Living for God's Pleasure

Lessons from the Pursuit of PhD

Picture with the President

A desire for learning was installed in me when my elementary school promoted me to 3^rd grade from the 1^st without attending the 2^nd.  But life was not always a smooth sailing like that; through many ups and downs, I have finally come to the end of my formal schooling.  As the reality of my final graduation sinks in, I have begun to see how this journey for PhD has finally taught me lessons that should have been learnt many many years ago.  Three things stand out in my pursuit of PhD; they are 1) Theological Clarity, 2) Academic Affection, and 3) Character Refinement.

1.  Theological Clarity: My Christian beginning was complicated.  Before meeting any Christians and reading the Bible myself, a small gospel booklet had convinced me to follow Christ.  Eventually I came in contact with a Christian group that was strongly influenced by the Baptist cessationism.  My water baptism took place in India, in a church associated with Church of North India, an Episcopalian body.  While fellowshipping with the Baptistic church after my baptism in India, God rocked my Christian world.  In one fateful day, I attended a worship service in a different church in Dhangadi; the speaker that day was from Sri Lanka, Dr. David Balasingh.  He talked about being baptized in the Holy Spirit, the subject that I had been constantly struggling ever since I took water baptism.  I had asked my Baptistic friends as when one should be baptized in the Holy Spirit.  They had no clear answers.  But this preacher was so convinced that unless you are baptized in the Holy Spirit, you cannot be effective witness of the Lord.  After the service, I tried to ask him more about this subject through his interpreter Basant Prakash Bhaikaji (Shrestha).  But there was not much said, all Dr. Balasingh said was, "if you want to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, go and read book of Acts chapters 2, 4, 8, 10, and 19."  I wrote those references at the back of my Bible and went back.  Throughout the week I had forgotten about what he told me, but on Friday night, as I began to prepare for the Saturday service, I remembered what he had said on the preceding Saturday in that little church by the river, across from the Muslim cemetery, through his interpreter.  At about 10:30 PM, I picked up my Bible, read until chapter 8 and didn't find anything special.  By the time I began chapter 10, I was feeling sleepy; closing the Bible, I started to pray in my rented room.  I remember saying to God "God, I don't know anything about this thing called baptism in the Holy Spirit, but if there is anything that you have for me and I haven't received it, please give me.  I want to be baptized in the Holy Spirit."  No sooner I had finished such a prayer, something amazing happened, my hands went up, my voice rose and I continued to pray the same thing but in a bolder and louder voice.  Unaware of the time I spent in prayer, I found myself fallen on bed, lying on my back, hands lifted up and speaking in a kind of language I had never heard.  At times I would feel as if my body was being lifted, at times I would feel as if my vocal cord was so enlarged that I could not close it any more to stop me from speaking.  A great sense of joy flooded my heart and I disturbed the whole neighborhood; dogs barking and people knocking on my door and windows.  To make the matter worse, the pastor of the Baptist church that I was belonging to was there (I had no idea that it had been hours since I disturbed the neighbors).  Following that experience, the Baptist church gave me two options; either to recant my experience and stop speaking in tongues or be excommunicated.  They asked one of their most senior ministers to counsel me.  I remember this brother willing to hold my feet in urging me to stop speaking in tongues.  He convinced me that it was from the devil and I was being deceived.  Knowing his theological and ministerial credential, I was worried if I had been truly deceived or was being possessed by an evil spirit.  So to appease these brothers, I decided to stop speaking in tongues in front of them.  I remember biting my tongues while worshiping God with them.  I knew I was not possessed by an evil Spirit, I knew the experience I had was so amazing; it was a life-transforming experience.  But I didn’t want to be excommunicated; I needed to belong to this Christian group.  Unfortunately, I could not hide my experience and eventually I was expelled from that church.  Once out of the Baptist church, I decided to attend the church where I heard Dr. Balasingh speak first.  This fellowship belonged to Assemblies of God denomination; one of the prominent Pentecostal denominations.  Through this fellowship, I was recommended to attend Southern Asia Bible College from where I completed my four years Bachelor of Theology.  Returning to Nepal, I decided not to join the Assemblies of God but to remain as an indigenous minister of the gospel without any former affiliation.  Later, got the opportunity to study in a Presbyterian seminary for my M.Div.  Experience in this seminary convinced me for the need to be ordained as a minister and decided to receive the ordination under the Presbyterian Church.  In this seminary, I understood the value of theological reflection instead of depending on my theological sentiment.  Up until that time, my theological worldview was shaped by my experience of baptism in the Holy Spirit.  I found reading the book of Acts so comforting and inspiring.  But when I read the other portion of the New Testament, I did not feel the same kind of affinity with my experience of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.  To make the matters worse, Cessationist interpretation of the book of Acts became a formidable hurdle for me to overcome.  