leadership and love
And again, it is amazing to realize how blind and lucky I am. Just because we have been blessed in one area does not give us the right to believe that everyone has the same life as we do, and that we can thus judge those who were not given what we have. We are most blind when we think we see everything important and relevant, such that we can make a judgment. And also with this knowledge, the reason why some things were the way they were seems to make a lot more sense, though of course I cannot for sure say what is in the future, and what everything is leading to.
Life is about so much more than me. I think I've been realizing that more and more. And love, 1 Corinthians 13 love, is making more and more sense. For me, the more and more I explore the Christian worldview, the more I think, this is what life itself is about. This rings true to me, and there is so much internal coherency that I find applicable across the backdrop of my life. The way the Bible has the real power/potential for healing - that is something that is infinitely important to me - because it proves that it knows what it is talking about, to some extent. The way that it helps relationships to be the best they can be. The way it encompasses all people, hurt as they are, different as they are.
It's like Plato's Myth of the Cave - I do indeed feel like things are made right and brighter, and yet I am so far and no one in this world can claim to grasp the glory of God yet. So then, how great God must be.
Recently I spoke with some people separately about God. Their ideas of God. One was someone who identifies as a Christian, but who believes it is less and less important to use the language of the Bible. He said, it's like a man from a rural country who goes to the Amazon. He is amazed by the Amazon (pardon the pun). He says, "Wow, I have to share this with the people back home." And he starts drawing maps, diagrams, coloured in beautifully, writes tomes on the diversity of the Amazon, its ecology, etc. To share it with the people at home, he brings the Amazon back for them in the best ways he knows how, diligently.
The people back home are amazed, too. "This is something we've never seen before." They pore over the maps. They have study groups discussing the essays written, and spend their time memorising and analysing the diagrams in great detail. But none of them ever make the trip to the Amazon, the place which the writer wanted them to experience the glory of. The people back home have handicapped their knowledge of the Amazon in this way. The Amazon is much more than static maps and words; it is a living reality.
He said that many times, when we think with a Christian worldview, in purely Christian language, we are too obsessed with the details. That process by which we solidify our mindset is the exact same process that leads to the fundamentalist people of other religions/cultures that we ourselves dislike. We must understand that where we all individually are in life is largely a part of our own stories. What has meaning for us, has unique meaning to us because it ties into our own life story, the power of our myths. He does not dismiss our individual beliefs by saying that these things don't have power to us, or that God too is only able to accept one version of spirituality and method of connection to him. He does not discount that people attach validity to their own truths that they have found. But he says, the truths that we think we have are the ones that blind us. We never can know God enough, being human and limited. Thus, he says that the answer to solidify our truths is to experience reality to the fullest. To test the truths of life, because truth is out there waiting to be tested. In the meantime, we cannot etch our prior claims on truth before we have experienced all of it, for fear that we are too tied up with our views at one time to let go of what is not true. In that sense, his biggest commitment is to ensure that his own beliefs are based on the truth of reality.
This feels dangerous in some ways. It is true that Christianity has helped me a lot to get through this life. It feels like it is cutting scarily close to the roots of my beliefs. In some way, this is what learning more about Islam and Buddhism does for me too. It helps me to challenge and pare to the essential and most truthful, if I can open my mind enough to do that. But I must admit I still have a long way to go in understanding. I don't even know the Bible well enough. I know it does have some claims to being God's Word, and thus our best access to truth. I know that it does claim that Jesus is the one way to God, although it does not prescribe one way that Jesus may be known and accepted i.e. only through the Sinner's prayer. (Here's a link on how the Sinner's Prayer does not seem to have Biblical basis, though I don't necessarily agree with the article's counter-proposal that physical baptism is the way to know Christ). In fact, there are many signs in the Bible that Christianity is so much more than that. Like how Jesus says that many will say that they know him, but they do not, and he will tell them to go away from him, for they are evil-doers (Matthew 7:22-23). And how the Bible says that whoever knows God knows love, and thus whomever does not love, does not know God (1 John 4:7-8).
