Are you a good James Bond?
Aug 31st, 2010 by ljkim
Steve, whom some of you know, used to say that he thought the difference between the good James Bonds and the bad ones is that when the actor looks at a woman, the good ones look like they’re into the woman, the bad ones look like they’re more into themselves. I think this is true for a lot of things. The world is filled with vain people strutting to the tune of their own accomplishments, but what’s cool, what’s extraordinary is when someone is into their art, into their work, into their play, into loving people, without caring how they look. This the Bible’s idea of “humility.” As C.S. Lewis said, it’s ‘not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.’ It’s a holy self-forgetfulness and simplicity that is part of a carefree fun passionate life of meaning, not seeking to self-elevate with every act, but to serve and enjoy… I mean, how else do you think you’ll ever be able to save the world?
Almost every Filipino I know is Catholic, this was once true for my Irish friends too. Almost every Korean American I know went to a Presbyterian or Methodist church as a child. And almost every older African American woman I know goes to church as well. What does this mean for us? It means it’s easy for our unbelieving friends to see us going public with our faith, and assume it’s a part of our residual cultural identity (whether it is or not). As a result they might respect our faith, but feel, “that stuff is fine for you, but it has nothing to do with me.” It’s like celebrating Thanksgiving in Kenya… It’s fine as an American tradition, and can be respected elsewhere, but it doesn’t mean the same thing for non-Americans.
Studies have shown that people find it harder to believe someone when they are culturally different from you… So when someone from a foreign country who speaks and looks and sounds strange to you tells you something, it’s harder to believe even if everything they’re saying is true. I bring this up because if only certain kinds (culturally) of people talk about God, it’s very easy for your unbelieving friends to feel God and the Bible is implausible… But if people like them, (ie, people like you) who believe were to go public with their faiths… it creates a plausibility structure. 
The spiritual gift of “tongues” was a controversial issue for some contemporary Christians, but it was a fact of life for the early church. Without getting lost in controversies, the main idea here is that there is a gift of “passionate worship.” People with this gift are able to worship “in the moment” standing on the very precipice of eternity and bask in the knowledge of God, experiencing His presence and goodness, trusting His wisdom, and losing themselves (if only for a little while) in Him. In the early church this led to babbling, or ecstatic utterances that were sometimes called the languages of angels… Anthropologists have noted examples of “ecstatic utterances” in non-Christian pagan religions from the Mediterranean to Africa and East Asia (mainly with the aid of drugs)… No matter, the point of tongues is not really the “tongues,” it’s the state of mind that led to it… Deep, heartfelt, in-the-moment worship of the kind we should all one day experience inwardly. 
We don’t really use the word “prophet” the way the Bible does, so you might think of it as a kind of “wisdom” or “maturity” or the gift of “faith” or a “passion” for God. Prophets are especially gifted to speak for God when no one else will. And for disciples, they can speak in such a way that it’s clear that they’re not speaking out of pride or self interest, but from a clear push from God. So prophets are the ones who said before Y2K that the world will not end because of a computer glitch, or any other kind of human accident, but it will end only as God makes it end and gives us a new beginning. 
In places other than New York, people really like to hear that God accepts you “just the way that you are…” It doesn’t mean you don’t have room to grow – but that God loves and adores you right now, just the way a parent loves his newborn, even as he expects the baby to one day grow up. Here in NY, the problem isn’t so much that we worry about God loving us as we are – the problem is we have trouble loving ourselves as we are. Not self-hate in a psycho babble sort of way, or a religious way… But we have trouble loving how we look, how we act, our pedigree, what we do for a living, what we’ve accomplished. We look around and there are people who are younger, better looking, more successful, smarter, etc – and since we have such good taste, we can’t stand being anything less. 
Imagine you had a coworker who was a nice guy, easy to work with, easy to talk to, and everyone knew he was cheating on his wife. So here’s the question: is it any of your business to say anything about that? What do you think? Personally, I don’t know… For myself, I think I’d ask about it, but it wouldn’t be my place to say anything outright. Okay, second scenario: what if you knew the wife and you were friends with both the cheating husband and the spouse. Would you say something to the wife? Or say something directly to the husband? And imagine you ask a coworker friend about this and he/she says “what someone else does to be happy is none of my business…” So what would you do? Just one more scenario: what if the wife, who was your friend, came to you knowing about her cheating husband and begged you to talk to him? Would you say something then? 
There are objective ways to see if you have a high IQ, and fall into the “genius” category – but there’s actually no test to see if you’re an artistic genius. There’s also test you can take with a number 2 pencil to determine if you’re a musical genius. In some sports, certain athletes are said to be geniuses as well… it’s not just their speed of physicality, but their inventiveness and mastery of the game. Paul Ekman, who basically founded the scientific study of human facial expressions found that some people had a natural ability to do what took him years of doctoral work to determine… just the way some people can understand mathematical concepts easily, he found these people had genius level natural abilities of recognizing minute facial expressions… 
I think one of the reasons why all the spiritual gifts don’t receive the attention of gifts like “knowledge” and “teaching” is because when we get to the part in 1 Corinthians 12 that mentions “working miracles” we are embarrassed and toss the list… None of the lists or items on the lists are definitive, so no one thing has to apply to every place, but I really believe there are people with the spiritual gift of doing miracles today… And we need them…
Some people have a green thumb, others have to work at it to keep grass alive. I once had one of those potted things of grass on my desk. It died in two weeks. In the same way there are different kinds of healing gifts in the Bible. Some people can make you feel better just by their presence (when I was a little kid, it was mom – not dad – that I wanted when I was sick). Some people are better at nursing sick people and putting them at ease so they can get better. Some people pray in such a way that it helps people get better. Whatever the form, there are many kinds of spiritual gifts involving healing…