Episode 49 - A Christmas Story of Sorts

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welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody this is michael gunger and i know we told you that we were taking a break for the holidays but here's just a little christmas present for you surprise episode i just listened to this podcast by my brother david and john arndt they have a podcast called the brilliance podcast that they started to share about their new record that's coming out and their idea is every podcast is about a specific song and it's a really cool podcast but this last podcast that just came out i thought was such a beautiful story and especially for this time of year it's advent it's coming up on christmas time here and our world right now is in a lot of tension there's so much happening and i think this story offers some unique insight into how to see and treat the other how to have hope in a time like this and this guy that's telling the story his name is lang and he's actually the husband of home who is the buddhist guy that we had on in our suffering series so i thought that was also kind of an interesting connection so once again this is an excerpt from the brilliance podcast and word of warning some of it may not be suitable for young listeners you can check out more of their stuff this is their sixth episode uh but the brilliance has been good friends forever obviously my brother but they've also contributed to the liturgists several times been part of what we've been doing since the beginning so we hope you enjoy this bonus episode today and that it would help you going into this holiday season with family members who you might have some things to say whom you might have some tension with we hope that this will help send you into those spaces with some grace in your heart enjoy happy holidays everybody [Music] my name is lang leroy lim good to meet you and i'm good to share with you my story as i was saying i love sharing my story but i have more and more of an awareness that it's never my story or your story the stories we tell of our lives is the story of how we experience god working with us and i must have been told this when i was much younger but now that i'm 52 i i'm getting it you know that's it it's my story as god has worked with me and how i have responded so i grew up in in singapore to english educated parents uh they were lapsed uh seven days adventists by the time i came along they didn't go to college but they had received an english education and that was their first son and as was the habit of the rising middle class in the 60s you get a chinese name and then you get an anglicized name and they wanted elves and so uh so i have libro as my middle name and and lang means dragon because i was born the year of dragon my parents had marital difficulties when i was seven and they separated i really love my parents maybe i should tell my parents story my dad is a soft-hearted man who when i was seven met this woman so i call her aunt jenny because i don't want her to be the woman and he discovers that she had been sold by her parents to this chinese businessman to be his second wife and so you know that's out for ages and actually still outrageous that even happened in the 1960s you know and has a soft spot for her and befriends her well the old man finds out and of course he's furious and comes to my home and wants to punch my father or something like that and that's how my mother finds out that he has an affair but actually nothing had happened so she throws him out and journey's thrown out and so both of them are homeless so then they get together and then they start a family of their own i have two half brothers and her story is really sad because she had two daughters and two sons by this man and he kept the sons and threw her out with her daughters i mean just the most hateful sort of stuff so my dad's life is in tatters jenny's is my mom is mine is it's just all this stuff and then they become christians and then it's jenny who says to my auntie jen who says to my father now that we have become christians why don't you go back to your first wife right so he goes back to my mom and then they have a discussion and they say well jenny is uneducated does i have a profession how is she going to live so in singapore there's this system where the government gives you public housing that you can buy but you can only buy it as a family unit so you have a married couple so this is where my mom and dad decide to get a divorce because they actually never divorced they don't even separate it they decided to get a divorce so that he could marry her and get her the housing then now they've cleared up all the papers and they're actually not legally remarried so that's how they're sorting this thing out and so it's an only child and quite lonely had a more introspective band and someone actually a teacher in my grade school gave me a story book and it was a christian story book meaning it was christian fiction but in it was a boy who was lonely as well who was presented to the gospel by a neighbor a neighbor who was known to be a witch she was just a lovely old lady who shared with him the gospel and said that jesus is there to be his friend and so he said the sinner's prayer and i repeated along as the reader but also as a participant in that story and simply remembered bursting into tears and feeling the incredible befriending of god in me jesus christ had come to take up residency in my heart [Music] and it was so powerful it was also embarrassing because i