As I reflect on the passage of Hebrews 4:15 and 5:2 this morning, I am thinking about how the Asian parent in me manifests in the way I treat others, and read the Bible.

This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the
same testings we do, yet he did not sin. (Hebrews 4:15, NLT)
…
And he is able to deal gently with ignorant and wayward people because he himself is subject to the same weaknesses. (Hebrews 5:2, NLT)

Often times, I use my parents as an analogy to God. It helps me understand a lot of difficult concepts, like unconditional love, discipline, forgiveness, and relationship. But there is the stereotypical Asian parent inside of them, and inside of me — the one who is unforgiving, the one who is fast to criticize, the one who is judgy, the one who is impatient, the one who has both a superiority and an infeority complex… the list goes on.

I’ve been slowly learning to be a little more conscious about this, thanks to the help of a friend pointing it out to me but perhaps God as well. And I’ve come to see that it permeates a lot of things in my life — how I think of people who come to me with their burdens as inadequate or not trying hard enough, how I see some demeanor or actions of others and think they must have had too lenient of parents, how I look down upon the subset of the UW-Madison population who indulge in a hedonistic life, how I project the imperfect idea of a parent-child relationship to how I expect God to work. It has especially been apparent to me with this one friend of mine recently. I kept seeing his imperfections, like the lack of heart behind choosing the songs we will be serving people with (he is my praise team leader), how his one and only concern many of the weeks is being inadequate in school, and how he seemed to be unwilling to tackle uncertainty. I’ve tried to maintain my integrity, but at times I’ve failed and been passive agressive to him.

It seems that I am still quite far from embracing the heart of Christ. Because of my Asian Parent Lens (APL), I sometimes cast my presumptions of how a benevolent figure must be like onto Christ. But something reckless the Bible tells me about Christ is that he is on the one hand sharper than a double-edged sword (in our resistance), but on the other hand deeply tender and gentle (in our coming to him).

“He is able, with all meekness and gentleness, with patience and moderation, to bear with the infirmities, sins, and provocations of his people, even as a nurse or a nursing father bears with the weakness… of a poor infant.”

Owen, Works, 21:455-56

Maybe I could justify my APL in light of Christ’s sharp, double-edged sword, consuming fire nature. But intuitively, I can feel that this isn’t necessarily the conclusion God desires me to arrive to. What I feel more strongly is that in my dealing with people with gentleness, patience, and moderation, to bear the infirmities of the people around me, I become a reflection, a vessel of Christ.

Will be thinking about this and trying my best.