Angela Lin 0:14
Today we are going to talk about a part of your identity that I think a lot of people are afraid to discuss in polite company. But here we go. We are going to be talking about religion and spirituality. And today we have a special guest to help provide a different perspective. Her name is Lindsay.
Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Lindsay Liu 0:35
Hey, guys. I’m Lindsay. I’ve known Angela and Jesse for probably since our high school days. So it’s been a while. I’m actually a little bit different from both Angela and Jesse in the sense that I’m actually part of generation 1.5 as an immigrant, so I wasn’t born in the US. I was actually born in China, but I came here right before kindergarten started. I think at around like five years old, you still kind of do remember like, you know, your time there because your cognition would have kicked in by then. Thank you for having me. This is definitely a topic that I actually really enjoy talking about. So I’m really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jesse Lin 1:09
Thanks for joining.
Angela Lin 1:10
I think a kind of baseline place to start since we are talking about religion is for each of us to discuss first what religion we were raised up in, because oftentimes, individuals are not the ones who choose which religion their family brings them up in. So let’s first talk about how our families chose to introduce religion to us.
Jesse Lin 1:31
I met Angela through the temple that I went to growing up and my parents were Daoist. So that was the religion that we followed growing up. And Daoism has a combination of a lot of different things. But there’s some aspects of Confucianism, there’s some aspects of Buddhism, but to be honest, we at least myself, I wasn’t really immersed in what the religion actually meant. For us, it was kind of just like a weekly nice gathering for me to hang out with my friends Angela and other people who were at the temple so it was more of a social kind of situation or place for me.
Angela Lin 2:11
I echo that obviously since we were raised in the in the same religion so Daoism I actually don’t know if my family were Daoist prior to moving to Southern California or if they were Buddhists because like you said, Daoism is like, a sect of Buddhism, which is largely practiced in Taiwan. But yeah, same here. I think we were too young and also the language factors also part of it that like most of the scripture, or the books, I don’t know how to call them but like they they’re written Chinese like ancient Chinese. So we did study them. They made us like, memorize the texts and like recite it back, but we didn’t really know what we were reciting or like, what it meant, so for sure, I echo that it was more just like an excuse to be with my best friends and for our parents also hang out with their friends. But Lindsay, you have a very different experience from us. So how about you?
Lindsay Liu 3:08
I actually started off atheist. My family started off atheist. I think both of my grandmas at around roughly the same time when I was still in China, they both kind of tried to understand Buddhism and like tried to dabble in it and stuff, but I think neither of them really got into it that much. We were just largely atheist growing up and then I actually didn’t become a Christian until our family moved to California when I was around eight years old.
Angela Lin 3:34
So then it was from eight years old at some point your parents decided that they wanted to test out Christianity or to join the community or how did that happen?
Lindsay Liu 3:45
When we moved to California we were moving from Iowa so largely like white community, when we moved here for my dad’s postdoctoral at the time, and when we first came like we didn’t know anyone and I think this is something that Asian communities in like probably Western countries, and stuff, at least, you know, in America, they do really well. They really welcome you in, you know, just on the basis of your ethnic identity. And when our family moved here, you know, we were sought out by the Asian American community at this church that was actually half white, half Mandarin speaking. And obviously, the main reason why they had been interested in us was largely just because we were Chinese American. That’s kind of how we were brought in. It wasn’t really like my parents sought it out. It was just more of a community relation.
Jesse Lin 4:28
Now that we’ve kind of established what everyone’s background is, where does everyone stand today in terms of their religious or spiritual beliefs?
Angela Lin 4:37
I’m this kind of like hodgepodge, I would say I mostly aligned with being agnostic, where I like definitely believe that there is something higher but I don’t know what that is necessarily. And I don’t want to put a name to it. But I would also say I’ve had this like added layer of spirituality that came after I did psychedelic drugs, which we talked about previously, if you’re interested look back at that episode. When you go through these kinds of spiritual experiences through those drugs you are open to up to this feeling that everyone is connected that there is this energy that flows through like all living beings, and that there is a sense of like a greater power, greater entity or purpose that kind of like drives everything together. And during that experience, I also was able to connect a little bit deeper with this like Daoist background that we were brought up in. I did have visuals and connections with Buddha. So I would say after that I am now more agnostic leaning more towards like spiritually Daoist.
