I am James Hong and welcome to the Surpassing Value Podcast. The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to flesh out what's been going on in the midst of an ocean of megaphones that may not actually withstand the test of scrutiny. As a signpost theologian, I will do my best to filter out the impurities and point people in the right direction.

Because this is the initial episode of the Surpassing Value Podcast, it seemed right to me to lay out the origin, purpose, and probable destiny for this podcast. I thought that there might be a fringe group of people that would be curious as to why I had this compulsion to start a podcast voluntarily.

Before I begin, let me say for the vast majority of people who are listening, you will probably not find this episode interesting, so please feel free to hit stop and go to episode #2 if you want something that is remotely at an attempt at substance. This introductory episode is really for my friends or family who are interested, who are curious, as to why I would do something so dramatic.

If it were me, I wouldn't be interested, so I've given you that fair warning. By talking about the origin, purpose, and probable destiny for this podcast, I think it will answer all those questions. So let me get to the origin. The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to really more adequately flesh out what's been going on.

It's my attempt and my contribution in how we could think about things. Don't get it twisted, I don't have an innate desire to be heard, I don't consider my voice to be "special" by any means. Now that's hard to swallow from someone starting their own podcast voluntarily, I get that, you'll just have to take me at my word.

However, what I mean by compulsion is the following, or the reason for the compulsion is the following. My perception is that there are so few voices in an ocean of megaphones that are speaking within a framework that withstands scrutiny. What I mean by that is, there are so many people with huge influence in our culture, and that's what I mean when I say an ocean of megaphones.

The megaphone is their platform, it's their huge audience. And there are so many celebrity pastors and notable thought leaders, just influential people who, when they're speaking out on the issues facing our country, they are not speaking within a framework that withstands scrutiny. To say it another way, the substance of what they say, if you were to analyze it, it wouldn't pass muster at all.

I understand how that might come off as I make that statement, I'm cognizant, it makes me look arrogant, I'm not a scholar, I don't have the credentials of a scholar. So in order for the listener to prove or disprove the veracity of my statements, I guess you're just going to have to judge the content I'm putting forth.

Furthermore, in order to be fair to the ocean of megaphones that I'm referring to, we would need to have sustained dialogue, which is essentially impossible though. Because if we're talking about a wide-ranging idea, or some notable person of influence, some celebrity pastor, I'm not going to be able to sit down with that person and have sustained dialogue.

I'm going to do my best to portray viewpoints that I do not share accurately, I will not caricature other viewpoints because I've seen people do that and I find it unbeneficial and very anti-intellectual. So I'm going to steer clear of doing that. The other thing is my perception of what I see in society today might be wrong.

Maybe the people of notable influence, maybe they're not wrong. Maybe I'm the one that's wrong, I get that. Everyone stands or falls before his maker. Believe me when I tell you, even though I'm putting out this podcast completely voluntarily, I feel compelled to do so because of what I perceive to be a lack of voices speaking correctly in what I see as a very perilous time period.

If we're friends on Facebook, you might have noticed that I've been posting a lot more on current events and trendy ideas. Those are completely my own thoughts, those are completely my own opinions, they do not reflect the stance of the church I attend or any other organization that I'm affiliated with, that's just an FYI.

But going back to that, if you know me, you know that posting on Facebook is just not my thing. Let me say, for those who do post actively on Facebook, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. You want to share your life, you want to share pictures of your children, your parents, or other events, you want to share what you're learning, you want to share things that have touched you, I think that's great.

I think it could be a great medium to see what's going on in another person's life since we can't be keeping tabs on everybody, so there is a lot of good that comes from social media and from posting on social media. That just was never my thing. However, I started posting on social media because of the complete, again my perception, just the complete lack of accuracy when it comes to speaking about what's going on, not only in our country in a political sense, but what I would think in a much, much more deeper and important sense.

The problem I found with posting on Facebook, though, is that I'm constrained to a very limited amount of space. I get maybe a couple paragraphs, maybe along with that an image or a video or some other link. That's not enough space, though, to fully flesh out some of these ideas.

Good ideas cannot be adequately developed over Facebook. For example, nobody expects to understand a subject like general chemistry over a couple paragraphs. Relevant science majors will spend a year with exams on that subject alone, and even then that's not exhaustive. General chemistry is an important subject, but so is justice, so is love, and so is racism.

So is philosophy, so is theology, or the lack thereof. So it doesn't mean that posting on Facebook about these ideas is inherently bad. My only point is there are huge limitations, huge limitations when it comes to tackling these subjects, and I experienced those huge limitations because I had so much more to say, but I knew I had to truncate it or risk losing the post altogether.

In the process of truncating, there are things, important things that are left unsaid, counterpoints that are not dealt with, and nuances that would have clarified as opposed to obfuscating that were not developed. The end result is that many times, meaningful justice to an idea or topic isn't accomplished. With the podcast medium, one is able to deal with these topics in a more meaningful way that comes closer to accomplishing that justice, that meaningful justice, but is by no means exhaustive either.

