#typewriter therapy

I’m realizing more and more how much my theology was forged in the furnace of dominant westernized thought and how easily the wax scaffolding of that doctrine melts under scrutiny.

If Scripture is from the East, told in eastern oral tradition, and spoke against the western trappings of materialism and expansion: how much of my faith was stripped of its eastern roots and baptized in manifest destiny?

Looking back on the textbooks I read in my SBC seminary, they’re all by one demographic. Yes, we can learn from anyone. But the lack of diverse voices meant my faith was squeezed by a narrow lens. Not timeless at all.

In 1807, British missionaries made a “Slave Bible” that removed chunks of Scripture like the book of Exodus. They were afraid it would incite rebellion among enslaved Africans. Much of our theology is still taught this way: ignoring the parts that would inspire the oppressed and shake those in power.

How much did I miss by being raised in a constricted, breathless, imperialized faith that was the “only way”? How much has the church today limited God’s imagination?

I’ve heard often, “Because the Bible says so.” Okay, but whose interpretation? Yours? Mine? From the era of the Crusades? When they were burning people at the stake? When it was used to support slavery? What if we have different conclusions? What if we’re both wrong?

When someone says, “I disagree with your theology,” they’re saying, “I disagree with your interpretation of theology based on my interpretation of theology.” So where did it come from? Trace it back and it’s always from a person. With a tiny brain like yours and mine.

If my opinion is always matching up with my interpretation, I’m carving God into my own image. Then I am not in dialogue with God, but manipulating a robot-idol to do my bidding and to turn off at my convenience. I’m only colluding with myself as my own accomplice to maintain the power I want to keep.

One thing I know is clear. Jesus said plainly: I must love people. Especially the wounded and oppressed. There’s no equivocation or wavering there. How it looks will differ, but that it must happen cannot. Where Christ is, I want to be too.

— J.S.

I’ve worked in the hospital long enough to find:

Not every storm will pass.

Some oceans do not part.

Some things will never be okay.

Belief is powerful—

but it doesn’t magically make the life you want.

Sometimes the cancer wins. The evil gets away with it. The law and medicine and prayers don’t always work.

Life, as you’ve been told, is remarkably unfair. But it’s even worse than you think. If you knew the cold cases never solved, the surgeries that fail, the hate crimes unrecorded, the abuses unreported, the thousands of gofundmes that get nothing, the patients who die alone—it’s too much to think about. I’ve seen nameless people end up cremated by the county without a trace.

These types of catchphrases—

“Just put your mind to it, you attract what you believe, hustle and grind and get up at 4am like me, you don’t have it because you don’t”—

They only work in a vacuum. It assumes the luxury of a perfectly windless environment with unlimited windfall. It does not account for failed systems which actively hurt people who already live in deficit. It does not account for purely bad luck. To blame is only to place a second burden which pushes further down, never up.

Here’s the other thing. Life is made bearable by those who bear it with you. Who crawl with you to the finish line. Who remind you what happened to you is not your doing.

So often it’s assumed we need correction when really we need connection: to know we are not untouchable simply because life itself withdrew from us. To know that grace is not contingent on how we may have fallen. Grace, in fact, is exactly for when we fall.

I don’t need to know how to succeed in three steps. I need the people who will crawl with me when I can’t take another step. I need the grace which whispers to me through grief, depression, and sorrow, in the hopes that glimpses of bare joy will occasionally peek through the wreckage.

My hope is even when the storm stays, you will too.

Even if for a moment, in the worst of it, in the dirt and hurt of it, I hope you will visit a little while.

That in loss and abandonment, grace remains.

That when every prayer goes unanswered: you are the miracle I have been looking for.

— J.S.

If you think we can “agree to disagree” on theology so easily, I have to tell you about my old friend “Don.”

Don was a pastor who told me satan was using me. I was eager to believe Don because I didn’t want satan using me. In my impressionable young mind, I tried hard to get on his good side.

Don was the type of guy in constant lecture mode. Always condescending. But his theology only made that worse.

Here’s when I knew it was all wrong.

At the church Don was working at, a student took his own life. The lead pastor told the staff, “This is the biggest attack on our church from satan we’ve ever faced.” The student’s suicide was “spiritual warfare” against the church. Don believed that completely.

I still would’ve done anything for him. I did. I listened to Don lecture me for hours and trash talk every pastor in town and he confided in me his own deepest heartbreaks, though he never listened to mine. And even then, I was put on his list anyway: the list of people being used by satan. I feel a deep shame about all of it. Part of me still wonders, “Is Don right? Am I being used by satan?”