didn't know who to talk to almost a sense of like if i share this my mom or dad you know it would be too tender a story and they wouldn't know what to do with it so i kept that secret but i had a secret friend maybe people have secret animal friends but mine was the son of god fast forward two or three years later i found myself at a rally in the anglican cathedral in singapore i think i went with my mom she had chronic ailments she wanted healing i went there was an altar call i went forward we got separated people were speaking in tongues and falling on the ground and i thought it was strange but not not alarmed i mean i've never seen anything like that before so you know it was not stranger than anything unknown right yeah it didn't have a negative reaction and i remembered uh uh going up to the bishop like he was the bishop he was charismatic within the charismatic movement and um he didn't even listen to what my prayer request was he just laid hands on me and prayed and oh my gosh i felt this fire electricity warm throughout my my body was frightful not frightening just frightful but delicious and spam my knees buckled and i wandered around what i now call ecstatic joy that felt like no god is real god is physically real [Music] and was part of that charismatic movement for many years in singapore so i pause because that was also the beginning of my difficulties with and what shall i call it with the church with christianity with evangelical christians i don't quite know what is the noun maybe in the end it was my quarrel with god but i knew i was attracted to men and a homosexual that was the word one would have used and went to christian bookstores looking for some answers there were few books to be found and the ones that were available the best that it was a passing phase the vast majority said it was a terrible sin most suggested that if you were truly a christian god would change you so then whoever called into question for me was am i i i mustn't be a christian you know i mustn't be a christian uh so something's wrong did i not fully accept jesus as lord i chosen to be baptized so what has gone wrong did i not repent enough so that my acceptance of jesus my savior was conditional am i repenting and and then all the confusion you know this my repentance a good work i'm supposed to do i thought faith saves not work so does does repentance become a kind of work okay so then if it's faith and not how hard i repent then there's something wrong with my faith so i'm going to all these charismatic rallies and going up for the altar call and wanting to get healed i wouldn't tell the gila what my issue was i felt like you know god if you know what it is you know he should know right he is the gift of the holy spirit yes son i know you're homosexual let me heal you i mean so and i don't say it with humor but uh it was it was awful the problem then not anymore the problem then was finding myself caught between two loves uh the fact that every now and then there would be a male friend i would find myself really drawn to and and i would say yes attractive suddenly there was sexuality but it was not just that it was drawn to i wanted to be closer to be connected to my heart i think we forget uh how much young people of whatever orientation uh when they're young it's the beginning of love that they feel that's what's so traumatizing it's not just that you're horny is that it comes with a heart opening and you don't quite know what to do with that for me there have been these moments of having close male friendships and that i knew was becoming more than friends and then i i am told this is wrong and so i'm caught with between my love of god and this other impulse of the heart that's the difficulty i think it has all been misconstrued to say well it's about sex come on ask any teenager gay straight or whatever it's what about sex a depressed 14 year old our hormone sex yeah of course that's it but the hormones and the psychosis intensifies what's going on in our heart that's all and then i was fortunate to win a scholarship to a wonderful international high school called the united world college founded to promote peace and understanding among young people there are 15 of them around the world now i was chosen to represent singapore and so it was my first time leaving singapore and i went to the us to new mexico it was beautiful i was up in the mountains i saw stars for the first time i think where you see like five stars because it's you know humid and it's an equator and it's a city i saw stars good heavens yes good heavens indeed i saw stars you know the milky way thousands actually millions of them and i'm in nature and my theological struggles and of course there are attractive boys there that i'm struggling not to have feelings for but i go out into nature and i'm hiking and i'm rock climbing and i start understanding that god is in nature i'm in nature and if you love you know that old evangelical song how great that works behold the stars well now i get it so nature uh started really becoming for me another source of a direct experience of god's goodness what bears witness to god scripture we think of it it's not just that paper text called the bible nature is scripture the goodness and the love of god and diversity of god it's just here and if it's in nature it's also in me it's also in my body and so my experiences are also another valid way to say this is who god is not not exclusive so exclusive then i become a kind of a you know self-inflated messiah maniac but it's like but that i'm not