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Whisper Transcript | Transcript Only Page

00:00:00.000 | I am James Hong and welcome to the Surpassing Value Podcast.
00:00:15.620 | The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to flesh out what's
00:00:19.740 | been going on in the midst of an ocean of megaphones that may not actually withstand
00:00:24.600 | the test of scrutiny.
00:00:26.620 | As a signpost theologian, I will do my best to filter out the impurities and point people
00:00:32.300 | in the right direction.
00:00:42.260 | Because this is the initial episode of the Surpassing Value Podcast, it seemed right
00:00:47.940 | to me to lay out the origin, purpose, and probable destiny for this podcast.
00:00:56.300 | I thought that there might be a fringe group of people that would be curious as to why
00:01:03.080 | I had this compulsion to start a podcast voluntarily.
00:01:08.260 | Before I begin, let me say for the vast majority of people who are listening, you will probably
00:01:13.820 | not find this episode interesting, so please feel free to hit stop and go to episode #2
00:01:22.700 | if you want something that is remotely at an attempt at substance.
00:01:29.220 | This introductory episode is really for my friends or family who are interested, who
00:01:36.380 | are curious, as to why I would do something so dramatic.
00:01:40.900 | If it were me, I wouldn't be interested, so I've given you that fair warning.
00:01:46.700 | By talking about the origin, purpose, and probable destiny for this podcast, I think
00:01:52.040 | it will answer all those questions.
00:01:54.300 | So let me get to the origin.
00:01:57.420 | The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to really more adequately
00:02:03.020 | flesh out what's been going on.
00:02:05.340 | It's my attempt and my contribution in how we could think about things.
00:02:10.340 | Don't get it twisted, I don't have an innate desire to be heard, I don't consider my voice
00:02:16.320 | to be "special" by any means.
00:02:19.140 | Now that's hard to swallow from someone starting their own podcast voluntarily, I get that,
00:02:25.420 | you'll just have to take me at my word.
00:02:29.180 | However, what I mean by compulsion is the following, or the reason for the compulsion
00:02:34.980 | is the following.
00:02:37.980 | My perception is that there are so few voices in an ocean of megaphones that are speaking
00:02:47.400 | within a framework that withstands scrutiny.
00:02:52.140 | What I mean by that is, there are so many people with huge influence in our culture,
00:03:02.760 | and that's what I mean when I say an ocean of megaphones.
00:03:05.680 | The megaphone is their platform, it's their huge audience.
00:03:09.760 | And there are so many celebrity pastors and notable thought leaders, just influential
00:03:16.280 | people who, when they're speaking out on the issues facing our country, they are not speaking
00:03:25.640 | within a framework that withstands scrutiny.
00:03:30.020 | To say it another way, the substance of what they say, if you were to analyze it, it wouldn't
00:03:35.280 | pass muster at all.
00:03:37.600 | I understand how that might come off as I make that statement, I'm cognizant, it makes
00:03:42.680 | me look arrogant, I'm not a scholar, I don't have the credentials of a scholar.
00:03:47.800 | So in order for the listener to prove or disprove the veracity of my statements, I guess you're
00:03:53.520 | just going to have to judge the content I'm putting forth.
00:03:56.520 | Furthermore, in order to be fair to the ocean of megaphones that I'm referring to, we would
00:04:03.560 | need to have sustained dialogue, which is essentially impossible though.
00:04:07.800 | Because if we're talking about a wide-ranging idea, or some notable person of influence,
00:04:15.660 | some celebrity pastor, I'm not going to be able to sit down with that person and have
00:04:20.840 | sustained dialogue.
00:04:22.600 | I'm going to do my best to portray viewpoints that I do not share accurately, I will not
00:04:31.640 | caricature other viewpoints because I've seen people do that and I find it unbeneficial
00:04:40.260 | and very anti-intellectual.
00:04:42.660 | So I'm going to steer clear of doing that.
00:04:47.480 | The other thing is my perception of what I see in society today might be wrong.
00:04:53.980 | Maybe the people of notable influence, maybe they're not wrong.
00:05:00.340 | Maybe I'm the one that's wrong, I get that.
00:05:04.140 | Everyone stands or falls before his maker.
00:05:09.020 | Believe me when I tell you, even though I'm putting out this podcast completely voluntarily,
00:05:16.460 | I feel compelled to do so because of what I perceive to be a lack of voices speaking
00:05:24.300 | correctly in what I see as a very perilous time period.