I know that there's still a long way for me to go in my own journey. Many things have been understood in the world, and I have not even covered enough of them, much less reached many conclusions on my own. Although, it does make me happy to have reached some ideas about life independently of having to read them from someone else. In that sense, I am very grateful that God made me able to do so, because these give me meaning in life.
*
And another thing. Because we all live in different realms, with different things that are important to us, then it is quite interesting sometimes how the things we prize about ourselves are not the same things as what our friends prize about us. We can live in quite different dimensions most of the time, but all of them are real. For example, this link on Intuition and Sensing references how Intuitors often dismiss the knowledge and focus of Sensors on experience. I suppose it might be a sort of fight-back for how some Intuitors are criticized for being dreamy and impractical, though they have valid ideas. But fighting something back should not be done by fighting the same way. Real love fights evil, rather than fighting people (Romans 12:9-21). And if we do not have love, we are all in the same state of evil. Moreover, if God exists, he created us fully in both realms - with a body to sense, and a spirit that is able to think outside of pure sensation. And our Creator is big enough for both types of people, and all of us.
Explaining slightly more this idea of God being big enough for us: I really like the Korean historical drama Queen Seon Deok. In addition to introducing some of the (altered) history of the times, it struck me as being written by people who had some very interesting ideas about humans and their relationships. The drama follows the story of Queen Seon Deok, originally named Deok Man. I know, not a very pretty name but... Ignore that and follow me here. :) Haha and also now I am thinking that I could possibly be the only person here so bothered by that name, with my love for names.
Deok Man basically grows up not knowing that she is a princess. Later, she learns of her royal birth and realizes she has a responsibility to her kingdom that she must fulfill - for her kingdom, Shilla, is now in the grips of a woman who is powerful, yet not motivated in the interests of the people of the nation. As Deok Man grows and continues in her quest, she solidifies her ideas of why she is continuing this fight instead of running away to live a quiet and modestly happy life, as she was sorely tempted to. And she realizes that she truly cares about the people in her kingdom. She wants to equip them with the skills for life, and make it such that they will not be wiped out in time. For this, she also realizes that she has to continue the quest to unite the three kingdoms of Shilla, and its neighbouring kingdoms Goguryeo and Baekje.
She does not want to merely conquer those other kingdoms and have them subordinate to the Shilla people. She wants to unite them, for the people of all those kingdoms to become people of her kingdom, to all become part of Shilla in full and not as half-classed citizens. To unite them, she must make herself a leader who can encompass them all. A leader, she believes, must be like a mother to his/her people. A leader has the infinite trust of his/her people, and the accompanying responsibility to be able to accept them all.
For example, this kingdom, Shilla, was at the time made up of some prior conquests as well, including the people of Gaya. Deok Man wants to truly integrate Gaya with Shilla. The Gaya people have wanted to place a king in power for some time, and she happens to have someone by her side who is Gaya and whom she loves. But because she knows that they will use him for Gaya purposes instead of for Shilla if she marries him, she has to destroy the identity of Gaya and not let them get their way in protecting their own interests by choosing not to marry this guy. She gives the Gaya people chances to be accepted. She raises their status to exactly the same as the people of Shilla, and practices some affirmation action to abolish their past discrimination. But in return, she requires them to totally stop having rebel organizations, even if an active rebellion is not being planned. She cannot have them nurse this separate identity anymore, for it will stop them from becoming truly Shilla in identity.
Later, it is discovered that this rebel organization exists. Through some political manipulation, she corners them and has them hand to her their list of people in this organisation, who are Gaya by blood; there is only one such valuable list that exists. They hand it to her, expecting her to sentence all the people listed to death. Instead of destroying the people involved, what Deok Man does is unprecedented as a ruler of a feudal kingdom. She holds the book over the nearest flame, and burns it completely. In this way, the people are made Shilla because they now can only identify around being part of Shilla. There is now no way to verify someone who claims to be of pure Gaya blood. Meanwhile, Deok Man will not destroy them out for being Gayaians, although they have committed treason. This is because she, as their leader, must accept that although the Gayaians are now being treated fairly by her, they have been persecuted before that, and prior to the burning of the list, they had no guarantee that they would be treated well past her reign. She understood that as much as they could be a tool to hurt her, they were also doing this to protect themselves from hurt. And so, she as a leader changed the situation so that they could accept her plans, and she would always be the one to accept them.
