Grateful.

i remember, way back in 2003, i was in a prayer group at intervarsity’s urbana mission conference . . . we were praying for the world.  i started to weep, and i prayed that the united states would learn to love its own forgotten, written off, and lonely.  that night i think God placed on my heart the calling to urban ministry.  and i am so grateful He did.

“Hi, I’m Mr. Bhang”

haha  i’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while now, but i’ve been too busy . . . preparing lessons!  cause i’m a teacher, biotch!  haha  freaking wild.  just call me mr. bhang.  ^^

i’m teaching hs biology and health at seattle urban academy.  follow the link and watch the videos and i’ll spare you all the details of the school.  but lemme tell you . . . it’s been one freaking wild ride.  each day it’s kinda like having a weekend youth retreat crammed into 3 periods of biology and 2 periods of health; just as exhausting, rewarding, and action packed.  whew.

now i know what you’re thinking . . . “wtf is chris doing being a teacher??? should this job have gone to someone more qualified like jklam?”  a good question.  but now looking back on my life (i’m 24 years old now – i’m a grown-ass man!), i feel God’s been ordering my steps since before i realized:  majored in microbiology (a major i never thought i’d use after college!), spent 2 years working in urban ministry, love working with youth, and i’m an excellent roll model (BUWAHAHAHA!).

i still have dreams of law school . . . but for right now, i’m feeling very grateful, honored, and that like i’m in the right place in this season of life. and i’m very fortunate to have a lot of friends that have chosen to work in education to help me. please feel free to pass on any new advice for your noob friend. ^^

-mr bhang

Story Time

it’s a beautiful day here on the west side (of philadelphia that is). the sky is nice and blue, the clouds are wispy, and a light breezed brings a pleasant still to the neighborhood. all that’s missing is a girlfriend to sit by me and enjoy the moment. haha ^^ as i was sitting out on our little porch reading, i started to reach for a cigarette, but then stopped. i guess i felt it would be sacrilegious to burn a newport on such a nice day. then i heard the ice cream man drive by . . . and it made me want to blog.

almost funny inequalities
i just finished kozol’s savage inequalities. not a bad book. the more i read about our nation’s schools, the more interested i become . . . if i go to law school i think i might want to focus my attention to education reform . . . hmmm . . . my first-hand experiences with inner-city schools has been pretty limited, and didn’t see things quite as bad as what kozol described, but here’s a story:

my roommates and i went to go see a middle school girl’s basketball game at a school across the street from our apartment to support one of the girls at our church. ben, if you’re reading this, you can attest to how ridiculous it was. imagine 10 full-grown women crammed into a less than half-court court (where the three point line on both sides met mid-court), in a room meant to be an auditorium, shuffling around for position, but can’t really do anything because the ref (who obviously had some major complex-issues) keeps on calling 5-second violations in keys that take up half the playing space. it was madness . . . but the players kept on playing (or at least trying to), and the small audience (sitting in uneven rows of hastily set up metal chairs) kept on cheering – as if this was the norm. this story is pretty trite next to those you’ll find in books . . . but it’s a memory i’ll never forget. and y’all know that nothing like this would ever fly in radnor or mercer island schools.

privileged pacifism
not long ago i was involved in a little scuffle with some dude who tried taking my laptop on my walk home from the trolley. in living here (and chicago) i’ve learned the meaning of “watching your back”, and saw him running at me by his shadow. after a little struggle, i punched him in the stomach and elbowed him to the back of the head and ran home. taught that dude not to mess with nerdy looking asian kids walking down the street with their school bags.

i’m sure my resort to physical action disappoints some of you . . . but let me assure you, i was disappointed in myself too – the first time it happened. the first time a guy messed with me on the street, i took the insults and trash he threw at me for as long as i could, but when he started pushing up on me and threatening some serious violence, i clocked him good. i returned home suuuper depressed, as if i had betrayed some great part of me, and that i had failed as a christian.

but over the course of the next few days, i realized that i wasn’t, nor was i ever really, a pacifist. i was fake one . . . having never really experienced a situation that put my safety at risk (to that extent), it was easy for me to preach non-violence. these days i think that those who advocate for non-violence simply for non-violence-sake are spoiled, and exercise little more than privileged pacifism. cause it’s easy to cry “peace, peace!” when there’s no violence around you. but when faced with the dangerous realities of what goes on in this world, forgive me for sounding jaded, sometimes violence is unavoidable.

and just a disclaimer, i’m not saying violence is the answer. another story to illustrate my point: while my roommate and i played some night football with neighborhood kids (man that was some intense football . . .), a couple of gang bangers started making a little trouble. one pulled me by my hair and said, “the fuck are you china man? you their coach or something?” now HERE was the time to be an example of peace. even though i wanted nothing more than to break the guy’s arm off, the guys we were playing with were watching. they soon sided with us and said, “naw, these guys are our friends.” and told us not to mind them too much – “theyz no good.”

the ice cream man
one of my first memories of living in chicago was the ice cream man. he’d drive up and down west end and maypole street (referred to by the cops as the “shitty street”) selling his goods to a slightly off version of fur elise. all was good and well, until we started hearing his truck drive around at 1am. the dude was obviously selling more than sponge bobsicles.