00:05:33.300 | If we're friends on Facebook, you might have noticed that I've been posting a lot more
00:05:38.540 | on current events and trendy ideas.
00:05:42.260 | Those are completely my own thoughts, those are completely my own opinions, they do not
00:05:48.760 | reflect the stance of the church I attend or any other organization that I'm affiliated
00:05:56.300 | with, that's just an FYI.
00:05:59.420 | But going back to that, if you know me, you know that posting on Facebook is just not
00:06:05.900 | my thing.
00:06:07.340 | Let me say, for those who do post actively on Facebook, I don't think there's anything
00:06:12.900 | wrong with that.
00:06:14.300 | You want to share your life, you want to share pictures of your children, your parents, or
00:06:20.660 | other events, you want to share what you're learning, you want to share things that have
00:06:26.760 | touched you, I think that's great.
00:06:28.720 | I think it could be a great medium to see what's going on in another person's life since
00:06:38.880 | we can't be keeping tabs on everybody, so there is a lot of good that comes from social
00:06:45.660 | media and from posting on social media.
00:06:49.600 | That just was never my thing.
00:06:51.080 | However, I started posting on social media because of the complete, again my perception,
00:07:01.320 | just the complete lack of accuracy when it comes to speaking about what's going on, not
00:07:11.960 | only in our country in a political sense, but what I would think in a much, much more
00:07:19.920 | deeper and important sense.
00:07:23.840 | The problem I found with posting on Facebook, though, is that I'm constrained to a very
00:07:30.800 | limited amount of space.
00:07:32.840 | I get maybe a couple paragraphs, maybe along with that an image or a video or some other
00:07:38.580 | link.
00:07:40.720 | That's not enough space, though, to fully flesh out some of these ideas.
00:07:47.960 | Good ideas cannot be adequately developed over Facebook.
00:07:52.880 | For example, nobody expects to understand a subject like general chemistry over a couple
00:07:58.660 | paragraphs.
00:08:00.320 | Relevant science majors will spend a year with exams on that subject alone, and even
00:08:06.000 | then that's not exhaustive.
00:08:09.800 | General chemistry is an important subject, but so is justice, so is love, and so is racism.
00:08:19.160 | So is philosophy, so is theology, or the lack thereof.
00:08:26.280 | So it doesn't mean that posting on Facebook about these ideas is inherently bad.
00:08:34.360 | My only point is there are huge limitations, huge limitations when it comes to tackling
00:08:43.680 | these subjects, and I experienced those huge limitations because I had so much more to
00:08:49.520 | say, but I knew I had to truncate it or risk losing the post altogether.
00:08:55.780 | In the process of truncating, there are things, important things that are left unsaid, counterpoints
00:09:03.140 | that are not dealt with, and nuances that would have clarified as opposed to obfuscating
00:09:09.320 | that were not developed.
00:09:12.000 | The end result is that many times, meaningful justice to an idea or topic isn't accomplished.
00:09:18.840 | With the podcast medium, one is able to deal with these topics in a more meaningful way
00:09:26.920 | that comes closer to accomplishing that justice, that meaningful justice, but is by no means
00:09:32.860 | exhaustive either.
00:09:34.660 | The best way, in my opinion, is when you have a relationship with someone, and there is
00:09:42.380 | sustained dialogue, but that rarely happens, especially amongst people with differing ideologies.
00:09:52.720 | So with the podcast medium, I know that even with this medium, there are going to be limitations,
00:10:00.900 | and it's not as limited as posting on social media.
00:10:07.320 | Secondly, as I move on to the purpose of this podcast, you've already kind of picked up
00:10:13.760 | when I just talked about the origin, that is kind of interlinked with the purpose.
00:10:20.140 | What I would add to this section, though, is that the purpose of this podcast, again,
00:10:24.240 | is to just fully flesh out these topics to my target audience, and my target audience
00:10:30.500 | are my friends and my family.
00:10:33.060 | My friends generally consist of people at church, at work, my childhood friends from
00:10:39.380 | Koreatown, and from other parts of Los Angeles.
00:10:42.460 | I grew up in Los Angeles, the city, not the county.
00:10:46.260 | I moved around a lot of times, so I have a lot of friends from different areas of Los
00:10:50.220 | Angeles.
00:10:52.260 | And I'm not aiming to get downloads.
00:10:55.060 | I'm not interested in making this podcast famous, and even if I were, it's not going
00:11:02.220 | to happen.
