And God answers “That’s what you don’t know. You don’t know how much I love you. The moment you think you understand is the moment you do not understand. I am God not man. You tell others about Me — that I am a loving God. Your words are glib. My words are written in the blood of My only Son. The next time you preach about My love with such obnoxious familiarity, I may come and blow your whole prayer meeting apart. When you come at Me with studied professionalism, I will expose you as a rank amateur. When you try to convince others that you understand what you are talking about, I will tell you to shut up and fall flat on your face. You claim you know I love you.”

“Are you aware that I had to raise Jesus from the dead on Easter morning because My love is everlasting? Are you serenely confident that I will raise you too, My adopted child?”

“Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else.”

“When Scripture, prayer, worship, ministry become routine, they are dead. When I conclude that I can now cope with the awful love of God, I have headed for the shallows to avoid the deeps. I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.”

*sigh*

Lord Jesus, we are silly sheep who have dared to stand before You and try to bribe You with our preposterous portfolios. Suddenly we have come to our senses. We are sorry and ask You to forgive us. Give us the grace to admit we are ragamuffins, to embrace our brokenness, to celebrate Your mercy when we are at our weakest, to rely on Your mercy no matter what we may do. Dear Jesus, gift us to stop grandstanding and trying to get attention, to do the truth quietly without display, to let the dishonesties in our lives fade away, to accept our limitations, to cling to the gospel of grace, and to delight in Your love. Amen

~ The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning

I’ve been avoiding this whole controversy due to the mere fact that there has been enough attention thrown that direction. I really didn’t feel the need to add to the noise. Also, I thought, “Who am I? Why does my opinion matter?” But when people started asking me more and more what my thoughts were, I realized maybe my voice DOES matter.

Long story short: Jud Wilhite & Mike Foster wrote Deadly Viper. Much of the Asian American Community were deeply offended by their use of marketing, which used kanji and martial arts illustrations. Words were expressed on blogs. Feelings were hurt. Jud & Mike (along with Zondervan) addressed the concerns as best they could. Plans to re-design the book were made. Everyone seemed to have come to a compromise. Then, instead of going with the plan, Zondervan pulls the book off the stands… indefinitely.

Now, everyone feels censored.

The Asian American community has blown up the blogosphere with their thoughts. You can read some written by Professor Soong-Chan Rah, Eugene Cho, DJ Chuang, Dave Gibbons and Kathy Khang. Then later I was quoted HERE by DJ Chuang… twice.  I highly respect ALL of these contributors, but I don’t necessarily agree with everything they are saying. My comments have been so scattered on different blogposts, I thought it would be better if I just compiled them all in one place. So here goes:

For clarity, I am Chinese-American. I didn’t even speak English until I was in first grade, but if you and I had a conversation, you’d never know that because I have NO accent. ESL classes were my best friend in elementary school. On my wedding day, I had a Chinese red-dress wedding AND an American white-dress wedding (with tea ceremony). Brian “purchased” me for $99.99. It felt like the longest day of my life. I know the Chinese traditions all too well, yet at the same time, feel as if I know NOTHING about my culture. Where does that put me? Always willing to learn, I guess.

I am DEEPLY saddened about the controversy surrounding this matter.

People were offended and hurt in this process. Brothers and Sisters in Christ (of the same race, of a different race, same gender, different gender) slung nasty words at each other while they fought for a side… fought to be heard. Ironic really, how this book was about character assassination.

The majority of the offended party has not even read the book. This is unfortunate because the premise and the purpose of the book is quite phenomenal and has changed the lives of many. The offended also saw an obscure Facebook video from 2 years ago that was unrelated to the book’s marketing and words flew. Even though the video was removed immediately once it was brought to attention, integrity was questioned.

The offended looked at the design and concluded it was a marketing gimmick when in reality, the book wasn’t about hijacking a culture… it was about using the Kung-Fu movie genre & Martial Arts as a metaphor for living a life with integrity.

I understand that some of the DV marketing was offensive. Not knowing some of the material was offensive doesn’t excuse the DV team from the FACT it’s still offensive. However, they were never given a real opportunity to rectify it before it all blew up in their face.

My biggest disappointment in all of this isn’t that I felt as if my Asian culture had been attacked… but that CHRIST’S culture had been attacked.

From the beginning, my frustrations weren’t with the DV camp… it was with some of the “offended” Asian American community. Am I saying they didn’t have a right to be offended? NO. Hear/read me clearly – God gave us ALL feelings for a reason. If we feel it, it’s real to us. Right, wrong or indifferent, it’s real. Our job is to communicate that out of love and grace so that restoration can take place. But from what I have read, that didn’t happen.

Matthew 18: 15-17 says:

^15″If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. ¹⁶But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ¹⁷If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

From what I saw… the offended jumped STRAIGHT to the last resort.

We’ve come a long way from when my great-grandfather was working on American train-tracks as a slave. We can talk to each other now respectfully and humbly without fearing for our lives… so let’s use our words to resolve issues of offenses… not attack back.

I’ll close with part of my comment on DJ Chuang’s most recent post:

I wish that DV didn’t get pulled. I wish the Asian-American community didn’t APPEAR so “overly-sensitive” and to be blunt… a bit selfish. But that’s where we are right now and I feel like I’ve got a foot in both camps. This CAN be remedied… but it’s gonna take communication… and some serious hugging.

“Brothers don’t shake hands… Brothers gotta HUG!”

Oh… and in case you couldn’t tell? I was NOT offended by ANY of Deadly Viper’s materials.

This book was chosen because the title spoke to me.  I have known Jesus for as long as I can remember… and for the longest time, church has taught me that I should always have joy because of that.  Church, without meaning to, taught me that if I loved Jesus, and he truly lived in my heart, everything would be fantastic in my life.

Everyone seemed to be living a great life blessed by God.  Everyone except me.  I hurt.  I hurt people.  People hurt me… badly.  I was isolated.  I didn’t belong anywhere.  But I pretended.  I tried.  I really REALLY tried… because Christians HAVE IT ALL TOGETHER.

Seriously… the Church is REALLY bad at allowing Christians to be authentic.  I’m not picking on a certain church.  Just being general… 

It wasn’t until the last 8 years, did I really truly realize and believe that church is for the broken, the imperfect, the lonely… the unstopping sinner.  Me.

Confession:  I still don’t feel like I belong anywhere sometimes.  Often, actually.

I don’t usually cry reading books.  I can count the times a book has drawn tears on ONE HAND, but I’m a few chapters into this one… and I think I may be in deep doo-doo.

Check this excerpt from the Book:

Come home, sweet baby.  The lights are on.. soup’s on the stove, warm bread in the oven.  Just come home and let Me hold you, protect you, cleanse you from the world that ravages your very soul.  I know you.  I know what you have done and what has be done against you.  I know how hard you have tried to be good and how defeated you feel.  But you can rest now.  My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.

You don’t need to be a good Christian girl.

Just be who you are — My beloved child.

So here’s the deal.  I’m a Christ follower.  I’m a Worship Pastor.  I am a broken BROKEN human being in need of insurmountable grace.  If you are too, you belong in the Church.  If you’re perfect… GET the heck OUT.

Any other “good christian girls/boys” out there?