How Grace Empowers Cultural Humility

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Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His Kingdom.

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0:00:23.1 Jim Lovelady: Hello, beloved. Welcome to Grace at the Fray. My sixth grade social studies teacher, Mr. Whitehouse, used to say, “There are things you know, things you don’t know, and things you don’t know you don’t know.” It’s like the story of the older fish who asks the two younger fish, hey guys, how’s the water? And after swimming on, they ask, what’s water? That’s what this episode’s about, especially when it comes to identifying syncretism in your culture. Syncretism is the mingling of multiple religions, and everyone does it. Even real followers of Christ. That’s why Jesus warns, no one can serve two masters. He knows our hearts. The Old Testament repeatedly shows God’s people chasing false gods, seeking life in whatever else other than God. A lot of syncretism resides in the category of what you don’t know, you don’t know. You just don’t realize it. You may call yourself a Christian, but you still worship false idols. There are things in your heart that work themselves out in your life in ways you don’t see. Ways that make it harder to love others and leave you chasing something other than God. You’ve fallen into syncretism when you see Jesus plus in your life. Jesus plus popularity. Jesus plus good health. Jesus plus money. Plus my winning team. My winning political party. Jesus plus my relationship. Jesus plus anything else equals idolatry. And you’re doing it right now and you don’t even know it. You don’t even know that you don’t know. Oh, what a mess we are. Well, at Serge’s Renewal Team, we seek to keep the gospel as our single motivator for mission. Helping people recognize the idols they didn’t know they had. And how the gospel sets them free from that. Now, being confronted with an idol can feel life-threatening because we’ve been finding life in this false god, but freedom comes when Jesus becomes more beautiful than whatever else we’ve clung to. Well, my guest today is Alex Jun. He’s Serge’s Director of Intercultural Development and he helps people identify the cultural idolatries that keep them from living out their identity in Christ. He wants to help you learn to see the syncretism in your heart. And like any good missionary, when Alex points out idols, he also points you to Jesus, the one who opens blind eyes, so that they can see the light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ. So I think of Alex as a sort of missionary to our missions agency. Because he’s joined Serge to help us see the things that we didn’t know we didn’t know. And to trade in the false gods, the false idols, for true life in Christ. 

 

0:03:20.9 Jim Lovelady: Alex Jun, welcome to Grace at the Fray, man.

 

0:03:23.9 Alex Jun: Thank you very much.

 

0:03:24.7 Jim Lovelady: Welcome to Serge. You’ve been with the company for a few months now, and so, I’ve been trying to get you on here since then. And so, welcome to the little studio.

 

0:03:34.6 Alex Jun: I love what you’ve done with the place.

 

0:03:37.3 Jim Lovelady: So, what do you want to talk about?

 

0:03:38.7 Alex Jun: I’m happy to talk about myself, as I usually do. I had heard that almost everything you do is autobiographical. So anything that you care about and what you’re passionate about, may have something to do with you. Family of origin, your own experiences. For me, lots of different experiences, trauma, things like that. So what I end up doing and the things that I care about at this age, I realize, really is and continues to be about me and stuff that I’ve got to work out.

 

0:04:06.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. I think it’s interesting that as you’ve come into the company, you’re starting to explore and help us explore some new territory. So I’d love to hear how you came to the company and the autobiographical aspects of that, definitely. From there, it’s like, okay, well, what does it look like? What are your hopes and dreams for the company?

 

0:04:32.5 Alex Jun: Great. So officially, my title is the Director of Intercultural Development. And part of my responsibilities are to help the company, individuals and groups, understand intercultural development, humility and intercultural intelligence in better ways, not just individually, but systemically. And for myself, again, I said everything is autobiographical, semi-autobiographical. Everything that I’ve been doing my whole life, being Korean American born in the United States, my name’s Alexander Jun because I was born in Alexandria, Virginia.

 

0:05:10.0 Jim Lovelady: Oh, nice…That’s a good town.

 

0:05:12.1 Alex Jun: Yeah, lovely town. Lived there until I was about seven. And then we moved to San Francisco. My father was so proud that his two children were born in the United States, gave us good American names, Alexander and my sister’s name is Virginia. So pretty funny stuff. He said, “You could do anything you want in this country, anything you want. It’s great that you’re here.” And I believe that. But elementary school, middle school, lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and there was just a lot of racism and a lot of teasing. And as a young, angry Alex trying to figure out, trying to make sense of who I am, and it’s part of my testimony, really, there was one particular time where the teasing and the bullying was so extreme, I came home crying probably middle school, and just got so angry at my parents. And I said, why did we come here? Why did we move to the United States? If we just stayed in Korea, then maybe I wouldn’t be teased so much about nothing I can do about my hair, my eyes, all these other things, the language we speak, the culture that we are, that back in the ’80s, people didn’t know what Korean was. It was Chinese or Japanese. And so, I was just very frustrated when I looked in the mirror. I didn’t like what I saw. I’m trying to reconcile all that. Then I get to college. I become a Christian. Jesus meets me in college. And it took a few years for me to then realize, Imago Dei. I was made in the image of God: fearfully and wonderfully made. And that concept helped liberate me, free me from the angst that I had for who I thought I was supposed to be. And so, I’m leaning more and more into that space that God made me this way. I should celebrate that, not apologize for it. The difference between my children and me, as I mentioned before, oh, they mispronounce my name in English. It’s okay. But it’s also okay to correct people and say, this is the way the name should be said. I never imagined in middle school with people not even knowing what Korean is, I wouldn’t have imagined that today we have BTS and Korean dramas and all the K-pop. Incredible how popular Korean men are around the world. It’s about time. We’ve been good looking for a long time. Oh my goodness. But it’s so neat to see, there’s a certain, just being represented feels so good. And I realized at its most base level, representation matters as well. So part of our journey here at the company is to try to help raise greater representation for different types of workers, who God has fearfully and wonderfully made. And so on that level, I think there’s something beautiful about bringing different perspectives, different color, different age, different genders, all of those types of things to help the community thrive even more and celebrate all that is good about how God’s created us.

 

0:07:58.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. You work for, you do a lot of things, but you work for a missions agency that’s wanting to reflect the global reach that we have. And that’s one of the things I’m really excited about you being with the company is like, we work all over the world and you’re like, okay, well, so we should have people who reflect the global nature of our work. And so, that’s really exciting to me. But at the same time, as I’m trying to explore what it looks like for Gen Z to participate in global missions, I’m just invest in, I’m curious about all that. And so, I want to hear your perspective on what you’re seeing.