Lindsay Liu 5:47
For me, I’ve grown I think, in my Christian faith more and more so over the past years, particularly since college ended for me and I joined like a really close Church communitytThat’s really helped me to really grow in my faith.
Angela Lin 6:03
Jesse and I are pretty ignorant in this topic. We know that there’s like all these different branches of Christianity, right? Like Protestant, Presbyterian, I don’t even know the rest. So like, is there a specific branch that you’re part of? And if so, why?
Lindsay Liu 6:20
I’m part of the Protestant Christian church, I think the one I would most closely associate with is probably of evangelical Protestant Christians. If you were to go into more like am I Presbyterian, Lutheran, Anglican, something like that. I don’t particularly identify with those because that’s not the style of church that I go to, and I’m not sure that I belong there.
Angela Lin 6:41
What does evangelical mean?
Lindsay Liu 6:43
So evangelical is a larger umbrella of Christianity, particularly I think, Protestant Christianity. Basically evangelizing is to share the gospel like the message of Jesus Christ among you know, just everyone your neighbors and the other nations everywhere. Evangelical Christians is broad in the term where we basically just recognize that that is what we’re called to do by Christ. And that is how we live.
Angela Lin 7:08
And Protestant versus Roman Catholic?
Lindsay Liu 7:11
I’ll be honest, I don’t I don’t actually know much about Roman Catholic churches. Basically, the Roman Catholic Church has a lot more like ancient kind of rituals and stuff. There’s kind of like a lot more layers to it in the sense of they believe in things that the Protestant church doesn’t believe in. So for example, the Protestant church is largely centered on the belief that your only way to salvation, salvation that is from your sins is that you would need to know Christ and that it’s that personal relationship with Christ that gets you there. Whereas like, for example, the Catholic Church, they look at it more from the perspective of well, you need to also like venerate to pray to Mary, Mary, who’s Jesus’s mother. There’s things like penances when you do something wrong or when you sin to ask for forgiveness and things. They have kind of more things that are needed in order for you to get to salvation, whereas for Christianity, it’s all founded on one thing, and that’s kind of the root of the fact that it’s all based off of salvation from Christ alone. And by faith alone.
Angela Lin 8:10
Jesse?
Jesse Lin 8:11
I’ll keep it short and sweet. I also identify as agnostic, I do believe that there’s a higher power, but I’ve never had an experience that validated this feeling. And I told you earlier about this idea of Pascal’s Wager, which is this concept created by the mathematician Pascal who says that sacrificing a few earthly pleasures is worth it for potential entry into heaven, even if you don’t believe because you can lose a few things now, but supposedly, the afterlife is infinite, right? So you have infinite more loss to suffer, if you don’t believe so. That’s kind of like how I feel about it a little bit like I do believe but mostly because it’s like weird not to given that everyone generally has very strong spiritual or religious leanings, and it doesn’t hurt me in any way to try and like manifest that belief, you know?
Angela Lin 9:15
Let’s get into the meat of this. Another kind of baseline thing that we want to iron out first is this difference between the term religion and spirituality. Because I think oftentimes these terms are used interchangeably, but they do have different meanings. And so to start with organized religion, we have the dictionary definition here. It is a structured system of faith or worship, especially one followed by a large number of people such as Christianity, Islam or Judaism. I think the point here is that like the emphasis is on the word organized that there’s like a structure around it versus spirituality, I feel like it’s harder to define. I don’t actually agree with the dictionary definition so I didn’t bother writing it down. So I thought it’d be interesting for us to have a discussion around that. Like how would how would you define spirituality? Because I feel like for me, a lot of what you said Lindsay resonated with me in terms of like having that personal connection. That is what I kind of associate with the idea of spirituality that like it is a personal decision of yours to have this relationship with whatever the higher power is, or like this feeling of connection between everyone and it is for you. That’s how I see it. How about you guys?
Jesse Lin 10:41
I agree. I think when you talk about religion, and especially organized religion, there’s definitely a lot of negative connotations with it. And I also feel like spirituality is something that is more personal than organized religion, like organized religion, to me is the structure, the bureaucracy, the how you go about being religious versus like your actual connection.