Even the Pentecostal sympathizers like James Dunn and others have left no stone unturned to debunk the Pentecostal interpretation of the book of Acts and their doctrine of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.  As I turned to my Pentecostal cousins to see if they could help me stand up against this onslaught of Evangelical opposition to my experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, I chose Gordon Fee, who is by bar the most prolific Pentecostal theologian of our time.  To my dismay, I found Fee to have accepted James Dunn's position when it comes to receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit after conversion.  Even those Pentecostals who claim to have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit have concluded that the doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit subsequent to conversion cannot be sustained from any other New Testament books apart from the book of Acts.  So, it appeared to me that Pentecostals are willing to divide the New Testament understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in two parts; Luke standing for the baptism in the Holy Spirit subsequent to conversion while Paul and the rest opposing Luke's view by claiming that one receives the baptism of the Holy Spirit in conversion.  Such a division I cannot comprehend; Holy Spirit cannot be saying two contradictory things at the same time.  Either Luke is right or Paul is right; or we have not understood both of their understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit.  With such a dilemma at hand, I have to make up my mind as where I stand in this debate.  Should I stand with Luke or Paul?  I decided that I should not choose between one and the other; I want to see what Paul had to say about my experience.  With Luke I had no quarrels, but it was Paul who appeared to be contradicting what I experienced.  But when I looked at Paul's experience I have found my peace of mind; I have found my theological conviction and that is; there is no disagreement between Paul and Luke.  But to come to this conclusion is not an easy task.  The traditional understanding of justification and regeneration had to be looked at from a new angle; an angle that is prone to come under severe attack.  In the protestant and catholic traditions, salvation is attributed to the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is believed to be the one who brings a person to faith in Christ.  In these traditions it is believed that the Holy Spirit comes in the hearts of the sinners before Christ comes in.  But by looking at Pauline letters, we found that salvation takes place when one hears the gospel.  The gospel proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit has the power to create faith in the hearts of the listeners.  Just as in the beginning God created everything by his word, now the new life is also created by the word of the gospel.  When a sinner hears the gospel with the intention of receiving it; the gospel recreates faith in the human heart and a new human spirit created.  At the point of regeneration, a human spirit is created; it is not the Holy Spirit coming and living in the sinner as it is thought in the evangelical theology.  The Holy Spirit comes to the sinner only after the sinner has been recreated by the power of the gospel.  In all of Pauline discussion of salvation it is faith in the gospel that saves a sinner and not the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is not the agent of creation; God in Christ through the gospel creates new life in human heart and then imparts the Holy Spirit as his presence.  Even John and Peter agree with Paul that the new birth is the result of God's word.  Once the new creation comes into existence by the power of the gospel, then God comes to dwell in that creation through the coming of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is not the life creating agent, but the life-sustaining agent.  If this is the case, then I can fully rest assure my struggle of reconciling my experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit with Paul.  Paul was a man who himself went through this experience.  Writing a PhD thesis from Pauline writing has given me a theological clarity which I had struggled for so many years.  But this is not the end of my struggle of course, it is just the beginning.  I will have to work hard to see how Pauline understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit provides me the basis for my understanding of the baptism in the Holy Spirit subsequent to conversion.  I no longer have to be afraid of Paul, rather, in Paul, I see my own experience.   In the next posts, I will list the other two lesions; 

1. Academic Affection
2. Character Refinement

Living for God's Pleasure

Living for God's Pleasure (English+Korean)

"The Blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of Prosperity"

Aside the American involvement in Korean War, a few people in the world knew about South Korea.  Even the industrial revolution of 70s and 80s failed to introduce "South" Korea to the rest of the world because almost all exported merchandise was marked "Made in Korea", implying that there was only one Korea, the communist Korea.  Probably the dictatorial governments in both the nations for a long period of time made it difficult to separate one from the other.  A prominent Korean missiologist, Dr. Jun Ho Jin, often used to joke with us in our seminary days about the place of South Korea in the world.  In the early 1990s, he was invited to minister in Eastern Europe; his host came to receive him with a Hyundai car.  Excited to see a brand from his country, Dr. Jun excitedly complimented "You have a nice car!"  With great pleasure and excitement, the host replied, "Yes, Sir, the North Korean cars are great!  Do you know they have a car building company called Hyundai?" 