Another way Deok Man changed herself in order to be able to encompass people was in offering the powerful woman I mentioned earlier, a job in working for her. You must understand that this woman had been evil for a long time, and an enemy of the royal family in her lust for the throne. It was because of this woman that Deok Man had grown up not knowing her identity in the first place, because this woman would have made use of some circumstances of Deok Man's birth to unthrone the king and have the queen executed. In addition, this woman caused the death of Deok Man's newly reunited twin sister. Yet, when this woman Mishil was cornered, Deok Man did not kill her instantly. First, she sincerely offered Mishil the chance to serve in Shilla, recognising that this woman was powerful because she had many talents, even if she had not used them for Shilla's interests in a long time, but rather only for Shilla's interests where they coincided with her own interests.
If the leader is not able to change himself or herself to be able to accept these people as Shilla, regardless of his or her other claims to leadership, this leader does not have a true claim to leadership. In this same way, I believe that the being I call God is the Creator of all. I believe that he created all in love that is vast in a way we cannot contemplate fully on earth, and with this love he is great enough and big enough to accept the ways we all have turned out and the limitations to us understanding and loving him back. If God was any lesser, he would not be God. But it is because he is God, that I can have faith that he will hold himself to a standard of love and leadership that we cannot even hold him to. I believe that nothing, "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). The only thing that can separate God from us, is ourselves, because God respects us so much that he will not force us to be with him. And this is why he sent Christ to wash away the gap between Holiness and those who have fallen away with blood. He has made it that easy, in allowing us to be imperfect and fail in all other ways (although of course allowing us to be that way does not mean he will be content with us stagnating at that point and not motivating us for better, and changing us if we will let him).
*
This post, I suppose, is really about leadership. There are no perfect leaders on earth. No one who can claim to fully encompass and accept every other person, knowing every other person to their inner selves and still accepting them fully. None of us are the source of Love, and none of us have enough in ourselves. But God will be enough. If we are only to point the way, and there is a responsibility for those of us who know and have felt his Love to point the way to all the other broken humans, then we shall be content and free in pointing the way, because we know that God is the one who will be all the rest we are not.
Life is about so much more than me. I think I've been realizing that more and more. And love, 1 Corinthians 13 love, is making more and more sense. For me, the more and more I explore the Christian worldview, the more I think, this is what life itself is about. This rings true to me, and there is so much internal coherency that I find applicable across the backdrop of my life. The way the Bible has the real power/potential for healing - that is something that is infinitely important to me - because it proves that it knows what it is talking about, to some extent. The way that it helps relationships to be the best they can be. The way it encompasses all people, hurt as they are, different as they are.
It's like Plato's Myth of the Cave - I do indeed feel like things are made right and brighter, and yet I am so far and no one in this world can claim to grasp the glory of God yet. So then, how great God must be.
Recently I spoke with some people separately about God. Their ideas of God. One was someone who identifies as a Christian, but who believes it is less and less important to use the language of the Bible. He said, it's like a man from a rural country who goes to the Amazon. He is amazed by the Amazon (pardon the pun). He says, "Wow, I have to share this with the people back home." And he starts drawing maps, diagrams, coloured in beautifully, writes tomes on the diversity of the Amazon, its ecology, etc. To share it with the people at home, he brings the Amazon back for them in the best ways he knows how, diligently.
The people back home are amazed, too. "This is something we've never seen before." They pore over the maps. They have study groups discussing the essays written, and spend their time memorising and analysing the diagrams in great detail. But none of them ever make the trip to the Amazon, the place which the writer wanted them to experience the glory of. The people back home have handicapped their knowledge of the Amazon in this way. The Amazon is much more than static maps and words; it is a living reality.