 

0:08:33.6 Alex Jun: Yeah, there’s an excitement about things that’s happening with this generation that we just don’t understand. But you asked a question earlier about Asian American Gen Zs in particular, and I’d love to return to that. One of the great joys that I have in attending the church that I attend, I attend a church in downtown LA, Citizens Los Angeles, shout out to Citizens. Jason Min is the pastor. He, in his early 40s, seems like he’s old because of the context of the church. A lot of Gen Zs and young millennials. And there’s something, and all three of my children go there. They absolutely, it is their vibe. And you would see the occasional Gen Xers there, which is wonderful.

 

0:09:17.3 Jim Lovelady: The sages…

 

0:09:18.3 Alex Jun: Yeah, just to round out the range of ages. But there’s something beautiful about this particular church in this particular city with a range of Asian Americans who are not all from Los Angeles. I had heard recently in a sermon that maybe half of the roughly thousand that we have at our church are from out of state. They want to give Los Angeles a try. It’s something that I couldn’t… it’s just inconceivable for me as a Gen Xer to take that type of leap of faith to say, I want to try something. I want to live my life and chase my dreams. And so, there are a lot of dreamers in LA who are Asian American, who are not going into medicine and law and engineering. And so, there’s something beautiful about that freedom that they have.

 

0:10:08.3 Jim Lovelady: Would you say that because of the stereotypical kind of like, oh, you’re Asian, so you’re going to go into math and you’re going to be a doctor?

 

0:10:15.0 Alex Jun: Yeah. A Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie said that stereotypes, the challenge with stereotypes is not that they’re untrue, it’s that they’re incomplete.

 

0:10:24.0 Jim Lovelady: Oh, yeah, that’s good.

 

0:10:25.2 Alex Jun: And so, there is something about children of immigrants who come to the United States from East Asian countries in particular, whose parents said, “Look, this is the American dream.” It’s the myth of the American dream. Why don’t you become a doctor, lawyer, financially successful? Little do we realize that this is also your parents’ 401k plan. And so, we need to make sure we are the retirement plans. And so, then you become a sandwich generation. What’s nice about the Gen X Asian Americans, children of immigrants by and large, I think part of that immigration related stress dies with them. And the greatest gift that they’re giving to their children is bigger dreams, because they don’t have to provide for their families. They don’t have to translate for their parents.

 

0:11:07.8 Jim Lovelady: That pressure.

 

0:11:09.4 Alex Jun: Yeah, that pressure is gone. And so, there’s a whole new generation that’s coming up to say, I could do whatever I want. The exciting part about that is, as a Christian, as a Christ follower, that also means you’re free to go on missions. You’re free to spend your time in your 20s without the burden of saying, I need to make money because my parents are working so hard in menial jobs and I need to provide for them. So that’s my message to the Gen Z third generation Asian Americans whose grandparents were immigrants. And so, they’re two steps removed. You’re free. You’re free to do all these things. And all your jobs and opportunities will be there in your 30s.

 

0:11:48.3 Jim Lovelady: Do they feel free? Do you think that they feel free? Is that like a proclamation you’re giving, is it a blessing that you’re speaking over them?

 

0:11:54.8 Alex Jun: I think what I’ve noticed is that they’ve embraced the freedom of career choices, of going into what Gen X would call non-traditional, unstable types of work as social media influencers or fashion industry, a large number of entertainers, actors, singers. I think it’s beautiful. And I just think of the generation before them, that maybe they had the desire and the ability, but the context was very different. So they’re free in that regard. And I would add one more piece. You are free to also serve the Lord and not have that financial burden to take care of the family. There’s something beautiful about that.

 

0:12:37.7 Jim Lovelady: You’re an educator, you’re a professor, you’re a doctor.

 

0:12:41.1 Alex Jun: Useless on an airplane. And I just sit quietly, when someone says…

 

0:12:46.0 Jim Lovelady: Is there a doctor on the plane? You’re like mmh.

 

0:12:48.9 Alex Jun: I can analyze your syllabus for you.

 

0:12:52.7 Jim Lovelady: Is there an educator on the plane?

 

0:12:54.2 Alex Jun: That’s right.

 

0:12:54.9 Jim Lovelady: I got this. What do you need?

 

0:12:56.8 Alex Jun: Before we land, can you lecture for a few minutes? Yes, I’d be happy to do that.

 

0:13:00.6 Jim Lovelady: Can you lecture us please? Said no one ever. But that’s what I’m good at.

 

0:13:05.9 Alex Jun: That’s right.

 

0:13:06.5 Jim Lovelady: I can lecture you.

 

0:13:07.6 Alex Jun: One of my best friends, Lloyd Kim, runs the other organization, MTW. He gave a great talk. Maybe you could put a link at the bottom. Just a wonderful talk on very specifically for Asian Americans, mostly Gen X and millennial children of immigrants. And he just made a great argument for why we are prime candidates to serve overseas. We grew up code shifting. We grew up with dual language, dual cultures embedded in our experiences. We have the Korean word is noonchi.

 

0:13:40.3 Jim Lovelady: Noonchi.

 

0:13:40.9 Alex Jun: Noonchi, a natural sixth sense of reading people, presence. They look like they want something. We’re attentive, right? This is what first-year missionaries are struggling to identify, to say, what is it about this culture that I need to understand? And so, when you’re already in a bicultural experience, what you do at home is going to be different from what you do everywhere else. You are primed. And he made a great argument to say, don’t you think this is how the Lord had been working all along? That you don’t struggle with that? You can eat bap (rice) and kimchi in the morning as well as cereal. Even our stomachs are bicultural. It’s something beautiful about that. And if that’s true for some Asian Americans, that’s got to be true for other ethnic groups as well. And so, making that, seeing that not as a liability, but as an asset, it’s always been an asset for the Kingdom. And there’s something beautiful about that.

 

0:14:31.4 Jim Lovelady: We have a category, we call it third culture kids, TCKs, for children of missionaries who go overseas, they become third culture kids because that place that they have gone to isn’t home. The place that they’ve left is no longer home. So there’s this third liminal space that they reside. Is that similar to what you’re talking about? That they’re already kind of wired to be, or the wiring has already enabled them to be very successful TCKs?