Lindsay Liu 11:03
So I think for me coming at this from the perspective of Christianity, so I think Christianity is actually interesting because when I think about it, is it a religion? Or is it more spiritually based? And I would personally define it as probably both. The way that I see it is because the organized religion part of it, and that comes from things like the fact that we believe in the Holy Bible. And then also I would say, like, you know, church itself is organized in the sense of how you go about it and things and the community component of that. Well, that’s definitely organized. But I would say, though, to reduce Christianity to just those two elements, you’re missing the spiritual element of this, you know, that personal relationship with Christ. And ultimately, I would probably identify that as more spiritual because it is a personal relationship with Christ in the end.
Angela Lin 11:50
So how big of a role does religion slash spirituality play in everyone’s sense of identity and your sense of self?
Jesse Lin 12:03
it doesn’t really a whole ton just because I don’t think about it all that much. And it really only comes into the periphery of my everyday when it starts to become not a personal spiritual thing, but kind of like a social thing when they’re like overlaps, or conflicts from the social component between like organized religion and like the things that I generally believe in outside of religion.
Lindsay Liu 12:27
I think, originally, when I first came to faith, I first thought of it as like, oh, this is going to be a part of my life. And then as I got to understand the gospel more, I thought that okay, well, maybe this should be a bigger part of my life. And then as my understanding grew even more and my relationship with Christ developed there, I thought, okay, this should be the biggest part of my life then. But I’ve come to know that that’s actually all wrong that Christianity is my life. So yeah, so it’s involved in every thought, every decision just every facet of my life.
Angela Lin 12:58
For me, I feel like, spirituality is underlying in my sense of identity, but it’s de-prioritized. A big realization that I had, especially on those like spiritual experiences is that it is really easy to get bogged down in your everyday life. It’s part of me for sure, but I don’t think I pay enough attention to it or spend enough time kind of cultivating that, and it’s something that I want to work towards. But I’m not, I’m not putting in as much effort yet as I want to.
Jesse Lin 13:32
So one of the kind of side questions related to this that we wanted to ask was, how do you reconcile your personal beliefs and your personal spirituality with non inclusionary like parts of Christianity? What do you feel when you see a different person who practices a different kind of Christianity saying things to other people that are really hurtful or exclusionary or don’t really feel like it’s part of what Christianity or the Bible teaches?
Lindsay Liu 14:04
if I’m to be sincere about my faith as a Christian, which is founded on God’s word, which is the Bible, I can’t just believe and agree some part with some parts of it and not other parts of it. This would mean that even for parts of the Bible that our culture nowadays may call out as non-inclusionary. I would need to trust that God has always had a greater purpose for these things, beyond what I can currently understand right now. And in action, though, as Christians, we’re called specifically by the Bible over and over again, to love others. This command to love others, as ourself is really the core of that. So basically, when Jesus walked the earth, He showed a love for people that was radical for his time, but he did it in a way where he didn’t change who he was or compromise what he believed. And so we as Christians are to model after his way of loving and I think in practice, honestly, the church fall short of this love. And I would say that that’s largely because the church is made up of sinners to begin with, you know, people who do fall short of being able to achieve this kind of love.
Angela Lin 15:10
So what would you say is your truest spiritual experience that you’ve had that made you feel close to God or to a higher power?
Lindsay Liu 15:21
I think it was when my seven year relationship with my college sweetheart had ended. We were engaged for a year at the time when that fell apart. I think that experience if I had to pinpoint something that was revolutionary and convicting of my faith and radically just changed how I viewed God how I viewed my relationship with Christ. I would say that that would probably be the moment.
Angela Lin 15:45
Is that because after that really difficult moment you found strength in this relationship, or what was that that this moment kind of triggered?
Lindsay Liu 15:58
Yeah, I think strength is definitely something that came from that because I think when you’re in that position, you know, you’re you feel like you have everything, well…I felt like I had everything robbed of me. And so I did feel very weak. So strength was something that I definitely sought. I think I also wanted to be at the core of it to be loved when you’re when you’re breaking up with someone you feel unloved. And so I felt like strength was one thing that was given love was one thing that was given. But I think ultimately, just feeling his presence being so real through that whole process with me, was just radical, because I think presence is something that you really need in order to have a genuine relationship with anyone. So if you can feel someone’s presence there, then I think that really makes it real to you and kind of solidifies that you have this. This person in your life.
