Sharing God and beers

To most American Christians, the title is totally taboo. What?! Beer?! How UNGodly. Haha! :) Some of my best witnessing and evangelism has been over a couple of beers. I've found it to be a good way to connect with people and talk about deeper issues.

I chilled with my old high school acquaintances Calvin Lee, Erik Okada, and Ryan Matson (married to Jeanie O'Brian) yesterday over sushi, hot sake, and beers. Erik and I talked about philosophy (Nietzche, Heidegger) at little while we waited for the other two. It was great because we were both really open and respectful about your views. We asked each other good questions and provided good answers. The talk led to ethics, which ultimately led to the existence of God. Him being con and me being pro, of course. It made me realize how much TAing this philosophy class was such a blessing for me to understand how people who are not Christian think.

I've also learned that peripheral arguments like philosophy may help guide the discussion toward Christ. But the ultimate point to emphasize is, "John 3:16 God so love the world that He gave His only Son so that those who believe may not perish by have eternal life." Just as importantly would be "Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is life through Jesus Christ our lord." This is ultimate wisdom, knowledge, and philosophy; but Jesus warns us that in the eyes of the world it is utter foolishness. I pray that I point them beyond that initial reaction and toward the Father so that they will be loved and blessed for an eternity.

Some reminders for my friends:
To my non Christian friends reading this - Sex is not "bad," but should be in the right context. It's good. Kissing is also not bad, saving it for the altar is good, not saving it for the altar is also good.

To my Christian friends reading this - alcohol is not "bad," but being out of control is bad. Alcohol can be good, according to Paul and for the sake of reaching out to others.

It seems simple enough, but you'd be surprised how much culture plays into our faith, which is not good. When I share Jesus with people, I'm sharing "the way," not exporting American values and culture. Our faith transcends culture. A lot of people out there hate American politics and culture, so it will do us no good to associate our faith with this culture if we're really trying to reach them.

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Hyatt

I took them out to Japengo at the Hyatt in La Jolla during Happy Hour and covered the bill. I didn't think it was going to be too expensive, but it was very expensive. Darn!

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Sam's Wedding

I went to Samantha and Trevor's wedding today. They had their first kiss on the altar and the whole room broke out laughing! Trevor was full on trying to make our with Sam, who was trying to push him away! Haha!! I wish I had it on video. That guy was aggressive!

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Napoleon Dynamite is the greatest movie ever!!! And at least Eleasa Tang from CBC agrees, most people don't.

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Hostage

I saw Bruce Willis' new action packed movie, "Hostage," last night. It's such a guy's movie with swat team action and stuff. I saw it with a friend who is going into military intelligence and another friend who just got tortured in the desert for a week. The second friend is a US Navy fighter pilot who went through interrogation training where they march around for 6 days without food, then get captured, beaten, tortured, and psychologically manipulated by fake enemy fighters. It was definitely the right kind of company to watch this kind of movie.

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My research papers.

I put a bunch of my research papers online if you are interested in seeing how much of a nerd I am. Actually, I think they're cool papers on the future of IR in East Asia. Warning, my earlier papers are not as good as recent papers.

www.geocities.com/antawei1

Sharing Christ with my students was so scary

Today was my last discussion section, so I took the last half of the class to give them my take on all that we had learned. Our readings and lectures have all pointed in the direction of: "The Renaissance was a shift from faith to reason." As if faith runs counter to reason. We read Nietzsche ("God is dead"), Marx, Heidegger, etc. Basically, the theme was that science disproves religion. My views were the exact opposite.

I started by recapping on the differences between the philosopher and scientist, based on my previous blog from last week. I stressed that, from the readings and from my personal experience, science has pointed me toward God and Jesus Christ. I talked about genetics, art, beauty, and the second law of thermodynamics (toward disorder). Then I talked about how philosophers don't know jack about science, etc.

It was so scary, but I was convicted by God that I should share this with them today. It would be easier to disobey, but I don't want to be His useless tool.

Ok, I'm in office hours now and a student is asking me to regrade his philosophy paper. Ttyl.

Brilliant car wash idea

My new Accord Coupe is black and hard to dry well after washing because it gets water spots really easily. 2 nights ago when it was raining really hard, I came up with this brilliant idea of washing it with rain water. I put on my boardshorts and soaped up my car in the pouring rain at 9pm at night. The cars driving by must have thought I was really weird. I was freezing so badly! I think I caught a minor cold.

Lessons learned: Don't wash your car in the rain at night.

Or wash it while it's raining during the day and wear a wetsuit. ;)

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Wetsuit

I bought an awesome wetsuit, top of the line "O'Neil Psycho" today for a great deal! I wanted to get a wetsuit for a while to go surfind with friends. I feel like I'm living a "city"life here in SD going between the library, my house, and classrooms. Soon I'll be living in a big city and wishing I had SD beaches. I need to be floating in the middle of the ocean.

I bought my wetsuit on the way to class this morning. Then I really wanted to try it out in the ocean so I called up Jon Yan and we skipped Int'l Rela of Asia Pacific class to go swim the La Jolla Shores to Cove and back (1mi). The sky was beautiful and clear, the ocean was refreshing, the grass was green, and the sand was white. It was so great!

My wetsuit is so awesome!! I'm so warm in it! It was the first class I ditched all year so far (1.8 quarters), but I knew we weren't doing anything for class today.

Then I went to class and finished my Spanish presentation on the Indigenas Tarahumaras.

Rockclimbing, plus being offended.

Pam Wan came rockclimbing with Dave Chiu and I yesterday. She's so popular that she effortlessly brought along an entourage of 5 other CBC friends with her. It was a great time of fellowship, but climbing lasted 4 hrs! That's a long time. Dave and I climb weekly for 2 hours. Then we all (7 of us) grabbed dinner together, then boba. Bad idea since finals are a week away for me.

Green Tea House was flooding with cigarette smoke from outside so I asked the waiter to close the door. He came back and gave me really bad attitude. He was acting stand off - ish. I was shocked, as I sat there with my church friends ready to react. Pam saw it coming and said my name twice firmly to keep me in check. I just sat there quietly and took the emotional and verbal offense because I didn't want to make my friends uncomfortable. If it was just me, Dave, and Alex, I would have stood up against him.