My own revelation of South Korea came only after the 88 Seoul Olympics.  Until then, I had the similar assumption that all the merchandise marked "Made in Korea" came from North because South was just a breakaway part waiting to be united with the rest.

Same thing can be said about the church in Korea; especially the presence of numerous mega-churches in South Korea clouds our vision of reality in such a way that we think anything from Korea is super spiritual because people like David Younggi Cho are born there--because a one time poor nation became an industrial miracle in a short span of 20 years.  Surely God was blessing the Korean people with material blessings in response to their spiritual hunger and the price they paid for believing in Jesus Christ.  The breakneck speed of industrial development under the strong dictatorial rule of President Park Chung Hee was so spiritualized that it was considered to be God's reward for the Christians' spiritual excellence and prayer.  The Tertullian proverb "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church" was almost replaced in Korean psyche as "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of economic progress".  During that economic boom, millions of Koreans joined the church and in no time Korea became the second largest missionary sending nation in the world. 

Unfortunately after the Asian economic crisis the growth of the church went in the reverse gear; the protestant church has since experienced a steady decline and if the trend does not change, in 20 to 30 years, these mega-churches might look like the senior citizen's asylums.  In the mission fronts; Korea still has about 20 thousand missionaries around the world, but compared to their numbers, the positive impact is yet to be felt in many of these nations where they work.  Rather a disturbing fact concerning the relational difficulties with the native Christians continues to follow the Korean missionaries; particularly in the developing nations.  Interestingly, the Catholics on the other hand are doing very well; they have experienced steady growth after the economic crisis and the non-Christian Korean population is rather willing to give them the benefit of doubt.  Missionary like Father Lee Tae Seok who gave his heart for Sudan is revered by the Catholics and non-Catholic Koreans alike. 

The decline of Protestant church at home and the relatively spineless impact of Korean missionaries abroad signal to a symptomatic problem within the protestant communities.  And the crux of the matter might have to be with the Tertullian proverb.  "The blood of the martyrs" is surely the seed of the church; it cannot be the seed of economic development.  But in my estimation, the protestant church in Korea, subconsciously, has made a fatal mistake by believing that the economic progress was somehow God's reward for their spirituality.  The Christian martyrs who gave their lives in this nation stood to lift up the Cross of Christ and taught their fellow believers to carry the cross daily.  However, though the Korean landscape today is filled with the high-rise church steeples and crosses, if a martyr from the 19^th or 20^th century had to visit, he/she would be terribly disappointed to see them far removed from the everyday life of Korean Christians; in fact the currency has replaced the cross.  Churches have become like gigantic corporations and companies who only care about the number of people and amount of money collected on Sundays.  Fulfilling the founding/Senior Pastor's dream of becoming a mega-pastor by either expanding his mission work/television network/books or a building project becomes the primary objective of the local church's existence.  In a church like this, so many innocent Christians are used, abused and abandoned after their usefulness is exhausted and no wonder the church is declining; survival of these mega-churches is now depending on the death of the smaller churches.  There is a marketing strategy of self-help gospel preached from these mega-pulpits as bait by demonstrating how the senior pastor has succeeded by applying those principles.  The lure of the currency of comfort more than the cross of Christ attracts these members from the smaller churches.  Every month, hundreds of smaller churches are shutting their door for Sunday worship because the bigger church in the city functions like a modern mall. 