Angela Lin 16:51
Jesse?
Jesse Lin 16:52
I would say that I haven’t had a come to Jesus moment for lack of a better term, but I do kind of resonate with what you’re saying Lindsay in the sense that like, when I look back at parts of my life that I thought really sucked, or were really dark, and at that moment, I was like, I’m never gonna crawl out of this terrible disgusting like slime pit that I fell into. It doesn’t suck so much now. So it feels like there’s some progression to where I am now. I just don’t necessarily attribute it to something like religious or spiritual, but it is something that I can look back and say that I’m grateful about, if that makes sense.
Angela Lin 17:37
For me, I feel like I had a triggering moment – it was my MDMA journey. It was an extremely spiritual experience for me and what you said about just like feeling and knowing that presence was with you, I felt that instantly when I was in that journey of like, I knew that I was connected to everything and every spirit. And this connectivity was not like a learning I had, it was just like I just knew it in my soul. And from that point that really like opened up my spiritual like willingness to look at the rest of the world. But then, when I did ayahuasca, I mentioned that I saw Buddhas and they were essentially like three Buddhas that were like circling me. And I felt just this protection from Buddha and it was like, they didn’t have to say anything it was I knew that they were there to protect me and that they were always going to be with me and have always been with me throughout my life. And then my last kind of piece of the puzzle was so we talked about how part of the reason Jesse and I didn’t connect with Daoism when we’re growing up is that it was taught in Chinese and these books like we couldn’t read Chinese. It’s it’s hard right as like a kid. And so even though we were taught the Dao De Jing, which is like the main book in Daoism, we didn’t know what it meant. And so after I had these spiritual experiences, I felt like it was worth seeing if I could connect with these texts now as an adult after having these experiences, so I bought it. And as I read through it, there were so many things in there are so many teachings in there that I was like, this is exactly what I need in my life. And these are like the struggles that I have with like myself growth, and this resonates a lot with me. And I wish that I had been able to connect with this sooner in my life than now.
So you know, aside from that period in your life that helps you find your relationship or develop your relationship further with God. What do you do on a daily basis that helps you renew or build that relationship?
Lindsay Liu 19:58
There’s definitely things that as a Christian are supposed to help us, you know, build that relation, that ultimate goal of building that relationship with Christ. Part of it is definitely reading the Bible. And so I think for me, I’m currently doing two Bible studies right now both of them are like doing it what’s called inductive style. And basically, it kind of reminds me of what Angela just brought up about trying to understand like, original text. Part of the inductive Bible study is that you go into the original Greek, so trying to understand which Greek word was specifically used in this passage in this verse to try to get the author’s original intent and like a more fleshed out understanding of what they were originally trying to say. So yeah, so reading the Bible, praying every day is really helpful. Prayer is really just this relishing in this gift that I have this direct connection with Christ, and that to act on it would be to pray and to establish that relationship and to keep that up. And then I would say the next probably five component that we’ll talk about is going to church – community, being involved with in community. And the reason why this is important is because Christ does describe the church specifically as his body. And so you can already see from there that Christ and the church body have a very close relationship that is meant to be a consistent and like a regular part of the faith and the walk.
Jesse Lin 21:22
What about you, Angela, I mean, you mentioned that you want to do more things to develop yourself spiritually, and you’ve got the Dao De Jing translated are there like other things you’ve been doing to try and widen that?
Angela Lin 21:33
So I would say the things that I do that are not on the daily, but that helped me remind myself of this connection with spirituality are reading the Dao De Jing and also there’s this book called Journey of Souls. And my therapist actually recommended to me like a year ago and it like it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. It is written by a psychiatrist who specializes in past life regression. And so the book is all about the findings that he has discovered through his clients sessions in therapy about eternal life. In his sessions, he’s able to use hypnosis to get the clients to essentially remember some of the past lives that they’ve had. So then they’re able to discuss kind of like their transcendence into just like their eternal souls, their actual selves. And so that book reminds me that this life on Earth right now is transient. And it’s not who we actually are. It’s like one phase of who we are, but who we really are is the soul that’s inside of us. And so when I read that compounded with the teachings from the Dao De Jing, it translates in a daily life into the way that I carry myself with my interactions with people. I think my practice of being more spiritual is remembering who I actually am. And so when I’m feeling like superheated, super angry, or whatever the like negative feeling is I have to remind myself of that knowledge and then remind myself that like, this is temporary, this is a test, this journey of self growth is the way to be closer with spirituality and to be closer with my soul.
