cho seung hui needed help. but i’m not so sure that help was available for him in that circumstance – even if he could have acknowledged the fact that he needed it. i suspect the clash of cultures affected cho affected him in a way that the typical counselor doesn’t have experience with. my best friend back home is a child psychiatrist, and he occasionally picks my brain when he has as an identiifed patient an asian child or adolescent. i think my ability to articulate the basic differences in culture (the interdependence and fixation on relational structure and rules/expectations, the shame-based parenting style, etc.) have given him insight he might have never gotten elsewhere and hopefully made him more effective in treating these patients (although nowadays he does very little therapy and is reduced to medicating most of his patients).

Thanks for letting me know of your post. I don’t mind your difference of opinion, and I do admit to my over-extension for using identificational repentance with this recent tragedy.

Back to the concept of identificational repentance, which I think does have some emotional-healing value to some people, particularly the in-touch-with-emotions people like myself. What “good” does it do for the whole might be debated, but that’s okay.

As for attempts to reach out, I’d imagine that typical outreach of inviting people to attend a small group or an event won’t cut it. There’s a whole different approach to reaching out to the marginalized, wounded, and hurting, that most ministries don’t know how to do. I’ll confess I don’t know how to do it myself.

And in the case of those who need psychiatric care, it’s more up to the family support network to encourage and support mental health care. If that’s absent or too shameful, we’ll all suffer for it.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/aprilweb-only/116-31.0.html

I was at a candle light vigil tonight (Wednesday night), and heard that this incident has been particularly difficult for a Korean Dad. Now that Dad didn’t know anyone directly associated with the tragedy, but the knowledge that the person who committed such atrocities was Korean pains him. He’s wondering if he should go and apologize to the non-Koreans. In my exposure to racial reconciliation, there’s a concept of identificational repentance that may be at play here.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_victim_vignettes;_ylt=AtMZ.68moQxQF6w07betTeis0NUE

My prayers are with them and their families.

5 days from now, I’ll be guest preaching at a church comprised of mostly next generation Asian Americans, located right in Northern Virginia. Same state, next county. We all need a word of comfort and hope, and God’s Word points us to where that can be found, and it will take more time than a 30-minute sermon for God’s grace to work its way down into the depths of our soul and being.

Plus, I think being who we are as next-gen Asian Americans, we need something more than a generic Gospel — we need a contextualized Gospel. The Gospel has to and can speak into our Asian American experience.

So, thinking out loud on my sermon preparation, it’s as much an emotional preparation as a spiritual one. I have to be honest and vulnerable, to say what I don’t know, to say that I have a hard time expressing my emotions and pains, personally and culturally, to let down my “save face” traditions, to weep with those who weep. I want to call out that life is more than suffering only, but life is also to be celebrated. I want to say that we have to get past formalities and relate more deeply with one another, the marginalized and the loners, the achievers and have-it-togethers too. I want to confess that the church has fallen short and hasn’t lived out the Gospel with winsome grace and love — our in-fighting and hypocrisy has turned a lot of people off. God help us all.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003669403_shoot17.html

I can already smell the racism and xenophobic comments brewing.

May the force be with you all.
I am just a stranger from HKSAR …You dont know me at all in fact.

Stranger from HK