The best way, in my opinion, is when you have a relationship with someone, and there is sustained dialogue, but that rarely happens, especially amongst people with differing ideologies. So with the podcast medium, I know that even with this medium, there are going to be limitations, and it's not as limited as posting on social media.

Secondly, as I move on to the purpose of this podcast, you've already kind of picked up when I just talked about the origin, that is kind of interlinked with the purpose. What I would add to this section, though, is that the purpose of this podcast, again, is to just fully flesh out these topics to my target audience, and my target audience are my friends and my family.

My friends generally consist of people at church, at work, my childhood friends from Koreatown, and from other parts of Los Angeles. I grew up in Los Angeles, the city, not the county. I moved around a lot of times, so I have a lot of friends from different areas of Los Angeles.

And I'm not aiming to get downloads. I'm not interested in making this podcast famous, and even if I were, it's not going to happen. But there's such a low barrier of entry into the podcast community. And when I heard about that, I thought that this would be a great medium for those who are interested to maybe ignite dialogue.

Maybe if you see some dude making a fool of himself, maybe that will stiffen other people's spine and we could finally have dialogue. And I value sustained dialogue so much, especially someone who has a differing ideology than myself because I want to share lives with people who have differing ideologies than me, but the problem is our culture almost doesn't allow for that.

And I think that's incredibly sad. So you remember at a dance when no one's dancing, some fool steps onto the dance floor first and starts dancing, and then everyone kind of joins in on the dance because they know it's safe. They know that you're not going to be judged.

I want to be that guy who starts the dance and everyone with differing ideologies, we can at least share our lives and talk and see one another as human beings as opposed to people who have differing ideologies, aka the enemy. That is great in an established relationship. But again, even in established relationships, people are scared to speak.

By doing something so dramatic, perhaps this will engender more conversation. So if you're listening to this and I say something and you want to talk, but you're afraid that you'll be labeled a racist or a bigot, I will keep our conversation confidential. If you're listening to this and you're the only liberal in a sea of conservatives or vice versa, I will keep our conversation confidential.

If you don't want to have sustained dialogue, that's fine too. I just need to take a risk. I also created an email for this podcast. It's thesurpassingvalue@gmail.com. If you want to send an anonymous email, that's fine too. It's thesurpassingvalue@gmail.com. Feel free to send me any thoughts, concerns, questions, ideas for future episodes, things of that nature.

Furthermore, in the course of this podcast, you're going to hear me point to other podcasts, other resources, other thought leaders. I'm not going to present myself as someone with original ideas or fresh ideas. I might even take certain episodes to clarify some of the things I said earlier. As one might expect, that is not the way to grow a podcast.

Because if you want to grow a podcast, you sort of have to have a cloak of authority so that people will come and listen to you. But growth is not one of my goals. It's not a goal. So I'm free to point people to others and to do away with that type of pretentiousness.

I'm looking forward to that, to just speaking and being what I would call a signpost theologian. So before I define that, I want to tell you right now, there's a podcast that I've been listening to that I would point you towards. It's the Just Thinking Podcast with Daryl Harrison and Virgil Walker.

That is the Just Thinking Podcast with Daryl Harrison and Virgil Walker. They're part of a larger podcast group called The Bar Podcast, B-A-R, The Bar Podcast. That is headed up by my friend, Dwayne Atkinson. Dwayne Atkinson is someone who actually helped me start the podcast, who helped me launch the podcast.

I want to give a huge shout out to Dwayne. But the Just Thinking Podcast is a podcast that I've been listening to heavily. I would 100% recommend that you listen to them and just listen to all their episodes. If you come up to me and you tell me, "Hey, I listened to a couple of your episodes and then I just moved on to Just Thinking," I would consider that a victory.

That's what I mean by a signpost theologian. A signpost theologian is a completely made-up term I just came up with to describe someone who doesn't consider themselves an authority, but rather someone who knows just enough to point people in the right direction and/or sift through the impurities. Pretty much of all of what I'm going to say are things I've learned and digested.

I don't have a single original thought in my head. I will do my best to present the source of the things I say, but my head has become so full of ideas. I don't know with 100% accuracy where I got some of my ideas from. So that's what makes it difficult.

So if you hear something and it sounds like something else that someone said, it's probably something else that someone said. The only human part that I will consider that I've played is that I try to use a strict scrutiny standard to the things I've learned, filter them through that strict scrutiny standard, and hopefully do a decent job presenting it in a manner that is relevant, but again, by no measure exhaustive.

With that said, if you're listening to this podcast, some of these topics might or might not appeal to you. My target audience is not exclusively Christian, but as you know, I am a Christian. So that is the worldview that I'm going to be speaking from, or trying to speak from.