 

0:15:02.0 Alex Jun: That’s right. Yeah, no, that’s spot on. TCKs, I love how that’s now gotten trademarked with one specific group of people, but I love the concept of it because it’s that third space. It’s that we’re always in liminal spaces for children of immigrants who were forced to come. At childhood or were born into another country and really had no choice in the matter, but learn to deal with it. Very similar experiences with TCKs who had no choices in the matter, but ended up living in fill in the blank country in various languages, including English, but not always. And learning to survive in multiple countries. Then they come back to the United States and they struggle.

 

0:15:42.2 Alex Jun: In the same way that if I were to go back to Korea, of course I was born in the United States, but if I would go back to Korea, Koreans will look at me and say, I could just tell you’re not from here. And it’s really interesting. And I said, so what is it?

 

0:15:55.1 Jim Lovelady: By the way you walk.

 

0:15:56.6 Alex Jun: Well, one person, it was a compliment, actually. They said, Korean Americans, you look happier, brighter.

 

0:16:04.3 Jim Lovelady: Interesting.

 

0:16:05.2 Alex Jun: Yeah. Well, ’cause there was no mandatory military service, so maybe not losing two years of my life forced into the military in Korea could be part of it. But there was something, and I’ve heard that time and again, people just look at us and they say, when I travel with my family, and we weren’t speaking in English, they would look at us and say, yeah, we could tell you’re from America. There’s something about your countenance that looks different. I thought that was really interesting.

 

0:16:26.1 Jim Lovelady: Interesting.

 

0:16:26.7 Alex Jun: But back to the code shifting and always being in this cultural milieu, I think third culture kids not as surprised when adult third culture kids end up back on the field in the same place or somewhere else, because it’s what they’re used to, and I think that’s beautiful because God’s designed that for them in many ways. I would make the same case for second and third generation children and grandchildren of immigrants, because they’re very accustomed to that. And when they travel, it’s easier. The most difficult question for a TCK is where are you from? Well, my passport is this place.

 

0:17:01.0 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:17:01.7 Alex Jun: My family’s from this place, and I grew up in that place. Asian Americans and other children of immigrants have the same thing. Where are you from is a very difficult question.

 

0:17:10.2 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:17:10.7 Alex Jun: Well, if you’re asking what city I’m from in the United States, I have an answer. If you want to know my heritage, language, and culture, I have another answer. My nationality is another answer. So a lot of overlaps, a lot of parallels with that, and a lot of trauma. We don’t all work it out well, TCKs and second and third generation immigrant kids as well, but there’s also, as I said before, if we see this from Kingdom-centered eyes, it was never a liability. It’s always been an asset. It’s always been a Kingdom asset, and I think that’s something we should explore more.

 

0:17:41.0 Jim Lovelady: Like I’ve never thought about what you’re talking about in terms of the way that third, is it third generation kids are just naturally going to have a natural propensity or even it’s going to naturally feel like home to just go do cross-cultural ministry. And while what I spend a lot of time helping folks who are thinking about going on the mission field, is the encouragement to go have this cross-cultural experience that they’ve never had before. And you’re saying, no, no, the third generation teens, young adults, Asian teens and young adults, they’ve been living the cross-cultural experience. And so, it’s just natural. There’s something really, just really exciting about the potential for that, that I had never thought until you talked about it right now.

 

0:18:36.3 Alex Jun: Yeah, with our Kingdom-minded friends who have embraced this idea, it’s just unlocked a whole bunch of opportunities. My own experience is my children were young when my family moved to Cambodia. We were seconded with MTW for three years. And Cambodia is a Southeast Asian country. They eat rice and porridge and noodles for breakfast. And so, when we had other teammates who did not have that experience, you say, hey, how are you doing today? How can we pray for you? You’re like, I’m having a hard culture day. What is it? I just want a regular normal breakfast. I said, this is normal breakfast for us. This is the easiest part of living in Asia.

 

0:19:15.1 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:19:15.5 Alex Jun: Is the food. But if we want pizza, we can get pizza as well. So yeah, then even the food is already naturally built in where we’re used to eating a variety of food depending on where you are with family or with friends. And then language and culture, again, noonchi and being able to read a room, reading a culture and being able to switch on a dime is something that comes naturally. And we got to celebrate that. And again…

 

0:19:37.3 Jim Lovelady: I’m jealous of that.

 

0:19:39.2 Alex Jun: And others have been ashamed of it. So that’s interesting, right? Because…

 

0:19:44.4 Jim Lovelady: Others have been ashamed of it?

 

0:19:45.7 Alex Jun: Ashamed of that experience because no one needs to know what my ethnicity is outside of my house. It’s when you come home, I’m this person, but then I’m a different person when I’m in public. And I don’t know how much of that we show. Again, the excitement of third generation Gen Z Asian Americans, whose parents, by and large, have made that transition a little easier, because they’re speaking English to their family at home, things like that.

 

0:20:11.9 Jim Lovelady: Well, is that kind of hearkening back to your experience in San Francisco where you were getting bullied and it’s like ugh?

 

0:20:19.9 Alex Jun: All that had happened when I was younger made me so much more attentive to other people’s pain, other people’s needs, which is, I think, very important. When you’re the only Asian American in certain spaces, you naturally see another Asian American and two things happen. One is, either I’m going to be drawn to that person but simultaneously repelled because there can’t be two cool Korean Americans in the space. Key & Peele did a great skit on that once, and if you want to follow up on that. But this idea that there can only be one of us, it’s a scarcity mindset.

 

0:20:51.6 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:20:53.1 Alex Jun: So you run the risk of running into someone who looks like you to say, hey, we’re either going to be very close or we’re never going to talk, because there can’t be more than one of us. And that was because of the scarcity of representation. I think the generations that are up and coming are already in multi-ethnic spaces. If not multi-ethnic friend groups and communities in their schools and hopefully in their churches, at least representation on television and media. And it’s not just representation in the United States, it’s a global representation. And again, this is a generation that’s growing up with such a broader understanding of various cultures. And I think that’s something beautiful that they inherently seek to understand individuals and who they are and the manifold identities that come with who they are and embracing them. I think that gets hard for some generations to say, well, you’re either this or you’re that and you can’t be both. I think we are probably, again, very uncomfortable with that type of grayness of the multiple identities.

