Back to Blogging(?), Randomness, and Liberation Theology

I haven’t blogged in a while. And I still have what Ann told me at her wedding echoing in my mind—something to the effect of, “You should blog more!—which I felt honored by the fact that she wanted to listen to my thoughts more. Karen also told me that I should get back into blogging, and I thoroughly enjoy reading her blog, Ann’s blog, and so many others’ blogs.

I’m not entirely sure why I had such a precipitous drop in blogging. I think part of it is because blogging was a primary source to pour out my angsty feelings, and I don’t keep so many of those angsty feelings to myself right now. I suppose that’s a positive thing, as it signifies that I have people I can chat with about whatever I need.

Not that I couldn’t have done that in college. (A little bit of a sidetrack here as I explain a bit about my personality.) I’m pretty much an open book and have a sort of internal policy that if someone asks me a question about myself, I will pretty much tell them the truth, no matter how personal the question is (although I find myself kind of throwing this principle out the window when I’m in interviews… I’d like to say that my nervousness gets the better of me, but part of it is that I just want to look good too, and that sometimes results in a little embellishment of truth). Coupled with that is my priority for not giving people more info than they want and boring them with my personal info. I suppose the key is persistence and asking the right questions. If you’re just gonna ask me, “How are you?” I might not respond with much more than “Good” or “Alright” because I need to know that you really want to hear the long, drawn-out answer. Chances are I only hold back that drawn-out answer because I’m hesitant to believe that you actually want to hear about it. It also saves me the trouble of hashing through that answer only to be disappointed by your lack of interest, haha.

Anyway, even though I’ve used my blog primarily for the angst-relieving-ness (and I’ve stood by that because this is my blog and I feel like I should just write whatever I want to write), I also feel like I should also use it to update people and to process some more about my own life. I mean, heck, I was reading through some of my older posts/drafts, and that stuff can be CRYPTIC. I’m like, man, I wish I had given myself more clues to figure out what the heck I was all sad about here. But I didn’t, and now I don’t know what I was talking about or thinking about here. haha.

Moving on from that semi-explanation about why the lack of blogging, an update on my life. I’m currently writing this on a cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to the East Caribbean with my parents, grandma, and aunt and uncle. I work only occasionally, and spend most of my time playing games, watching TV, reading articles/books that interest me. Life’s pretty great, to say the least, haha. I graduated from GIAL in December, and am pretty much done with that school and its craziness. I’ve been pretty shaken-up by the ordeal and have developed a general mistrust of Christian culture, and conservatism to an extent as well.

Let me explain a little bit more about that. I figured out a couple weeks ago what some of my distaste in Christian stuff comes from when my church in Dallas invited a children’s choir from an orphanage in Uganda to perform. They were singing about how God was all powerful and so great and everything and the lyrics were in these flashy fonts and animation, and there were all these happy-clappy people in the audience singing along and I felt a little sick from seeing it all. I felt my head reel a bit. And a lot of general Christian sentiment (maybe they’re more Christian platitudes?) makes me feel much more uncomfortable than it did in the past.

It’s not like I don’t believe that God is all powerful and great and mighty and etc. I think the feeling comes from realizing that there are so many Christians who believe those same things, but think about other things in a completely different way than I do. And sometimes, I feel like, “Oh, how interesting that God works both in conservative and in liberal mindsets and that we’re all one big, beautiful, messy Body of Christ.” But usually I feel like those different ways of thinking can easily (and do easily) result in damaging practices. And the fact is that they don’t even notice—or really particularly care—that their way of thinking can be so damaging.

It’s made me hesitant to pray much, read my Bible much, and to a much greater degree, memorize Bible passages, because the administration at GIAL did all of those things and they still believed in their decision to discriminate against me and silence me. They prayed so much about their decisions, and chasing me away from campus without an apology was what they decided on. The faculty/staff who were upset that I was still even on campus probably didn’t have people challenging them or fighting on my behalf and what ended up happening is that fear won. Their fear of losing donors and losing other students besides me trumped their decision to act in a compassionate and considerate manner towards me.

