Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am sure that each of you has read lots of books on personal development – how to win friends and influence people, how to win interviews, how to conquer hearts, secret of charming people, how to be a good salesperson, personnel management, how to win women, how to win men, how to be a good leader… And if you say these books have helped you a lot in life, you will shock me.

Being a MA student at The National School of Administration in Saigon, I read many books on personal management, leadership and personnel management. And after I got to the US and became a lawyer specialized in litigation, I read more personal development books and interpersonal communication books.

However, I never felt that those books were really helpful. Yes, they did give me a bit of knowledge and some suggestion, but somehow I always felt that they missed something – something like a light bulb – switching the light on, and you see everything, every issue and every answer clearly in a full beautiful picture before your eyes, instead of a bunch of bits and pieces of info and advices that have no foundation to stand on.

Until one day, two men in Washington DC invited me to join a group of men in “a gathering of friends in the spirit of Jesus Christ.” They said they were “not in religion” but only a group gathering in the spirit of Jesus Christ. They asked me: “Does that make sense to you?” I said, “Yes, it makes great sense to me. You distinguish Jesus from the church. And I do that too. I like Jesus, but I am not so fond of churches – they always have messy things and oftentimes have no Jesus.”

So, about two dozens of us men met every Tuesday morning, eating breakfast, talking about personal things, national things, world things and whatever. Then one person would talk for several minutes about Jesus or some of Jesus’ sayings. Then another person prayed to close the breakfast. That was really simple and had little religious colour. I figured it was like a bunch of Vietnamese friends meeting in the spirit of Ho Chi Minh.

Everyone in the breakfast group, including me, really liked those breakfasts.

For those breakfasts, I read about Jesus in the Bible. I had known the Bible since I was little, in primary school. But I had never really studied Jesus seriously, other than what I had heard in the church, which was like you heard about a man’s clothing but knew nothing about the man himself. Now, I read and understood Jesus much deeper, to the heart of a loving and sorrowful man who dedicated his life to teach people how to love.

The breakfast group had one unspoken purpose – to encourage each person to live like Jesus. But the encouragement came by itself to your heart. No one pushed it.

You would naturally love Jesus because he was such a sentimental and loving man. If you don’t love a man like Jesus, probably you can’t love anyone else in the world. And when you really love a master, you want to live as the master lives.

So, I loved Jesus more and more and wanted to live as he lived, and I gradually changed from a tough and rough litigator to a much gentler heart and, without trying, I started to love more and more people of the world.

And suddenly, the light bulb was switched on – I understood deeply about human interaction, human communication, diplomacy, human politics, human dealings, human pains and sufferings…

And I knew that now I understood so deeply about human relationship because I had a foundation to stand on – that was the love for all people, for all humankind.

So, it is hard to learn about human relations and be good at them without the foundation of “loving all people of the world.” Without this foundation, we can only have bits and pieces of shallow knowledge about human relations, not mentioning mastering them.

Wish all of us got the light bulb turned on.

With compassion,

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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