 

0:21:56.7 Jim Lovelady: Interesting. Tell me some stories to unpack the uncomfortability about that liminal space, because I want to be able to catch myself where I’m doing it. And then, I want to be able to see where other people are doing it as a pastor. I want to shepherd those kinds of things to invite people into the liminal. It’s okay. Jesus is in the gray areas.

 

0:22:21.3 Alex Jun: Here’s an example of where I live in Los Angeles. That’s a large “Asian American population.” Well, if it were that simple, you have to disaggregate data. You have to look at Koreans. If we say you’re Korean American, are you first generation, meaning you’re the first when you came when you were an adult? Korean is your first language, but your English is really good, but you’re bilingual, but you think in Korean. Then the second generation or somewhere in between, if you came when you were younger and you didn’t have a choice, we call it 1.5. Korean Americans came up with that term, which I think is really interesting. And then there’s a range of 1.5 to 1.7, 1.9. Because how first generation are you? And then you’ve got second gen, third generation. If I think about other East Asian groups like Chinese, ethnically Chinese, but they’re from Indonesia, they’re Chinese Indonesians. So they’ve already come with multiple cultures, Chinese Malay, Chinese Singapore. They might not even be Chinese. They might have a mother who is Malaysian and a father who’s from Singapore and they’re ethnically Chinese. Well, what type of Chinese? Are they from the Fujian province? Are they Taiwanese? And so, there’s a whole range. They’re not just all Han Chinese. Then they come to Los Angeles and we get lumped in as Asian, Asian American. And so, I think that’s at that level, that sounds very granular for some, but if you’re in that space, all of those things matter. And the conversation just flows naturally. I think our folks who have been on the field fundamentally understand that. Well, there’s Spain and there’s Spaniards and then there’s Catalan. There’s all these different groups within. Ben Lewis was talking about the number of Venezuelans who live in Peru. It’s fascinating. But if you’re not part of that culture, you’re like, everyone’s just speaking Spanish. Everyone’s just Latino and it’s just too broad as a category. So there’s something beautiful about the lower you go, the deeper you go, the more granular you can get. You’re starting to see greater authenticity in people. And when you’re being recognized like that, it matters. It matters on the receiving end that somebody took the time to understand all those subtle nuances and is able to then repeat back to you to say, oh, I see where you are on this. And you’re like, oh, wow, you really took some time to study that. And I think that’s a form of generosity. It’s a form of love.

 

0:24:47.6 Jim Lovelady: Those are the things that I was made aware of when we went on the mission field that I hadn’t been paying attention to before. And I go, oh, I need to be a student of the culture. But then, that just never leaves and just forever be a student of the culture. I talk about like I’m an armchair sociologist where I’m just curious about the kind of people and what do you like and what do you do, and what’s your favorite food?

 

0:25:17.5 Alex Jun: There’s a natural curiosity about other people’s cultures and their lives. I think if that’s where we are, that’s a great indicator that they would do well cross-culturally.

 

0:25:26.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. I had to learn that by going overseas. But what you’re saying is the third gen Asian young adults.

 

0:25:33.7 Alex Jun: The Gen Z.

 

0:25:34.0 Jim Lovelady: Gen Z. They have that already.

 

0:25:37.0 Alex Jun: They’ve been primed since they were born.

 

0:25:38.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:25:39.3 Alex Jun: So it’s a real neat opportunity for them.

 

0:25:41.2 Jim Lovelady: Well, one of the things that, or a couple of things that I wanted to submit to you, doctor.

 

0:25:49.0 Alex Jun: Only my children call me doctor.

 

0:25:52.8 Jim Lovelady: Doc, how about Doc? You mentioned the American Dream a couple times, and what I love about how you started this conversation with, this is my story, it sounded individualistic, but I know you enough to know that you are on a mission to help thwart the promises of the American Dream, versus the promises of the gospel, and how individualism it’s part of our culture, but it’s not part of Christianity, and how do we navigate those things? So I want to hear you talk about the American Dream, and open up the idea of what individualism is doing to all this. Ready, set, go.

 

0:26:37.0 Alex Jun: Well, it’s interesting because as missionaries fundamentally understand, when they’re in other cultures, they’re always looking for syncretism. Where’s the religious syncretism in this culture that we recognize? And what happens in that, as an educator for years, I said that window by which we’re looking at the other was never a window, it was always a mirror. It was always looking at ourselves. And we don’t do that as well. And so we don’t see the syncretism in the United States. So a great example of this was in Cambodia, we had Christians in our community who said, hey, so now that I’m a Christian, should I get a Christmas tree? Alex, where in the Bible is that Christmas tree? Oh, is this what they were talking about, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Is that why it’s a Christmas tree? Or is this the tree that Jesus died on? And we just had to pause, and I apologized on behalf of all of Western society who call themselves Christians. It’s actually not a Christian tradition. It’s not, it’s a form of syncretism. But you can do it, there’s freedom in the Lord, but goodness gracious, it was a, what was it, some sort of…

 

0:27:43.4 Jim Lovelady: It was like a baptized, it was one of those things that we baptized early on, and now no one really knows what it means. I have one friend who, he put the carnation flower. I’m totally outing him. He would put the carnation into the tree so it was an incarnation. Like, good try, buddy.

 

0:28:06.2 Alex Jun: I like it.

 

0:28:08.4 Jim Lovelady: Trying our best to baptize the Christmas tree. 

 

0:28:15.0 Jim Lovelady: I want to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we here at the headquarters in Philadelphia are praying for each week. We meet on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray, and this week, we’re praying for our teams in East Africa. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that you would bless these folks. Give them joy in their work in your kingdom, and the pleasure of your joy as they follow you. Give them wisdom and let your grace abound in their relationships with one another, with family members and children, and with the people they serve. Heal all sicknesses, liberate the enslaved, protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness, restore to them the joy of your salvation, and let your Kingdom come and your will be done in these places just as it is in heaven. We pray in your name. Amen. Now, back to the conversation.

 

0:29:13.7 Alex Jun: What was another example during Easter? They said, oh, so these are the eggs? This is sort of the rebirth? Where’s the Easter bunny? Like, how would Christians celebrate this? I’ve seen that. Why is that? And we’re like, sorry again.

