Jason Chu & Gospel Imagination

This week on 20 Minute Takes, we talk with Jason Chu. He's a rapper, public theologian, and activist.  He and Nikki talk about Gospel imagination, and having a Christian faith that navigates today's complexities and contradictions.  He shares from his new album "We Were the Seeds."

You can listen to Jason's music on streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon, etc.
Catch him @jasonchumusic (on all social media): Instagram, TikTok,  Twitter/X
And learn more about him at jasonchumusic.com

20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action.
Host: Nikki Toyama-Szeto
Edited by: Wiloza Media
Music: Andre Henry

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Hello, my name is Nikki Toyama-Szeto. I'm the Executive Director of Christians for Social Action and your host for today's episode of 20 Minute Takes. This week we talk with Jason Chu. He's a rapper, an activist, and an educator based in Los Angeles, and he talks with us about the gospel imagination, the work of activists and artists, and why the church needs both.

Join us for this episode.

Well, Jason Chu, thank you so much for joining us here on 20 Minute Takes. 

[00:00:53] Jason Chu: It's great to be here. We've been trying to set this up for a while, so I'm super honored that you fit me in your schedule. 

[00:00:59] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I love it. Any chance I can get to talk to you? I always say yes, because it's I always learn so much. You know, I was thinking about you and You know, the Asian parent stereotype, right?

The acceptable careers that folks are allowed to choose is usually doctor, lawyer, engineer. And I look at your list, rapper, activist, educator... what's the family's response as you kind of stepped fully into this amazing space where you find yourself?

[00:01:24] Jason Chu: Yeah, that's a great question because, you know, I, I think about that stereotype of, you know, doctor, lawyer, engineer, and, and I get it. And I also want to push against it. Yeah. You know, in the sense of, I get it because so many Asian American families come from economic, financial, social trauma, right? True. That's true. And when, and, and, and I'm super empathetic and I think honestly there needs to be more empathy for these parents who, who arrived in this country needing to look for something, needing stability, not having stability or resources.

And they said, "Hey, this is what will set you up. This is what will set our future generations up." That's right. But at the same time, I like pushing against that because, you know, it's not like you go to Asia and everyone's a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or, or even honestly, that those are...

[00:02:13] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I never thought of it that way.

That's true. 

[00:02:15] Jason Chu: Right. And, and so in my family, you know, my, my grandfather, he was, he was an author. My, my dad's father was an author and a journalist and a community leader in the Chinese -Thai population, the Chinese community in Bangkok. And so, yeah. And so I often sometimes think about how in some ways me being a rapper and me being a community advocate and me being an educator is actually deeply rooted in, you know, this sort of family tradition.

And And then honestly, and then, you know, like for us, right, we have this added layer between you and me, right? Of this sort of like Christian mission and conviction. 

[00:02:57] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Yes. 

[00:02:58] Jason Chu: And and my parents are you know, they're Christian, they're religious and they- They raised me, right? We go to church and we hear missionaries talk, you know, the missionaries, our churches supported, they come home for Christmas or they come home for furlough.

And, and I grew up, you know, hearing stories from people who felt called to go and step outside of normal, you know, and, and, and very much the work I do now, whether that's in music, whether that's injustice, I see it as that same sort of like missionary calling that vocation. Yes. So I think that's how my parents understand it.

That's certainly how I've presented it to my parents is, you know, the same way that you taught me to look up to these women and men. That's what I'm trying to do with my life and career. Yeah. This time, this place. 

[00:03:51] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: And I, I love that. My my great aunt is Yuri Kochiyama. And one of the things for me, she's this Asian activist.

And I think similarly to you, this dynamic of like, no, no, no, like this sort of noisy form that I take is actually this fulfillment of what a typical, like it's like redefining. I love that as a writer, as an educator, as an artist, as activist, you're, you're following in this generational line. That's pretty awesome.

That's pretty amazing. You talk about Gospel imagination and I feel like that's really like I hear a lot of people talk about Christian imagination And I mean that's even for us. We talk about stirring the Christian imagination, but you actually make a distinction with gospel imagination- can you talk a little bit more about what is that distinction?

