convoluted.

had a dream that i was supposed to perform at this girl's sorority party, and she'd planned the party all around my performance, but at the last minute i got the opportunity to lead worship in the prayer room at IHOP, so i canceled on the girl and she was furious at me, and kept sending me scathing text messages about what a horrible person i was.

also in this dream, i was looking at a vase, and i saw a spider crawling out of it and i got scared, but then it turned out to be a huge orange frog with a smaller orange frog beneath it (it was sort of attached to the underside of the bigger frog's belly) and THAT frog had a small stuffed fishie in its mouth.

in other news, i am learning a lot here. we watched a documentary called "China in Revolution," about (guess what?) China during their civil war (and WWII) from the 20's to the 50's. i learned so much that i never knew before, just about the details of the revolution(s), about chiang kaishek and mao zedong, about how stubborn and brutal both sides could be. i think i learned a lot about the chinese mentality, for both people in power and the peasants, who really lived very bitter lives. and i don't know, maybe still do. i'm not sure what things are like for the very poor in China now, but the documentary had some pretty sad interviews, like an old woman talking about how she was a child worker in a factory, and how communism sounded like paradise compared to what they have--so much so that she would have been willing to give up her life for the cause. there's so much to learn from that statement alone.

then this morning we watched "The Story of Qiu Ju" in my chinese criminal law class. i'd actually watched that movie before at home, a long time ago. but i'd forgotten how sad it is! and it just made me THINK so much. there's no real bad guy in the movie...so there's no easy way out for the audience--you can't just blame one person for the problems. it's about the failure of the chinese judicial system to actually provide justice, but it's also about chinese pride and saving face, AND about the way living in a village changes your relationships with people, so that maybe the standard rules/mentalities about justice don't apply, because things just are more complicated than that.

and then tonight, we went to a lecture by Timothy Ash, a Hoover Fellow at Stanford and an Oxford Professor in European Studies (i dont know why i started capitalizing things for this. i think it just felt a little disrespectful to not capitalize a Hoover Fellow's name. or title, apparently). it was on the G20--well, it was prompted by the G20 summit, but it was mostly about Ash's hypothetical idea of a G3 coalition (U.S., China, and EU). i thought the discussion was pretty interesting--there were 14 Americans, 7 Europeans, and 29 Chinese students present, and hearing from the different groups about whether or not China would replace the U.S. as the most powerful country in the world and the pros and cons of a G3 coalition was very...stimulating to my mind, shall we say.

sometimes i get super interested in things like this, but almost immediately come to the thought, "what does it matter, anyway?" i think that's what puts me off from politics so much--yes, it's interesting and one can get very involved/caught up in the complex relationships between people in power, but when i think about the history of the world, kings and kingdoms have risen and fallen over and over again, and that's that. people live and then they die, and all of it comes to nothing in the end. i know that the politics of today do affect future generations, and i'm not discounting the value of the present-day effects of politics, especially when it comes to human lives and the quality of these lives. i think politics can be very influential and can do a great amount of good or harm. and i think, in theory at least, it's important to pay attention to what people in power are doing because what their actions can affect everyday lives all over the world. but the problem is, i feel like politics is always, if i may, SHOOBING AND GOOBING AROUND!!! hahaha

okay seriously though.

it's all about power. earthly power. it's about making your own country climb as far up as possible, and it's about doing damage control when the mad struggle for power and wealth begins messing up the world in major ways. in the bible, it seems like God's view of politics is much, much different from people's view of politics. kings are so concerned with making treaties and waging wars and conquering lands and playing political games to create what they think will be best for their countries/empires. but from the beginning, God has pretty much only been concerned with whether or not they ruled justly (protecting the poor, widows, orphans, and foreigners), and acknowledged Him as God. when they didn't do these things (which was the case far more often than not), He used them as pawns to destroy each other.

i feel like God has always only had one goal in mind, and that is to be in relationship with people. and He's given men great power time and time again, but when they haven't acknowledged Him as God, their most ingenious plans have always came to nothing. no matter how strong one nation or empire seemed, God could always raise up one that was stronger. it all seemed so futile in the end. i guess what i'm saying is that God's ideas of justice and how to handle power are so different than the world's ideas of these things. the "kings" of this world aren't interested in Him. so when i start thinking about politics, i inevitably stop short and wonder why i should even waste my energy learning about all this stuff, when it's so...meaningless. all of it is meaningless--it goes around in circles and sometimes it looks promising, but to me, the promises made by nations are false, fragile at best. we try to build ourselves up without acknowledging the Builder. we even try to do noble things like solving the problem of poverty, but we do these without admitting that God is good or seeking His face at all. we're trying to fix this world ourselves, but the truth is that we simply can't. and people won't admit that--they simply cannot believe that the world is not in their full control. the best, most noble efforts of kings and kingdoms to improve this world are so unimportant compared to the most vital thing--in the end, the only vital thing, actually--to know and love God. when we're spending all of our time and energy on these things, as if they're the only things that matter, we're just chasing after the wind. and when i think about life from this standpoint and ask myself the question of what the best possible use of my life could be, it's always simply to preach the love of Jesus as widely and powerfully as i can. because who cares if i help improve the quality of life? food, shelter, health, and even justice will preserve your body, but it won't feed your spirit--it won't nourish the eternal part of you. and a relationship with God is not a luxury that can only be fully experienced if your natural needs are taken care of. i hope this doesn't make me sound like one of those people that goes up to a starving man and says, "God bless you" and walks away. i'm not talking about dead religion that i want to spread to people everywhere. i'm talking about a relationship with a LIVING God, who cares for a whole person, and not just the spirit. but i am saying that having a relationship with God far outweighs having your physical needs met.

these are things i could never say in public at a place like Stanford, because people would just consider me to be an ignorant Christian. i haven't always been like this, either. i think the more i learn about God, the harder it is for me to live a "normal" life, or see this world like a "normal" person would. sometimes i scare myself. i think, "what if i'm just going off the deep end, into craziness?" so i have to take a step back and just ask God to please, just take me where He wants me to go. as long as i'm not walking according to my own will, it doesn't matter how crazy the rest of the world thinks i am (a lot easier said than genuinely believed, of course). and i can and will make mistakes, but as long as i learn to love humility, He will set me right. and of course, He often uses people to do that. so your opinions are appreciated, even if they don't always seem to be, at first.