00:11:05.080 | But there's such a low barrier of entry into the podcast community.
00:11:11.700 | And when I heard about that, I thought that this would be a great medium for those who
00:11:17.140 | are interested to maybe ignite dialogue.
00:11:22.780 | Maybe if you see some dude making a fool of himself, maybe that will stiffen other people's
00:11:34.820 | spine and we could finally have dialogue.
00:11:38.100 | And I value sustained dialogue so much, especially someone who has a differing ideology than
00:11:49.580 | myself because I want to share lives with people who have differing ideologies than
00:11:59.420 | me, but the problem is our culture almost doesn't allow for that.
00:12:05.980 | And I think that's incredibly sad.
00:12:08.940 | So you remember at a dance when no one's dancing, some fool steps onto the dance floor
00:12:18.100 | first and starts dancing, and then everyone kind of joins in on the dance because they
00:12:24.700 | know it's safe.
00:12:25.700 | They know that you're not going to be judged.
00:12:29.220 | I want to be that guy who starts the dance and everyone with differing ideologies, we
00:12:37.300 | can at least share our lives and talk and see one another as human beings as opposed
00:12:47.500 | to people who have differing ideologies, aka the enemy.
00:12:57.380 | That is great in an established relationship.
00:13:01.420 | But again, even in established relationships, people are scared to speak.
00:13:08.460 | By doing something so dramatic, perhaps this will engender more conversation.
00:13:17.780 | So if you're listening to this and I say something and you want to talk, but you're afraid that
00:13:26.660 | you'll be labeled a racist or a bigot, I will keep our conversation confidential.
00:13:33.340 | If you're listening to this and you're the only liberal in a sea of conservatives or
00:13:38.140 | vice versa, I will keep our conversation confidential.
00:13:44.800 | If you don't want to have sustained dialogue, that's fine too.
00:13:48.620 | I just need to take a risk.
00:13:51.380 | I also created an email for this podcast.
00:13:54.540 | It's thesurpassingvalue@gmail.com.
00:13:58.380 | If you want to send an anonymous email, that's fine too.
00:14:02.140 | It's thesurpassingvalue@gmail.com.
00:14:07.420 | Feel free to send me any thoughts, concerns, questions, ideas for future episodes, things
00:14:16.100 | of that nature.
00:14:18.100 | Furthermore, in the course of this podcast, you're going to hear me point to other podcasts,
00:14:25.860 | other resources, other thought leaders.
00:14:28.740 | I'm not going to present myself as someone with original ideas or fresh ideas.
00:14:36.940 | I might even take certain episodes to clarify some of the things I said earlier.
00:14:42.460 | As one might expect, that is not the way to grow a podcast.
00:14:47.620 | Because if you want to grow a podcast, you sort of have to have a cloak of authority
00:14:54.100 | so that people will come and listen to you.
00:14:56.540 | But growth is not one of my goals.
00:15:00.780 | It's not a goal.
00:15:02.640 | So I'm free to point people to others and to do away with that type of pretentiousness.
00:15:11.700 | I'm looking forward to that, to just speaking and being what I would call a signpost theologian.
00:15:23.180 | So before I define that, I want to tell you right now, there's a podcast that I've been
00:15:27.660 | listening to that I would point you towards.
00:15:30.580 | It's the Just Thinking Podcast with Daryl Harrison and Virgil Walker.
00:15:35.260 | That is the Just Thinking Podcast with Daryl Harrison and Virgil Walker.
00:15:41.400 | They're part of a larger podcast group called The Bar Podcast, B-A-R, The Bar Podcast.
00:15:48.620 | That is headed up by my friend, Dwayne Atkinson.
00:15:54.040 | Dwayne Atkinson is someone who actually helped me start the podcast, who helped me launch
00:16:00.180 | the podcast.
00:16:01.180 | I want to give a huge shout out to Dwayne.
00:16:04.540 | But the Just Thinking Podcast is a podcast that I've been listening to heavily.
00:16:08.700 | I would 100% recommend that you listen to them and just listen to all their episodes.
00:16:17.060 | If you come up to me and you tell me, "Hey, I listened to a couple of your episodes and
00:16:21.140 | then I just moved on to Just Thinking," I would consider that a victory.
00:16:26.380 | That's what I mean by a signpost theologian.
00:16:28.660 | A signpost theologian is a completely made-up term I just came up with to describe someone
00:16:36.020 | who doesn't consider themselves an authority, but rather someone who knows just enough to
00:16:43.620 | point people in the right direction and/or sift through the impurities.