 

0:29:25.1 Jim Lovelady: When I was a missionary in Spain, my faith was really tried at Christmas time, because they didn’t do Christmas the way that I thought Christians do Christmas. And they’re like, no, this is Christmas. And I was like, it did not feel like Christmas for me. And so, there was one of those things that I had to go cross-culturally to see how syncretistic my Christianity was with my American dream, with what was actually just American culture.

 

0:30:00.6 Alex Jun: That’s right. Our failure to separate what is cultural and what is sacred and what is secular. Our failure to separate what is secular and what is sacred, what is Christian and what is culture, what is American and what is Christian, that is probably a great indicator when you leave for a little while and come back, or you’re able to be a little bit more self-critical of society, in your own society. It’s hard because it’s water we swim in.

 

0:30:24.5 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:30:25.7 Alex Jun: But to recognize that the American dream was never biblical, and we somehow conflate the American dream with the land of milk and honey. And if when you make that connection, then all of a sudden you’ve got the United States as the land of milk and honey, which is completely unbiblical. I don’t think the writers of the scriptures ever intended the United States and North America when we have Jesus, who was not a blonde-haired, blue-eyed savior, never spoke English and never lived in the United States, never set foot in North America, a Jewish carpenter, olive-skinned, whatever version of Jesus that’s depicted in American society may have nothing to do with our Lord and Savior. And this is the danger of the violation of the second commandment, some would say, is you make graven images.

 

0:31:13.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:31:14.2 Alex Jun: And so, that would make sense. There’s freedom, of course, but there’s something to recognize this type of syncretistic…

 

0:31:21.7 Jim Lovelady: There’s actually more freedom once you recognize where the syncretism is.

 

0:31:25.8 Alex Jun: That’s right. Yeah. So once we recognize it, we’re free to let these things go. We’re free to let go of a nation to say the rise and fall of any particular nation will not determine the rise and fall of the gospel and God’s Kingdom. Once Christians understand that, we’ll be the first ones to fight for things that are kingdom-oriented, things that are eternal, rather than laws and policies. It’s funny because do we apply that same process in other countries? Do we want to see other nations become Christian nations? I’m not sure that we needed Constantine. I’m not sure that we needed that extra stamp of approval to say this is now government-sponsored. I had heard a story when I was at Lausanne last year in Korea, the Lausanne Four Conference, and they were talking about missionaries in China, and how the early missionaries had prayed that the Chinese church would slowly become independent and self-governed and self-run. And they prayed for that and prayed for that. And what happened? Communist government came in, and they kicked out all the missionaries. And as one of the last missionaries was leaving, he said, who would have imagined that a secular government God would use to fulfill our prayers, that the Chinese church is now self-governed and self-run and thriving? And there may be more Christians in China than anywhere else. That’s mind-boggling. And they’re sending missionaries out within the country and then sending missionaries out around the world as well. It’s just a fascinating prospect. I was in Shanghai once, and I was at a house church, and we had a pastor who came down from Yanbian, which is in Northeast China. This is the border city between North Korea and China, so there are a lot of ethnic Koreans who live there. And he was a fourth-generation ethnic Korean.

 

0:33:18.4 Jim Lovelady: Interesting.

 

0:33:18.4 Alex Jun: In China, fluent in Korean, fluent in Mandarin. And he came down to Shanghai, and he was running this church. And it was fascinating because he had what we’d call a KM, a Korean ministry, and a CM, a Chinese ministry. And both thrived.

 

0:33:34.3 Jim Lovelady: Like two different congregations?

 

0:33:35.5 Alex Jun: Two different congregations, two different languages. And he…

 

0:33:38.6 Jim Lovelady: Talk about code switching.

 

0:33:39.5 Alex Jun: And he was doing both. And just my mind was blown because I’m like, oh, we have EM and KM, Korean-speaking and English-speaking, but never by an ethnic Korean who grew up in China and is fourth-generation Chinese. So fascinating. I don’t think their goal, if I think of my Christian brothers and sisters in places like China, I don’t think their goal is necessarily to say, let’s make China a Christian nation. I think they just want more religious freedom, perhaps, to do what they want to do. I remember they were saying, I don’t know how you all can be Christians in America, with all the things going on that make it so confusing to be Christian, because your culture is so interwoven into your faith that I don’t know how you can separate it.

 

0:34:19.4 Jim Lovelady: Well, they’re speaking into our syncretism, and we go, what are you talking about?

 

0:34:22.6 Alex Jun: That’s right.

 

0:34:23.4 Jim Lovelady: ‘Cause we don’t see it.

 

0:34:24.2 Alex Jun: ‘Cause we don’t see it, yeah. I think there’s something beautiful about having these conversations with ourselves. And as a mission-sending agency, it’s something beautiful for us to be able to say, we recognize that it’s the water we swim in. So even the way that we prepare and vet and give the stamp of approval of who we think would be appropriate to go out on missions, we need to challenge our own long-held assumptions of what we think is sort of standard practice, English fluency, proficiency, nationality, ethnicity, things that we have maybe long seen as liabilities, and the discussions we have about our concerns. If we come from an asset-based approach, if we look at it as something that’s positive and beautiful, we might change. And then, how we determine who’s qualified and who’s ready and who we’re excited about to send out, might change as well.

 

0:35:19.3 Jim Lovelady: Part of what excites me about you coming to this company is that you can spot where we’re being syncretistic, because it’s not just like the American dream is syncretistic. Well, sure. And individualism has crept, is like fundamental, foundational to what we are as a culture. And so, can we spot where individualism is in this big picture? Well, sure. But can we spot it at these particular levels, like what you just described, how we’re bringing in a missionary to go somewhere?

 

0:35:51.6 Alex Jun: But even our theology, as we think about a covenantal approach to… I became a Christian my first year in college, and it was just so hard for me to grasp the concept that I kept saying, I did nothing wrong, because I had a very individualistic understanding. Who is this Adam you keep talking about? Who is my father? Who sinned, and because of that, those sins were imputed to me. And who is this Jesus that you’re talking about, the second, the final Adam, who, because of his work on the cross, imputed righteousness to me, that I had nothing to do with it? Well, as a Korean born in the United States, I always say, you can take Alex out of Korea, but you can never take Korea out of Alex. We are naturally collectivistic people. And so, I understood honor-shame culture. I understood if I do something, it’s not just me, it’s my community. It made covenantal theology a lot easier to understand, because I realized, oh, it’s not about me. It’s not about an individual. It’s really about a community, that God saved a people. And so we can understand that theologically, and then we really struggle as American Christians to understand systems and structures, because then we all of a sudden default back to individualism. And that’s why we struggle so much with understanding structures and systems, because then we naturally just think, okay, well, let me think personally and individually. How do I understand this? Well, I’ve never done these things, therefore it must not be true, rather than failing to understand systems.

