The church doesn’t talk about sex enough. And by talk about sex, I mean really talk about sex—not just warn young people against premarital sex,…
Walking with Jesus in Asian American-ness
Category: #reflection
It was only when I left for college and then graduated that I realized how much I wanted to connect with my parents. And how hard the language barrier made it sometimes. In high school, it was all about rebellion. My teenage self wanted desperately to get away. I wasn’t thinking about communicating at all; in fact, it was the opposite—I wanted nothing but to cut off my communication with my nagging, overbearing parents.
Fast forward a couple more years. Sure, I called home once or twice to cry to my parents when the worst of college and failure hit me. But when I graduated, found a job and stable community, started working full-time… all of a sudden, I realized how fleeting time with my parents actually was.
At the crux of the Christian faith, I think, is this concept of being “worthy.” God has a love for each one of us in the sense that regardless of our past, regardless of our present circumstances, regardless even if we actively reject him… he loves us and wants us. That’s the gospel, the “good news” that people are given the choice to believe.
Sometimes believing that is truly hard.
I think as the church, we should talk about sex more.
Perhaps one of the greatest schemes of the devil is to distort something that God intended to be so good, into something that society views as taboo, secretive, or dirty. Many churches issue the blanket statement, “no sex before marriage,” and then leave it at that. A smaller selection of churches are willing to talk about Genesis or the creation story and sex in the abstract sense—sex as union, sex as procreation, sex as blessing. But not too many churches are willing to talk about the nitty-gritty (are you shuddering at the thought?) of sex from all angles—embracing the physicality of it as well as the sacred symbolism.
I had a good conversation with a new friend today, and we were swapping stories about some of our hobbies and interests, current life reflections, and family upbringing. I was sharing about how my parents were born in Taiwan and then moved to the United States later on in life. He looked at me and said, “Bro, that’s crazy if you actually think about it.”
I recently watched this highly inspiring TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author and speaker, who talks about “the danger of a single story.” Stories have the power to influence and to shape. Stories inform our beliefs and they also shape perception of the truth. A single story, therefore, twists and misaligns reality to that single perspective and lands us with stereotype or incomplete “half-truths.” She describes several of her experiences from childhood as anecdotal evidence: growing up reading American and British stories in Nigeria, she heavily internalized the contents of those stories as representative of ALL stories.
I’ve been trying to read various different Christian books lately that are authored by people who are not white men. One of them is At Home In Exile, by Russell Jeung—Asian American Studies professor at SF State and incidentally, someone connected through the sister church that started my church, who has come to preach for us a couple of times. His book memoir details his narrative living in East Oakland’s “Murder Dubs” neighborhood, and finding solidarity and community with the Latino and Cambodian refugee families there. I found one particular passage particularly scintillating for me:
Asian Americans have always had a harder time talking about mental health. Perhaps it’s because many of us have parents who have stifled or never developed expressing the full range of emotion in a healthy way. Maybe there’s a stigma against it in a lot of Eastern cultures. Or maybe it’s less an Asian American issue so much as a generational one. Regardless, I think our mental health has a LOT to do with how we’re able to commune with God, so as a church, we had better be talking about it.
I’ll admit it. I always hated history growing up. It was my least favorite subject. But I have come to realize that identity and history must go hand-in-hand. As a second-generation Chinese American, the Chinese part of my identity requires that I recognize and honor my family origin. At the same time, the American part of my identity stipulates that I take the time to understand the history and policies that have shaped the very society that I live in.
I can’t believe we’re hitting around four months of life with COVID-19 now (at least, in the United States). Masks and public precautions seem commonplace and Zoom just seems part of life now. When the pandemic first hit the US back in March, the Bay Area was one of the first places to issue for a strict shelter in place policy. I remember joking with my friends at the time that life under quarantine would be “my time to shine” as an introvert. I constantly want and need more quiet, alone time to feel settled as a functioning human being.