He said that many times, when we think with a Christian worldview, in purely Christian language, we are too obsessed with the details. That process by which we solidify our mindset is the exact same process that leads to the fundamentalist people of other religions/cultures that we ourselves dislike. We must understand that where we all individually are in life is largely a part of our own stories. What has meaning for us, has unique meaning to us because it ties into our own life story, the power of our myths. He does not dismiss our individual beliefs by saying that these things don't have power to us, or that God too is only able to accept one version of spirituality and method of connection to him. He does not discount that people attach validity to their own truths that they have found. But he says, the truths that we think we have are the ones that blind us. We never can know God enough, being human and limited. Thus, he says that the answer to solidify our truths is to experience reality to the fullest. To test the truths of life, because truth is out there waiting to be tested. In the meantime, we cannot etch our prior claims on truth before we have experienced all of it, for fear that we are too tied up with our views at one time to let go of what is not true. In that sense, his biggest commitment is to ensure that his own beliefs are based on the truth of reality.
This feels dangerous in some ways. It is true that Christianity has helped me a lot to get through this life. It feels like it is cutting scarily close to the roots of my beliefs. In some way, this is what learning more about Islam and Buddhism does for me too. It helps me to challenge and pare to the essential and most truthful, if I can open my mind enough to do that. But I must admit I still have a long way to go in understanding. I don't even know the Bible well enough. I know it does have some claims to being God's Word, and thus our best access to truth. I know that it does claim that Jesus is the one way to God, although it does not prescribe one way that Jesus may be known and accepted i.e. only through the Sinner's prayer. (Here's a link on how the Sinner's Prayer does not seem to have Biblical basis, though I don't necessarily agree with the article's counter-proposal that physical baptism is the way to know Christ). In fact, there are many signs in the Bible that Christianity is so much more than that. Like how Jesus says that many will say that they know him, but they do not, and he will tell them to go away from him, for they are evil-doers (Matthew 7:22-23). And how the Bible says that whoever knows God knows love, and thus whomever does not love, does not know God (1 John 4:7-8).
I know that there's still a long way for me to go in my own journey. Many things have been understood in the world, and I have not even covered enough of them, much less reached many conclusions on my own. Although, it does make me happy to have reached some ideas about life independently of having to read them from someone else. In that sense, I am very grateful that God made me able to do so, because these give me meaning in life.
*
And another thing. Because we all live in different realms, with different things that are important to us, then it is quite interesting sometimes how the things we prize about ourselves are not the same things as what our friends prize about us. We can live in quite different dimensions most of the time, but all of them are real. For example, this link on Intuition and Sensing references how Intuitors often dismiss the knowledge and focus of Sensors on experience. I suppose it might be a sort of fight-back for how some Intuitors are criticized for being dreamy and impractical, though they have valid ideas. But fighting something back should not be done by fighting the same way. Real love fights evil, rather than fighting people (Romans 12:9-21). And if we do not have love, we are all in the same state of evil. Moreover, if God exists, he created us fully in both realms - with a body to sense, and a spirit that is able to think outside of pure sensation. And our Creator is big enough for both types of people, and all of us.
Explaining slightly more this idea of God being big enough for us: I really like the Korean historical drama Queen Seon Deok. In addition to introducing some of the (altered) history of the times, it struck me as being written by people who had some very interesting ideas about humans and their relationships. The drama follows the story of Queen Seon Deok, originally named Deok Man. I know, not a very pretty name but... Ignore that and follow me here. :) Haha and also now I am thinking that I could possibly be the only person here so bothered by that name, with my love for names.
Deok Man basically grows up not knowing that she is a princess. Later, she learns of her royal birth and realizes she has a responsibility to her kingdom that she must fulfill - for her kingdom, Shilla, is now in the grips of a woman who is powerful, yet not motivated in the interests of the people of the nation. As Deok Man grows and continues in her quest, she solidifies her ideas of why she is continuing this fight instead of running away to live a quiet and modestly happy life, as she was sorely tempted to. And she realizes that she truly cares about the people in her kingdom. She wants to equip them with the skills for life, and make it such that they will not be wiped out in time. For this, she also realizes that she has to continue the quest to unite the three kingdoms of Shilla, and its neighbouring kingdoms Goguryeo and Baekje.
She does not want to merely conquer those other kingdoms and have them subordinate to the Shilla people. She wants to unite them, for the people of all those kingdoms to become people of her kingdom, to all become part of Shilla in full and not as half-classed citizens. To unite them, she must make herself a leader who can encompass them all. A leader, she believes, must be like a mother to his/her people. A leader has the infinite trust of his/her people, and the accompanying responsibility to be able to accept them all.