I am afraid that the Cross of Christ has ceased to be the moral and the spiritual compass for the Korean Christianity; the cross has been safely kept on top of the church building so that Christians don't have to carry it daily.  In the mission field; thousands of missionaries fly out of Korea every year with great ambitions but very few last in the mission field more than three years.  Those who remain in the mission field find their heart become increasingly negative towards the very people they thought were gong to offer their lives for.  The hierarchical and class mentality becomes their biggest obstacle in respecting the local people who are poorer and lower compared to the missionaries; Korean tradition, culture and language tell that you cannot respect a person who appears to be lower than you.  To make the matter more complicated, Korea's economic development becomes the starting point in sharing the gospel; and this raises the false hope in the hearts of the impoverished seekers.  Eventually through various ways, the local people hope in the missionary to meet their material needs rather than trusting God for their salvation from sin.  But for the number and success oriented missionary, it does not matter how the local people understand the gospel so long as they come and he has some good report to send back to his donors.  Thus, the protestant church in Korea and its missionaries are still trying to convince the world that the "blood of the martyrs is the seed of economic development". 

Nevertheless, the blood of the martyrs will not go in vain.  Even though the cross of Christ is now relegated to the roof tops, it will stand tall and continue to pierce the Korean hearts so that they will experience the true life in Christ; so that the church won't have to stop growing when some economic crises comes upon.  Every time I drive through the countryside and come across an empty village church with its cross on top, my heart simply breaks in knowing that at one time there were men and women, boys and girls, who made that ground holy by their steadfast faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, by their willingness to carry their cross even to the point of being martyred for their faith.  There is so much holy blood of the saints spilled in this land and God will not allow the god of materialism silence that seed which Tertullian talked about.  I believe a new generation of Korean saints carrying the cross of Christ will rise up to dislodge the currency driven mega-churches and pastors.  I believe a new generations of Father Lee Tae Seok will rise up to re-define the Korean missions instead of allowing the donation hunting missionaries destroy Korea's image of a nation where so much holy blood had been spilled for the cross of Christ.  May be the Cross of Christ is left on the roof top for the time being, but even there, it will stand tall and God will draw his people to himself!

Nepali videocast

जीवनमा आशिष् र श्रापको रहस्य (भिडियो सन्देस)

Why Should We Pray?

No Margin for Error

विनाविस्वास परमेश्‍वरलाई रिझाउन असम्भव छ

Eureka! Have you got what you are looking for?

In every culture, we all remember as little kids playing "hide and seek".  Being able to locate the hidden member brought a sense of wonder and immense pleasure to the heart of the seeker, and the game continued without getting tired of doing it all over again.  As a father, I used to play this game with my son from the time he was a toddler; every time he found me under the blanket or behind the door, he would laugh his heart out; I could see a great sense of joy in finding what he was looking for.  I wish life was as simple as like that toddler finding his half hidden father behind the door or under the blanket so that, as often as possible, we would throw our hands up in the air and laugh our hearts out with a sense of accomplishment in finding what we were looking for.  The game of "seeking" continues in the adult life; even though we often do not know what or who we are looking for.  Some of us spend a life-time of seeking and still remain empty-handed, disappointed but unwilling to end the game, knowing that there lies an elusive object of our search in which we peg our hopes of finding happiness and final accomplishment. 

When I first read the New Testament, the first verse that stuck to my mind was Matthew 7:7 in which Jesus says "seek and ye shall find".  I was 17 and nearly all my conscious life up until that time, I had spent in seeking something.  I remember seeking it in the Hindu Holy books, in the temples, in the holy places in India, and in the starry night sky of my remote part of Nepal where you could count the stars; they felt so close and so real as if a voice from them would bring me the answer to my deepest longing - who am I, where have I come from, why am I here, and what is my end?  These were not philosophical questions of a person who had become weary of life; these were existential questions of a boy who never knew his parents until the age of 11; these were questions ingrained in my psyche from the day I became conscious of my existence.  But by 17, I had decided to end my quest; I was ready to end the game, but something kept me alive, a something that Tolstoy also did not know as why he did not end his life;

I was happy, yet I hid away a cord to avoid being tempted to hang myself by it to one of the pegs between the cupboards of my study where I undressed alone every evening, and ceased carrying a gun because it offered too easy a way of getting rid of life.  I knew not what I wanted, I was afraid of life; I shrank from it, and yet there was something I hoped for from life. 

