If I haven’t tried at least some sort of street outreach in medicine… slap me upside the head

If I haven’t traveled to another country on some sort of missions trip… slap me upside the head

If I’ve lived in New York City (want to go there for residency) for more than 6 years… slap me upside the head

If I’ve lived too comfortable of a life… slap me upside the head

If I’m not constantly doing something that scares me… slap me upside the head

If I’m worrying too much about tomorrow… slap me upside the head

I I’m not appreciative of each and every day… slap me upside the head

Oh and for those negative connotations associated with Christianity, here’s my response to those. 1) Jesus hung out with the “worst of the worst” people. He sought them out and he showed them love and not judgement. 2) As a person who studied biology for four years in college and who is in medical school now, studying nothing but lots and lots of science and research… I can honestly say that digging deeper into science actually draws me closer to God. Now, I know this is a bit of a debatable topic here: seeing as how with science you can never prove nor disprove the existence of God. The boundaries of scientific research just don’t lend themselves to proving/disproving such things. However, for me at least, learning about every function of living creatures all the way down to protein structures actually helps me to realize the vastness (and utter perfection) of creation. and 3) Jesus told us to go out and share the good news… not to force people to change. I’m not sure I know of anybody who became a Christian because some guy told him that he’s going to go to hell if he doesn’t become a Christian. Only by going back to the roots of Christianity, to Jesus Christ, can we actually understand how to share this good news.

I’m not sure who actually reads this blog… but as you can tell I’ve really been struggling with a lot of aspects of my faith lately. But, I’ve never doubted the good news that was shared. I know that Jesus died and rose again. It’s every other part of Christianity that has me struggling. I’ve been using this blog to kind of vent out because I don’t really feel like there’s anybody else to really go to.

I can do nothing without Jesus

I will follow You

1. Study hard so I can rock the USMLE Step 1′s next year
2. Get a good externship for the summer – there’s an emergency externship at a hospital in Pennsylvania that I want to try and get
3. Run a full marathon – Doing a half marathon in April… maybe a full marathon by fall?
4. Go skydiving… maybe this spring when the weather gets better?
5. Learn some MMA… hopefully taking a goshin jitsu class this semester with a couple friends
6. Learn how to take better pictures with my DSLR
7. Get better at basketball
8. Workout more – stronger, faster, etc etc
9. Get better at Chinese… my chinese sucks =\
10. Learn how to speak another language too….. Korean?
11. Limit the amount of time I waste on things like facebook

More to be added when I think of other stuff

People always told me while I was younger that I should learn more Chinese about China because it’s my heritage etc etc. Well, as a child I was actually really fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, and English. After being told to learn Chinese and being forced to go to Chinese school as a kid… I subsequently lost most of that. Now I can have maybe a basic conversation in Chinese and that’s it. I also to this day still have a disdain for many aspects of traditional Chinese culture.

I was also always told that you should read more books and that it’ll make you smarter. I have to this day never finished a full book. The only way I got through English classes in high school and college was sparknotes. That and massive amounts of copying old papers. Now that nobody tells me to read anymore, I finally went to Barnes & Noble the other day and picked up a book to read and actually finish.

School. Man have I always hated school. I never thought that school was really necessary to be successful in life. I think school has been placed as too high of a priority for people these days. Those people who are perpetual students or those people who think that success in school will define their success…. well it doesn’t. The majority of jobs use almost none of the things you learn in school. You’ll learn it all on the job. This might sound kind of funny coming from someone who’s in med school and will be in school for a long time… but if my only goal was to get a decent job that paid well.. believe me I would not be in school right now. The exception to this comes if what you really want to do requires a lot of schooling (doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, etc). If I just wanted a good job and a comfortable life, I would’ve taken that Epic Systems job and be living comfortably in Madison with 55K/year starting salary and travelling the country for business, going out every weekend, etc.

Now more to the point about why I wrote this… I never really grew up in the church. I became a Christian when I was in junior high/high school at a retreat that I went to with my cousin. As such, I was never really “brought up” to be a Christian by my family. I became a Christian because of the gospel… because of the “good news”. But almost immediately, the church culture began to turn me off from Christianity. It was all about rules – don’t do this, don’t do that… all masked under a “well that’s what God wants you to do”. Well for me, being the one who hates being told what to do, it really began to annoy me. It wasn’t until college where I really began to discover God. I am so glad God put me in the city for college. It helped me to truly see God beyond just the rules of church culture. Listening to New Community sermons with Pastor Peter were amazing also. It helped me to get back to the roots of Christianity, beyond the youth groups and church culture of upper middle class suburbs. I was really blessed by UIC AAIV and New Community. I still listen to New Community podcasts as much as I can. It turned Christianity and the church upside down for me and helped me to open my eyes to the world that God sees.

Then I graduated and came to Champaign-Urbana for medical school. And since I’ve come I’ve had this feeling that Christianity is so dry. All of the sudden, I’m thrown back into an area where people live in a bubble, where church is about singing the same worship songs, where again there are these unwritten church rules of “do this and don’t do that”. I kept wondering why I was having these feelings, when there are definitely people at CFC that are on fire for God. I think CFC is very ideology and theology based. As such, it’s so easy for people to get lost in all of that and lose sight of the roots of Christianity – the gospel. It’s almost a little too perfect – everybody is such a good Christian and they do all the right things. Or… maybe it’s that people are afraid of showing their true brokenness… and I’m not talking about admitting that “yeah, I haven’t been praying very often or I haven’t been reading my bible much or doing enough QT’s”. I’m talking REAL brokenness that we all deal with.

To me, everything is all about roots. If you make a decision to do something, you better know why YOU made that decision. If you’re going to go to medical school and be a doctor, you better be sure that it’s what YOU want to do and not what someone else told you would be good or would make you money. There’s definitely people like that in my class and it makes me a little sick to think that they’re putting themselves through all this and it’s not what they want. If you’re going to call yourself a Christian, remember why that is. It’s not about being moral or right… we’re all broken like none other.

There’s probably a lot of typos and fragments in this whole post. But it’s my blog and I do what I want! I’m not even gonna go back and re-read this. Hopefully it makes sense. Maybe someday I’ll look back and remember my feelings when I wrote this.

Okay… i would still probably do all those things. hah

I’ve always thought of Einstein’s quote whenever things are getting tough - ”Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” Maybe if I just keep going and don’t look back, then things will resolve itself and everything will be all good again. I think one thing the quote fails to address though is that there has to be something that you’re moving towards – something better than the here and now. Otherwise, the entire argument just kind of goes out the window doesn’t it? Why keep moving forward if what’s forward is worse than what’s here? God tells us that he will never lead us to anything that we can’t get through. That through everything, He will always be with us and guiding us. I think we always tend to go through each day just trying to slug it out and just make it to the next day. In the end, the days are long but the years are short. When we look back, we will wish we had savored the lessons and the experiences that each day brought. Even in the tough situations, God is always there. Can you find Him? Are you looking hard enough?

I have not much
To offer You
Not near what You deserve
But still I come
Because Your cross
Has placed in me my worth

Oh, Christ my King
Of sympathy
Whose wounds secure my peace
Your grace extends
To call me friend
Your mercy sets me free

And I know I’m weak
I know I’m unworthy
To call upon Your name
But because of grace
Because of Your mercy
I stand here unashamed

I can’t explain
This kind of love
I’m humbled and amazed
That You’d come down
From heavens heights
And greet me face to face

Here I am at Your feet
In my brokeness complete