HELLO
In my first entry, I wanted to share the heart and inspiration behind the name of my blog and what inspired me to create it.
I decided to name my blog free as the sky, because freedom is at the core of who I am. I deeply desire all humanity to experience freedom, the freedom to be who we each are as who God created each of us to be.
I have come to this point in my journey, having traveled through intimate involvement with the evangelical missions movement for more than 30 years. This experience has been both a blessing and a baggage for me. I am who I am because of how evangelicalism has shaped me over the years. At the same time, it also blinded me to other realities of faith traditions (that were outside of my own) and eventually reached its capacity to offer me answers that I was looking for (really more about questions than answers—It’s not even to say I have questions in life. It’s the realization that I [or my existence] am a question that only God can answer). I didn’t know there were other “deep wells” to drink from.
What I discovered
out of desperation more than anything else…having run out of options to turn to…
is the contemplative or mystical traditions of writing, which then began to speak to me in ways that finally gave my soul the language and words to describe my life’s journey.
I am not an ex-evangelical (some coined the term exvangelical), although I have left certain facets of evangelicalism behind and thus am profoundly sympathetic to ex-evangelicals. I don’t really want to be labeled (true to a free nature).
Naturally, I have been filtering the evangelical stream (including more narrowly the evangelical missions stream) through the contemplative lens and seeing significant limitations and honestly how suffocating it is to navigate life within it. My language now is more of God’s Kingdom reigning in all facets of God’s creation globally. Action without contemplation is too damaging (whatever we happen to be doing)—violating the foundational premise that we are human beings, not merely doings—which inevitably leads to creation and management of hectic and superficial religion all over the world. In the end (perhaps penultimate) from my vantage point, I desire all (peoples, languages, tribes, and nations) to be who God created them to be without someone (or something) forcing them to be who they are not.
This to me is a true reflection of God’s Kingdom (The Big Reality) coming on this earth!
There are two perspectives from which I write my blog. One will be to voice my critiques, questions, offerings, and ways forward in missions, integrating the contemplative stream. This undoubtedly will seep through in my writings both explicitly and implicitly. More foundationally and passionately, however, this is my personal faith journey riddled with dark valleys and high peaks and uneasy questions and answers and ultimately the shedding of my false self and discovering my true self that I think will speak to pockets of people who are seeking how to live this life as God’s Kingdom citizens.
-Chong Kim