Now it doesn't mean that what I'm going to say isn't thoughtful. And what I mean by that is, when people who do not go to church hear someone say, "I'm going to be speaking from a Christian worldview," it sounds like I'm just going to be spitting out a lot of Bible verses.

I am going to be spitting out Bible verses, but it's not going to be a sermon. It's going to be an accurate blend of conveying truth, speaking in terms that anyone can understand. However, I do believe that the Bible is the Word of God. And in one of these episodes, I want to talk about that because I wasn't raised in a Christian home, and I really do want to explicate how I came to faith around college.

I do want to talk about that because that's close to my heart. I also, in a future episode, want to talk about the physical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Again, not speaking from a "because the Bible says" standpoint, but the extra-biblical evidence that points to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In another episode, I am hoping to tackle the extra-biblical evidence for the Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, and also the New Testament. I also want to talk about critical race theory, racism, social justice, human dignity, Darwinian evolution and scientific racism, abortion, the philosophical arguments for Christianity, worldview analyses, political philosophy, and sociological applications.

I will be talking about various passages in the Bible, various theological positions, the canon of Scripture, this idea of contributory negligence. I'm hoping to even do some book reviews because I think there are plenty of books out there that could aid us in understanding so much of what's going on.

Now, if you've noticed from this list, it is incredibly eclectic in nature. However, each of these topics, I could only approach from the Christian worldview. And I want to tackle this in another episode too. There really is no such thing as ideological neutrality. It really is a myth. Now, I can't expound on that in this episode.

I want to devote at least half an episode, if not an entire episode, to this idea and what I see as the myth of ideological neutrality. But let me say, it just doesn't exist. So there is this temptation for me to say that I'm going to approach all these topics in a neutral fashion because a neutral fashion seems to give the connotation that it's unbiased.

And when you engage in a truth-seeking process, you would think that you would have to approach it from a neutral and unbiased viewpoint. There's truth to that, but my only point is, none of us, none of us are ideologically neutral. Thirdly and lastly, I want to address the probable destiny of this podcast.

I mentioned in the origin section that this podcast was born out of my perception that there are so few voices in an ocean of megaphones that are speaking within a framework that withstands scrutiny. Dialogue is many times just shut down through assaults and insults while the one doing the veiled assaulting and insulting feels morally superior for having done so in a polite manner.

There are way too many monologues where straw men are set up as the opposing viewpoint. People chop down or cut down these straw men in order to prove a point that doesn't really benefit the conversation. And that entire action of setting up a straw man and then cutting down that straw man doesn't hold up to the pressure that truth naturally brings.

All it does is make that person who's doing the setting up and the cutting down, it makes that person feel morally superior and objective when in reality it's really the coward's way. With that said, this could very well be and I foresee it to be a temporary moment in time.

I don't think the few voices will be forever. At some point we're going to wake up, at least that is my hunch. In the future this podcast is just going to shut down because there won't be few voices at some point. Moreover, if I feel that I can't bring good content or it dawns on me that even the content that I'm bringing isn't up to snuff, then I won't see a need to continue.

So with that said, I don't know how long each podcast is going to be. If you put a gun to my head, 30-45 minutes an hour, some episodes maybe 5-10 minutes. Even the frequency of the podcasts in terms of the production of new episodes will probably vary. Whatever the case, I feel free because I'm not trying to gain traction.

All I want to do is just do a good job in tackling these issues and put forth a decent product. I want to end with the title of this podcast, The Surpassing Value. That comes from Philippians 3.8. Philippians 3.8-10 is my favorite passage in all of scripture and it reads like this.

More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.

There is so much meaning and purpose and joy and satisfaction I derive from these simple three verses. I want to know Christ in my suffering because there is, as Paul described, this surpassing value. It's greater than anything of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. And many times, that joy happens in suffering.

And when we avoid suffering, we're also robbed of that joy. I want to be vulnerable. I want to look like a fool. I want to look like the village idiot. Because when I look at this country, this country that I love with my entire heart, and I see it burning, I see it burning, I see it looted, I see half the country hating the other half, and I think to myself, I know why people hate each other.

I know what the solution is. And it's gotten to a point where the false piece is now gone. And we are completely at odds with one another. I do not want to look back 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now and think to myself, you know, I wish I spoke up.

I wish I spoke up. It's a little strange. It's a little weird. This is completely outside of me to start a podcast. Part of me is even ashamed. At the same time, at the very same time, the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, makes it easy for me to risk.

It makes it very easy for me to risk. The compulsion that I described to you earlier is a snapping that has occurred in my heart. When you decidedly realize how little you care about being misunderstood, or the vulnerability that comes from articulating controversial ideas from a minority point of view, it is like fire in my bones.

Well thanks for making it to the end. I'll try to make the journey worth it. To Him, the honor, glory, and eternal dominion, James Hong. Amen. (upbeat music)