Jesse Lin 23:36
Wow ,I love that. I actually the only thing that I was gonna add is that I kind of do the same thing. I feel like to be spiritual you have to be you have to introspect once in a while, right? Like you’re saying, either through prayer or through what you’re doing every day where you’re like taking a breath. And personally, I’ve also been doing that more and more just because I’ve noticed that my temper does also get really out of control sometimes. But then when I stop and just like talk to myself about the situation I mad at, it may not necessarily be like a religious practice, but I also want to achieve a state where I am less bothered all the time. So, Lindsay, you mentioned that a huge piece of Christianity is this body of Christ, the church and the community. How important is that in your life?
Lindsay Liu 24:28
So I think in terms of like, the church body and the importance of it, I think it’s crucial, honestly, to be part of one, being part of the Christian body is really important and being part of the church is really important because it’s through the church community that we can practice loving and serving others and that we can also receive that kind of love and being served as well. So that’s part of it. But you know, also it’s just his design for us as well. Like, you know, it’s not good for people to be so lonely and is one thing and I would also say that as an example of how the church community is so important when it’s coming together is the fact that Jesus calls us to care for the marginalized, to care for the people that are probably being unseen or you know, uncared for. And you know how the church can actually actively do that is to come together and to support these people. So I think that’s another facet. The church is supposed to very much take care of those within it and the community surrounding it.
Jesse Lin 25:27
Angela what do you feel like the community that we were in growing up, how important was that for you?
Angela Lin 25:33
Oh, incredibly important. I mean, not because of the religion though. Like we already talked about this, But the best thing that that organized version of Daoism did for me was meeting you and Karen, who is our other best friend. We’ve all been like, extremely close friends since we’re like five years old, essentially. So and that’s gonna continue for the rest of our lives. So even if like we are all in different paths or levels of connection with that original religion, the ability to have met you guys and to spend every week with you and like develop our friendship is unparalleled.
Jesse Lin 26:10
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. I also have to say that looking this is like another one of looking back moments where I’m like, that didn’t suck as much as I felt like it saw during the middle of it. But, you know, when we have to do those classes and learn the text and stuff, like at the time, it was kind of like a little bit of a drag. But now that I look back on it, it’s not that I took a lot of learnings away from it, but it gives me more appreciation of the value of those things in the context of our heritage and our history,
Angela Lin 26:41
Digging more into the Asian piece of it because we often like to contrast kind of East and West. One of the things that is interesting to us is that so you and your family are from the Eastern world, right? But you subscribe to a religion that was founded in the West. Do you ever think about that? Like, does that ever bother you in any way? Or like, Yeah, what are your thoughts on that?
Lindsay Liu 27:10
Yeah, I definitely know what you’re asking where you’re coming from. And it is a very interesting thing. So when I looked into this more, I think one thing is that the Bible actually the start of it, it’s actually before, I guess, like that more visible split between East and West. It’s older than that, in the sense of just existence. So an example of this would be Noah’s Ark. So Noah has three sons, and actually it’s from his sons that the different continents and the different like, you know, ethnicities and things split off in such. Given that I would then say that while it is kind of a religion that has had more visibility, and you know, is more perpetuated from the West, I don’t know that I would necessarily call it a Western religion though, even though I understand that you’re you’re saying that it does seem to have come from the West. It certainly didn’t come from East Asia, for example. And I was actually looking into this more recently to kind of really think deeper about my Chinese American identity. So thinking about that more, I was researching the Chinese church. And I was actually finding things about how you know, Christianity is actually really just blowing up in Asia right now for one and you know, the projected numbers and the increased growth is just crazy. And I even came across this one resource that said that there’s actually more Christians now in China than registered members of the Communist Party. Whether or not that one fact is true, I think it’s safe to say though, that Christianity really is increasing and increasing rapidly in the East.
Jesse Lin 28:42
And then final kind of fun question related to East versus West. Do you still partake in any like Asian woowoo superstitions, like superstitious Asian things like you know, you go to some houses and they have that octagon or mirror hanging over the door or you have some, you know what I’m talking about?