an invalid source of knowing god as sinful and broken as i might be you know as a faulty radio receiver [Music] there's lots of static you're still receiving something what is true of me is true of you it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com slash liturgists that helped me break out of the biblical fundamentalism that had been part of my early upbringing i finished princeton i go to seminary uh one it was to sort out for myself my own theological beliefs i was not out as a gay man but then how do i be a gay christian because in the 80s 90s so much of the christian talk in this country was not just hostile it was violent and many people who grew up with a christian background just simply rejected their faith you know throughout the bath water and who cares about the baby for me it was not not possible i didn't want to because i had these experiences of closeness with uh with god uh i could not uh no then i could not forget it was part of who i who i was who i am so seminary was a good place to work that through at union theological seminary in new york city uh had feminist liberation theology black liberation theology and gay liberation theology so that's where i went the only reason i went to seminary was also as a major at princeton i was thinking of being a diplomat back in singapore or doing economics to essentially help make a better world and i remembered in this economic class with this professor who was telling us how microeconomics markets work perfectly to allocate resources right and i put on my hand and i said sir i didn't use this first thing because i came from singapore and everyone's a service so markets work perfectly to allocate resources why are there poor black people in trenton and this was not a naughty question i just come to the u.s and this was my third year not into the whole us dialogue around racism this was just a foreign student international student just perplexed right taking a train to trenton and you see like my goodness this town is terrible it's not like princeton new jersey right and it's poor and they're black and why are they poor black people it's not a racist question about like there's something wrong with black people is there simply a question of in this society of yours i see that you have black people and they are poor and you tell me that your market works well why innocent question and he said oh young man we are positivists in this class for your normative question go nate's door to the religion department but my question was not a normative question about about values my question actually was in fact a positivist question in fact why do you have a class of people who are poor what does your economics say anyway he didn't answer my question the economics department didn't i went over to the religion department and cornell west was there as a professor and i started taking courses in american history and philosophy emerson and dubois and you know franz fanon the wretched of the earth and started looking at racism and colonialism and reading liberation theology that was when my christian faith came alive for oh it must be the third or fourth time i think throughout one's life you know this this flame that god gives us uh we want to call it when you receive jesus or baptism or confirmation whatever you your name your first moment you know we we gotta have a new vlog put in and we know that you for me the new log was reading the gospel where jesus is in solidarity uh with the poor and marginalized and a heartbroken and oppressed and ashamed and the outcast the materialism that has been the blessing of american society and it's a mixed blessing because that has come partly from my exploitation but still we're blessed to have good things but materialism ain't gonna make nobody happy and right with god on the other hand if you don't have the basics you're gonna be deeply unhappy and it is a right for every human being to have access to some of the basics and we can't agree on that in this country you know the the secular left or even the secular right has no space for the transcendence and evangelicals hold that gem but they get so preoccupied with the anxieties about sex good heavens and gender you know let's like loosen up you can still be in love with with god without getting all twisted up over that but the other parts were like yeah to have an experience of a transcendence that that this life is not just a materialism that no it isn't just about me winning over you we are called in our baptism to be new creations to have economic relationships with each other that are wholesome and not based on exploitation you can be expected whilst you're being legal let's get that clear we have a lot of legal exploitation going on america can be a light upon the hill but it's got to be a different kind of a light in a different hill i think this is again the fruits of getting older and having the blessings of it is actually my relationship with my parents when i chose to come out to them i saw i would come out to them before i turned 30. so no my 10 30 i told them it was incredibly difficult and horrifying for all of us because my dad brought up the bible she turned it to sodom and gomorrah and started quoting scriptures at me well my mother chased me around the apartment trying to lay hands on me in order to exercise the demon on me and it's comical to think of it now like a terrible be great movie uh but at some deep part i mean it's awful i chose to individuate meaning i chose to be myself that's for my own psychological health so i didn't