[00:04:43] Jason Chu: Yeah, and, and you know, this may just be my own pure kind of internal semantic games, but for me Christian is a word that is so laden 

[00:04:58] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Okay 

[00:04:59] Jason Chu: You know because I think that Christian has become more about a socialite especially, you know in in in Modernity. Yeah Christian is Christian this social identity.

Okay. You know, it's, it's, it's something that draws lines between people who are, who are Christian and aren't Christian. Whereas I think what honestly keeps me Christian is the gospel. Right? Because I think the gospel's for everyone, right? Okay. And, and the Bible is very clear about this, that the good news of Jesus Christ is something that should be good news to all people, no matter how they identify, no matter what their social location is, right?

For the Jew and the Gentile, right? For the powerful and the impoverished. The gospel is something that brings hope and transformation and, and what, you know our friend Andre Henry, right, called, says: "It doesn't have to be like this," right? It doesn't have to be this way. That to me is the gospel imagination and that's something that speaks to you whether or not you identify as Christian, whether or not you're traumatized from Christianity.

And I think that that's really powerful. Having something that's from God that isn't tied to, you know, I've identified this way or I've taken these creeds, but it, it washes over all of creation. So that's why I love viewing the world through the lens of a gospel hope and a gospel imagination my hope is not in Christianity, my hope is in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[00:06:41] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I see. Yes. Yeah. And I hear you put together some things that I don't often see a lot of people put together. There's this artist. And there's this activist and there's this gospel imagination. Can you tell me a little bit, like, how do those, do they work together? Or are they just like three different hats that you just wear whenever it's appropriate?

[00:07:02] Jason Chu: Thank you for asking that. Cause that's actually a, something that I've, it's a journey that I've been on to realize that they're intertwined, right? Because I think, you know, honestly, when, when, when you met me, even I was in the, process of figuring out the relationship between those, you know maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

That's right. It just felt like there were all these things that I was passionate about, all these things that spoke to me and, and my heart and my body responded and said, yes, this is right. And, and so I just did it, you know, when, when we were a little younger, right, we do things and we don't know why we do them, but then the more we do them, the more we realize they come from certain places, right.

And so for me, I've realized that there's absolutely a tie between my art, my, my desire for justice and my work for justice and my Christian faith, my, my religious convictions. And I, I guess. And, and I don't even know if I know how to articulate it. And I don't even know if the point is to articulate it, right.

Because I would just say that those are all the things that when I engage in them or when I think about them, I feel the Spirit moving, you know, beyond sort of like human rationale, you know, and, and, and I could talk where I can say, and I certainly do talk about, you know, how hip hop is a liberative movement that Is emblematic of the upside down kingdom, right?

Or I could talk about how. You know James Hal Cone a lot of my theology is based on, you know, this sort of imagination of the black Jesus and, and understanding the ramifications of that for other marginal communities. But frankly, all of that conversation is just rooted in when I consider social justice, when I consider art and creation and, and, and making beauty. And when I consider the cross, I feel the same thing in each case, which is that this is something profound and beautiful that I feel called to. So just kind of follow that. 

[00:09:22] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Wow. So each of those streams, you kind of feel like you are pushing for something that is. Deep that has resonance that you said and you're sort of striving for this beauty in each of those places But it also sounds like they're not predictable places. Yeah, somewhat surprising in each of them 

[00:09:41] Jason Chu: I've been so surprised Nikki. I'm so surprised to be who I am today I'm so like I have no clue. I I think I was talking with my partner yesterday About our younger selves And about how, you know, she at 12 or 15 or 20 and me at those ages, like we would never have dreamed that we'd get to be the people we are today, that we'd be get to, to live out the callings that we do today because. Yeah, it, it, it really is, you know, God is able to do so much more than we can ask or imagine. So then, right, so then how do we, how do we get a vocational vision, right? How do we do this? It can't be something that we advance and articulate because any, you know, this is a apophatic theology, right? This idea that every What does that mean?

What is apophatic theology? So apophatic theology, right, is this notion that any time we try to dictate any time that we say, God is X or the will of God is Y, what we're actually doing is constraining God, right? Because God is so infinite and so grand and so much bigger than human imagination and vocabulary can capture that anytime we say, Oh, well, God has to be this, we're actually constraining God within the limits of our language, reason, and imagination.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And so apophatic theology, right, which is very Jewish, it's very mystic, it's actually very Sufi, like, there's a lot of strands of this throughout, you know, religious experience. Apophatic theology says the best thing we can do, the wisest thing we can do, instead of saying like, oh, God wants X or this, you know, we just, just shut up for a minute.