 

0:37:21.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, it’s the aspect of individualism is so huge and so sneaky that we just kind of don’t even see it until we’ve left. Maybe, I’m still discovering and on the lookout for how my propensity to just think individualistically just works itself out.

 

0:37:41.8 Alex Jun: It’s natural, right? It’s something that we all, because this is the water we swim in.

 

0:37:45.5 Jim Lovelady: It’s so natural, I don’t even know when I’m doing it.

 

0:37:48.0 Alex Jun: That’s right. David Foster Wallace said that, this is water essay, which is classic. My daughter has it tattooed on her arm.

 

0:37:53.6 Jim Lovelady: How’s the water, boys? What’s water?

 

0:37:54.8 Alex Jun: What’s water? And I think about that in terms of even the way we understand our own journeys individually when we talk about sin, that we just think it’s individual and not structural. Let me go back to Cambodia.

 

0:38:09.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:38:09.4 Alex Jun: We had Cambodian Christian friends who were single and wanted to get married, so they asked the missionaries, the Christian missionaries from America, I want to have a Christian wedding. I want to break from all the things that were wrong in my country, and I want to have a Christian wedding, not a Buddhist wedding, a Christian wedding. And we were stuck because we had to recognize what was Christian and what was cultural, what was truly biblical, like white dress, why?

 

0:38:37.7 Jim Lovelady: Exactly.

 

0:38:38.3 Alex Jun: Walking someone down the aisle. You can see a covenantal relationship of what happens to you. I could see that. Mendelssohn, dun-dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dun, is that Christian inherently? Is that what it is? And so, it was a great struggle for us because we had to wrestle because we didn’t want to syncretize them either to recognize what is Christian and what is just American, and it’s hard. Until it’s time to think about it.

 

0:39:02.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Well, what I love about the missionary endeavor is how we’re always looking for the way to parse this out and go, what aspects of this culture are going to be celebrated in God’s Kingdom? And what aspects of this culture are idolatrous and need to be repented of and jettisoned, not just by me as an individual who has a propensity to, as a white American Texan, who’s like, oh, I got this. I’ll just zip in.

 

0:39:41.0 Alex Jun: Just cowboy up.

 

0:39:41.1 Jim Lovelady: Just cowboy up. Yeah, I’ll just zip into this and be tenacious.

 

0:39:44.8 Alex Jun: That’s right.

 

0:39:45.6 Jim Lovelady: So tenacity by itself is fine. Tenacity attached to the idolatry of power, like my own power and my own self-righteousness, well, that’s no good. Tenacity under the subservience of the Lord brings people like Stephen in the Bible, in Acts, to stand up and go, look, stone me. He’s risen. What a tenacious thing to do.

 

0:40:12.4 Alex Jun: Yeah. What is the object of our tenacity? Where do we want to place it? Yeah. Well, there’s something, I’d heard this term that grace is not immune to hard work. So, yeah, we don’t merit our salvation, but there’s something beautiful and liberating about working hard for the kingdom. But I think there’s a mistake there because, again, these are little cultural, syncretistic pieces that creep back into our psyche to think, I earned this. I made my way because of what I’ve done, because of how hard I worked. And that’s the danger of this empire building that is very common for well-developed countries. We’re good at empire building, either societally or individually. And so, we create our own little kingdoms, our own little empires, and we get very territorial, even in our ministry. And it was all God’s. But we get very territorial with ministry that doesn’t even belong to us. That’s where the individualistic piece comes out. That’s why it’s so hard to understand Acts, the book of Acts, where everyone’s giving up of themselves so that no one would have need.

 

0:41:20.9 Jim Lovelady: We look at that though, well, that must be communism.

 

0:41:23.6 Alex Jun: Yeah, we call that redistribution of wealth. Have you read the book of Acts? How do you interpret that? So I think that gets played out. We are the byproducts of a capitalistic society. This is where people start calling me communist. I’m just saying capitalism, I know some might argue that it’s in the Bible. I don’t see it. I don’t know where it is that capitalism is clearly stated in Old and New Testament.

 

0:41:50.4 Jim Lovelady: Right. Those are all the syncretistic things that when we want to hang our hat on, we as Christians want to hang our hat on my American identity and the American flag. And even to say, well, I won’t do that. I’m going to wrap myself in the Christian flag. It’s like, well, even that is so American.

 

0:42:09.3 Alex Jun: That’s right.

 

0:42:09.8 Jim Lovelady: So all of these syncretism that we just don’t even see anymore. And so, it does take someone you keep saying, well, I’m going to say something shocking. It’s like, well, it’s shocking because it reveals potential syncretism that we have, potential places where we are putting our faith in that, in our identity. Let’s put it at identity because identity is the deeper reality. Like union with Christ is my identity. And so, when I start going, well, we live in Philadelphia, the easiest thing for me as a Texan is to talk about the Eagles idolatry.

 

0:42:50.6 Alex Jun: Yes, let’s go. What is, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So I’ve got LA We won’t talk about our two cities, but yes, we can crap on Philadelphia.

 

0:43:02.6 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. So that becomes the wonderful example of these idolatries. Well, so easily we can turn capitalism in our capitalistic society into an idolatry that we don’t even see. And so, for you to raise your hand and go, hey, have you ever thought about how that that’s idolatrous? What?

 

0:43:21.3 Alex Jun: Yeah.

 

0:43:22.2 Jim Lovelady: What? It’s shocking. It can feel shocking, but it’s an invitation.

 

0:43:26.1 Alex Jun: Yeah. And what I notice, is there’s a litmus test to anything that you say that I keep saying that, oh, this might be controversial for somebody and they’ll react. There’s a litmus test. How you react to us, whether you agree or disagree, how you react says more about what’s deeply embedded, than how you actually feel.