see them for seven years and that did a very important work of uh being myself but as rabbi friedman suggested one should differentiate but once you shall stay connected so i did stay connected meaning i did not choose to to cut off and and they to their credit did not disown me their persistence on trying to change me and bring me to reparative therapy came out of love but really really misguided we had a few encounters where they have changed over time in part because uh my my partner of 21 years is a just a lovely human being and i think that they could not help themselves but realize like he was a good guy you know just that he was a guy and and uh they came to our wedding although they said we are christians we can't we can't uh we can't condone this so i said well come for the party then so they came so they came and then the ceremony was taking place so they said we'll come to a ceremony but but we come bless it so so i said okay fine then you sit in the back row so so they tried they tried hard i want to describe the kind of evangelical my parents are they are not college educated they love the lord they read books which i think they shouldn't read because it just narrowed their minds but i also saw that it gave them hope right they're so complex you know they gave them some kind of hope my dad said i i have to talk to you before i die uh one thing i said what what one thing and he said god made adam and eve not adam and steve i said okay good i know where that phrase comes from you've been reading those books this is my father completely up front and rather than get defensive i thought let's get into inquiry and i think i understand where he's coming from so i said to him well let's talk about the nature of god then rather than nature of human sexuality who is god so i said god is creator is god is so creative so god is creative so god has created our hands for what we eat within we write with it we care for babies with it okay yeah can we also kill with it yes many purposes to our hands so god created us with mouths with our mouths eating yes okay speaking yes what about kissing and what about oral sex so yeah mouth can be used for oral sex straight people do it so i said okay same thing with the ears yes for defecation it also has lots of nerve endings it's pleasurable and it can it's a sex organ and hey it's not just gay people straight people too my father at that point oh my gosh if you think that anus is a sex token we have nothing to say anymore he never brought up the subject again never pushed for us to change it's just it's just between you and god the next year we gave them a vacation to go to paris and that was great and also not great because they didn't like to see home and eye holding hands but they came in other words we learned to be present to each other we didn't agree we still had these outbursts of pain where they would say something and i would react i would say something and they would react and so we learned not to talk about some things that were painful like they were asking me you know so do you believe you know so you have all these buddhist images you know gosh you know you go from being gay to having buddhist images you know that's idolatry i'm like okay we're not gonna we can't go there but can we just be present with each other and so the great gift that god taught us was okay we can be present to each other we can still enjoy each other there are ways to love each other because love starts regrowing my dad asked me to go with him to nepal so he's been a missionary to nepal for 25 years now my dad was the man who failed to launch and he started working as a janitor and so he lives off my mother's pension and then he works as a janitor he works as my janitor although i can very well i give him an allowance he doesn't need that but he wants to work as my janitor to clean up my apartment because he says i want to take money to give to my sons and daughters in nepal now i'm not converting people who have their own religion that's my own philosophy but my dad wants to do that and so it's like great go do it in other words grudgingly i'm admiring him and then uh one evening in in a ceremony not a christian one let's say a native american bench type of ceremony the feminine voice of god spoke to me and said you know you've told your father that you love him and you've forgiven him for his infidelities you haven't told him that you actually respect him because this man works as a to to put an apologize in you so i go with him to nepal because he wants me to see his ministry and i see huts that he's built churches church buildings he's built people coming to shake his hands and of course another part of me says you know he's bringing free clothing and just like christian missionaries from the past you know there's always giveaways and that's always been part of the colonial enterprise and so he's doing the same thing in some ways because they are poor and they're coming to him because of that but it's not just that they're having community people are helping them and he's transformed and he's become a generous man my gosh wow his interpretation of the gospel is not mine just straight biblicalism but is he touching lies is god using him yes it's wrong of me to say that this is a colonial enterprise he's loving them they are not perfect ah that's the other thing there is imperfection are the good news we do there's a perfection but that forces me to also accept my parents as they are my mother's big sadness was that i wouldn't have children and then fast forward my