HUMAN AND SPIRITUAL JOURNEY AS SUBJECTIVE, PERSONAL, AND EXPERIENTIAL

My wife and I are currently participating in the Asia Society for Frontier Mission in Jeju, Korea this week. This morning, I presented a paper titled above to a mixture of participants representing various countries and different religious traditions in Asia, all following Jesus. I have been part of this hermeneutical group since its inception as one of the original designers. I thought I would share my paper in 3 parts (the next two parts will be longer in length).

Introduction

Humanity was inaugurated and endowed with the original blessing, the divine blessing of humankind being created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) that ended with God declaring, “It was very good” at the end of the sixth day (Genesis 1:31). The divine original blessing extends to all humanity and the single greatest pursuit of all life is to discover and live out the original blessing and design by being us which means accepting how God created each of us. Furthermore, the process of how each human being bears and stewards the blessing is to walk on a uniquely distinct path culminating in an incredible array of diversity of such expressions. All bear the image and likeness of God and what I do bear is also unrepeatably and uniquely mine. I do not lose sleep over such a mystery of universal and personal blessing, but I also grasp this to be true without knowing how.

What Jesus may have meant as living an “abundant life” (what I would like to interpret as simply my life) remains as the perennial but elusive invitation for all humanity regardless of religions, cultures, and systems. To be sure, there is not one uniform “abundant life” that prescribes and dictates to all. Rather, an abundant life assumes that we each live our unique life according to God’s original intention. Of course, we devote our entire life to discovering and living out the original intention.

Some of us have been using the language of insider approach, but in deeper analysis and on an existential level, it is essentially about permission to live one’s life as God imagined from the very beginning. God granted this freedom and permission from the beginning, but some others came along, claimed “permission” rights, and dictated certain way(s) to live life. This unfortunate development persisted for many centuries (as it is the human tendency to control and dominate) spanning many religious and cultural traditions. However, the original blessing and permission remain to be vigorously explored without distractions, distortions, and detractors. To me, this is both a missiological as well as theological endeavor as starters. In the end, this exploration will have to involve all of life and all the disciplines life has to offer.

In this paper, I would like to try to piece together how we read and interpret the Scriptures as well as to read Scriptures as divine art (captured by earnest and fallible humans) in the context of discovering our life and the Creator’s imagination in each of us. This overarching narrative portrays how grand and expansive our God is and how freeing the freedom (which comes to us as grace) of God is. As such, this journey must be subjective, personal, and experiential. The Bible and how the Bible came together to paint this very picture of subjectivity, personalism, and experiences at work.

Words that Breathe

One of the gifts and perks of being human is that we get to express our ideas, imagination, thoughts, feelings, etc. through both spoken and written words. We can also express ourselves through various forms of art, always utilizing mediums that subjectively resonate with the creators. Whether using words or not, we are all artists, expressing and making “art” with our lives. Divine creativity that we inherited from the ultimate Creator must find its human expression. All human beings create something meaningful according to each of our historical and unique imaginations. We exist to create. Life happens to be the vast empty canvas where we get to go to work as artists. Life is a medium and arena where the art of being oneself expresses itself.

There was once a time when spoken words were the norm but in the 15th century Gutenberg singlehandedly (and once and for all) placed written words over spoken words in vast majority cultures around the world. Though all written words feature both intent and impact, the power of words lies in the impact circle of interpretation and meaning. No one reads without interpretation. No one lives life without interpretation. Thus, life is an endless series of interpretations based on subjectivity, and art expresses itself through life. Invariably, the author’s intent in the literature world remains elusive to pinpoint (not to mention the cultural distances) especially if the authors no longer exist to defend or explain.