,” or even when we don’t.
I used to be more feisty about the plight of the Asian American male. There is a website called AngryAsianMan.com, in which all the venting and griping goes on—Affirmative Action works against us, we’re stereotyped as the “model minority,” people think that I’m either a computer geek or a kung-fu master, people always ask me where I immigrated from, white men always steal our women, etc. Well, thankfully I put those days behind me, because many of those claims are ridiculous (though some of them are based in truth). I realized, Jesus was not AngryJewishMan.com! He turned the other cheek, he showed self-control and meekness, and he did not say a word even when he was led like a lamb to the slaughter. We get so miffed about slights against us that we forget how much worse other people have it than us—it’s much harder to be an African American in this country than it is to be an Asian American, it’s much harder to be a Christian in a Muslim country than it is to be a Christian in America, and no matter what kinds of things I suffer as a Christian, it’s nothing compared to what Christ himself went through. Instead of becoming AngryAsianMan.com, perhaps when we encounter people who do not understand us or who racially stereotype us (whether in good ways or bad), consider educating them instead of griping or getting angry. A lot of people who make racial stereotype remarks are doing it out of ignorance (though sometimes it is malice), and we often don’t need to blast them. The next time somebody says to you, “So where are you from?” instead of saying, “I was born in the U.S., just like you! Do I ask you what country in Europe you are from?” perhaps a gentler response is, “You mean to ask, what is my ethnic background?”
What advantages are there in being an Asian American Christian? First of all, on the mission field, we can go places where white people can’t go. We can “blend in” in Asian countries where the Gospel is not prevalent, rather than sticking out like a sore thumb. We can minister less conspicuously in places which hold political grudges against white Westerners (I’m thinking particularly of Muslim nations, or Africa, or amongst Native Americans). Secondly, embrace the schooling and socioeconomic resources that God has blessed us with. Asian Americans have the highest educational and financial levels, on average, of any racial group in the country. Let’s use those things to our ministerial advantage. You may think that in a sermon on humility I’d be pointing at the poor uneducated fishermen like Peter and John as pillars of the faith (and yes, they are). But let us not forget that God used the most educated and powerful Pharisee, the Apostle Paul, educated under the greatest Rabbi of the time, Gamaliel, to serve his purposes. God made him the greatest missionary in the book of Acts, and used Paul to write half the New Testament. Education and prestige have their benefits when used in the service of the Kingdom! As long as they are not self-serving and used for evil, as Paul did when he was still called Saul. But God humbled him and changed him name to “Paul” which means “little.” Also, use our economic resources to help the church, to help ministries, to help others in need. Thirdly, we can be bridges. We can use our ethnicity to break down dividing walls between whites and blacks. I think of Judge Lance Ito in the O.J. Simpson case—only an Asian could have served as judge in such a racially-charged trial. Both in the secular world and in the church, Asians can build bridges. Fourthly, can we contribute something to the cultural life of the church? Whenever I walk into a Latino church, there is a distinctive “flavor” in the musical style, the culture, the preaching, the way that people interact. Same with black churches, and white churches too. But often when I walk in Asian American churches, there is nothing distinctive about it. It feels like a white church, except everyone looks Asian. Why are we truncating what God has given us? He has given us a rich heritage and culture, why do we settle for imitation instead of original contribution? I understand that it seems difficult to apply this practically (“Are we supposed to use pentatonic scales or atonality in our worship music?”) but I think we can contribute themes, ways of communicating, and relationships from our culture that are unique and benefit the worldwide body of Christ.
That’s how Asian Americans in general can apply some of these Biblical principles, but what about BASA in particular? Where does BASA fit in?
I don’t see a problem with BASA as long as it is a ministry within the context of the larger body (that body being Biola, and more widely, all Christians). If we remain insular, I don’t think BASA is doing what it was meant to do. When I was in seminary, it was mainly white with a large minority of Koreans. The Koreans would often sit together in the cafeteria, prompting the whites to ask, “Why are you all so exclusive? Why don’t you join us?” In which case they would respond, “Why do we have to join you? Why are you being so exclusive? Why don’t you join us?” It cuts both ways. BASA needs to partner with other groups and ethnicities at Biola, but other groups and ethnicities also need to partner with us. But, in humility, let us take the first step and make that effort to build bridges. Yes, we sometimes need to be prophetic, but we also need to be pastoral. Let us have the wisdom to know when to use which.
To achieve true unity in the body, we have to have humility. And humility is only found in the Gospel, as expressed by the example of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s make sure our humility is manifested fully through the channels of service and worship. Can we make our own unique contribution as Asian Americans in a way that is filled with humility?