half brothers now have children and they need child care and my mom is taking care of them and so this is my mother with whom i've struggled and i'm an only child for so long and i just realized she's full of love i don't like a theology i think part of it is just wrong but i like the practice of her life i like how she's practicing her life and of course what what we're talking about here with christianity in this country is everyone's obsessed about christian orthodoxy meaning what is a right belief but the jewish rules of our faith is autopraxia what are you what are the right practices and not only just autopraxy we might just call it author geography god is actually calling us to find ourselves in the right place not the right belief or necessity of right practice is it hand washing how do you find yourself in the right in the right place with you and god in the right place with me and you you know and my parents are now in the right place and that's been a big teaching for me so i go within the new creation church because my mom is very happy when i go with her to church do i like the church service no the music is too loud i don't like the bangy baggy music you know and i don't like a theology that's just all you know but that's okay it's not wrong you see there's so many other ways god speaks uh to us you know they find my episcopalian service old and dull yeah it is kind of a dull the the thing now is how do we enrich each other how do we grow each other and each other i mean progressives liberals evangelicals church in singapore is a mega church right it's 30 000 people they like it and they say we like it so much because pasta prince keeps on telling us it's grace it's grace and you finally get it you know i said why didn't you get it before when i was telling you is that well and so i said what do you think about you know my being gay i said it's up to you and god and i think that's a theologically honest thing so my parents are visiting us last year for my father's 80th birthday and my husband home says to them you know i i haven't called you mom and dad i called you by the asian term of reference uncle and auntie i want to call you mom and dad and dad says well if if you call me mom and dad then what do i call you son-in-law or but then i don't have a daughter i have a son but you can be your daughter in law because you're a man okay so it's only a man and wife and so we start going and round in this spiral of no gay marriage so we've been down that road so many times about what the bible says about that but then i asked a different set of questions i said so if i were to die and you know i have a really modest apartment in singapore that belongs to me the laws in singapore wouldn't recognize our marriage so it will flow to you my parents asked nicks of kim so what would you do with that and he said oh we'll keep half and the other half we give to home homes my practice day what wow so then i said uh and if i were to fall ill in singapore where my u.s will power attorney doesn't apply so you now have to make decisions for me as my clients of kin what would you do and he said home makes the decision i'm too old now i'm at the end of my life you know he's been close to you he wouldn't use your partner your couple you know you're both so close he's the closest person in your life he makes the decision for you so i'm sitting back going like they're just not going to use the words but they recognize their reality of what's going on so finally we ended the dinner okay i called you son you're my son in christ i have so many sons in christ and whom says great i'm your son in [Music] christ and that's it and we're not going to talk about gay marriage and gay sex and you know what the bible says because you know where is christ christ isn't my dad you know this guy who really wasn't a great father when i was younger all these mistakes and you know i was too young to be a father we all probably realized that and and then you know he's humble enough to turn his life around and the reality is that that's christ at work because that's a man trying to love right then i think he's recognized that in my life the continual struggle to love to love them love across these differences and that woman i have been supporting each other for 21 years and that that's love has deus ebs from monastery at texas you know where love is god is present this is what we mean by the incarnation of christ and jesus was born in a stable full of am i allowed to use the four-letter word you know [Music] and so so in the of our lives god is there born in right in the thing itself [Music] not hovering about engaged and that's what we mean by incarnation not just jesus as this only begotten son of god he has the only begotten son of god but as paul says the first born not the only born the firstborn so we are the second born and the third born to me that's the evangelical message christ is born all is not lost man so beautiful i hope you enjoyed that as much as i did thanks so much to the brilliance for letting us share that with you all to check out more of their work they make beautiful sacred music they've got their podcasts they've got all the social media stuff you can keep an eye on the brilliance music and of course this is the liturgists podcast and you can follow us at the liturgists on all of our social media and let us know what you think about this episode and other episodes so much love from all of us here at the liturgists to you for this holiday season we'll see you in the new year thanks for listening everybody