Just, just like, like, it's funny because it's theology, right? Usually we think of theology as a person with a really good brain figuring out what God wants and what's right and wrong and what's godly and not. And apophatic theology, this sort of mystical, tricky theology says, just shut up for a second and let's make theology not about us. Interesting. And let's make theology about God and let's just receive and and that's been kind of the journey. 

[00:12:09] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: So it's, it sounds like it's a posture, not this posture of sorting, organizing, and knowing, but a little bit of this posture of, I don't know, how would you describe, what, what is that posture?

[00:12:19] Jason Chu: Well, I, I think it's, it's, it's a denormalization of Enlightenment era philosophy, right? Oh, interesting. Rationalism. Yes, yes. This notion that the human mind is the foremost and most accurate organ through which we can perceive truth. Yes. Yes. Right? This, this like Cartesian rationality that honestly, I would say has infected Christianity.

And it's not that God didn't give us minds and logic and reason. That's all great. But when we elevate all of that over God, right? Yes. Again, now we're putting God in the box of what I can figure out and what makes sense to me rather than placing ourselves under the authority of a God that's way bigger than, than.

Than we can ever imagine. 

[00:13:11] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: That's right. Yeah. I, so as you're talking, I'm thinking of like, I think Psalm 131 talks about your, your thoughts are so, so vast. How can I even understand them? So it's, I, I appreciate that posture. It seems like it's a particularly great posture for an artist and for an activist to have, right?

It's sort of like this prophetic stirring. Kind of a role. That's pretty amazing. 

[00:13:36] Jason Chu: Yeah, and and i'm careful with phrases like prophetic stirring because people use phrases like that to justify a lot of You know, like cult type manipulation 

[00:13:48] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Are you saying you're not a cult leader? 

[00:13:50] Jason Chu: I'm saying I could easily want to be one 

[00:13:55] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Well, that's that's an honest confession.

[00:13:57] Jason Chu: Yeah but but yeah, it's just like there's this thing that You know, right? It says, you know, you'll know it by its fruit, right? You'll know them by their fruit. And, and I would say that the, the, the, whenever I shut up a little bit, and I stop thinking with my college educated, master's degree, seminary educated, blah, blah, blah, who cares?

Like, God isn't, God isn't impressed by any of that. You know, when, when we come to God like a child. Like a kid who just wants to make cool stuff and be kind to others. All the things I'm proudest of and that feel the most. Right and godly come out of that, not out of me being smart or cool or loud. 

[00:14:41] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: I like that. I like that. You just dropped an album, "We Were the Seeds." Hmm. And when I think of seeds, I'm thinking of things that are sort of dry that drop into the ground. And, and grow into a thing. What was it that you meant when you titled your album, We Were the Seeds? 

[00:15:04] Jason Chu: It sounds so LA, and this is really funny. I don't, so, so right so we started work on this album long before we titled it. For the last two years, I just set aside time, it was like I was tithing my work time. Every Friday morning. Yes. I wouldn't respond to email, you know, I'd get all my business done by Thursday night. And then every Friday, I'd just hang out with my producers or I'd listen to music. And I started writing this music and just wanted to write good music that I felt was powerful, that I felt had some soul in it.

And out of that came this music that was multi generationally engaged that had, like you said, I love the word imagination. It had an imagination of what it could mean to be In Asian American person to be, you know, a person who's living in a technological algorithm driven digital world and trying to hold on to the soul of community.

I watched a lot of this TV show Reservation Dogs, which. I think it's just the best thing on TV in the last 10 years about native communities, about these kids Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo made this series about these four young kids, native kids living on a reservation and just, you know, like took in all these inspirations and wound up writing this music that felt like there was a certain through line, an emotional, a communal through line.

And I was, in an airport on a layover and that phrase, you know, my creative director and I had been texting each other like messages of like, "Oh, this could be that album title, what about this?" And so on. And I was just sitting there in the airport and we were the seeds came to my mind and, and it just felt right because.