00:16:50.780 | Pretty much of all of what I'm going to say are things I've learned and digested.
00:16:57.020 | I don't have a single original thought in my head.
00:17:01.180 | I will do my best to present the source of the things I say, but my head has become so
00:17:07.180 | full of ideas.
00:17:08.980 | I don't know with 100% accuracy where I got some of my ideas from.
00:17:17.180 | So that's what makes it difficult.
00:17:22.180 | So if you hear something and it sounds like something else that someone said, it's probably
00:17:28.500 | something else that someone said.
00:17:32.140 | The only human part that I will consider that I've played is that I try to use a strict
00:17:40.180 | scrutiny standard to the things I've learned, filter them through that strict scrutiny standard,
00:17:48.000 | and hopefully do a decent job presenting it in a manner that is relevant, but again, by
00:17:54.580 | no measure exhaustive.
00:17:59.780 | With that said, if you're listening to this podcast, some of these topics might or might
00:18:05.060 | not appeal to you.
00:18:07.360 | My target audience is not exclusively Christian, but as you know, I am a Christian.
00:18:16.880 | So that is the worldview that I'm going to be speaking from, or trying to speak from.
00:18:25.880 | Now it doesn't mean that what I'm going to say isn't thoughtful.
00:18:34.040 | And what I mean by that is, when people who do not go to church hear someone say, "I'm
00:18:41.280 | going to be speaking from a Christian worldview," it sounds like I'm just going to be spitting
00:18:45.900 | out a lot of Bible verses.
00:18:48.320 | I am going to be spitting out Bible verses, but it's not going to be a sermon.
00:18:56.040 | It's going to be an accurate blend of conveying truth, speaking in terms that anyone can understand.
00:19:10.680 | However, I do believe that the Bible is the Word of God.
00:19:18.840 | And in one of these episodes, I want to talk about that because I wasn't raised in a Christian
00:19:23.580 | home, and I really do want to explicate how I came to faith around college.
00:19:34.380 | I do want to talk about that because that's close to my heart.
00:19:38.560 | I also, in a future episode, want to talk about the physical evidence for the resurrection
00:19:47.200 | of Jesus Christ.
00:19:48.480 | Again, not speaking from a "because the Bible says" standpoint, but the extra-biblical evidence
00:19:55.360 | that points to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
00:20:00.840 | In another episode, I am hoping to tackle the extra-biblical evidence for the Bible,
00:20:08.920 | the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, and also the New Testament.
00:20:14.000 | I also want to talk about critical race theory, racism, social justice, human dignity, Darwinian
00:20:21.080 | evolution and scientific racism, abortion, the philosophical arguments for Christianity,
00:20:28.880 | worldview analyses, political philosophy, and sociological applications.
00:20:33.720 | I will be talking about various passages in the Bible, various theological positions,
00:20:37.880 | the canon of Scripture, this idea of contributory negligence.
00:20:42.880 | I'm hoping to even do some book reviews because I think there are plenty of books out there
00:20:49.900 | that could aid us in understanding so much of what's going on.
00:20:55.480 | Now, if you've noticed from this list, it is incredibly eclectic in nature.
00:21:04.000 | However, each of these topics, I could only approach from the Christian worldview.
00:21:14.880 | And I want to tackle this in another episode too.
00:21:19.120 | There really is no such thing as ideological neutrality.
00:21:24.960 | It really is a myth.
00:21:27.240 | Now, I can't expound on that in this episode.
00:21:32.240 | I want to devote at least half an episode, if not an entire episode, to this idea and
00:21:40.520 | what I see as the myth of ideological neutrality.
00:21:45.060 | But let me say, it just doesn't exist.
00:21:49.920 | So there is this temptation for me to say that I'm going to approach all these topics
00:21:55.620 | in a neutral fashion because a neutral fashion seems to give the connotation that it's unbiased.
00:22:02.920 | And when you engage in a truth-seeking process, you would think that you would have to approach
00:22:10.160 | it from a neutral and unbiased viewpoint.
00:22:15.040 | There's truth to that, but my only point is, none of us, none of us are ideologically
00:22:24.040 | neutral.
00:22:27.720 | Thirdly and lastly, I want to address the probable destiny of this podcast.
00:22:32.520 | I mentioned in the origin section that this podcast was born out of my perception that
00:22:37.000 | there are so few voices in an ocean of megaphones that are speaking within a framework that
00:22:42.120 | withstands scrutiny.