Don’s story of spiritual abuse is mild compared to so many stories I’ve heard over the years. My sad suspicion is that if it were not for his theology, we might still be friends.

I say that to say: Your theology matters.

If your theology demonizes others so much that even their suicide is called an attack from the devil, then hey: you are the devil. It’s you. You can go straight back to hell with that theology. Or throw it out and start over.

I know I’ve gotten it wrong too. But what I know is that if my faith ever compels me to erase someone’s dignity, then Scripture has become my weapon and not a mirror to check myself. It is a no longer a home for connecting with God, but a throne in my own image.

If your faith makes you a jerk, then what is it even for? If you harm others in the name of Jesus, in the end the only name you’re dragging is yours.

I believe that Scripture must move us to a theology of compassion, accountability, to be wildly kind. Otherwise it is not the life that Jesus had in mind. Christ is for the wounded. This is where I will be too.

— J.S.

[Disclaimer: Some of you will leave after this post. Grace be with you.]

When I was a pastor, a church member came out to me.

He told me, “You’re the only person here I felt okay to tell.”

I didn’t know exactly why, but I was honored. We talked a lot on the phone. He cried and screamed a lot. I don’t remember all I said, but one thing I do: I kept telling him that God loves him and God would never stop.

I found faith later in life. When I was an atheist, I had always been affirming—but when I embraced Christian faith, it seemed the church was telling me to love less. And it seemed selective. Apparently pregnant teens and addicts were not okay. But pastors who molested children and cheated on their wives were okay. It was confusing.

When I was in seminary in 2008, the evangelical church lined up to vote “yes” on Florida Amendment #2. It was to ban gay marriage. I voted “no.” To me, ethically it made no sense to legislate morality. I wrote about it and got blasted. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t about me. All I could think about was my friend crying on the phone.

I’ve visited dying patients who spent their lives hiding. I learned their preferred names. They were free at the edge of death. I wondered how they could be free at the edge of life.

No one’s identity to me is about politics or positions. It is about a soul. And I affirm the soul. I affirm that God loves. I affirm God says some hard stuff about justice and trust and accountability. But it is because God loves.

Is this controversial? I wish it wasn’t. I am a simple-minded person who has seen too much death and suffering—and I am both softened and strengthened in heart, always for the diminished and erased. I have no energy to hate, to debate, to legislate, to separate. And I cannot love less. Why else did Christ become human except to make us more human?

I know this: The God that I know will never stop loving you, because God loves you that much.

So I refuse to refuse the refused. I honor souls fully because they exist. Because they have a name. Because they’re divinely made. Just because.

This chaplain loves you. This husband, father, Korean American, and son to immigrants has no conditions.

— J.S.

I have always, always, always been a people-pleaser.

There were whole seasons where I would lose sleep and go stomach-sick thinking I might have remotely upset someone.

I was an expert on doing pirouette with shaky ankles over thin ice and dynamite, frantic apology dances, walking sideways until somebody could see I was really sorry, I didn’t mean to, what can I do to make it up to you, I will literally bleed tears for you, please for God’s sake just like me don’t leave me please like me.

It’s still a problem. I can feel my soul stretch to somebody when they’re upset with me. Desperate to correct it.

I have found too that our systems do not take kindly to those who who stand tall, take a knee, protest and petition, rock the boat and make waves—they will roll their eyes the second you call out *white supremacy* and xenophobia and oppression.

It is not so easy to “choose” to be ourselves everywhere we go, because a trip wire waits for those who run against assimilation and towards systemic change. In systems that reward conformers and punish the outspoken: how can we choose to be anything else?

What I’ve had to keep learning was I’d rather someone hear my “no” than to get a fraudulent yes-version of me.

I’d rather someone know me fully—husband, father, brother in Christ, Korean American, chaplain, fiercely for the wounded—then to get the pieces of me that were comfortable for them.

I’d rather scream against a system than be assimilated by it, so that others inside will know they are not alone, that their stories matter, that we seek the same horizon.

I’d rather someone love me for my boundaries than like me for violating all of them; otherwise what does that say for both of us?

People will still leave long after you pleased them. Long after you painfully sculpted yourself with their chisel. So you must sculpt with your own. So I must.

To speak, by grace, through all that God has made us, even when it does not make change in this lifetime, is still to give our story for one person, for the people who need it. Others need you: all of you. Not the one who pleases. But the one who speaks truly. Speak. Truly.

— J.S.