 

0:43:41.8 Jim Lovelady: Oh, that’s so good.

 

0:43:42.5 Alex Jun: I was the most angry about God and Jesus, right before I became a Christian.

 

0:43:48.2 Jim Lovelady: Oh, right.

 

0:43:50.1 Alex Jun: And people who are the most reactive to something that I say, I’m like, oh, you’re closer than you think, because you’ve held too closely. You protest too much. There’s something there, that you’re ready to release this. And when you do, you’ll feel so much more free. But there’s something absolutely liberating about being at a place like Serge, because I think so much of what we talk about leading from weakness, and I’ve seen it in this company the short time that I’ve been here, that when I bring up a topic, people’s responses, I haven’t thought about that, but maybe you’re right. It’s something I should lean into and take it to Jesus. What a beautiful response. This takes me all the way back to what we talked earlier about cultural intelligence versus cultural humility. And how I make the distinction is cultural intelligence, I’d say, is more cognitive. You know the right answers. Like if you’re in fill-in-the-blank culture, then these are the practices and the norms and values, and I need to know that. And you can be culturally intelligent and practice out of the cognition. Cultural humility is a question of the heart. So if somebody challenges you about something you did or said or didn’t do or didn’t say correctly, how do you respond? Do you respond in anger and defensiveness, or do you respond with, well, like regular humility, like everything else? You’re like, oh, I didn’t realize that. Let me reflect on that. And if it was offensive to somebody, let me pause and think about that. Every missionary in every country has gone through some form of this, where they made some sort of faux pas culturally, socially.

 

0:45:24.5 Jim Lovelady: Absolutely.

 

0:45:25.2 Alex Jun: And when they get called on it, do they get defensive and say, I didn’t mean to do it, or do you recognize the impact of what you’ve done and you realize this is the culture? That’s cultural humility. We get that cross-culturally. Sometimes we don’t understand that intra-culturally. So if we’re in Africa or we’re in Asia, we understand it. If that’s not our normal culture, then we’re always faced with a cross-cultural element. Then we bring it back to the United States with the range of representation, ethnically, gender, and otherwise.

 

0:45:57.0 Jim Lovelady: Oh, the opportunities are profound.

 

0:46:00.2 Alex Jun: We just don’t apply it, inter-culturally. Yeah.

 

0:46:03.1 Jim Lovelady: Give me a metaphor for cultural intelligence, and then give me a metaphor for cultural humility. And maybe it’s couched in some story.

 

0:46:11.6 Alex Jun: Bowing. For Asian cultures, for Korean cultures, it would be bowing. The metaphor is bowing. You know in your head, when you see someone who’s older or someone who’s a stranger, Korean culture dictates naturally that you should bow. It’s an honorific, honor-shame culture, so you bow. And we teach our children this. If you see someone older, looks like your father’s age or older, then you need to bow. You greet with honorific terms, et cetera. If you’re speaking Korean. So that’s the cultural intelligence piece. The cultural humility piece is when someone says, I don’t think you bowed when you saw me. Well, do you react and say, look, I was born in America. I don’t need to play these cultural games. I am my own person, and you’re not going to get this toxic application of culture on me. That I’m not going to submit myself just because you’re older. Give a thousand examples of how we can react incorrectly.

 

0:47:08.8 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:47:09.5 Alex Jun: Or simply say, I’m so sorry.

 

0:47:11.1 Jim Lovelady: Right. 

 

0:47:12.5 Alex Jun: You missed it. I did bow, but I’m so sorry. And you bow again.

 

0:47:16.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s fantastic. And what empowers all of this is, oh, I’m free because I know who I really am in Christ. And our propensity to, so talk about a culture that we don’t understand. The culture of grace, the language of grace is a language that is very foreign to all of us. And so, we’re kind of fumbling into practicing the language of grace and living into the reality of who we are in Christ. And so, there are moments where, like as I’m taking people through Mentored Sonship, I’ll show them something. I’ll make an observation and they’ll realize just how idolatrous and sinful they’ve been basing their lives off of kind of a fundamental thing of, hey, do you see how angry you are? Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen how angry I am or whatever kind of thing like that. And then they’re just blown away and I go, hey, from now on you are no longer allowed to be full of self-pity and shock about your sin.

 

0:48:24.8 Alex Jun: That’s good.

 

0:48:25.7 Jim Lovelady: Because Jesus already knew about that horrible sin that you just discovered. He already knew and he loves you. He already loved you. He already loves you. And so, hey, you’re no longer allowed to be shocked about discovering a sin that you have in your life. Well, it’s something similar when I’m having a cross-cultural interaction where the metaphor is wonderful where, oh yeah, I didn’t do that. Well, I don’t have to defend myself anymore. I’m free from that. And all I have to do since I’m free from that, is show love.

 

0:49:00.8 Alex Jun: Amen.

 

0:49:02.2 Jim Lovelady: And so, of course, I’m going to do that.

 

0:49:03.4 Alex Jun: And so, when we talk about culture, intercultural development, it’s really just another element to a concept that so many people in our company have already understood and embraced. We just need to apply it in the same context. I don’t want people to feel guilty about what they didn’t know about a culture because first of all, your guilt doesn’t help resolve the problem.

 

0:49:25.5 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:49:26.2 Alex Jun: And it just leaves you wallowing in self-pity. And that is not the goal because we’re free. And so, how do we respond? We have the freedom to respond and make the mistakes we need to make.

 

0:49:35.4 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:49:35.9 Alex Jun: And continue to make them and embrace our weaknesses in certain areas. I think we’re primed to do this in a similar way. I know that this is a company that says, oh, we’re so weak in some of these areas. We’re so glad that you’re here to work on this stuff. And I said, it’s never been a liability for you. It’s always been an asset. Your humility, not cultural humility, your general humility, leading from weakness, recognizing our brokenness. We are primed to embrace even this concept.

