As We Go

By Jonathan Ho

Last year I wrote my first article for KRC, about the difficulties my friends have had in finding a home in the church. As a second generation Asian American living on the East Coast, I have found few places where I have felt at home. My family culture is Taiwanese, but I attended public schools of mostly Caucasian students in a New England suburb. Like many young Asian Americans, I took piano and cello lessons, and many extra study classes through programs such as Kumon (a learning center) and Kaplan. After graduating high school, I attended a predominantly Jewish college and I now spend most of my time in very Westernized circles.

You might not relate with these specific experiences, but I believe we share something in common: we are strangers and aliens. We belong and at the same time, we do not belong. As a reader of an English section written to a primarily Chinese audience, you are standing at the intersection of cultures.

Intersections exist where paths cross, and they are also places where we can choose to take a new path. Although we often see life as one specific way or another, I believe Jesus gives us a third way, one which exists at the tension of left and right, of rules and freedom. I once heard someone say that wisdom exists at the point of tension of “complementary truths,” truths which seem opposed to one another but which are also both true.

The theme of this issue is “God in All Aspects of Our Lives.” The articles here explore the tensions we often ignore: does dying to myself mean neglecting self-care? What does having a Heavenly King have to do with voting? Is leisure time a waste of time? How can I be freed from sin and given God’s love and yet feel fallen and depressed?

All these articles have been written by dear friends of mine who are in this journey of figuring out what it means to walk with God and to be sons and daughters of God. They have wrestled with and continue to wrestle with these truths in the hope that Christ would be revealed in them.

My hope and prayer is that God would use these articles to open our eyes to the Kingdom of God, to see that Jesus’ death and resurrection opened the way not to a rigid religious path, but to a freedom to live as true human beings. May God help us trust in his ways and not our own.

Finally, I want to thank Sloan Milliken for his hard work over the years editing this section. He has been full of grace and support in helping me transition over. He has poured his heart out into this section and I pray God may use me to continue what he and Jay Zinn, another previous editor, have started, to help the body of Christ discover the Kingdom of God as foreigners and strangers on earth.

Many Blessings,
Jonathan Ho

P.S. I’d love to hear if these articles helped you and if you have any questions or topics you’re curious about. Please email thoughts, questions, and comments to: [email protected]