For example, this kingdom, Shilla, was at the time made up of some prior conquests as well, including the people of Gaya. Deok Man wants to truly integrate Gaya with Shilla. The Gaya people have wanted to place a king in power for some time, and she happens to have someone by her side who is Gaya and whom she loves. But because she knows that they will use him for Gaya purposes instead of for Shilla if she marries him, she has to destroy the identity of Gaya and not let them get their way in protecting their own interests by choosing not to marry this guy. She gives the Gaya people chances to be accepted. She raises their status to exactly the same as the people of Shilla, and practices some affirmation action to abolish their past discrimination. But in return, she requires them to totally stop having rebel organizations, even if an active rebellion is not being planned. She cannot have them nurse this separate identity anymore, for it will stop them from becoming truly Shilla in identity.
Later, it is discovered that this rebel organization exists. Through some political manipulation, she corners them and has them hand to her their list of people in this organisation, who are Gaya by blood; there is only one such valuable list that exists. They hand it to her, expecting her to sentence all the people listed to death. Instead of destroying the people involved, what Deok Man does is unprecedented as a ruler of a feudal kingdom. She holds the book over the nearest flame, and burns it completely. In this way, the people are made Shilla because they now can only identify around being part of Shilla. There is now no way to verify someone who claims to be of pure Gaya blood. Meanwhile, Deok Man will not destroy them out for being Gayaians, although they have committed treason. This is because she, as their leader, must accept that although the Gayaians are now being treated fairly by her, they have been persecuted before that, and prior to the burning of the list, they had no guarantee that they would be treated well past her reign. She understood that as much as they could be a tool to hurt her, they were also doing this to protect themselves from hurt. And so, she as a leader changed the situation so that they could accept her plans, and she would always be the one to accept them.
Another way Deok Man changed herself in order to be able to encompass people was in offering the powerful woman I mentioned earlier, a job in working for her. You must understand that this woman had been evil for a long time, and an enemy of the royal family in her lust for the throne. It was because of this woman that Deok Man had grown up not knowing her identity in the first place, because this woman would have made use of some circumstances of Deok Man's birth to unthrone the king and have the queen executed. In addition, this woman caused the death of Deok Man's newly reunited twin sister. Yet, when this woman Mishil was cornered, Deok Man did not kill her instantly. First, she sincerely offered Mishil the chance to serve in Shilla, recognising that this woman was powerful because she had many talents, even if she had not used them for Shilla's interests in a long time, but rather only for Shilla's interests where they coincided with her own interests.
If the leader is not able to change himself or herself to be able to accept these people as Shilla, regardless of his or her other claims to leadership, this leader does not have a true claim to leadership. In this same way, I believe that the being I call God is the Creator of all. I believe that he created all in love that is vast in a way we cannot contemplate fully on earth, and with this love he is great enough and big enough to accept the ways we all have turned out and the limitations to us understanding and loving him back. If God was any lesser, he would not be God. But it is because he is God, that I can have faith that he will hold himself to a standard of love and leadership that we cannot even hold him to. I believe that nothing, "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). The only thing that can separate God from us, is ourselves, because God respects us so much that he will not force us to be with him. And this is why he sent Christ to wash away the gap between Holiness and those who have fallen away with blood. He has made it that easy, in allowing us to be imperfect and fail in all other ways (although of course allowing us to be that way does not mean he will be content with us stagnating at that point and not motivating us for better, and changing us if we will let him).
*
This post, I suppose, is really about leadership. There are no perfect leaders on earth. No one who can claim to fully encompass and accept every other person, knowing every other person to their inner selves and still accepting them fully. None of us are the source of Love, and none of us have enough in ourselves. But God will be enough. If we are only to point the way, and there is a responsibility for those of us who know and have felt his Love to point the way to all the other broken humans, then we shall be content and free in pointing the way, because we know that God is the one who will be all the rest we are not.
Labels: God, korean dramas, law, leadership, mbti, Queen Seon Deok, realisations
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