 

0:50:10.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. The story that’s been floating around in my head lately is the story of, in Mark 10, the second half of Mark 10, James and John, they’re like, hey Jesus, give us whatever we ask. And he’s like, what would you like me to do for you? And they say, we want to sit at your right hand and your left. And it’s like, oh, you don’t even know what you’re asking. The only place in Mark where anyone is on the right hand or left hand of Jesus is on the cross, the thief on the right and the thief on the left. And so, they don’t even know what they’re asking. And He has to school them on the need for humility. Even like, are you able to drink the cup and participate in the baptism that I’m going to be participating in? And they’re like, yeah, we’re able. They don’t even know. Just the naivety of it, thinking that they know. And then just a little bit later after that is blind Bartimaeus, who’s crying out for mercy because he is humble and lowly, sitting on the side of the road. He doesn’t know what to do. And he hears that Jesus of Nazareth, this famous guy, he’s coming. And so, he has the audacity. He’s tenacious enough to cry out. And everyone, man, the disciples, they’re doing the same thing that earlier in Mark 10, the disciples are like, no, the little children should not come unto Jesus. Don’t let them. And he’s like, no, come. Let the little children come. And then they’re like, no, don’t, Bartimaeus, stop talking. Don’t go to Jesus. And Jesus is like, bring him to me. Let the blind man come to me. And he asked the same question. What do you want me to do for you? Let me see. I want to receive my sight. And so the humility, the desperation is just, I got nothing else. I have nothing else. I’ve made all of these mistakes, these cross-cultural mistakes. I’ve put my foot in my mouth so many times, that I can’t be surprised. I can no longer be surprised when I put my foot in my mouth and I’m embarrassed, of course. But hey, I’m free in Christ.

 

0:52:10.7 Alex Jun: Britney Spears wrote a song about it. Oops, I did it again.

 

0:52:14.4 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:52:15.1 Alex Jun: Embrace it.

 

0:52:16.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:52:16.7 Alex Jun: We’re going to make a million mistakes in our lives. Might as well get started.

 

0:52:19.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, because you are loved way more than you can imagine.

 

0:52:22.8 Alex Jun: Amen.

 

0:52:23.7 Jim Lovelady: And you don’t even know.

 

0:52:25.9 Alex Jun: And if my salvation was dependent on how my actions are, I would be in a desperate, dark place. Absolutely. We are free. Amen.

 

0:52:35.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, where it always lands with the gospel is, that you’re going to have some more humility and that’s going to be a really good thing because humility and joy go hand in hand. What’s wrong with that?

 

0:52:52.3 Alex Jun: Amen. That’ll preach.

 

0:52:56.4 Jim Lovelady: I just wish you lived in Philly, so that we could just do this more. So every time you’re here, come back to the podcast and we’ll unpack some of these. I feel like we touched on a number of things that are exciting for me to think about what you’re bringing to Serge.

 

0:53:15.5 Alex Jun: That’s great. Yeah. I’d love to hear what you hear ’cause I just I think like me, so.

 

0:53:20.4 Jim Lovelady: Well, and I think like me. And so, that’s where it’s like, well, is anybody going to raise their hand and say, hey, do we notice these things? Let’s pay attention to these things. It’s like, oh yeah. Well, that’s what we do as a missions agency. All of these folks, they go overseas and they go, all right, well, I’m me. And obviously…

 

0:53:40.0 Alex Jun: We’ll do things the right way, which also happens to be my way.

 

0:53:42.9 Jim Lovelady: Oh my gosh.

 

0:53:44.5 Alex Jun: How perfect. I love when it comes together like that.

 

0:53:44.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Let’s be good at repenting of that. But being in a cross-cultural situation, just reveals so much more about what’s going on in our heart. And it’s like, this is the way Jesus liberates us. Go hang out with people that are very different from you, because I love you.

 

0:54:08.6 Alex Jun: Yeah. That’s good. I’d say even like in the United States, this is something for me on a lesser level, not all white people are the same. There are people from the South who don’t understand people from the North and vice versa.

 

0:54:21.4 Jim Lovelady: Oh, absolutely.

 

0:54:22.0 Alex Jun: And if you’re not white, you’re like, I don’t understand why you all can’t get along. You look the same to me.

 

0:54:28.5 Jim Lovelady: Well, if you’re not from Texas, you’re just different. Texas is different. That’s for sure. Well, my friend, we’ve begun something that I hope will continue.

 

0:54:37.6 Alex Jun: Amen.

 

0:54:38.4 Jim Lovelady: So thanks for hanging out.

 

0:54:39.6 Alex Jun: Thanks, brother.

 

0:54:47.5 Jim Lovelady: Alex and I spent a lot of time talking about syncretism in culture, but I would be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit more about the syncretism that’s in our own hearts. It’s the fancy word for mingling, trusting in Jesus with trusting in all of these false gods. Jesus plus anything else is idolatry. It’s Jesus plus nothing is everything. And there’s a challenge in any culture to follow Christ without having the culture influence your faith with its false gods that form syncretism. It’s the age-old living in the world but not of the world. So I was fascinated by how he mentioned that young Gen Z Asian Americans are set up really well for cross-cultural ministry because, in a way, they’ve been living in the world but not of the world, in the same way that third culture individuals experience life and are able to navigate a variety of cultures. This sets them up really well for some fantastic ways to do cross-cultural Kingdom ministry. So I want to leave a link in the show notes for the talk that Alex mentions that was given by Lloyd Kim about how second-gen Asians and other third culture folks are perfectly equipped to do cross-cultural Kingdom ministry. And, man, it’s just really exciting, this idea. I also want to make you aware of a couple blog posts that continue where this conversation leaves off. The first is about what it’s like to grow up a missionary kid, those who reside in these third culture spaces. And the second is about how to recognize your own individualism and how to move into a more God-centered way of seeing the world. You may learn something you didn’t know, you didn’t know. Follow the link in the show notes. And, of course, please like this video, leave a rating, share this episode with your friends, and keep us in your prayers. As I’ve been exploring the radicality of grace in this season’s conversations, one verse keeps coming up in my mind over and over again. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. In the midst of all of our mess, God gives more grace. That’s in James 4. If I want to know just how radical God’s grace is, I need to learn humility. I need to learn to see myself rightly. That’s what humility is. And when I do that, immediately I experience God’s grace. Because He knows all the things I didn’t know, I didn’t know. And He loves me. The Lord delights to build His kingdom through weak people who say yes to His grace, and courageously step out in faith to love others empowered by that same grace. So as the Lord guides you into the unknown, a light to your path, I want you to go and serve with His blessing. May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to smile down on you. May the Lord be gracious to you and turn His bright eyes to you and give you His peace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, life everlasting. Amen.

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