the favored one

by Chloe Sun

God often takes us from familiar contexts to unfamiliar places in order to shake our perspectives about life, to shatter our old belief systems, and to transform our mind and soul. This past December and January, I made a trip to Hong Kong and God did just that.

I spent most of my teenage years in Hong Kong. It was once a familiar place. Ever since I came to the U.S., I have made several trips back home. Every trip seemed to create mixed feelings of old and new as well as familiar and foreign. I was often torn between the two worlds, struggling to find my own identity and a sense of belonging. I often asked, “Where is my real home?”

Several years ago, I started teaching at Logos, a Chinese seminary, which places me in a marginal position in light of the larger American culture and mainstream American seminaries. It was a long journey of wrestling with God and with myself to make sense of this marginality. Last year, I have finally resolved the tension and learned to accept the reality of my status through my trip to Paris last May, which shifted my perspective of center and margin, and through learning from Jesus’ example as a marginal person.

Because of the marginality that I experienced as a Chinese woman teaching in an ethnic seminary in the U.S., I often felt inferior, resentful and not favored by God. However, my recent trip to Hong Kong changed this perspective. Hong Kong is similar to New York City, with high rises and busy city life. It is also similar to Las Vegas in that both places are full of material temptations, entertainment and worldly glory. As I walked on the street of Hong Kong with hundreds and thousands of people everyday, it hit me hard that I was different from the rest of the people in Hong Kong. I was different because I came to the U.S. I was different because I became a Christian and was called by God to serve Him. I could have been ended up just like any of the multitude of people walking on the streets of Hong Kong. Yet God took me away from this island, put me in the U.S., and invited me to be His child. He detoured the whole path of my life.

Now I feel that God’s favor is on me. I feel that I am special in God’s eyes. I did not do anything to deserve God’s favor, yet I am chosen by His grace. What makes me different from the multitude of people walking on the street of Hong Kong is not that I earned God’s favor but because God chose me. I started to internalize God’s love and developed a renewed sense of understanding of what it means to have my identity in God.

Although my outward predicament as a marginal person living in the mainstream U.S. culture has not changed, my inward attitude toward myself and toward God has. I realized that someone who lives at the margin can still be favored by God. This realization empowers me to be more confident in who I am and in what God will accomplish through me. I am indeed fearfully and wonderfully made by God. (Psalm139:14)

Chloe Sun, PhD., teaches Hebrew Scriptures at Logos Evangelical Seminary. She lives with her husband and son in Southern California. To contact Chloe, please send your inquiry to AAWOLblog@gmail.com.

center and margin in the city of light

by Chloe Sun

This May, I had the opportunity to teach a two-week intensive course in Paris. My students were primarily blue-collar Chinese immigrants. Some work at local restaurants in Chinatown, some work at clothing stores and others have no steady jobs. Some left their families in China and came to Paris in search of a better life. Others came with their families, and are waiting for years and even decades to become legal residents. Most of them have not integrated into the mainstream Paris structure and culture. They live on the margin of society both socially and physically, subject to the rules and regulations of the Paris' government for their survival and welfare.

There I was, in the City of Light, a place renown for its romantic scenery and beautiful historic sites. I lived in a mixed neighborhood in the city center with local French, African-French and Middle Eastern French neighbors. By contrast, the place where I taught was in Chinatown, full of Chinese shops and restaurants, similar to Chinatowns in San Francisco or Manhattan. Every day, I commuted between my home and the church, between the center and the margin.

My sense of center-margin dynamics shifted throughout my trip. I had always thought of the United States or the English-speaking culture as the center of the world, and felt out of place teaching at an ethnic seminary. However, while I was in Paris, I saw how the French did not like to speak English or even like the Americans at all. The church in France is in decline and many churches are empty buildings. It made me wonder: Is America or the English-speaking world the center? Or is France or the French-speaking world the center? Then there were my students in Paris -- they occupy the lowest rung of Parisian society, but their devotion to God, their sincere faith in the midst of various difficulties, their desire to learn God's word and obey Him place them in the center of God's kingdom.

I also learned from the trip is that it is our human nature to want to be a part of the center of the visible world. If we are at the margin, we feel like a loser or a failure. However, when I think of Jesus, the Son of God, who came as a marginalized person, lived a marginalized life and died a marginalized death, I have to ask myself "Why do I want to be at the center?" Being at the margin enables me to share the experience of Jesus' marginalization and adds meaning to my own multiple marginalization. And as I've learned from my students in Paris, being on the margin can drive and empower us to live in the center of God's Kingdom and will for our lives.

Chloe Sun, PhD., teaches Hebrew Scriptures at Logos Evangelical Seminary. She lives with her husband and son in Southern California. To contact Chloe, please send your inquiry to AAWOLblog@gmail.com.

finding my way as a third culture kid

by Chloe Sun

I have always perceived myself as a foreigner in America. My parents were born and raised in Vietnam. I was born in China, raised in Hong Kong and came to the U.S. for college about twenty years ago. Identity became a ever more prominent issue when I came to teach at a predominantly Taiwanese seminary in Los Angeles. I felt lost amongst people who looked like me but whose culture and language differed from mine. Questions came up that I struggled to answer. "Who am I?" "What am I doing here as a non-Taiwanese?" "Where do I belong?" I felt like the marginalized of the marginalized. I didn't know of any name for my kind of identity – I was part of three countries, cultures and languages, but none of them, on their own, felt like a perfect fit.

Then, at a book event for More Than Serving Tea, a book on Asian American women in leadership, I met Young Lee and other women who shared my struggles and experience. Together, we became the core members of AAWOL. In one of our earliest monthly gatherings, I shared my identity struggle. In response, Debbie, one of the AAWOL sisters, shared her journey of liberation and shared information that described my kind of identity – I realized that I am a "TCK" (Third Culture Kid)! To give a name to an identity is powerful. I felt like I have a place in this world because there is a name to someone like me.

Since then, I have grown in my understanding of myself and of God's purposes for me at the margin. I started to read the Bible differently, paying attention to the characters who lived in more than one place in their lives. I started to look at people differently, forming solidarity with those who are also at the margins. Although having a name to my identity gives me a sense of place, it does not mean that I have no struggles as a person at the margin. I realized that being a TCK is an asset in a pluralistic culture. I am grateful to my AAWOL sisters who have come along side me in this journey of understanding our identity.

Chloe Sun, PhD., teaches Hebrew Scriptures at Logos Evangelical Seminary. She lives with her husband and son in Southern California. To contact Chloe, please send your inquiry to AAWOLblog@gmail.com.