… umm … i forget where i was going with this story. haha. anyway, the ice cream truck that came by earlier reminded me of my chicago home.

i should get back to work. -chris

Charismatic Megafauna

:: warning – this evening’s post is a bona fide late-night rant ::

my “theology of poverty” professor and past director of the evangelical environmental network, stan lequire, taught me this phrase. it’s taken from a strategy employed by ecologists and animal rights activists to get supporters: the prominent display of the cute, cuddly, intelligent and beautiful species of the planet on the covers of their propaganda. they know that most people aren’t gonna be compelled to save endangered animals just by displaying a patch of moss and a couple plants (and if they do, you know the plants are gonna be covered with colorful, breath-taking flowers . . . with a possible brightly plumaged bird soaring out of the branches) . . . people want to save the majestic bald eagles, the exotic and playful pandas, and the mysterious and awesome blue whales. they know that for most donors, it’s not about saving species . . . it’s about appealing to our culture’s attraction to the aesthetic, beautiful, and charismatic. and sadly, i think same thing goes with the way a lot of Christian organizations work. there are some faces that’ll make you open up your check books just a little bit quicker than others. you’ll probably find either healthy, smiling poor folk, or the 3rd world destitute pictured on the front cover of Christian aid catalogs. and you’ll probably find some adorable children too . . . but what ever the setting or people group, they’ll always be presented as innocents, meaning whatever circumstances they find themselves in are clearly not the result of their own bad moral choices (the reason children adorn their literature). and just as you’re not going to find fugly plants or parasitic tapeworms on the cover of rain forest magazine, you’re not going to see crack hypes or paranoid-schizophrenic alcoholics on the promotional material of any Christian organization. even on mission year’s website, an organization i’m still a part of, there are plenty of pictures of smiling, semi-attractive people . . . and kids.

now you know i’m not knocking ccf, or anything like that – i think programs like it are priceless . . . my mom’s going to go work for one in thailand in less than a year. but i think it’s sad that our nation’s version of Christianity has been so tainted by material capitalism and upward-mobility such that we get to choose which poor will receive aid and compassion. and the advertising powers that be know who the Christian americana will choose to “love”: the innocents. cause when it comes to people who’ve made bad choices, or have lived a life of sin even though they’ve had all the same advantages that we’ve all have as free americans . . . we write them off as losers, smelly, dangerous losers. in fact, based on the way we treat the poor, we don’t even consider them humans at all – just a bunch of projects and problems to be selectively solved. they aren’t worthy of our help, and we tell them to pull themselves up by those effing bootstraps and live better.

the church of these united states has forsaken her literal neighbor. freaking fubar. my heart is about ready to collapse from exhaustion after reading all these books in class about poverty in the united states. page after page about evils that are so deeply intertwined within our society … evils that our churches so effortlessly ignore: the divides in wealth, education, opportunity, and humanity are ever growing . . . and yet, we sit here twiddling our thumbs, waiting to dream dreams that the prophets already dreamed for us, waiting for a calling that God’s been speaking to us since civilization, doing little more than playing favorites with God’s favored.  God’s going to judge us and yes, we are responsible for our own actions (and thoughts) down here on earth . . . but to boast such temerity as to pick and choose who has lived a life worthy of love and Biblical charity, as if our filthy rags mean anything, i think verges on heresy – acting like we’re God . . . shaping Him into the image we think He should be and choosing who we will love.  withholding grace and kindness, and therefore rejecting God’s grace and kindness.

something in me snapped last night . . . i was exhausted from fuming over the sad, ungodliness of our nation, and i got sick of myself for my hypocrisy. i even went to bed at 9pm (about 5 hours early for me).  today, i had a lot of time to reflect and pray . . . and i think God rebuked me and reawakened some passion in me that’s kinda fizzled away lately. and i think it’s because i over romanticized the urban poor and urban ministry. i expected it to be challenging, but still kind of easy and intuitive . . . i expected my neighbors to like me, immediately . . . i expected the people i was serving to be kind, polite, well-mannered, pleasant, appropriate, understand my humor and my “asian-ness” . . . i expected to be thanked and appreciated . . . and expected to live some wonderfully bohemian and justice-centered life filled with deep and delightful relationships.  i made up in my mind what the poor should be like, and how i would fit perfectly into the inner-city.  i’m ashamed that i was so selfish and arrogant and ignorant. Lord, forgive me for the vain rewards i was looking for here in the city. forgive me for exploiting Your people in my heart and mind. forgive me for only wanting to serve those i wanted to and for trying to do it with my own strength . . . i’m so sorry . . .

Church . . . our nation hurts more than we care to know. there are a lot of poor people out there that Christ, Himself, identifies with . . . and we choose to pass by, we choose to ignore, we choose to let remain hungry and friendless. what if Jesus was ugly? smelled of sweat and fish? hung out with weirdoes and seemed to talk to Himself? i’m not trying to be heretical here, but i think there’s a good chance that these things might have been . . . maybe reasons why He was despised and written off by so many . . . save those who were aware of their own deep poverty and helplessness.