Lindsay Liu 28:59
For sure, I’m pretty sure my mom has that in the backyard.
Actually, when I was last talking to Angela, I was giving her a tour of my room after cleaning it. And there’s just this red thing hanging on the back of it that I don’t even know when my mom hung that up probably when I was away at college, and I can’t take it down because it doesn’t match anything in my room, but it’s there out of respect for her. And I guess that’s kind of where my answer for this is. I think there’s a difference between partaking in these kinds of, you know, Asian ancestral rites and rituals and things and then also genuinely like believing that on the inside, you know, for it to kind of sink in deeper. I think it kind of comes down to, again, that relationship with Christ. So if this is going to be something that I do that’s going to affect my relationship with Him, then that’s going to be an issue. But if this is just something that is not going to affect me on my relationship with Christ, and this is more of you know, trying to show love and respect for somebody else. And that’s kind of where that line is drawn. And they’re aware that, you know, I’m coming at this just from that perspective, then personally, I would, I would say it’s okay. Like I haven’t, I haven’t destroyed that octagon mirror that’s somewhere in our house or taken down this red thing. I mean, also recently, I was back in China for my grandmother’s funeral, you know, I was there to kind of be part of with with the family to kind of send her off and it’s very ritualistic, you know, when you when you bury somebody and stuff in your family in Asian cultures. So, you know, I came for the tomb sweeping. So I came for that. And you know, it is kind of like a ritualistic practice. And I had to kind of really think about this deeply and really pray about it as well and is doing these rituals going to inhibit my relationship, my walk with Christ, this is going to be an issue, or am I making this clear to my family that I don’t believe in what these practices mean, but I’m doing this out of care, love and respect for you. You know as a way of you know, honoring our, our family as a whole.
Angela Lin 31:11
Okay, so a lot of heavy discussion today. So to close it out as you know, since you do listen to our podcast we always like to close with a sweet treat and our Fortune Cookie closing section and so for today as a kind of pick-me-up related to the topic, our ending question is what are you most grateful for as part of your current or previous religious slash spiritual experiences?
Jesse Lin 31:44
I will start this one growing up in the Daoist temple, I’m most grateful for having met you and Karen and having that friendship obviously, which is very much still an anchor for me now number one and number two, I am grateful for the kind of like rote memorization exercises they made us do because my memory is so shot right now I’m so glad they made me do that otherwise, I would literally not remember anything.
Angela Lin 32:12
For me, I am definitely very grateful for you and Karen in my life. But the second thing I’m grateful for is just the eye opening-ness of the spiritual experiences I had in putting me on the right path for self growth, because I really do think that the way that I actively work through my spirituality is through my self growth. So to be conscious of my actions, and like the motivations and the drive behind that and to be able to kind of manage that better. That’s something I’m very grateful for.
Lindsay Liu 32:45
For me. I feel like there’s a lot I think, probably the major thing is knowing that basically the foundation of Christianity is that you know, we didn’t do anything to deserve or to earn the status. The idea identity that we have that is based in Christ. That’s something that I’m really grateful for, because then that relieves me of that pressure to live up or to perform. And that also makes me realize, though, that it is truly just by that grace that Christ has given me that I know him and that I’m able to be saved, that it’s not possible to earn it, like I can’t be smarter and earn this or someone else can’t be smarter than me and earn this or someone else can’t be too stupid or whatever to to know Christ, because that’s not how this is based. And that’s not how this works. Actually, I would call that in pretty inclusionary. So I think that that is actually really something that I’m really grateful for. And then secondary, I would also say, yeah, community, the community that it’s brought for me is is huge as well. Being able to walk with people that share my worldview, and that support me and that encouraged me and that they’re praying for me as I’m struggling and I’m praying for them as they’re struggling and that we’re just, you know, mutually helping one another. But beyond just helping each other that we’re trying to strive for really loving the world, the way that Christ loves the world.
Jesse Lin 34:01
Well guys, if you liked the episode had some feedback or wanted to tell us something about your own current spiritual or religious experiences, feel free to email us at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com that’s Y-O-U-R-E. And as always, please rate us five stars on Apple podcasts, si vous plait, and if you come back next week, we’ll have a new episode for you then.