The world suddenly became way more unpredictable to me. And although I can certainly see the good that going through my education at GIAL and persevering through those trials did for me, at the end of the day, it wasn’t at all what I thought was going to happen going into the school. I thought it was great that I was going to go to a Christian school so that I could better figure out my faith and sexuality—and while I think I did figure things out much more, I never imagined it would be partly from being oppressed for my sexuality.

Realizing the randomness that comes with humans/the universe was disturbing. There are no safeguards when it comes to humans. It doesn’t always matter that you prayed so much and “felt at peace” about the situation; you can still screw things up horribly. And I certainly don’t think you always “feel at peace” when you’re doing something that God wants you to do. Sometimes, you feel great turmoil. That doesn’t mean it isn’t the right decision. But even feeling turmoil can’t be some kind of reliable predictor of what to do. Sometimes, everything goes wrong even when you did all the “right Christian things.”

I don’t think that’s something that’s talked about much. I mean, that point about how you can still severely delude yourself about what’s right is usually glossed over by making everyone feel more at ease with reminders about God’s sovereignty and grace over all situations and it’s okay because everything will be fine in the end!!

This is where my slow and continuing crawl into liberation theology and racial minority theology would depart from the traditional mindset that I would go into.

I’ve been reading Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, & Queer Christians Are Reclaiming Evangelicalism by Deborah Jian Lee after I got a signed copy at the Gay Christian Network Conference this year in Houston (which, interestingly, happened on the third and four floors of the Hilton and the third floor of the George R. Brown Convention Center just a week or so after HCC hosted the Chinese Missions Conference in the same place [plus I think the 5^th floor of the Hilton]), and it’s been a book that I’ve been wanting to read for months ever since I read the title, haha. And some of the things in the book, which is mostly a journalist’s description of various movements in Evangelicalism, have been shocking. 

For instance, the fact that Billy Graham “declined the 1963 invitation to King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, responding, ‘only when Christ comes again will little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children’” (page 29). Although as Lee notes later, Graham did apologize for his actions and how they helped perpetuate racism. 

But that kind of focus about how everything will be alright in the end can seriously impede work that leads to justice. It certainly placates those who are too lazy (or too invested) to change the status quo, but it does nothing for the oppressed. And I heard a similar sentiment from one member of the administration. That people just weren’t ready for changes now, but the landscape would change radically in a decade and I should just be quiet and wait for that. Not really sure why that person didn’t just fight for the change that she herself thought was inevitable and (I think) positive. I guess it was just something she didn’t feel was important enough.

The point I wanted to note about white theology is found in this excerpt in the book: 

"What the schism [between how black and white evangelicals interpret the world] comes down to is a gap between how much weight each side gives to individual responsibility, on the one hand, and systemic oppression, on the other. Evangelicals focus on personal responsibility as a core element of their faith, Emerson and Smith note:  if you want to live a positive, moral life, you and you alone are responsible for maintaining a healthy personal relationship first with Christ, and then with others.

For white evangelicals, this position is absolute; any social problems are seen as rooted in negative relationships and poor choices. There is little room for any way of thinking that places the blame for social conditions outside the individual. We see this in the multitude of worship songs and sermons that focus on the individual’s personal faith narrative; collective sin is typically ignored.

On the other hand, black evangelicals value personal responsibility but also understand that unfair systems and history deeply impact social circumstances and the fate of those subject to these systems. This is evidenced in theology that emphasizes deliverance for the oppressed and a salvation that is collective—as opposed to individual—in nature. These themes have translated into the language of civil rights and cohesive community action, which has its origins in the black church.

The segregation of churches around these radically different perspectives has given rise to a white theology that, developed in isolation, routinely invalidates black beliefs. This, in turn, has helped feed white evangelical support of policies and institutions that carry out black oppression.”

I am trying to wrap my brain around that, around the idea that maybe the Gospel to me in my situation right now as a queer Asian person is a "theology that emphasizes deliverance for the oppressed." In a sense, I've already been delivered from GIAL through graduating, but in another sense, those wounds of spiritual/psychological abuse still linger in my head. I often feel like I am barely holding on to my faith, or at least, the communal, church aspect of it. I still go on Sundays and on Wednesdays every week that I can and I serve on the Hospitality Team once or twice a month, but in most of those settings, I sometimes feel like I'm barely able to participate.

I dunno, we'll see what happens.