At the age of 18, Tolstoy became skeptical of everything he learnt as a Christian. In his Confession he says; “Every time I tried to display my innermost desires-a wish to be morally good-I was met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to base desires I was praised and encouraged.” Tolstoy gave in to all kinds of immoral life.  The more immoral and filthy he became, the more people around him gave him the company and praised him.  Such an irrational praise of an immoral person finally got to him and began to suspect the very kind of life he was living; he found his soul within himself protesting the kind of company he was in and the kind of life he was living.  This inner quest for truth and meaning hunted him so much that he began to envy the peasants whose lives were filled with all kinds of hardships and sorrows but they lived life without fear; to them, life was not wearisome whereas the rich and famous found no meaning in life.  For the peasants, when time came for them to leave this world, they would do it with tranquility and an assurance of surety that Tolstoy could not comprehend.  Eventually, he discovered the reason for such a tranquil life of the peasants compared to the strife ridden life of the counts and noblemen; the difference was, the peasants had faith in God whereas the rich and the famous believed in themselves or in their wealth and power.  That was the turning point for this man whose last audible words are believed to be "To seek, always to seek".  Ever since he came to his senses, biblically speaking, he lived his life with the quest of seeking the "Kingdom of God within".  His view of God and Bible were not accepted by the church; and duly got excommunicated, but he was a man who spent his life searching this God without whom he said, it is not possible for human to live.  In the Kingdom of God is Within You, he says;

Let a man only understand his life as Christianity teaches him to understand it, let him understand, that is, that his life belongs to not to him--not to his own individuality, nor to his family, nor to the state--but to him who has sent him into the world, and let him once understand that he must therefore fulfill not the law of his own individuality, nor his family, nor of the state, but the infinite law of him from whom he has come; and he will not only feel himself absolutely free from every human power, but will even cease to regard such power as at all able to hamper anyone.

After seeking power and passion throughout the better part of his life; Tolstoy finally found what he was looking for.  At the age of 82, he renounced the material life and the strife ridden family behind and went on a quest for solitude so that he would be united with the one he had finally found.  And in so a fitting way, after two months of leaving home, his earthly journey came to an end in a rural railway station. 

When I first read Matthew 7:7, again it ignited in me a desire to seek that which I didn't know, and coming to the gospel of Luke 15, I began to see a different Jesus; a Jesus who was seeking me all along the way.  Finding me was his greatest joy that he would call the angels in heaven to join him in celebration!  Such a revelation of Jesus brought me to tears and finally to my knees; he made his way into my barren heart, filled me with his love and compassion so deep that all my questing came to a grinding halt.  Like a little toddler, I laughed alone in the jungle where I had gone to surrender my life to Christ; like Archimedes running out of the bath tub naked into the streets of Syracuse, I wanted to jump in the streets of Dhangadi shouting "Eureka", but decided to keep it all in my heart and chose to talk to the trees about my new found life in Christ.  After several months of excitement, I finally mustered my faith to tell about this Jesus to my co-teachers and students of the school where I was teaching and rightly was expelled from that school for doing that.  Losing that job was no big deal, this was one of the greatest discoveries of my life and I had to tell it to as many as I could!   Only after I found him did I know that all along I was looking for him and him alone because nothing else could have satisfied me so fully and so completely.  It is now almost 30 years and the excitement has only increased; nothing excites me more than telling to People who Jesus is and what he can do for them.

Looking at people's life today, I see in their faces a similar kind of quest.  They hide their quest behind humor, knowledge, wealth, fame, power and pure absurdities; but the inner quest goes on.  Like Tolstoy, they think that having power and fulfilling their passions would somehow bring fulfillment but they find, as he found, that this only makes them emptier.  In the most lonesome moment of life, there is no one or nothing on which they can lean and like many, including Tolstoy, they would be tempted to look for the rope or a gun; and some manage to do it anyway.  But for those of us who have managed to survive, we can testify from experience and revelation that there is no hope apart from Christ.   Therefore, as the prophet Isaiah said, "Seek him while he may be found"; it is my desire that the reader would turn to Jesus and find what life really is.  There may come a time when it will be impossible to seek him and thereby forfeit this amazing life. But so long as you are alive, it is time to seek him if you have not found.

However, seeking does not come to an end in a different sense; in the sense in which Tolstoy went to seek at the age of 82; not because he had not found but because he had found the one he was looking for.  This is the kind of seeking Jesus meant in Matthew 6:33; it’s a seeking in which we discover what life in Christ is really like; it is the kind of life that is absolutely free; free from the control of any power or the properties of this world; "You will know the truth and truth will set you free"!

Why and What Should We Pray For?

A Choice with no margin for Error (27/01/13)