And I can't say why it felt right because I think it's, I love ambiguity and I feel like there's, you know, we were the seeds that to me that, that means this generation, right? The millennials and the Gen Z's and the people who are like alive right now, we're the seeds of previous generations, right? They are our parents, our ancestors threw us out into this world.

And, and the fact that we're still here building communities and building beauty, despite entropy, that's something we were the seeds can also very much to me be an Asian American thing, you know, this idea of. I, I look at migration history, you know, our friend Jane Hong, who is a professor of American history.

She has these incredible books and essays about immigration and how, you know, how Asian America grew in, in the wake of war and trauma. And for me, we were the seeds just sort of captures this sense of growth, this sense of yearning for organic connection rather than dead. digital amplification. And, and, and these days I'm really trying to go a little slower and grow more than I'm blowing up.

You know what I'm saying? I love that. I love that. I'd love to play a little clip from your track Moves. 

[00:18:27] "Moves" from the album: "We Come from Seeds": Mama told me not to listen to rumors. I know how to, when I step in the room, daddy taught me to be quiet and honest. Progress speak

tattoos on my skin. Handstands. 

[00:18:47] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Can you tell us a little bit about that piece? Moves. Yeah, so Moves was actually the last record we wrote for this album. 

[00:18:55] Jason Chu: Okay. I was sitting there with my co writer, Leo Xia, one of my best friends and, and our engineer and producer, Jonham. And he played us some music he'd been working on.

And we heard this and immediately, like that chorus kind of came to mind. Mama told me not to listen to rumors. I know how to groove when I step in the room. Daddy taught me to be quiet and not as don't talk on my progress, just speak with my moves. And it just felt it felt calm and fun. And, you know, by that time we'd already named the album and I knew I wanted to talk about generations.

I wanted to talk about intergenerational stuff and I'm at a place in my relationship with my parents where I actually am very proud of them. Which took a lot of work, you know, like, like, you know, cause honestly, honestly, like I think a lot, my generation talks a lot about, you know, Do our parents feel proud about us or not, you know, right, right, but I think that that bilateral relationship is just as important, right?

Yeah, we proud. Yeah of them right and and there's so much in this culture this this racist Orientalist culture that shows, you know, like old, small Asian men and women are not cool, right? That's not the image of a Western mother or father, right? The way they nurture us. But I'm at a point where I just think my mom's super funny and weird.

And my dad's just like a really patient, very kind, sometimes exasperated guy. And and I wanted to write something that let people know all the moves I make, you know, the, the, the, the people who taught me how to move through this world and move through this life, even if they don't know how I do what I do, but it all comes from them.

So, so we wrote that record one night at my producer's house. 

[00:21:00] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Nice. I love that. I love that. Last question, Jason, tell us, why is it that the needs artists and activists,

[00:21:14] Jason Chu: You know, God's an artist. God's an artist, and from what I hear, God is active in the world, right? So, so if we want to be Christian, right, if we want to be little Christ, if we want to be in the image of God, I mean, trust me, like, I also love business people, like I've got so many entrepreneurs, like there's so, you know, like we see Christ in so many things, but I think that we need artists because my favorite saying about this is that science teaches us how we live, but art shows us why we live, right?

Art can capture the ineffable, and I think that that's the beautiful thing. Art can speak about things without having to define them. And I'll just say, you know, The word mystery comes up over and over and over again in the Bible. And I think that logic and science and business can't teach us about mystery.

Art is where we learn mystery. Like like Sufjan Stevens talks about that. So. If you want to learn about mystery and mysticism, art is, is where we develop those pieces of our soul. 

[00:22:38] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: Thank you, Jason. I'm glad that you as a rapper, as an activist, as an educator are helping out the church and helping us Just get pointed towards that gospel imagination.

So thank you so much for joining us here on 20 Minute Takes. 

[00:22:55] Jason Chu: Hey, thank you for having me. 

[00:23:06] Nikki Toyama-Szeto: 20 minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action. Our music was created by Andre Henry. And this episode was mixed and engineered by Wiloza Media. If you liked this episode, spread the word by subscribing, reviewing, or sharing. I'm your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto if you want to find out more about our work, visit the website at christiansforsocialaction. org.