00:22:44.480 | Dialogue is many times just shut down through assaults and insults while the one doing the
00:22:52.980 | veiled assaulting and insulting feels morally superior for having done so in a polite manner.
00:23:02.360 | There are way too many monologues where straw men are set up as the opposing viewpoint.
00:23:11.480 | People chop down or cut down these straw men in order to prove a point that doesn't really
00:23:18.400 | benefit the conversation.
00:23:21.680 | And that entire action of setting up a straw man and then cutting down that straw man doesn't
00:23:28.200 | hold up to the pressure that truth naturally brings.
00:23:33.520 | All it does is make that person who's doing the setting up and the cutting down, it makes
00:23:39.680 | that person feel morally superior and objective when in reality it's really the coward's way.
00:23:48.020 | With that said, this could very well be and I foresee it to be a temporary moment in time.
00:23:56.720 | I don't think the few voices will be forever.
00:24:03.320 | At some point we're going to wake up, at least that is my hunch.
00:24:11.640 | In the future this podcast is just going to shut down because there won't be few voices
00:24:18.680 | at some point.
00:24:20.800 | Moreover, if I feel that I can't bring good content or it dawns on me that even the content
00:24:27.360 | that I'm bringing isn't up to snuff, then I won't see a need to continue.
00:24:36.240 | So with that said, I don't know how long each podcast is going to be.
00:24:40.720 | If you put a gun to my head, 30-45 minutes an hour, some episodes maybe 5-10 minutes.
00:24:49.100 | Even the frequency of the podcasts in terms of the production of new episodes will probably
00:24:54.120 | vary.
00:24:55.240 | Whatever the case, I feel free because I'm not trying to gain traction.
00:25:02.120 | All I want to do is just do a good job in tackling these issues and put forth a decent
00:25:08.640 | product.
00:25:09.640 | I want to end with the title of this podcast, The Surpassing Value.
00:25:15.640 | That comes from Philippians 3.8.
00:25:17.760 | Philippians 3.8-10 is my favorite passage in all of scripture and it reads like this.
00:25:25.960 | More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing
00:25:32.280 | Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but
00:25:38.360 | rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness
00:25:45.880 | of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness
00:25:52.340 | which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection
00:26:00.160 | and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
00:26:08.520 | There is so much meaning and purpose and joy and satisfaction I derive from these simple
00:26:21.160 | three verses.
00:26:25.240 | I want to know Christ in my suffering because there is, as Paul described, this surpassing
00:26:40.600 | value.
00:26:42.540 | It's greater than anything of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
00:26:48.520 | And many times, that joy happens in suffering.
00:26:56.080 | And when we avoid suffering, we're also robbed of that joy.
00:27:07.560 | I want to be vulnerable.
00:27:12.600 | I want to look like a fool.
00:27:17.120 | I want to look like the village idiot.
00:27:23.160 | Because when I look at this country, this country that I love with my entire heart,
00:27:37.560 | and I see it burning, I see it burning, I see it looted, I see half the country hating
00:27:50.400 | the other half, and I think to myself, I know why people hate each other.
00:28:04.640 | I know what the solution is.
00:28:10.360 | And it's gotten to a point where the false piece is now gone.
00:28:17.640 | And we are completely at odds with one another.
00:28:23.280 | I do not want to look back 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now and think to myself, you know, I
00:28:34.480 | wish I spoke up.
00:28:37.100 | I wish I spoke up.
00:28:41.020 | It's a little strange.
00:28:42.840 | It's a little weird.
00:28:45.520 | This is completely outside of me to start a podcast.
00:28:51.920 | Part of me is even ashamed.
00:28:57.200 | At the same time, at the very same time, the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus,
00:29:08.400 | my Lord, makes it easy for me to risk.
00:29:15.280 | It makes it very easy for me to risk.
00:29:22.000 | The compulsion that I described to you earlier is a snapping that has occurred in my heart.
00:29:32.680 | When you decidedly realize how little you care about being misunderstood, or the vulnerability
00:29:44.160 | that comes from articulating controversial ideas from a minority point of view, it is
00:29:51.640 | like fire in my bones.
00:29:57.540 | Well thanks for making it to the end.
00:30:00.120 | I'll try to make the journey worth it.
00:30:03.400 | To Him, the honor, glory, and eternal dominion, James Hong.
00:30:09.640 | Amen.
00:30:16.520 | (upbeat music)